Why Video Games Deserve a Place in History

The UK’s video games industry body Tiga has called for the products to be treated like other creative industries such as television or film, rather than mere “software.”

There is a good argument for this. Games have been part of human civilisation for thousands of years. Egyptians played the board gamesenet 3,000 years ago, around the same time that Persians played theRoyal Game of Ur with dice. Around 700AD the ancient Indian game ofchatarunga developed into the modern game of chess, and India is also the origin of snakes and ladders and ludo.

These games, as much as more recent creations such as Monopoly and Scrabble, have cultural cachet, a place in our society and history. Video games have fans all over the world – for example, when two Indian brothers launched Scrabulous, a web-based Scrabble clone for Facebook, they had 600,000 daily players until Scrabble’s owners shut them down. Video games of more contemporary tastes, for example online 3D shooters such as Call of Duty, have more than 100m players.

Games reflect society

In his classic utopian novel The Glass Bead Game, Nobel Prize-winning author Herman Hesse writes of the eponymous game:

The way to learn the rules of this game of games is to take the usual prescribed course, which requires many years; and none of the initiates could ever possibly have any interest in making these rules easier to learn.

The game, like games in general, draws upon many aspects of human culture, arts, mathematics, and music, and is capable of expressing and establishing relationships between them. A game is a means of playing with the entire range of culture in the same way that a painter might play with a palette of colours.

This gives some indication of the place games have in human societies, and why they are such an important part of our cultural heritage. The characters of James Bond or Batman are cultural heritage, and then there are 007 and Batman video games. These games are played by people of all ages, with a 48 percent peak between the ages of 18-49 with rest pretty evenly divided between the under 18s and over 50s, and over 40 percent of gamers in the US are women.

Often families and groups of friends play games together – for instance Wii Sports, which is considered a kind of social activity, shaping the way that we interact with other people. We’ve reached the moment in which we are all gamers. Games are part of our life and a common form of cultural expression.

Games are diversifying

Games have become far more sophisticated than simplistic shoot-em-up, beat-em-up tests of skill and reaction, providing imaginative and sophisticated references and comment on culture.

Narratives in games are increasingly important, drawing the player into a fantasy world, or a simulacra of the real world, offering avenues for learning, for fun, and understanding a given environment.

Such games include Eufloria, which mixes strategy with relaxing music based on the idea of creating life on a planet. Proteus, is a minimalist game of pure exploration and discovery in a musical wilderness environment. It contains no challenges, tests or goals other than those the player chooses. The music engine reacts to activity in the game prompting the player to explore the environment as music.

This is story development as an imaginative art form and as mesmerising and immersive as the best novels. In fact sometimes reality and fantasy meet in the gaming world, such as Kevin Spacey playing the part of Jonathan Irons in Call of Duty – a role at least partially based on his portrayal of a ruthless senator in House of Cards.

Games can also be useful: in 2011-12, the city of San Jose, which was facing a large budget deficit, created a budget challenge game for its citizens to engage them in helping tackle the problem. Games are even changing the face of scientific research, through Fold-it, which sees members of the public asked to solve problems for science, putting many minds to work to help with breakthroughs in the lab.

Part of the creative industry

In the UK, the video games industry is a strong part of the British creative economy, contributing more than £1.7 billion annually. The growth of the industry is closely related to the opening of new development hubs and companies, with the focus on mobile games. Globally, the British market ranks 5th in terms of consumer revenues.

The centres of the UK video games industry are strongly co-located with other creative industries, especially film, TV, advertising, music and design. This shows how all the creative needs – audio, narrative writing, visual effects – can be and are integrated to great effect.

Games are cultural products – they’ve been exhibited in the Barbican in London, at MoMA in New York City, and in in many other leading museums. The curator for the MoMA show, Paola Antonelli, said: “I really do believe that design is the highest form of creative expression”. We need to take that leap of imagination and approach games and the development of them as an extension of our creative industries.

'4D Printing' Makes Shape-Shifting Structures. #4D_Printing

Using a new technique known as 4D printing, researchers can print out dynamic 3D structures capable of changing their shapes over time.

Such 4D-printed items could one day be used in everything from medical implants to home appliances, scientists added.

Today's 3D printing creates items from a wide variety of materials — plastic, ceramic, glass, metal, and even more unusual ingredients such as chocolate and living cells. The machines work by setting down layers of material just like ordinary printers lay down ink, except 3D printers can also deposit flat layers on top of each other to build 3D objects.

"Today, this technology can be found not just in industry, but [also] in households for less than $1,000," said lead study author Dan Raviv, a mathematician at MIT. "Knowing you can print almost anything, not just 2D paper, opens a window to unlimited opportunities, where toys, household appliances and tools can be ordered online and manufactured in our living rooms."

Now, in a further step, Raviv and his colleagues are developing 4D printing, which involves 3D printing items that are designed to change shape after they are printed.

"The most exciting part is the numerous applications that can emerge from this work," Raviv told Live Science. "This is not just a cool project or an interesting solution, but something that can change the lives of many."

In a report published online in the journal Scientific Reports, the researchers explain how they printed 3D structures using two materials with different properties. One material was a stiff plastic, and stayed rigid, while the other was water absorbent, and could double in volume when submerged in water. The precise formula of this water-absorbent material, developed by 3D-printing company Stratasys in Eden Prairie, Minnesota, remains a secret.

The researchers printed up a square grid, measuring about 15 inches (38 centimeters) on each side. When they placed the grid in water, they found that the water-absorbent material could act like joints that stretch and fold, producing a broad range of shapes with complex geometries. For example, the researchers created a 3D-printed shape that resembled the initials "MIT" that could transform into another shape resembling the initials "SAL."

"In the future, we imagine a wide range of applications," Raviv said. These could include appliances that can adapt to heat and improve functionality or comfort, childcare products that can react to humidity or temperature, and clothing and footwear that will perform better by sensing the environment, he said.

In addition, 4D-printed objects could lead to novel medical implants. "Today, researchers are printing biocompatible parts to be implanted in our body," Raviv said. "We can now generate structures that will change shape and functionality without external intervention."

One key health-care application might be cardiac stents, tubes placed inside the heart to aid healing. "We want to print parts that can survive a lifetime inside the body if necessary," Raviv said.

The researchers now want to create both larger and smaller 4D-printed objects. "Currently, we've made items a few centimeters in size," Raviv said. "For things that go inside the body, we want to go 10 to 100 times smaller. For home appliances, we want to go 10 times larger."

Raviv cautioned that a great deal of research is needed to improve the materials used in 4D printing. For instance, although the 4D-printed objects the researchers developed can withstand a few cycles of wetting and drying, after several dozen cycles of folding and unfolding, the materials lose their ability to change shape. The scientists said they would also like to develop materials that respond to factors other than water, such as heat and light.

'Illusion Coatings' Are Like Futuristic Camouflage

Instead of using invisibility cloaks to conceal objects from detection, "illusion coatings" could hide things by making them look like something else, researchers say.

These illusion coatings could help soldiers or spies hide antennas and sensors from remote inspection while still allowing the devices to scan the outside world, the scientists added.

Invisibility cloaks, once thought of only as "Star Trek" science fiction or "Harry Potter" fantasy, work by smoothly guiding light waves around objects so the waves ripple along their original paths as if nothing were there to block them. Cloaking devices that work against other kinds of waves are possible as well, such as the acoustic waves used in sonar. 

But one problem with invisibility cloaks is that they isolate whatever they enclose. This means "the act of cloaking would prevent an enclosed antenna or sensor from communicating with the outside world," lead study author Zhi Hao Jiang, an electrical engineer at Pennsylvania State,said in a statement.

Instead, scientists have now developed what they call illusion coatings — flexible, lightweight materials that can make whatever they cover appear to be something other than what they really are.

The investigators started with thin sheets of a composite material composed of glass fibers and Teflon. These were covered with patterns of copper stripes that interacted with the composite material to scatter radio waves in a very precise way. The stripes are only 35 microns deep and about 300 to 500 microns wide. (For comparison, the average width of a human hair is 100 microns.)

Next, the researchers took whatever they want cloaked and surrounded it with a separator — either air or foam. Finally, they applied the coating. Depending on the copper patterns used, the researchers could make a copper antenna or sensor look like silicon or Teflon when it was scanned by radio waves. They could also make a Teflon cylinder look like a metal object.

These illusion coatings may one day help protect antennas and sensors from discovery by hostile forces. "The coatings we invented can still allow for the electromagnetic communication between the coated object and the outside world," said study co-author Douglas Werner, an electrical engineer at Pennsylvania State University. "A sensor will be electromagnetically hidden or camouflaged while it still maintains its sensing functionality."

Illusion coatings may also help protect any type of equipment from stray or intentional electromagnetic interference. For instance, they could help enable multiple-antenna arrays, "where each antenna will not be affected by the presence of the other antennas, even when they are placed in very close proximity to each other," Werner said.

In addition, illusion coatings could be used for tasks other than hiding. For example, they could help channel radio signals to improve telecommunications, Werner said.

While these illusion coatings currently only work for radio frequencies, the researchers are exploring ones that work against infrared and visible wavelengths of light, Werner said.

LifeTrak Brite R450: Fitness Tracker Review

The LifeTrak Brite R450 is a new fitness tracker from Salutron that aims to provide a comprehensive view of health and fitness.

The R450 certainly does have a lot of bells and whistles — it tracks your daily steps, distance, calories burned, heart rate and workouts, and automatically detects when you fall asleep and wake up. The device vibrates to alert you when you need to be more active, and it includes an alarm that the company says will wake you up at an optimal time that's based on how well you've slept. The device starts at around $120 on Amazon, putting it in the middle of the price range for fitness trackers.

The Brite R450 is also one of the few fitness trackers that monitors your light exposure, including blue light. (It is thought that too much blue light exposure before bedtime could interfere with sleeping well.) The company also says the device can tell you when you need more natural light.

The device also has some smartwatch features, including alerts for incoming calls, texts and emails, as well as calendar reminders. And it is waterproof up to 90 feet, so you can wear it while you are in the shower or swimming. All of these features sound good in theory, but how does the device work in practice? I tested it for a week to find out.

Overall Rating: 5.8/10

The pros of the LifeTrak Brite R450 include automatic sleep detection, a vibrating alarm and an ambient-light detector that can tell you when you need more natural light.

The cons of the R450 include a slow syncing process, bugs in sleep detection and a strap that is somewhat uncomfortable.

Design/comfort: 7/10

The Brite R450 has a large, circular screen surrounded by a ring of metal that I thought looked quite sleek. The display is easy to read, and the screen is always on, so you don’t have to push any buttons to see the time of day. But if you're in the dark, you'll need to turn on the backlight by holding down a button on the side of the device.

I was disappointed with the device's strap — it has a plastic feel, and it is hard to put on. The strap is adjustable, but because it is somewhat ridged, I found it hard to adjust it to one of the smaller sizes.

The device has three buttons on the right side. When you press the top "mode" button, you toggle through viewing: your notifications about calls and texts, a graph of your hourly activity, a graph of your weekly activity and a screen to track your workouts separately. The middle "view" button lets you see your basic stats: total sleep time, distance walked, calories burned and total steps for the day. You see these stats on the bottom of the screen, below the time of day, along with a progress bar that shows how close you are to completing your goal for the day. Also, you hold down this middle button to check your heart rate. The bottom button is the "start/stop" button, which you press to start/stop your workouts. You also hold it down when you want to sync the device to your smartphone (which syncs wirelessly via Bluetooth).

People who do not have smartphones may find the Brite R450 more appealing than other fitness trackers, because although it helps to have the LifeTrak app, it is not essential for using the device — you can view your weekly activity on the device itself. You can even manually enter all your information (height, weight, etc.) into the device itself, without the app, as well as set your goals and alarms. But this does require a lot of button pushing, and it's definitely easier to enter your information through the app.

Unlike many other fitness trackers in its price range, the Brite R450 battery does not need to be charged — it lasts about six months before you'll need to replace it.

User friendliness: 4/10

The Brite R450 has three navigation buttons, and each performs a different function, depending on whether you press the button once, twice or hold it down. This makes for quite a complex fitness tracker. For this reason, you'll want to give the user guide a read before you strap the tracker on your wrist and head out the door.

Performing basic functions on the device, like starting workouts and viewing your stats, is pretty easy, once you've familiarized yourself with all those buttons.

However, I found it tricky to get the device to check my heart rate — I would often need to do a reading multiple times before it would show a measurement. This may have been because the device did not fit me properly, as I had a hard time adjusting the strap to fit my wrist. Also, unlike some other fitness trackers that also track heart rate — like the Basis Peak and the upcoming Fitbit Charge HR — the LifeTrak does not measure heart rate continually throughout the day. Instead, the Brite R450 performs a measurement only when you tell it to.

Syncing the wristband with the LifeTrak app proved frustrating. First, I attempted to pair the device with my iPhone 4S, but I kept getting the message "Pairing Failed," even after I tried suggestions from the company for fixing pairing problems. I then tried an iPhone 5, and my R450 was able to pair, but the syncing process took forever. Seriously, it was several minutes. This is much longer than many of the other fitness trackers I've used, which usually sync in a matter of seconds. Because it took so long to pair, I would sync the device and then go do something else. Sometimes it would take several minutes, and then tell me there was a problem, and I would have to start again. I can only hope that the time it takes to sync will improve with newer versions of the app.

I also encountered problems with the device's sleep tracking. You don't have put the device into sleep-tracking mode, because the Brite R450 is able to automatically detect when you fall asleep, based on your motion, arm posture and ambient light. This is an appealing feature for people who don't want to remember to put their device in sleep mode every night. The first night I used the R450, the automatic sleep detection worked well — the device seemed to be able to detect when I was asleep and when I woke up fairly accurately. But the next few nights, the device did not track my sleep at all (it said I got zero hours of sleep). After exchanging emails with the company, I was told there was a bug in the app that turns off sleep detection in some cases, which the company is working to fix. (A representative told me this update would be available fairly soon.) But on the device itself, I was able to follow some steps to turn it back on, and after that, sleep detection worked again.

The ambient-light detection is an interesting feature, but for it to work, you have to keep the watch face from being covered by a sleeve from your sweater, jacket or coat. Because I tested the device in winter, the Brite R450 was almost always covered by my sleeve when I was outdoors, so it usually didn't detect when I had been outside. This is not a criticism of the watch design, but I think that users in cold climates should be aware that the ability of the device to detect when you're outside may be a problem when you're wearing winter clothes.

Value of information: 6/10

Although the LifeTrak Brite R450 tracks a lot of things, it provides very little information about what your stats actually mean. For example, although the default step goal is 10,000 steps a day, LifeTrak does not provide information about how much exercise you need to "be healthy." Not everyone cares about this type of information, but those who are just starting to track their distance/steps may be interested in knowing more specifically what they should aim for, and other fitness trackers do give users more insight into their activity. For example, the Withings Pulse O2 explains that people should aim to get 150 minutes of moderate activity per week (as recommended by the World Health Organization), and the Fitbug Orb looks at your activity for the past week to provide personal targets for total steps, aerobic steps and calorie intake.

Also, although the Brite R450 is one of just a few trackers that can track ambient light, it provides very little information about what to take away from your data. A graph in the app shows you your exposure to "all light" and "blue rich light" over time, and the app tells you how many minutes you were exposed to "bright light." The app suggests you get about 30 minutes a day of bright-light exposure. But is it bad if you get more or less than that? The app does not say. Also, the device did not tell me whether I needed more or less blue light, or whether I was exposed to blue light at the wrong time of day.

Still, the device does provide some takeaways in the form of vibrating alerts on your wrist. It will buzz to tell you to "get more light" if you've been inside too much. Another alert will say, "let's walk now" if you've been sitting down too long. In this way, the device does let you know when some of your behaviors are less than optimal.

Enjoyment/inspiration: 6/10

The physical vibrations from the Brite R450 on your wrist, and the messages to "get more light" or "walk now" may provide the extra nudge you need to get moving throughout the day.

In the app, next to each of your metrics you'll see a circle that fills with color as you get nearer to completing your goal for that day. When you complete a goal, you'll see a green check mark next to that metric. This is a quick way to see how active you are throughout the day. On the device itself, the R450 also displays your progress with a progress bar. If you see that you've nearly completed your goal, you may be motivated to go out and walk a little more.

The device does not have a way for you to connect with friends, however, or share your progress on social media sites, which may be a motivation for some.

Life Under Ice: Robot Captures Views of Hidden Arctic Ecosystem

SAN FRANCISCO — A nimble underwater robot has traveled below Arctic sea ice and collected the most extensive real-time video footage yet from this largely unexplored environment, revealing an unexpectedly rich ecosystem, scientists report.

Researchers have long known that algae and other small organisms thrive on the undersurface of Arctic sea ice — particularly in regions thin enough for sunlight to shine through and support photosynthesis. But, scientists have not been able to closely examine this environment in its pristine state, because the icebreakers they typically use to reach field sites tend to disturb the sea ice.

Researchers based at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts have now built a new remotely operated vehicle (ROV), called the Nereid Under Ice (NUI) vehicle, that solves this problem by diving beneath ice and delicately transmitting oceanographic data and real-time video footage to researchers on a ship through a thin fiber-optic cable. 

Sixteen hours of video footage from the NUI vehicle’s first four trial runs this past summer revealed a surprising abundance of life under the ice, including algae, jellyfish, and gelatinous animals called larvaceans, the team reported here at the 47th annual meeting of the American Geophysical Union.

"What might look on the surface like a barren wasteland may actually be a thriving ecosystem," study co-author Christopher German, a researcher at the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution, told reporters in a news briefing.

The underwater robot’s thin fiber-optic cable is only about as thick as a human hair, and gives it more flexibility and finesse than typical ROVs with thicker tethers that usually only travel directly below a ship. During its trial runs, the NUI vehicle was able to travel as far as 2,600 feet (800 meters) laterally from the ship, and was able to complete 2.3 miles (3.7 kilometers) of track-line surveys, the team reported. If the cable breaks, the robot is programmed to find its way back to the ship autonomously.

The robot documented organisms that form not only the base of the Arctic food web that supports larger animals like seals and polar bears, but smaller organisms that also play an important role in the global carbon cycle, by pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and eventually dragging it to the seafloor when they die. This so-called biological pump helps mitigate the warming effects of fossil fuel emissions by drawing greenhouse gases out of the atmosphere, the researchers said.

The scientists are using the NUI’s data to gather baseline information about this important sub-ice environment now, so they can better understand how its role in the global carbon cycle may change in the future, with thinning ice due to climate change.

"It’s one of these habitats that we have never seen before and we are understanding them as we are changing them," study researcher Antje Boetius, a marine biologist at the Alfred Wegener Institute in Germany, said during the news briefing.

The team is now working to analyze the data collected from the robot, and eventually hopes to equip the ROV to explore more extreme environments. The team's ultimate goal is to send it beneath the underbelly of a floating glacial tongue to study the region where a glacier meets the seabed, called its grounding line. A glacier’s grounding line plays an important role in the speed at which it melts and slips into a body of water, which has key implications for rising sea levels.

"Even just seeing that environment will offer a new kind of perspective, because it has not really been done before," WHOI researcher Michael Jakuba told. The team is particularly interested in exploring the base of Thwaites Glacier, an unstable region of the West Antarctic Ice Sheet, Jakuba said.

Tiny Sphere Satellite Will Test Future Space Surveillance Network

Astronauts released a tiny satellite from the International Space Station last month that will be used as a test bed for a future "space surveillance network," according to the U.S. Naval Research Laboratory.

The spherical machine, called SpinSat, measures 22 inches (56 centimeters) across. The satellite was released using a robotic arm within the space station's Kibo module, under supervision from the outpost's Expedition 42 crew.

The spaceflyers, particularly NASA astronaut Terry Virts, snapped pictures from the orbiting laboratory of the SpinSat as it tumbled and sailed away from the space station.

One major goal of SpinSat's mission will be to test how well new electrically controlled micro-thrusters can stabilize the satellite's position, NASA said in an update.

SpinSat's main mission, however, is to act as a calibration target fo rspace surveillance. The military is interested in testing whether it can track the orbits and spin of spacecraft and then characterize them.

"It's a good calibration object for them to say, 'Okay, we know this thing's going by. Can we do a maneuver detection, can we do a change detection, how small of a rotation can we see, how small of a shift in the orbit can we see?'" Andy Nicholas, the project's primary investigator,said in a statement.

If the new thrusters work as planned, the International Laser Ranging Service will then watch SpinSat's movements using ground stations around the world. The service tracks satellites with high accuracy — to about 0.4 inches, or 1 cm — but the military is aiming to do better.

Several retroreflectors — cubes with three flat mirrors — are installed on SpinSat. When light strikes any of these surfaces, it reflects in the same direction. As a result, ground stations can fire a laser at the moving satellite and triangulate its position based on the light that gets reflected back.

"They know the laser light's moving at the speed of light," said Nicholas. "They know where they were pointing the laser, and from that get very accurate orbit positions — down to the millimeter level."

Researchers can also figure out the satellite's spin rate as the laser light moves from reflector to reflector. Since there is space between each reflector, scientists can calculate the spin based on how the distance between the reflector and the ground station changes when SpinSat passes overhead.

SpinSat will also provide information on atmospheric density, as gas particles create drag on the satellite. When the sun is at the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity (as it is right now), extreme ultraviolet radiation puffs up Earth's atmosphere. Scientists are interested in studying the effects of this "swollen" atmosphere now, compared with measurements from four satellites, collectively known as the Atmospheric Neutral Density Experiment (ANDE), that were deployed during space shuttle missions in 2006 and 2009.

The new SpinSat is based on ANDE's design, but is slightly bigger. There are two ANDE satellites remaining, but researchers were unable to use them for this experiment, as NASA was concerned that, over time, atmospheric drag may cause these smaller satellites to hit the space station, according to the Naval Research Lab.

How This Supercool Hoverboard Works

If you've ever dreamed of cruising around town on a floating skateboard like Marty McFly does in the classic '80s flick "Back to the Future Part II," then you could soon be in luck.

A pair of innovators is trying to make the futuristic fantasy of riding a hoverboard into a reality. About two months ago, husband and wife design team Jill and Greg Henderson launched a Kickstarter campaignfor their Hendo Hoverboard, a levitating skateboard that could hit "hoverparks" as early as October 2015.

The Kickstarter campaign, which ends Sunday (Dec. 14), has been a resounding success, bringing in well over its initial goal of $250,000 in its first week. With only a couple of days to go in the impressive crowdfunding campaign, the project has already raised nearly $500,000. 

But with all the hype comes an important question: How in the world does this thing work? The basic premise behind the technology is something called Magnetic Field Architecture (MFA), Greg Henderson told.

MFA is Henderson's term for what others may call magnetic levitation, or maglev, which is already used to power superfast, hovering trainsin Japan, China and South Korea. These trains use magnets to create lift and thrust, and can travel at blistering paces because there is no friction between the train's wheels and axles and the rails.

But the tech behind the Hendo Hoverboard is different from current applications of maglev, for various reasons. The most obvious difference is that, unlike a train, the board doesn't follow a track. Instead, it hovers freely on top of a surface plated in copper.

Copper is what's known as an inductor, Henderson said. An inductor is a metal that isn't magnetic. When you put a magnet near such a metal, an electric current starts to flow in the metal. This current, in turn, causes a magnetic field to develop outward from the metal. If the magnetic field that develops is strong enough, it can levitate the magnet. If it's really strong, it can also levitate any object that happens to be attached to the magnet, including a hoverboard.

To lift a hoverboard and rider, a magnet needs to create a strong magnetic field — something that can be accomplished with the help of electricity. The Hendo board comes equipped with four electrically charged magnets, or electromagnets, which Henderson and his team refer to as "hover engines." These create what Henderson called the "primary magnetic field." When these powerful magnetsare positioned over an inductive copper surface, they're met with a strong repulsive magnetic field from the copper itself that pushes the magnets upward, levitating them.

Of course, the technology behind the hoverboard is a bit more complicated than that. To get the board to remain stable, the Hendo team uses four electromagnets.

"It stays steady because we're using more than one hover engine, and when we do that, it's sort of like trying to balance a unicycle versus a car — one wheel versus four wheels," Henderson said. "It's a whole lot easier with four hover engines."

The exact mechanism that gets all of these hover engines working together to keep the board afloat is at the heart of the Hendo team's Magnetic Field Architecture and, as such, is a company secret. However, Henderson did say that by combining the electric fields created by the hover engines, a more "efficient" magnetic field is created. He also mentioned that in high-performance versions of the board, only two hover engines are used — a feat made possible with the help of alternating magnetic fields.

"I suspect what they're doing is setting up a changing magnetic field in their magnets, and then that changing magnetic field is always inducing another magnetic field in the conductor below it that opposes it and keeps [the board] floating above the surface," said Eric Palm, deputy director of the National High Magnetic Field Laboratory at Florida State University, who is not affiliated with the Hendo Hoverboard.

Right now, the Hendo board is designed to levitate over copper, but it could also be made to hover over aluminum, as well as a variety of nonmetal materials that are also inductors, Henderson said. The technology behind the hoverboard is also offered in a scaled-back form, as the Whitebox Developer Kit, which is simply a box equipped with the company's signature hover engines.

"We're trying to inspire co-creation across the globe, and we're getting some fantastic responses," Henderson said. The ideas that people have already come up with for the company's hovering Whitebox are "amazing" and "exciting," he said.

Many of these ideas are focused on new innovations in the transportationand health care industries, Henderson noted. But there have also been some novel applications for Hendo's technology, including a hovering turntable for a DJ, in which the turntable spins while the record stays in one place, Henderson said.

"As a scientist, it's really hard for me to know whether this will really turn into something useful or if it's just a cool toy," Palm said. "But it certainly is very cool. I'd love to have one."

Futuristic Laser Weapon Ready for Action, US Navy Says

The next generation of futuristic weapons has arrived. The U.S. Navy announced that its high-tech laser weapon is ready to disable and destroy enemy drones and small boats, should the need arise.

The 30-kilowatt laser weapon system (LaWS) is housed aboard the USS Ponce, a naval vessel stationed in the Arabian Gulf— a body of water located south of Iraq that separates the Saudi Arabian peninsula from Iran.

While sailors have not yet used the new laser to destroy any real enemy targets, the Navy is prepared to do just that, if necessary, according to Rear. Adm. Matthew Klunder, chief of naval research.

"On USS Ponce, LaWS has been in test and development mode since August 2014 in the Gulf. We are now beyond testing – it's operational and the laser weapon is not in a box waiting for a special occasion,"Klunder told reporters at a news briefing Wednesday (Dec. 10) in Washington, D.C.

Under the Geneva Convention, militaries are not allowed to use laser weapons directly against people — a condition that Klunder said the U.S. Navy with abide by, according to Optics.org. But LaWS doesn't necessarily have to blow anything up to be effective.

Sailors operate the laser using a video game-type controller, according to Navy officials. With this controller, they can perform a variety of operations. If an enemy boat or aircraft gets too close to a Navy ship, the laser can deter the threat with an effect known as optical "dazzling." This nonlethal option — which amounts to a very bright glare — is meant to serve as a warning, giving the adversary a chance to change course without getting blown to smithereens.

But, if a threat keeps coming, sailors aboard the Ponce can increase the strength of the laser's highly concentrated beam, which will knock out the sensors or control systems on an enemy drone or vessel. If the adversary still doesn't get the hint, the beam can be turned up higher, making it capable of destroying the threat altogether.

In recent tests, LaWS successfully hit targets aboard a small boat that was speeding toward the Navy ship. The laser weapon also shot a small drone out of the sky, according to Navy officials.

"We ran this particular weapon, a prototype, through some extremely tough paces, and it locked on and destroyed the targets we designated with near-instantaneous lethality," Klunder, chief of naval research, said in a statement.

The sailors who tested LaWS reported that the weapon worked well even in high winds, heat and humidity — conditions that aren't ideal for the operation of a laser. The data collected from these trial runs will be used to develop new laser weapons for the Navy under the Office of Naval Research's Solid-State Laser-Technology Maturation program. These future lasers could one day be deployed on both large destroyer ships (used to launch missiles) and smaller combat ships, Navy officials said.

Laser weapons systems like the one aboard the USS Ponce could be used in ground-based defense systems, as well as in the air, according to Navy researchers. These weapons are sought after because they don’t require highly explosive gunpowder or pressurized gas to destroy enemy targets, making them safer for military personnel to operate. And since all they require is a steady supply of electricity, laser weapons may also be more reliable than conventional weapons.

Of course, the U.S. military is also pursuing this new breed of weapons for economic reasons. Laser weapons cost less to build, install and fire, compared with multimillion-dollar missiles, Navy officials said.

"At less than a dollar per shot, there's no question about the value LaWS provides," Klunder said. "With affordability a serious concern for our defense budgets, this will more effectively manage resources to ensure our sailors and Marines are never in a fair fight."

The most recent tests of LaWS are part of several rounds of testing that have occurred over the past three years. In a 2011 test, a laser weapon disabled multiple small boats launched from a U.S. warship. And in 2012, LaWS downed several drones during a naval test of the system.

Military Seeks Flying Aircraft Carriers to Launch Drones

The U.S. military wants to develop flying aircraft carriers to transport drones in and out of surveillance zones.

The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking ideas from companies on how to launch drones from huge transport planes, such as the massive C-130 planes that ferry troops and cargo to and from the battlefield..

Drones are cheaper and less risky to fly than manned aircraft, but their range and speed limitations prevent them from being used for some missions. Deploying them from an aircraft midflight would address some of these problems, DARPA said, and could improve surveillance, reconnaissance and intelligence-gathering missions.

"We want to find ways to make smaller aircraft more effective, and one promising idea is enabling existing large aircraft, with minimal modification, to become 'aircraft carriers in the sky,'" Dan Patt, DARPA program manager, said in a statement.

"We envision innovative launch and recovery concepts for new [drone] designs that would couple with recent advances in small payload design and collaborative technologies."

DARPA's proposal calls for a system that would allow military officials to reuse the launch platform multiple times, and could be used to retrieve the drones after they are deployed. To lower costs and minimize risk, DARPA envisions modifying existing transport planes to carry drones.

There are multiple payoffs, DARPA officials say, including safer missions for people, reducing the cost of deployments (since drones would be used instead of pilots) and technological advances.

"DARPA hopes to leverage significant investments in the area of precision relative navigation, which seeks to enable extremely coordinated flight activities among aircraft, as well as recent and ongoing development of small payloads (100 pounds or less)," agency officials said.

Companies submitted proposals last month, and DARPA said flight-ready prototypes could be ready in four years.

Microsoft Band: Fitness Tracker Review

The Microsoft Band is a wrist-worn fitness tracker designed for people who want to track data from their workouts while also having email, texts and other reminders available with a glance to their arm. The GPS-enabled device tracks your heart rate, steps taken, calories burned and the quality of your sleep, and also offers a guided workout feature. It pairs with the Microsoft Health app, which runs on iPhone, Android or Windows phones. At $199.99, the Band is more expensive than the Withings Pulse 02 and the Fitbit Charge HR (available in early 2015), which also track heart rate and cost about $120 and $150, respectively. But Band's cost is comparable to the Adidas miCoach Fit Smart (about $190 on Amazon), which also has a built-in heart rate monitor, but does not alert you about emails or texts.

What sets the Band apart from other fitness trackers is its smartwatch capabilities— email, texts and calendar alerts (as well as the digital personal assistant program called Cortana, which is available on Windows phones). But despite these bells and whistles, the manufacturer seemed to come up short on a basic requirement: comfort. I tested out the Band for a week, and here's what I found.

Overall Rating: 5.3/10

The advantages of the Band are the convenience of viewing emails, texts and other alerts on your wrist, combined with a slew of sensors including GPS and a built-in heart rate monitor. The disadvantages are that it's uncomfortable to wear, isn't waterproof and has a screen that makes it difficult to read longer messages.

Design/Comfort: 4.5/10

The Band comes in three sizes (small, medium and large), and has an adjustable-fit clasp. The device fit fairly snugly on my wrist, but the hard plastic strap and rigid screen made it pretty uncomfortable to wear for extended periods of time. The band is dust- and splash-resistant, but not waterproof, so you can't wear it while swimming.

The Band's display screen is a rectangular touch screen, measuring 11 x 33 millimeters (0.4 x 1.3 inches), with a resolution of 320 x 106 pixels. You basically have to wear it with the screen facing the palm side of your wrist; if you wear the device on the back of your wrist, you have to twist your arm awkwardly or crane your neck to read the display. I found this uncomfortable when I was sleeping or typing.

If you enable notification alerts,the Band can display incoming calls, emails, texts, Tweets or other updates, and has a small motor that vibrates to alert you.I did this, on my iPhone, by enabling each app to "Show in Notification Center" in the phone settings. It was easy to turn the push notifications on and off whenever I wanted to.

Alongside the touch screen are two buttons, the power and action buttons. Pressing the power button, centered beneath the display, will wake up or turn off the display, and pressing and holding it powers the device on and off. Pressing the action button, below and to the right of the screen, lets you toggle through the choices on the screen and select the one you want. For example, you use this button to start or stop a run, or turn the heart rate monitor on or off.

The battery normally lasts 48 hours, but it needs to be charged sooner than that if you turn on the GPS function, or other advanced features. The device charges via USB, and the stated charge time is less than 1.5 hours, whichis about what I found when using the device.

The Band connects via Bluetoothwith the Windows Phone 8.1; iPhone 4S, 5, 5C, 5S, 6 and 6 Plus; and Android 4.3-4.4 phones. You will need a Microsoft account to use your device, but you can sign up for one if you don't already have one.

When you first log in, you'll be prompted to give your Band a name and choose a color theme and wallpaper.

User-friendliness: 5.5/10

The heart rate monitor and GPS features were useful — I ran a 5-mile (8 kilometers) race with the device, and afterward I found it helpful to see my average pace, average heart rate and ending heart rate, among other metrics. People who are interested in losing weight or maintaining weight loss may find the calorie-counting feature helpful. I'm not sure how much I would use the other features, especially sleep tracking, since the device was uncomfortable to wear while sleeping.

Getting the notifications about emails and texts right on the screen was useful because it meant I knew about them even when I wasn't right next to my phone. But actually reading the messages, especially longer emails, on the tiny screen was difficult. Also, once a message is pushed to your Band, there's no way to delete the message from the Band, even if you delete it from your phone. And you can't reply to messages directly from the Band, unless you're using Cortana with a Windows phone.

I initially had some trouble pairing the device with my iPhone — the Bluetooth wasn't able to establish a connection right away. But I was able to get it up and running after a few tries, and after that it synced automatically.

The Microsoft Health app is fairly easy to navigate. The home screen displays basic information about your workout, sleep, notifications, etc., and you can customize how information is displayed on your Band by managing "tiles." 

Value of information: 6/10

Overall, I found the health-tracking features to be useful, and the notifications were kind of novel, but for people looking for a fitness tracker to track the basic data from workouts, the Band's higher price may not be worth it, and its uncomfortable design may mean there are better options. For those who have a Windows phone, I imagine that having access to Cortana could make the device more useful.

The tracker offers several ways to tailor your goals and workouts based on your own preferences. It was easy to navigate through the app to customize a workout: You go to the Find a Workout menu in the Health app, and then you can browse through the options. This could be a useful feature, especially for people (like me) who perform best with someone coaching them. On the Health app, you can adjust your targets for daily number of steps and calories burned to suit your own goals, and the app will tell you if you've met them.

You can see on the app which times of day you were most active, and you can download pre-designed workouts (such as "Train for a Half-Marathon in 8 weeks" or my personal favorite, "Fast-Track Your Pecs").

Enjoyment/Inspiration: 5/10

The Microsoft Band was fairly enjoyable to use, but didn't feel as comfortable to wear as some other GPS watches, such as the TomTom Runner Cardio.

The Band can share information with apps like RunKeeper and myfitnesspal. As a nifty perk, you can pay for your Starbucks purchases using your Band, though it's not marketed as a payment device like Apple Pay.

All in all, the Band seems like a promising device, but in practice, I found it didn't quite live up to its potential as either a fitness tracker or a smartwatch. Also, I couldn't get past it being uncomfortable to wear for long periods.

Laser-Zapping Experiment Simulates Beginnings of Life on Earth

The origin of life on Earth about 4 billion years ago remains one of the biggest unsolved mysteries of science, but a new study is shedding light on the matter.

To recreate the conditions thought to exist on Earth when life began, scientists used a giant laser to ignite chemical reactions that converted a substance found on the early Earth into the molecular building blocks of DNA, the blueprint for life.

The findings not only offer support for theories of how life first formed, but could also aid in the search for signs of life elsewhere in the universe, the researchers said.

The beginning of life coincides with a hypothetical event that occurred 4 billion to 3.85 billion years ago, known as the Late Heavy Bombardment, in which asteroids pummeled Earth and the solar system's other inner planets. These impacts may have provided the energy to jumpstart the chemistry of life, scientists say.

In 1952, the chemists Stanley Miller and Harold Urey conducted a famous experiment at the University of Chicago in which they simulated the conditions thought to be present on early Earth. This experiment was intended to show how the basic materials for life could be produced from nonliving matter.

Recent studies suggest that asteroid impacts may break down formamide — a molecule thought to be present in early Earth's atmosphere — into genetic building blocks of DNA and its cousin RNA, called nucleobases.

In their new study, chemist Svatopluk Civiš, of the Academy of Sciences of the Czech Republic, and his colleagues used a high-powered laser to break down ionized formamide gas, or plasma, to mimic an asteroid strike on early Earth.

"We want[ed] to simulate the impact of some extraterrestrial body [during] an early stage of the atmosphere of Earth," Civiš told.

They used the Asterix iodine laser, a 490-feet-long (150 meters) machine that packs about 1,000 Joules of power at its peak, which is equivalent to the amount produced by an atomic power station, Civiš said. The laser was only switched on for half a nanosecond, however, because that is comparable to the time frame for an asteroid impact, he said.

The reaction produced scalding temperatures of up to 7,640 degrees Fahrenheit (4,230 degrees Celsius), sending out a shock wave and spewing intense ultraviolet and X-ray radiation. The chemical fireworks produced four of the nucleobases that collectively make up DNA and RNA: adenine, guanine, cytosine and uracil.

Using sensitive spectroscopic instruments, the researchers observed the intermediate products of the chemical reactions. These instruments measure the chemical fingerprint of the molecules formed during the course of a reaction. Afterward, the team used a mass spectrometer, a device that measures the masses of chemicals, to detect the final products of the reactions.

The breakdown of formamide produced two highly reactive chemicals or "free radicals" of Carbon and Nitrogen (CN) and Nitrogen and Hydrogen (NH), which could have reacted with formamide itself to produce the genetic nucleobases, the researchers said.

The findings, detailed today (Dec. 8) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, provide a more detailed mechanism for how the basic chemistry of life got started.

The results of the study could offer clues for how to look for molecules that could give rise to life on other planets, the researchers said. The Late Heavy Bombardment could have created similar reactions on other rocky planets in the solar system, but these may not have had water and other conditions necessary for life, Civiš said. For example, Earth contained clay, which may have protected these building blocks of life from the very bombardment that created them.

"The emergence of terrestrial life is not the result of an accident but a direct consequence of the conditions on the primordial Earth and its surroundings," the scientists wrote in the study.