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.