Showing posts with label Future. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Future. Show all posts
Monday, 7 May 2012
Saturday, 5 May 2012
Bloomberg Summit to Focus on Future of Enterprise Technology - EON: Enhanced Online News (press release)
Line-Up Features Juniper Co-Founder Pradeep Sindh; Google CIO Ben Fried; Goldman Sachs Global Co-COO Don Duet; and Facebook Hardware Design and Supply Chain Director Frank Frankovsky
NEW YORK--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--In today’s dynamic financial marketplace, enterprise technology fuels everything from automated trading strategies to accounting and risk management platforms. As the volume and richness of data feeding the financial markets grows and new challenges emerge, Bloomberg will gather leading technology decision-makers, including chief technology officers and chief information officers from top companies for the Bloomberg Enterprise Technology Summit on May 10, 2012.
“We’re excited to be hosting our second Enterprise Technology Summit in New York and to convene some of the most influential in technology to weigh in on how enterprise technology practices are evolving in tandem with a number of industries.”
The Summit, which will take place at the Apella at the Alexandria Center in New York, will convene the biggest procurers of enterprise technology from across the public and private sectors – with a focus on financial services companies – to hear experts discuss how corporations and governments are leveraging the cloud, handling data storage challenges and securing enterprise operations.
Speakers will also advise on low-latency strategies for equity, option and ETF trading; discuss solutions for mobilizing enterprise and the outlook for mobile security; and debate the impact of Dodd-Frank and the new regulatory environment for technology.
“From trade execution to complex event processing to big data, an understanding of where enterprise technology is heading is key for today’s businesses, both in the private and public sector,” said Robert Bierman, head of Bloomberg LINK. “We’re excited to be hosting our second Enterprise Technology Summit in New York and to convene some of the most influential in technology to weigh in on how enterprise technology practices are evolving in tandem with a number of industries.”
Bloomberg CEO and President Dan Doctoroff will kick off the Summit. Additional key speakers include:
Donal Byrne, Chief Executive Officer, Corvil Richard Falkenrath, Principal, Chertoff Group; Former Deputy Commissioner for Counterterrorism, New York City Police Department Leonid Frants, President and Founder, OneMarketData Pat Gelsinger, President and COO, EMC Information Infrastructure Products, EMC Corporation Christian Gheorghe, Founder and Chief Executive Officer, Tidemark Richard Hochron, Chief Technology Officer, Direct Edge Ned Hooper, SVP and Chief Strategy Officer, Cisco Systems, Inc. Colonel Cedric Leighton, Founder and President, Cedric Leighton Associates; United States Air Force Colonel (USAF, retired); Former Deputy Director, National Security Agency Allan Leinwand, Chief Technology Officer, Infrastructure, Zynga Elias Mendoza, Partner, Union Square Advisors LLC Stephen Norman, Chief Information Officer, Markets, Royal Bank of Scotland Matthew Quinn, Chief Technology Officer, TIBCO Software Inc. D. Keith Ross Jr., Chief Executive Officer, PDQ ATS; Former Chief Executive Officer, Getco Ted Schlein, Managing Partner, Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers Lauren C. States, Vice President and Chief Technology Officer Cloud Computing and Growth Initiatives, IBM Corporate StrategyThe Summit is being sponsored by Juniper Networks, JNK Securities Corp., The Brazilian Association of Information Technology and Communication Companies (Brasscom), Gravitas, Grant Thornton LLP and Insigma.
For more information on the program and speakers, please visit: http://www.bloomberglink.com/tech-2012.
Follow us on Facebook, LinkedIn and Twitter (@BBGLINK). The hashtag for this event is #BBtech.
For more information on Bloomberg, please visit http://www.bloomberg.com/about.
About Bloomberg LINK
Bringing the power of Bloomberg to the executive conference business, Bloomberg LINK produces invitation-only, in-person gatherings that combine world-class editorial programming with peer-to-peer networking amongst the who’s who in influential communities. In this environment, participants engage in open discussions that lead to learning from each other’s expertise and experience. For more information, please visit www.bloomberglink.com.
About Bloomberg
Bloomberg, the global business and financial information and news leader, gives influential decision makers a critical edge by connecting them to a dynamic network of information, people and ideas. The company’s strength – delivering data, news and analytics through innovative technology, quickly and accurately – is at the core of the Bloomberg Professional service, which provides real time financial information to more than 310,000 subscribers globally. Bloomberg’s enterprise solutions build on the company’s core strength, leveraging technology to allow customers to access, integrate, distribute and manage data and information across organizations more efficiently and effectively. Through Bloomberg Law, Bloomberg Government, Bloomberg New Energy Finance and Bloomberg BNA, the company provides data, news and analytics to decision makers in industries beyond finance. And Bloomberg News, delivered through the Bloomberg Professional service, television, radio, mobile, the Internet and two magazines, Bloomberg Businessweek and Bloomberg Markets, covers the world with more than 2,300 news and multimedia professionals at 146 bureaus in 72 countries. Headquartered in New York, Bloomberg employs more than 15,000 people in 192 locations around the world.
Future of crime fighting lies in police's technological advancements - AsiaOne
With the nature of crime changing, Deputy Prime Minister Teo Chee Hean stressed on the importance of keeping up to date with technological advancements to stay ahead of crime.
There has been an increase in the use of technology for criminal activities such as credit card fraud and ATM skimming.
Some recent incidents were the DBS ATM frauds in January and February this year. Hundreds of unauthorised withdrawals were made from customers' bank accounts of up to a combined estimate sum of more than $1 million.
According to the Singapore Police Force's Crime Situation Report for 2011, the overall crime rate fell by 7 per cent to 606 cases per 100,000 population. This is the lowest crime rate registered for the past 20 years.
"To sustain this level of safety and security in Singapore, we need to plan and prepare ourselves to stay ahead of crime, build deeper partnerships with the community and sustain the trust of the community," said Mr Teo at yesterday's Singapore Police Force Workplan Seminar.
He added that they needed to position themselves for the future as the things the police have done well before may not be enough to deal with new challenges.
Traditional criminal syndicates now use technology to work across geographical boundaries and hide their identities more easily.
The CID is working to make better use of technology by introducing new tools under their Technology Crime Forensics Roadmap.
"This will ensure that their ability to recover data from damaged devices and to analyse video images keeps pace with what technology can offer", Mr Teo added.
Another initiative was the Home Team School of Criminal Investigation. It was set up in July last year, at the Home Team Academy, to provide training to keep officers up-to-date with the latest trends and technologies.
The school will embark on a project to use virtual crime scenes for more realistic hands-on experience.
The seminar also had an exhibition showcasing the latest tools, innovations and prototypes of new crime-fighting equipment. One prototype is the enhanced Neighbourhood Police Post that has an electronic kiosk that allows the public to lodge reports 24/7.
Technology not just equips offices with more crime fighting tools, but in the long run, it will increase productivity allowing officers to focus more on crime fighting.
natlim@sph.com.sg
"The future of AF ablation catheter technologies": A New Report Reveals the ... - MarketWatch (press release)
'Ghost Recon: Future Soldier' (ALL) Goes Gold - WorthPlaying.com
May 2012Platform(s): WiiU, Wii, PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, Nintendo DS, PSP, PC
Genre: Action
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Release Date: May 22, 2012 (US), May 24, 2012 (EU)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier features cutting-edge technology, prototype high-tech weaponry, state-of-the-art single-player and multiplayer modes, while going beyond the core Ghost Recon franchise and deliver a fresh gameplay experience, with an unparalleled level of quality that excites long-time fans and newcomers alike.
More articles about Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
Genre: Action
Publisher: Ubisoft
Developer: Ubisoft Paris
Release Date: May 22, 2012 (US), May 24, 2012 (EU)
Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier features cutting-edge technology, prototype high-tech weaponry, state-of-the-art single-player and multiplayer modes, while going beyond the core Ghost Recon franchise and deliver a fresh gameplay experience, with an unparalleled level of quality that excites long-time fans and newcomers alike.There is nothing fair, honorable, or just about combat. There is only winning and losing—the dead and the living. The Ghosts don’t worry about even odds. They do everything in their power to overwhelm and obliterate the enemy. Future technology is the key to winning an asymmetric battle.
I Ghost Recon Future Soldier join an elite team of highly trained, cut-throat special-ops soldiers. Armed to the teeth with unrivalled combat technology and cutting-edge military hardware, Ghost Recon takes you to the globe’s most deadly warzones to hunt down the highest value targets.
As a member of the elite Ghost Recon, you are among the few who possess the power, the adaptability, and the cognitive fortitude of the future soldier. Specialized in every area of combat, equipped for survival, and trained in absolute discretion, you are entrusted with the missions no other soldier can handle. Armed to the teeth with an arsenal of real-world high-tech weaponry only in prototype today, you are an F-16 on legs, trained to lock on to your objective even in the world's most complex, high-risk warzones.
When you’re outnumbered…only the dead fight fair.
While one of our competitors recently revealed plans to imitate our game’s future technology for their release in the fall, we’re proud to be bringing Ghost Recon: Future Soldier to retail this month,” said Tony Key, senior vice president of sales and marketing, Ubisoft. “Future Soldier has an unparalleled amount of high-tech weapons, gadgets and technology based on real prototypes currently in development that will show gamers the true meaning of future warfare.”
Key Features:
Experience the Future of War The Ghosts pack the latest and best high-tech military equipment, inspired by actual prototypes.Blend into any environment with mind-bending optical camouflage.An exoskeleton enhances the Ghosts' physical abilities, allowing them to run, leap, slide and kick farther & faster than any soldier on the field today.Unparalleled physicality and lethal expertise in melee close combat are now at your disposal. Control all-new heavily armed unmanned ground and air combat drones.Unleash large-radius firepower with a personal mortar capable of firing multiple guided rockets simultaneously.Natural Cooperation Instantly coordinate combat against 360° threats: link-up with your Ghost teammates in a formidable formation at the push of a button.Move-and-shoot-as-one with your friends or AI teammates with no training and no complex orders system.Benefit from your teammates' high-tech abilities and combine them to unleash the power of an army at the pull of your trigger.Epic Solo and Co-op Campaign! Join the Ghosts as Kozak, a fresh recruit whose elite unit is the United State's best and only means of retaliation when a nationalist coup unseats Russia's legitimate presidentExperience multiple aspects of the war from the unique perspectives of a high-level bodyguard, an engineer, a civilian and more.Play the single- or split-screen cooperative campaign across multiple theatres as the shadow of global conflict creeps across Northern Europe and beyond.Fast-Paced, Addictive Multiplayer Mode Up to 12 players in 6 vs 6 matches for a fast-paced, intense online experience4 game modes (Conflict, Saboteur, Decoy, Siege) focused on objectives and cooperationSelect from 3 classes (Rifleman, Engineer and Scout) and unlock new gear to battle online across 10 mapsGain XP points to level up, customize and progress your characterGather intel on enemies’ positions and seamlessly share it with teammatesUse the suppression system to pin enemies down while teammates flankGhost Recon: Future Soldier has an ESRB of "M” for Mature.
More articles about Tom Clancy's Ghost Recon: Future Soldier
Is Origami the Future of Tech? - BusinessWeek
In 1996 a young mathematician and computer scientist named Erik Demaine became fascinated by a magic trick that Harry Houdini used to do before he made his name as an escape artist. The magician would fold a piece of paper flat a few times, make one straight cut with a pair of scissors, and then unfold the paper to reveal a five-pointed star. Other magicians built on Houdini’s fold-and-cut method over the years, creating more intricate shapes: a single letter, for example, or a chain of stars.
It’s an odd subject of study for a computer science professor, but Demaine had an unorthodox background. When he was hired by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology in 2001, he was, at 20, the youngest professor in the university’s history. Pale, thin, and soft-spoken, with a pickpocket’s long fingers and a fox-colored ponytail, Demaine was born in Halifax, Nova Scotia, and raised by his father, Martin, a renowned glass blower.
Photographs by Leonard Greco for Bloomberg BusinessweekCurved-crease origami at Erik and Martin Demaine's shared studio at MIT
When Demaine was six, he and his father started a puzzle company. When he was seven, his father took him out of school and they spent four years traveling the U.S., choosing their destinations together. They spent a few months in Florida, Demaine recalls, “because it was so flat and good for riding bicycles.” Martin home-schooled his son while they moved from place to place. The traveling stopped when Erik returned to Halifax to enroll in Dalhousie University at age 12.
It was his father who brought the fold-and-cut problem to his attention when, still a teenager, Demaine was searching for a dissertation topic. It was clear that one could create complicated shapes by folding and cutting, but how complicated? What were the limits? It was a simple but potentially universal question, exactly the sort that most appealed to Erik. He worked on the problem for two years and in 1998 published a paper with his answer: There were no limits. Fold-and-cut allowed you to make any shape in the world, any collection of shapes, even, as long as they had straight sides. One could, in an angular font, create the entire text of this page with the right folds and the right cut. In a paper published two years later, Demaine expanded on this idea, extending it into three dimensions: Any faceted solid, he showed, no matter how complex or irregular, could be folded from a single uncut sheet of paper. Start with a piece of paper big enough, and you could model Notre Dame down to the last gargoyle.
At least in theory. Demaine’s computational origami work assumed an idealized sheet of paper with a thickness of zero, a sheet that could be folded an unlimited number of times. Still, his method gave a sense of the possibilities of folding. He has since become an accomplished origami artist. He’s also made a robot from a single sheet of plastic.
When we think of mass production, the image is of a factory floor. Take a car. The engine block is cast, either from iron or aluminum. The hood, doors, and roof are stamped out on 100-ton presses. Gears are carved from metal blocks by milling machines or punched out by dies. The console and interior handles are injection-molded or carved, the mats and seats woven or stitched together. Some of these processes date to the Industrial Revolution, others to the Iron Age. The natural world doesn’t use any of them. One of its favorite methods is to take something flat and fold it into a three-dimensional form. Flowers, leaves, wings, proteins, mountain ranges, eyelids, ears, DNA—all are created by folding.
Today researchers in robotics, biology, math, and computer science are immersing themselves in that method. Scientists are looking at how materials and molecules wrinkle, drape, flex, and crease. They’re using folding to design everything from robots to cancer drugs, from airbags to mirrors for satellite telescopes. An Oxford University engineer named Zhong You has used origami to design better-crumpling car bumpers and flexible, low-cost stents. A team at Wake Forest University has used origami folding to create a fabric of densely layered nanotubes that can generate power from body heat. In a range of fields, fabrication by folding has the potential to be far faster, cheaper, and less energy-intensive than traditional methods and to work at very, very small scales, where even the most precise mills and lathes have all the accuracy of an earthquake. Makers of medical equipment and consumer electronics are looking at folding as a way to streamline manufacturing processes.
“We have a paradigm where we want to build things by having a solid block and then etching away at the block until you get whatever shape that you want,” says William Shih, a Harvard University biochemistry professor. Think of Michelangelo chiseling his forms from boulders of marble, or a milling machine carving an engine part out of a hunk of steel. “The way that nature does things is different,” Shih says. “It uses a folding algorithm, and it’s something that seems to be very efficient. We can look to nature for inspiration.” Shih himself has designed devices at the nanoscale that assemble themselves out of DNA strands, a process known as DNA origami.
Photograph by Leonard Greco for Bloomberg BusinessweekRobert Wood in the Harvard Microrobotics Lab, which he runs
Folding is, at heart, a geometry problem, and the groundwork for much of the new research is being laid by mathematicians. The increasingly ingenious applications, though, are driven by collaborations between engineers, scientists, and programmers: “Biologically inspired engineering” is an ambitious new way of doing science that treats living organisms like mechanical systems. Just as the diameter of a gear or the strength of a spring determines how a clock works, the shape and tensile qualities of folded proteins determine their roles in the countless processes that keep the human body running. Deciphering those relationships and building off of them are part of what the new science of folding is about.
Two of Demaine’s collaborators are the roboticists Robert Wood of Harvard and Daniela Rus of MIT. Rus is one of the world’s leading researchers of “programmable matter”: substances that can change their own physical properties. Programmable materials could allow for the creation of devices that take on multiple dissimilar tasks, repair themselves, or evolve. The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, or Darpa, has a programmable matter project, and it helped fund the work that Wood, Rus, and Demaine have done together.
Most programmable matter research has focused on small modular robots and other devices that can combine into various larger forms. Folding is a different approach, and it has the advantage of having been studied both by mathematicians such as Demaine and by generations of origami practitioners. As Rus, Wood, and Demaine wrote in a June 2010 paper in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, programmable matter that folds could be used to create a Swiss Army knife-like tool that could morph from a wrench to an antenna to a tripod. Rus has spoken of the possibility of kinetic maps that could reproduce the topography of the landscape they’re showing, and Demaine of solar panels reconfiguring themselves to more efficiently capture sunlight.
The first challenge to realizing such machines is figuring out whether the sort of folding required is conceptually possible. Origami is all about crease patterns: choosing a fold pattern locks one into a single final form, whether it’s a crane or a flower. Demaine wanted to find out whether there was a crease pattern that was an exception to this, a sort of universal origami building block. He discovered it in a fold called the box pleat: a square grid of creases with alternating diagonals that origami artists had long known could be used to create a wide variety of different shapes. Demaine’s contribution, once again, was to prove just how wide that variety was. Using computational geometry, he proved that the box pleat worked as a three-dimensional pixel (a voxel). “If you want to make any shape out of little cubes, then this crease pattern is enough,” he says. Geometrically speaking, all you had to do was start with enough squares.
In the summer of 2008, Rus, Wood, and the researchers in their labs set out to see if Demaine’s mathematical proof could be translated into an actual device. Their aim was a small prototype, a sheet that could fold itself into two simple shapes: an airplane and a boat. Paper thickness and paper size, the issues that always separate computational origami from real world folding, would only be exacerbated in this transformer robot. The “paper” would need circuitry, and the wires would have to be able to stretch at the robot’s joints, since each fold doubled the sheet’s thickness. In addition, the motors at the folds that would drive the transforming process would have to be very thin but also powerful, since they would be acting at the joint, the point of least leverage (think of pushing open a door right next to the hinge rather than at the side where the handle is).
Over the next year the designers came up with solutions to each of the challenges. The final sheet, a square half a millimeter thick and 4 centimeters to a side, comprises 32 identical fiberglass triangles with silicone rubber joints between them. To create the wiring for the joints, Rus and Wood cut copper-laminated plastic into a mesh so it could expand, accordion-like, across the folds while still carrying a current. The robot’s muscles were thin foil strips made of a “shape memory” metal alloy that would either fold or straighten when electricity was run through it. Its robot brain was a sticker.
Leonard Greco for Bloomberg BusinessweekIt takes a week to assemble a RoboBee by hand—and a fraction of a second by pop-up folding fabricationSince his days as a University of California at Berkeley graduate student, Wood has been working on developing a life-size robotic bee. A tiny aerial robot, he argues, could be used to gather information in military and search-and-rescue operations, to explore hazardous environments, even to pollinate plants if bee populations continue to decline. Today, Wood’s RoboBee is part of an arms race of small drones: There’s also the Nano Hummingbird, built by AeroVironment for Darpa, and the 22-inch quadrotors being developed at the University of Pennsylvania (their feats of coordinated flying have made them YouTube (GOOG) sensations). The RoboBee remains a more rudimentary flyer; its designers are still working on getting it into a stable hover. The considerable challenge of sustained, controlled flight is exacerbated for the RoboBee by the fact that it’s a fraction of the size of its competitors—39 mm from wingtip to wingtip, 18 mm from head to tail, and one-sixtieth the weight of a quarter.
The RoboBee’s miniature scale has also created fabrication problems. Until recently the robots had to be built by hand using microscopes, tweezers, and superglue. The laborious process took a year to learn, and even then the merest twitch of an assembler’s fingers could ruin the work. Nine out of 10 parts ended up defective. At Harvard, Wood and the graduate students in his lab were constantly looking for ways to improve the process. A couple of them, including Wood, have small children, and two years ago they realized they had a model for how to rethink their fabrication process right in their homes: pop-up books. “You open up the page, and out pops this complicated structure,” Wood says. “All of the assembly trajectories are built into that laminated two-dimensional structure.” The magic of pop-up is that the clumsiest infant can make it happen. The unfolding is easy; what’s tricky is making the cuts and folds beforehand that ensure that everything properly deploys. If the engineers in the lab could create an assembly method that did the same thing, they would be able to turn a painstaking task into a mass production process. The minirobots could be stamped out by the sheet.
Two of Wood’s graduate students, Pratheev Sreetharan and J. Peter Whitney, set to work on pop-up assembly, poring over how-to books on pop-up design and trading e-mails with a German pop-up sculptor. Sreetharan, a physicist by training, took the lead in creating a production process for the RoboBee. He had to map out the dizzying choreography that would, in a single movement, lift every piece of the bee from two dimensions into three, without any of the parts colliding as they swung into place. He spent months on a computer design program diagramming the cuts he would have to make to guarantee the right folds, and he built large-scale models in cardboard and glue to test his ideas. “One of the strengths I brought to this,” says Sreetharan, “was the fortitude to just spend that long working on it.”
The basic concept was to stack all of the bee’s building materials—multiple layers of carbon fiber (for the body), titanium (the wing frames), piezoelectric ceramic (to flap the wings), and a flexible plastic polyimide film (the joints)—one on top of the other like plywood, using dowels to align them. Each of the 18 strata was precision-cut with a laser, about 3,000 cuts per layer, and bonded to its neighbors at particular points with a solid adhesive. Some of the robot’s structural elements, such as the wing frames, were made from just one layer. Others emerged from the interaction of multiple strata—the joints, for example, are polyimide sandwiched between layers of carbon fiber, with small gaps cut out of the stiff carbon to allow for articulation, like the elbows in a suit of armor. The circuitry for sensing and controlling the RoboBee’s flight, Sreetharan says, can simply be printed onto some of the layers with the same techniques chip companies use to make circuit boards.
By the spring of last year, Sreetharan thought he was close. He had come up with the idea of laser-cutting the carbon fiber around the bee into what he called an “assembly scaffold,” an intricate network of joints that would guide each component in the stack to its place as it rose, then could be easily cut away once the bee was locked into shape. One day in April, he laser-cut a prototype and, placing it under a microscope, began very slowly to raise it into shape, using a specialized jig and crank he had created. To his surprise, it worked nearly perfectly. Sreetharan is a pianist, and he remembers thinking as the bee emerged that there was something symphonic about the process. “It has so many different parts that are all basically in harmony,” he says. “Nothing in it is still. Everything happens together in such an ordered and controlled way.” His latest RoboBees can be popped into shape in less than a tenth of a second—he had to slow the process to make a video of it. Their predecessors took a week to make by hand.
Leonard Greco for Bloomberg BusinessweekShawn Douglas is the creator of the DNA origami nanorobot
Wood is one of 17 founding faculty members of an ambitious research alliance at Harvard called the Wyss Institute, whose mission in large part is to work with researchers to commercialize their ideas. What particularly excites him and his colleagues about pop-up folding is that it potentially can be used to make all sorts of complex devices. “It’s a manufacturing strategy that we think is going to revolutionize everything from microelectronics to toy manufacturing,” says Donald Ingber, a Harvard Medical School professor and director of the Wyss.
One of the companies working with Wood’s group is the Hong Kong-based toymaker WowWee, whose past hits include the Robosapien toy robot and Paper Jamz, a set of musical instruments made out of circuit-embedded paper. “We’re very interested, ” says Davin Sufer, the company’s chief technology officer. “We have a few product concepts that we’re working on together right now.” WowWee is looking at using pop-up fabrication to make toys that, like the RoboBee, would combine complex electronics with precision moving parts. “Toys are typically very labor intensive; we can save costs and make products more efficiently this way,” Sufer says. “We’re also looking at making products smaller and more compact than we could otherwise.”
For many researchers the true measure of folding’s potential is the profusion of ways nature uses it. One of Wood’s colleagues and collaborators is L. Mahadevan, a Harvard mathematician who studies the fold algorithms of insect wings, leaves, and flowers. Also at the Wyss, a biophysicist named Shawn Douglas, working with immunologist Ido Bachelet, has built something called a DNA origami nanorobot, a drug-delivery device one-ten-thousandth of the width of the period at the end of this sentence. The bot has shown the ability, at least in petri dishes, to identify cancerous cells and release a payload of antibodies that kills them while leaving healthy cells untouched.
Photograph by Leonard Greco for Bloomberg BusinessweekIn a petri dish, the DNA origami nanorobot kills cancerous cells while leaving healthy ones untouched
Douglas and Bachelet built their smart bombs using DNA origami, which takes advantage of the way DNA base pairs—the teeth in the zipper of the double helix—bond to each other. The method involves mixing single strands of DNA to form a three-dimensional structural lattice. By determining the base pairs’ order, DNA origami designers can determine where the strands bond and thus the three-dimensional form the lattice folds itself into. It’s not really origami; it’s more like the world’s smallest, most complicated balloon animal.
Researchers elsewhere are working on the puzzle of how proteins fold. The building blocks of human cells, proteins are strands of amino acids—they are extruded, spaghetti-like, from cellular machines called ribosomes. Biologists still don’t fully understand what determines the intricate shapes that the long molecules snap into once they’re completed. It’s a question with huge ramifications—Alzheimer’s, mad cow, and various cancers are thought to be caused by protein misfolding.
One particularly promising approach to understanding protein folding is a website called Foldit, created by David Baker, a biochemist at the University of Washington. It’s a game—anyone can go to the website and play—that awards points for finding the most likely folding pattern for a protein. Certain players have proven to have a real knack for it, and their cumulative efforts have solved problems that have long stumped biochemists.
The goal of researchers such as Baker isn’t just understanding how protein folding works and how it can go awry but also designing entirely new proteins. The forms proteins take determine their function—the corkscrew shape of actin is the mechanism by which muscles contract, the long, clingy arms of fibrin molecules form blood clots. Creating proteins that fold into new shapes could lead to compounds with new abilities: pharmaceuticals, chemical catalysts, molecules that take carbon dioxide out of the air or cause toxic compounds to break down. Baker has developed a protein that seems to block H1N1 flu infection, and Foldit players are at work on similar proteins for other flu viruses. As Baker describes it, what he and the Foldit players are doing is essentially protein origami.
“Living systems have all these different things that they can do and all of these different chemical reactions that they can catalyze, but those are just the chemical reactions that were of interest during the evolution of life,” he says. “We in our modern world have a whole bunch of problems that were never encountered during evolution, so we’d like to be able to make new proteins that solve those problems.”
Demaine has also studied protein folding. Along with advanced geometry, he’s using some of the same assumptions behind Foldit. “If we can find efficient, nice folding algorithms for proteins,” he says, “maybe nature is following those.” What excites him at the moment, though, is something called curved-crease folding, a method that dates to the 1920s and the artists and designers of the Bauhaus. Curving folds, it turns out, have a particular power: a simple pattern can create a menagerie of intricate three-dimensional shapes and can change the qualities of a piece of paper, giving it the ability to stretch and drape in new ways. Demaine is curious why that is. “There’s very little theory on curved-crease origami,” he says.
He’s not sure whether anything useful will emerge from the work, and as a mathematician that’s not his concern. His father is now an artist-in-residence and visiting scientist at MIT, and together the two have created a series of curved-crease sculptures. Some are in the permanent collection of the Smithsonian American Art Museum, others were on view earlier this spring at a Manhattan gallery. They look like some sort of mutant mollusk rendered by M.C. Escher. They seem, at the same time, both impossible and perfectly natural.
Friday, 4 May 2012
iPhone 5 challenger? Samsung Galaxy S III smartphone to compete with future ... - WPTV
LONDON (CNN) -- Samsung has launched its Galaxy S III smartphone, which it hopes will help solidify the company as the leading challenger to Apple and its iPhone 4S.
The new handset, with a whopping 4.8-inch screen and an 8-megapixel camera, was unveiled at a slick launch party in London on Thursday, complete with a backing orchestra.
Billed by Samsung as having been "designed for humans," the phone features voice and eye-recognition technology that the company hopes will set the handset ahead of its rivals in the crowded smartphone market.
Samsung has overtaken Nokia as the world's best-selling mobile phone maker, and Juniper Research reported Tuesday that Samsung also overtook Apple in smartphone sales in the first quarter, in what it described as "increasingly a two-horse race."
The new Galaxy handset, which runs the most up-to-date version of Google's mobile operating system -- Android 4.0 Ice Cream Sandwich -- recognizes when a user is looking at it, and ensures the screen doesn't go dark while it has eye contact.
S Voice technology -- Samsung's equivalent of Apple's Siri -- enables users to wake up their phone with a simple voice command. And voice recognition goes further -- saying: "Hi Galaxy ... picture," for example, opens the phone's camera app, and saying "cheese" takes a picture. Face-recognition software then identifies Facebook friends within images, and prompts the user to share them.
Samsung -- a sponsor of the Olympics -- revealed it will be sending devices enabled with mobile payment technology to the 2012 games in London.
Chris Hall, editor of technology website Pocket-lint, said he was "pleasantly surprised" by the new phone.
"When you compare it to the nearest rival it feels like they have pulled off a bit of a trick," he said. "They have put some effort into software innovations, particularly the eye recognition. The voice recognition feels like a reaction to Siri on the iPhone, but I don't know many people who actually talk to their phones."
"I think the success of the Galaxy S II proves people want something different that isn't an iPhone, and I think the S III is a valid successor to the S II." Samsung said the phone will be available in Europe on May 29, followed by launches in Asia, Africa and Latin America. A 4G version will go on sale in North America, Japan and South Korea in the summer.
Samsung did not announce what prices on the phone are expected to be.
China's agriculture future adopts US technology - UkrAgroConsult
As the most populous nation on Earth, China has intermittently been seen as the solution to the problem created by the ability of US farmers to produce more than they can sell at a profitable price. Sometimes the discussion is focused on cotton; at other times it is corn or soybeans. Today, it is pork—on the hoof that is.
A recent Reuters article, provides an explanation for the surge in the import of live pigs into China. From 2002 to 2007, China imported a total of 13,000 head of swine, while from 2008-2011, live swine imports totaled 39,000 head—15,000 in 2011 alone.
According to Reuters, China is importing breeding swine, “capitalizing on decades of cutting-edge US agricultural research.” Presently, “the focus on livestock genetics also represents an emerging economic bonanza for two of the most powerful American industries: technology and agriculture. Worldwide, the United States exported a record $664 million worth of breeding stock and genetic material like semen.” Depending on the species, the advanced genetics provides farmers worldwide with better daily rates of gain, better feed conversion rates, and larger litters.
While this market is lucrative for farmers who specialize in producing breeding sows and supplying semen from productive animals, it has long-term implications for US meat and grain producers.
As US per capita consumption of red meat has declined over the last decade, exports of pork have nearly quadrupled, and beef exports have recovered from the BSE event. This increase in exports has provided a bright spot in an otherwise stagnating market.
With potential major markets like China purchasing, not animals for slaughter, but animals with all of the best genetics the US has developed, the future potential of that market begins to look somewhat limited as the Chinese begin to gear up to move hog production out of the backyards of millions of farmers and into modern high-production facilities like those used across much of the US.
A separate Reuters article “China’s voracious appetite spurs farm expansion,” lists 10 firm in China, some with links to the US meat industry, that are gearing up to use the imported genetics to increase their production and slaughter capacity to meet the growing Chinese demand for meat which has increased by 10 percent over the last five years. These 10 firms represent both producers of hogs and large-scale meat processors.
Even if the US can continue to increase its meat exports to China in the near future, this all-out emphasis on domestic production by the Chinese has to put a damper on the potential for US meat exports. And there is no guarantee that with this genetic jump-start from the US, the Chinese will not develop their own genetic research teams, reducing the need for imports of this valuable material.
The Reuters article points out that all of the chickens and hogs in China will need corn, providing a potential boon for corn and soybean farmers. As Mike Phillips, president of US Livestock Genetics Export in Salem, IL is quoted in the first Reuters article, “‘Genetics and nutrition go hand-in-hand…. The more they use our genetics, the more they’re going to need to import corn from the US and elsewhere.’”
The usual assumption on the part of US grain producers is that they will be the major beneficiary of such developments. While there may be some benefit to US grain farmers in the increase in Chinese demand and production of meat there is more to the story.
Between 2001 and 2011, the increase in the US corn yield was a paltry 6.6 percent due to weather-related yield loss over the last 2 years. China on the other hand has seen yields increase by 22 percent over the same period. In addition while total US corn production has increased by 30 percent over that same period, Chinese production has increased by 68 percent. Clearly the Chinese are going to be grudging importers of corn but, as applicable, eager importers of US corn genetics.
But competition for supplying Chinese corn demands is not limited to just Chinese farmers. Farmers outside the US and China have increased their production of corn by 46 percent over the 2001-2011 period. At the same time the farmers outside the US and China have seen their corn exports triple. Where their corn exports were once (in 2001) just a third the size of US exports, in 2011 they were 23 percent higher than US corn exports.
As US corn farmers have hustled to meet the demands of a growing domestic corn ethanol market, farmers outside the US and China have gained a dominant position in the export marketplace.
The agricultural technology that gave US farmers a competitive advantage for many years is now spreading worldwide. And while the sale of that technology may continue to benefit a small numbers of farmers and agribusinesses, it also means that most US producers of meat and grain face an increasingly competitive worldwide agricultural marketplace.
westernfarmpress
A greener future: uniting research and business - New Statesman
The transition to a low carbon economy is a priority for the Government, and we recognise the vital role that research and innovation play in helping meet our ambitious green targets.
Through organisations like Research Councils UK (RCUK), Technology Strategy Board (TSB), Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) and Met Office we are supporting excellent climate and energy research, as well as ensuring that industry is a key player in the effort. UK capability in low carbon technologies continues to be a strong growth area.
The RCUK Energy Programme, led by the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), is investing £540 million over the next three years in research across a full spectrum of energy areas – from land-based renewables and marine sources of energy to carbon capture and storage.
It brings together a range of industry partners, such as E.ON who jointly funded a £14 million project to develop low energy solutions, and EDF who worked with the programme to reduce energy demand in buildings.
Established in 2007 as a 10-year partnership between DECC, BIS, EPSRC and TSB with six of the biggest companies in the UK (Shell, BP, E.ON, EDF, Caterpillar and Rolls Royce), the Energy Technologies Institute (ETI) is spearheading the development of low carbon technologies that are both sustainable and renewable. It has jointly invested over £130 million in projects to help accelerate development and deployment of large scale engineering technologies key to producing clean, reliable and more affordable solutions. Only last month the Prime Minister announced ETI’s £100 million Smart Systems and Heat Programme, with Hitachi as a key delivery partner.
Together, these programmes support postgraduate training, through industry collaborations, to ensure we have the knowledge and expertise to support a greener future. This includes a £6.5 million investment with ETI in the new Industrial Doctorate Centre in Offshore Renewable Energy. Working at the heart of industry, alongside global leaders like EDF Energy, Shell and Rolls-Royce, the students will be trained in the most innovative future technologies from designing cost-efficient new windmill blades to testing the latest wave energy technology at leading facilities like Edinburgh University.
We are also bringing energy leaders from the research and business worlds together through the Offshore Renewable Energy Catapult Centre. With state of the art facilities and sites in Glasgow and Northumberland, the centre will focus on technologies applicable to offshore wind, tidal and wave power – an increasingly valuable market expected to exceed £64 billion by 2050. It will also build strong links with centres of excellence, such as the European Marine Energy Centre, Wave Hub, and marine energy park in the South West of England.
Universities are already successfully working with businesses to commercialise their research. Imperial College used EPSRC-funded research to establish the award winning green energy company Ceres Power specialising in fuel cell technology, and Novacem, a company producing the world’s first carbon negative cement.
Our academic community is also working across national borders, with major international research collaborations including Europe, India, Japan and China. The RCUK-funded ‘Bridging the Urban Rural Divide’ programme brings together researchers in UK and India to explore how to make rural living more sustainable. One of the projects in the programme led by University of Nottingham will look at harnessing solar power, whilst another project will address the dependence of rural communities on fossil fuel.
All of this work is of course underpinned by the UK’s world leading research into climate change. This is going on at universities across the country, but also in Antarctica - one of the most rapidly changing environments on Earth – which I had a chance to see first-hand on a recent trip to the continent.
Only last week the first map to show changes in the thickness of Arctic sea ice through an entire winter season was presented at the Royal Society by a team from the Centre for Polar Observation and Modelling at University College London. It was produced by Natural Environment Research Council (NERC) funded scientists using data from the European Space Agency's CryoSat-2 satellite. It covers a huge swathe of the Arctic, right up to 88 degrees north – closer to the North Pole than any other satellite can reach.
The Met Office Hadley Centre is also carrying out world renowned climate science, providing scientific evidence to Government to supporting mitigation and adaptation policy, as well as cost-effective deployment of renewable energy. To build on this, we have recently announced an investment of nearly £50 million in a programme of climate research and modelling at the centre, together with £11 million additional funding for high performance computing capacity.
Energy and climate insecurity is a global issue, but the UK is absolutely committed to contributing to that agenda. We already have the academic and industrial expertise, and through Government support we can bring the very best people and organisations together to develop the skills and technologies needed to tackle the challenge head on.
David Willetts MP is the Minister of State for Universities and Science.
This article was written as part of the New Statesman Perspectives on Energy brochure. To see further information on the leading research that UK Institutions are making in meeting the energy challenge, click here.
BlackBerry accepts its touchscreen future - New Zealand Herald
When Research In Motion chief executive Thorsten Heins unveiled a prototype of the new BlackBerry 10 phone this week, it lacked a feature that has kept legions of users loyal to the platform: a physical keyboard.
At the BlackBerry World expo in Orlando, Florida, he showed off a sleek touch-screen device that more closely resembled an iPhone or Android smartphone than the keypad-equipped BlackBerrys of old.
While RIM still plans to produce models with keyboards, the demonstration was the biggest signal yet that the company was shifting to a touch-screen world.
RIM, which is counting on its redesigned BlackBerry 10 line-up to reverse a sales slump, faces a quandary. Smartphone users have embraced virtual keyboards, evidenced by Apple and Google accounting for more than 80 per cent of the market.
Even so, taking away RIM's physical keypad removes a feature that distinguishes it from the competition.
"Some will lament it, but others will embrace it," said Nigel Hughes, a vice-president in charge of sales at SteelCloud, which builds BlackBerry-compatible security software and hardware for customers such as the US Department of Defence.
"It's a recognition that the future is without a keyboard."
RIM could use a boost. Sales at the Waterloo, Ontario-based company tumbled 25 per cent last quarter, with US revenue plummeting more than 50 per cent. And RIM's share of the smartphone subscribers shrank to 12 per cent in the period, making it a distant third in the industry, according to ComScore. Google's Android operating system accounted for 51 per cent of the market, while Apple's iPhone had 31 per cent.
The iPhone's debut in 2007, followed by Android devices a year later, showed that users were willing to embrace phones without a keyboard.
While RIM made a foray into the touch-screen market in 2008 with the BlackBerry Storm, most of its line-up kept the keypads. The Storm was criticised for buggy software and was outsold by the BlackBerry Curve and Bold models, which both feature keyboards.
For Mousser Jerbi, a longtime BlackBerry fan, the new prototype's lack of a keyboard is a deal killer.
Jerbi plans to keep his current BlackBerry Bold rather than upgrade to the touch-screen phone. The keyboard makes it easy to tap out emails - something that sets the old BlackBerry apart from a sea of iPhones and Android devices.
Jerbi, who runs corporate sales for Groupe Tunisie Telecom, Tunisia's biggest wireless carrier, is sceptical the new model will catch on with loyalists. Even the name "BlackBerry" evokes the device's black keys, which resemble seeds.
"Getting rid of the keyboard is risky," said Jerbi, who once tried switching to an iPhone, only to switch back. "Especially for the email user, the BlackBerry experience is very good."
RIM began releasing the prototype to developers this week, saying it would be representative of the device's hardware - even if the final design is different. Features, such as word prediction, will make it easy for BlackBerry fans to adjust to a touch screen, Heins said.
Scrapping the physical keyboard from the initial BlackBerry 10 device will put it in closer competition with the iPhone and Android models, such as the Samsung Galaxy S. That could be tough for RIM, said Stephen Beck, a managing partner at the technology consulting firm CG42 in Wilton, Connecticut.
"If you're forcing a migration to non-keyboard, you're going to get people asking, 'What's the best of breed of those devices?"' Beck said. "Given the momentum of iPhone and Android, that's going to be a tough argument for RIM to win."
Michael Clewley, director of handheld software product management at RIM, reassured BlackBerry World attendees that the company will eventually offer something for everyone with the BlackBerry 10 operating system. That may include slide-out keyboards, as well as traditional keypads.
"RIM has always had a wide range of devices," he said yesterday. "We're dedicated to having a form factor that fits your needs."
- Bloomberg
By Hugo Miller'Black Ops 2' trailer hints at series' dark future - CNN International
Parts of "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" are set in a bombed-out Los Angeles that's under attack.A new teaser trailer for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" was posted online Tuesday nightThe game is set in a near future in which technology is pitted against humans The futuristic tone of the game seemed to polarize fans on the InternetThe latest title in the blockbuster "Call of Duty" series comes out November 18(CNN) -- A new teaser trailer for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" reveals important details about the setting and gameplay options for the latest title in the blockbuster "Call of Duty" series.
The clip was posted online Tuesday night and has already attracted 1.4 million views on YouTube. It features a near-future scenario in which the U.S. military has developed technology that puts unmanned vehicles and robots on the front lines of battle. An enemy gains access to that technology and turns it against cities all over the world.Developed by Treyarch and published by Activision, "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" will be released November 18. Its predecessor, 2010's "Call of Duty: Black Ops," is the best-selling video game ever in the United States, according to some estimates.Mark Lamia, Treyarch studio head, said his developers did a lot of research to set the game in a plausible future. He said for its single-player campaign, the game will feature multiple plotlines and nonlinear gameplay in which a player's actions affect how the story unfolds.Gameplay in the video shows a bombed-out Los Angeles, urban combat through city streets and ... horseback chases through the desert. It appears to mix futuristic, sci-fi themes with present-day elements.Lamia also confirmed that zombies are returning to the game. "Our biggest, most ambitious zombies ever," he said.He would not reveal anything about the game's multiplayer action. Lamia said more information on that will be released later.The futuristic tone of the game seemed to polarize fans on the Internet. Some joked about whether Treyarch was making Anonymous, the real-life hacker group dedicated to promoting free flow of information, the game's main villain.Twitter user @killyourfm said, "You know what? I'm BURNT OUT on shooters, especially Call of Duty. But that trailer got me very interested. Futuristic toys. Horses. Cool."However, "Call of Duty Elite" forum user Oneqwkford laments, "This looks stupid! If I wanted to play a Si-fi game I would play Gears of War or Halo! I always get Very excited for a new CoD game but this one looks very Disappointing. I will not be buying this one!"Many other gamers said they were waiting for more details on "Black Ops 2's" multiplayer action before making a decision about purchasing the game.Thursday, 3 May 2012
“The future of AF ablation catheter technologies”: A New Report Reveals the ... - EON: Enhanced Online News (press release)
PALO ALTO, Calif.--(EON: Enhanced Online News)--Design and technology consultancy Cambridge Design Partnership today announces that it has completed a research project to identify the future of medical technology to treat Atrial Fibrillation; a common and dangerous Cardiac condition affecting millions of people across the world. The report is designed to explore the emerging technologies that will lead to innovation in this field, and provide an unparalleled resource for organisations looking to develop treatments.
Atrial fibrillation is a type of cardiac arrhythmia (irregular heart beat) that affects up to 7 million people in Western Europe and the United States alone. There has been a 66%1 increase in associated hospital admissions in the last 20 years and these figures are projected to grow over the coming decades2. Drugs are used to treat the condition, but are less than 50% effective and often have associated side effects. Atrial Fibrillation is a major contributory factor to strokes, and if left untreated can lead to congestive heart failure.
In the past, surgical treatments for Atrial Fibrillation required open-heart access followed by full-thickness incisions through the atrial walls. In recent times there has been a shift towards low-invasive treatments using ablation catheters, with Radio Frequency (RF) ablation being the leading method. With the annual cost per patient at around $3,6003, the total cost of Atrial Fibrillation in the EU is estimated to be about $15.7 billion.
Dr Keith Turner who achieved his PhD at Oxford University, UK, has worked in medical device technology development for 20 years. He will attending Heart Rhythm 2012 9th-12th May, at the Boston Convention and Exhibition Centre in Boston, MA, USA. The Heart Rhythm Society is the international leader in science, education and advocacy for cardiac arrhythmia professionals and Keith will be talking to other industry professionals about the future of AF Catheter technology.
Drawing on a cross-section of top industry and clinical figures including leading electrophysiologists, as well as its own extensive experience in designing medical products, Cambridge Design Partnership’s report describes the future of ablation catheter technology as a means of treatment. It deals comprehensively and expertly with a wide range of subjects, from fluidics, through thermal management and the monitoring of lesion formation. Cambridge Design Partnership has been able to compile a comprehensive review of current solutions and identify future technologies that will form the fundamental drivers in this growing market.
Examples of enabling technologies that might feature in catheters in the longer term, and which are included in the report, are MEMS technologies, MRI-compliant components, force monitoring, advanced imaging techniques, real-time thermal modelling, and plastic electronics. All of these elements are currently undergoing exciting developments that may well make them ideally suited to incorporation in catheters within the coming years.
Major manufacturers are currently competing on efficacy of their solutions. Several technologies are now being brought to market and the quest for commercially successful, next generation ablation catheters are driving a significant innovation effort across the industry. During the research process Cambridge Design Partnership spoke to leading electrophysiologists who described the drivers in their decision to adopt a particular technology and the forthcoming directions that could best meet their needs. The results found that the crucial goal was to create repeatable, contiguous, lasting lesions, and that device choice was substantially determined by the perception of the ability to achieve this.
Dr Keith Turner, Partner, Cambridge Design Partnership commented, “This is a hugely important area in medical development. The market is competing to create more effective ablation catheters and so the ability to identify inspired engineering solutions and implement them rapidly into new products is essential. The part I find most fascinating is hearing the views of the electrophysiologists on each of the new technologies currently under development because it implies that certain projects need a change of direction if they are to provide a return on investment. The report should prove interesting reading for senior strategic marketing and R&D managers who are directing these programmes. As a result of this research we are now in a position to help accelerate the progress of these vitally important technologies and offer companies a true insight into the needs of the experts on the front line who are treating this condition.”
An executive summary of the report is available of Cambridge Design Partnership’s website http://www.cambridge-design.co.uk/ and the full report entitled ‘The future of AF ablation catheter technologies’ is available to interested parties on request. To request a copy please contact Dr Keith Turner at Cambridge Design Partnership on +44 (0)1223 264428 or by e-mail at kt@cambridge-design.co.uk
- ENDS -About Cambridge Design Partnership LLP
Cambridge Design Partnership is a creative technical consulting company that develops 'first of a kind' products in the medical, consumer and cleantech sectors. Based in Cambridge UK and Palo Alto USA we combine leading engineering talent with business acumen and a deep understanding of the human needs and technical opportunities that drive innovation.
Cambridge Design Partnership’s multi-disciplinary expertise and proven process will benefit any multinational or ambitious company aiming to maximise their return on investment in innovation.
Working as an integrated team, the company creates new products with a dynamic, flexible approach that leads to outstanding results and enduring client relationships. Our diverse team of engineers, scientists and designers has grown rapidly to establish a world leading reputation for technical and design excellence, astute project management and, above all, thinking differently.
Images:
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References:
1 Fuster V, Rydn LE, Cannom DS, et al, 2006. ACC/AHA/ESC 2006 Guidelines for the management of patients with atrial fibrillation. Circulation, 114:e257-e354
2 Miyasaka Y, Barnes ME, Gersh BJ, Cha SS, Bailey KR, Abhayaratna WP, Seward JB, Tsang TSM, 2006. Secular Trends in Incidence of Atrial Fibrillation in Olmsted County, Minnesota, 1980 to 2000, and Implications on the Projections for Future Prevalence. Circulation, 114:119-125
3 Fuster V, Rydn LE, Cannom DS, et al, 2006. ACC/AHA/ESC 2006 Guidelines for the management of patients with atrial fibrillation. Circulation, 114:e257-e354
"The future of AF ablation catheter technologies": A New Report Reveals the ... - MarketWatch (press release)
'Black Ops 2' trailer hints at series' dark future - CNN International
Parts of "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" are set in a bombed-out Los Angeles that's under attack.A new teaser trailer for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" was posted online Tuesday nightThe game is set in a near future in which technology is pitted against humans The futuristic tone of the game seemed to polarize fans on the InternetThe latest title in the blockbuster "Call of Duty" series comes out November 18(CNN) -- A new teaser trailer for "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" reveals important details about the setting and gameplay options for the latest title in the blockbuster "Call of Duty" series.
The clip was posted online Tuesday night and has already attracted 1.4 million views on YouTube. It features a near-future scenario in which the U.S. military has developed technology that puts unmanned vehicles and robots on the front lines of battle. An enemy gains access to that technology and turns it against cities all over the world.Developed by Treyarch and published by Activision, "Call of Duty: Black Ops 2" will be released November 18. Its predecessor, 2010's "Call of Duty: Black Ops," is the best-selling video game ever in the United States, according to some estimates.Mark Lamia, Treyarch studio head, said his developers did a lot of research to set the game in a plausible future. He said for its single-player campaign, the game will feature multiple plotlines and nonlinear gameplay in which a player's actions affect how the story unfolds.Gameplay in the video shows a bombed-out Los Angeles, urban combat through city streets and ... horseback chases through the desert. It appears to mix futuristic, sci-fi themes with present-day elements.Lamia also confirmed that zombies are returning to the game. "Our biggest, most ambitious zombies ever," he said.He would not reveal anything about the game's multiplayer action. Lamia said more information on that will be released later.The futuristic tone of the game seemed to polarize fans on the Internet. Some joked about whether Treyarch was making Anonymous, the real-life hacker group dedicated to promoting free flow of information, the game's main villain.Twitter user @killyourfm said, "You know what? I'm BURNT OUT on shooters, especially Call of Duty. But that trailer got me very interested. Futuristic toys. Horses. Cool."However, "Call of Duty Elite" forum user Oneqwkford laments, "This looks stupid! If I wanted to play a Si-fi game I would play Gears of War or Halo! I always get Very excited for a new CoD game but this one looks very Disappointing. I will not be buying this one!"Many other gamers said they were waiting for more details on "Black Ops 2's" multiplayer action before making a decision about purchasing the game.Ricoh Shows the Future of Large Format Inkjet at drupa 2012 With Ricoh Pro ... - MarketWatch (press release)
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