Motorola Mobility and Microsoft have been engaged in a legal battle for some time now, with the former claiming various patent violations by the latter. Earlier this month, the German courts ruled in favor of Motorola and ordered Xbox 360 consoles banned in the country, but Microsoft won a preliminary injunction staying that order. Now, an International Trade Commission judge says 4GB and 250GB Xbox 360 S consoles should be banned in the United States and has even recommended the move to the rest of the ITC. These consoles are currently manufactured in China, and if the ban becomes true, then no new 360s would arrive in the US. Consoles currently on sale would be hit with a cease-and-desist notice, and Microsoft would have to pay Motorola seven percent of the value of any unsold console still in the US.

Microsoft, on the other hand, is not that concerned with the ITC judge's remarks and is confident the ITC will rule in its favor. Microsoft says it hopes Motorola will have to make its patents available on "fair and reasonable terms," and that it does not expect any problems when the ITC concludes its investigation on August 23rd.

The Creative Assembly have been keeping owners of Total War: Shogun 2 happy with a steady stream of updates and DLC over the past year. Today you can try your hand out at creating map as a free map editor has been released for Total War: Shogun 2. The Total War Battle Map Editor tool will let you create and share Land, Naval, and Siege Battle Maps to be used in multiplayer or single player (Custom Battle Mode). Now you can create the perfect battleground to test your strategy and let others experience the creation. You can shape the terrain however you see fit and then add towns, forests, castles, and anything else you want to make the map truly unique. The Total War games have always had a rather vibrant modding community, and now The Creative Assembly are making things a little easier. You can access the map editor from the Tools section of Steam and start creating immediately.

A fact of technology security is that the more popular a device or piece of software is, the more malware will be made for it. This is why Macs have had so little malware in the past and why smartphone malware is growing in number. Researchers at the University of Michigan have recently discovered a way to use a defense mechanism, meant to protect smartphone users, to set up an attack to steal login and password information.

Some cellphone networks employ a middlebox firewall to secure data sequences. Information sent on the network is not sent in one big piece, but multiple small packets. These packets are numbered, so the receiver knows where to put each one in the larger sequence. A middlebox firewall checks these sequence numbers to make sure only packets with correct numbers get through. The researchers realized this can be used to redirect a phones data flow and found that 32% of the 150 networks tested across the globe are susceptible to the kind of attack they devised.

The attack works by sending packets with different sequence numbers. Those outside of the range of what the middlebox is accepting will be blocked, but any within that range will get through. Using a binary search, a hacker can be guaranteed a valid sequence number in just 32 steps, which takes seconds to achieve. Once a data packet gets through, a piece of malware already installed on the smartphone by the user, can then be activated and respond to the hacker, indicating a packet got through. At this point the hacker will have the ability to redirect the smartphone's traffic to a spoof site, such as Facebook or Twitter, where an unwitting user will type their username and password into a field for the hacker.

Worth noting is that this attack method circumvents the practice of sandboxing applications. It does not require one app does anything to another on the phone. The researchers have actually made an Android app to test if your Android smartphone is vulnerable to this attack, but at the time of my writing this, the app's page is down. (Perhaps this is because the app is considered malware by Google.)

 

Activision Blizzard has revealed that the long awaited Diablo 3 has broken two PC game sales records in the week since it launched. The game sold 3.5 million copies within the first 24 hours, and finished the week at 6.3 million copies. This number doesn't account for 1.2 million copies that were given out as a bonus for purchasing a one year World of Warcraft subscription. Modern Warfare 3, also from Activision Blizzard, holds the record for the fastest selling game across all platforms with 6.5 million copies purchased in the first 24 hours of availability. If you excuse me, I am now off to continue the fight against the demons.

Sapphire is currently running a contest until June 15 that will reward the winner with a gaming PC customized by Tom "Snail" Portsmouth. The system was built around a Lian-Li PC-U6 case, which has a unique, snail-like, shape. In addition to the eye-catching case, an Intel 2500k CPU, Sapphire H67 motherboard, and Sapphire HD7950 GPU are also included. For full details on the PC, have a look at the build log. The contest is open to members of the Sapphire Select Club in Canada, the European Union, the USA, and Malaysia.

Some situations call for the creation of Mobile Ad hoc Networks (MANETs) because the devices in the network are moving very quickly. For example, military and emergency-response situations require MANETs. Unfortunately, having the nodes of a network rapidly changing direction makes it difficult for them to efficiently transmit information. In the time it takes to transmit a signal after the closest node is identified, the nodes may have moved apart. Researchers at North Carolina State University have developed an algorithm to address this issue.

Instead of having the transmitting node just identify the nearest node at the time, and hoping the closest node will still be in range when transmission starts, the algorithm determines which node will be closest when the transmission starts. The algorithm also determines how quickly the information should be transmitted. If the transmission is too fast, the data can be corrupted, and if the transmission is too slow, there is a loss of efficiency.

Yesterday we learned that XCOM: Enemy Unknown will arrive on October 9th or 12th depending on where you live. The tactical revival of the X-COM series will be available for the PC, PS3, and 360, but there will also be an FPS entry in the series. The news for the FPS, known simply as XCOM, is not that great as it has been delayed to Take Two's 2014 fiscal year. That year stretches from April 2013 to March 2014, so XCOM could arrive at any time in that window. The FPS was originally supposed to have released last year, but Take Two delayed it to 2013. Now it may not arrive until the early part of 2014, which does not bode well for the 2K Marin-designed game. There is no telling why XCOM is being delayed yet again, but maybe we will learn more at E3 or another gaming convention this year.

For any kind of sensing technology it is important to have a large signal to noise ratio, so interference is at a minimum. Generally this means minimizing the amount of whatever you are sensing that is not coming from the targeted source. Shielding helps most of the time, but for some sensors, like infrared sensors, the detector itself heats up and distorts its own observations. As reported by the Optical Society of America, researchers at Peking University, the Chinese Academy of Sciences, and Duke University have developed a new kind of sensor that practically defeats this problem.

Current infrared sensors are based on a semiconducting alloy made of mercury, cadmium, and telluride, and rely on liquid nitrogen or electric cooling to keep the alloy's heat from interfering with the sensor. What the researchers developed is a carbon nanotube infrared detector. Carbon nanotubes react very strongly to infrared radiation, making them ideal for the infrared sensors, but they have another characteristic that makes their use truly beneficial. Nanotubes conduct heat very well, so even when they normally would heat up during use, the temperature speeds away and the signal remains clear.

This discovery could advance devices used in the military, optical communications, and science, to name a few. There are likely other uses not yet thought of too, because of how limiting the need for extra cooling equipment has been in the past.

Rumors come and go, with some being so off the mark you have to wonder just what the person who created it was thinking. Recently, a "rumor" started going around that NVIDIA would recall all the Kepler GPUs for no real reason. A tiny site by the name of pnosker started the rumor and then a bunch of other tech sites ran with it as fact. Other sites said the rumor "probably wasn't true," but did not have very nice things to say about NVIDIA regardless. The only problem is no one has ever heard of this pnosker website before, yet the rumor still spread like wildfire. What gives? The "author" at that site gave no substantial information for a source other than someone at Taiwan Semiconducting Manufacturing Company (TSMC), but then had to rework his original story by using another source at an unreliable site. The author then categorizes a minor issue from EVGA into a massive recall to add more fuel to the fire.

A tiny site decided to drum up some completely insane rumor, call it fact, and then it gets picked up by other sites in order to bring in traffic. Not exactly the best tactic in the world, but some people think resorting to it will help. The thing is, there is no evidence NVIDIA will ever issue a recall on the Kepler GPUs and you can be sure a "source" at TSMC would never leak something so substantial. OverclockersClub will always talk to NVIDIA anytime rumors start to make sure they are just that, but other sites do not always seem to follow our lead. It does not take long to place a phone call or email the NVIDIA reps, so why not try to clarify these rumors directly at the source? This is how lies and falsehoods get spread, people, so check your facts before posting some insane story!

NVIDIA has no problems with the Kepler GPUs aside from keeping the cards in stock. The GTX 670s and 680s sell like hotcakes as soon as stock comes in, but you can head to Newegg right now to find several GTX 670s available to buy. The Kepler cards are some of the most powerful ones around, and considering any one of them puts a hurting on AMD, you would be hard pressed to find an issue with them.

So, moral of the story is to check your facts and make sure what you are saying actually has some basis. Do not just come up with some bullshit to bring in traffic, when talking to NVIDIA or any company will go a long way to clear things up. Being proactive goes a long way to making sure your facts are actually straight!

Researchers at several institutions have been working towards faster and more efficient computer components by allowing for some error in the operations. A computer puts so much effort into its high accuracy that it has to go slower and take more power than if it let some mistakes slip by. Understandable, many computer scientists, engineers, and programmers do not like this idea because they want to know that every time they execute an operation, its output is correct. Researchers at MIT are working to reassure them while also offering a new way to cut corners for speed and efficiency.

The inexact method the researchers have developed is called loop perforation. Loops are pretty common constructs in a program that simply repeat an operation until some condition is met. By perforating or skipping some of the iterations in the loop. This, like other inexact methods, works very well with nondeterministic operations, which means they do not need to produce a single, specific answer. Basically, if the output itself does not have to be exactly the same every time, like the order of the top items in a search, you can be inexact without really sacrificing anything, but gaining a great deal of performance.

To get developers to accept this strategy, the researchers are using verification to prove it works. Verification just means that a program or piece of hardware does exactly what it is supposed to do. Traditionally this has only been used in academia, hardware design, and the development of critical software, because it is very labor intensive. Automated tools for verifying software are becoming more common and more powerful though, so some commercial companies are starting to use them on their products. What the researchers intend to do is use verification methods to demonstrate that inexact methods can be used without fear of compromising a system. The verification process can be used to ensure the errors are kept within a certain distance of the exact answer, or to show that one value can be inexact without compromising other, more important values. Returning to the search engine example above, the order of the found items can be inexact without allowing erroneous entries to appear in the list.

Ultimately, the choice to use inexact methods of any kind comes down to the developers. The MIT researchers are just trying to show you can be inexact without having critical errors, while also offering a new way to be inexact.

Microsoft head Steve Ballmer predicts that come 2013, Windows 8 will have amassed a user base of 500 million. The outspoken Ballmer made this optimistic statement during the Seoul Digital Forum, of which he touts Windows 8 as "a dawning of the rebirth of MS Windows." There's no denying Microsoft's strong grip on the OS market in general, but the claim of 500 million users garnered in such a short time span might not  convince some folks. Moving to Windows 8 will reportedly be easier on new PCs, as Microsoft is charging only $15 for the upgrade. With Windows 8 eschewing a lot of its predecessors' features such as the Aero Interface and the Start Button, the new OS is set to be quite a departure from Microsoft's previous OS efforts. "It's certainly the most important piece of work we've done," adds Ballmer.  

We've seen a couple different versions of the Thermaltake Frio CPU cooler being reviewed in the last several weeks and today we get an opportunity to check out the Frio Advanced model. ASUS has expanded its series of workstation boards to include a Z77 chipset version with LGA1155 support, designed primarily for Ivy Bridge processors with its 4-way eight lane PCIe 3.0 support. Our final review in the roundup today covers a wireless N router from TP-LINK.

Cooling
Thermaltake Frio Advanced Heatsink @ Frostytech

Motherboards
ASUS P8Z77 WS Workstation Motherboard @ [H]ardOCP

Networking
TP-LINK TL-WR700N 150Mbps Wireless N Mini Pocket Router @ ThinkComputers

Court battles are a funny thing, especially when it involves game companies. Activision and former Infinity Ward head honchos Jason West and Vince Zampella are in a nasty court battle over the Call of Duty franchise, but an interesting document has come to light showcasing a new series under development at Bungie. The studio famous for Halo has a contract with Activision to make a series of four sci-fantasy, action first-person shooters code-named "Destiny" to be released every other year starting in Fall 2013. Four DLC packs code-named "Comet" would release every other year beginning in Fall 2014 were also included in the contract. This is the first mention of any release details set up between Activision and Bungie for the new title, and I imagine is not how Bungie wanted the game to be revealed.

The first game (potentially the second too) would initially be for the Xbox 360 and its successor (listed as Xbox 720 in the contract), with future titles releasing on the PC and PlayStation 3 successor. The contract also revealed Bungie is at work on a possible sequel to Marathon, which originally launched on the Mac in 1994. No more than five percent of Bungie's staff would work on the action-shooter Marathon remake while the rest of the staff would remain under contract with Activision.

If you are wondering what all of this has to do with the Call of Duty case, well West and Zampella argue they took a smaller royalty rate to have more control over CoD. The two designers say they should be entitled to compensation for the "value of the creative authority," which could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars. If the case goes to trail on May 29th as scheduled, this contract and more could be just the iceberg of information to comb over.

Fans of classic strategy series X-COM will be in for a treat later this year, as Firaxis Games' XCOM: Enemy Unknown will arrive on October 9th in North America and the 12th everywhere else. XCOM: Enemy Unknown is the accurate tactical revival of the classic (unlike the FPS XCOM), and will launch on the PC, PS3, and 360 at the same time in October. Firaxis and 2K Games are investing heavily into the PC version to make sure it is as true to the roots as possible, and is even going so far as to make a PC-exlusive special edition of the game. Shelling out $60 will net you an art book, poster of the in-game headquarters, an insignia patch, and various digital goodies like a wallpaper and soundtrack. The digital version will just have the game, but it is not known how much that will set you back.

Pre-ordering XCOM: Enemy Unknown will grant you the Elite Soldier Pack, which has an exclusive recruit based on a character from the first game, X-COM: UFO Defense, and customization options for your troops. Hopefully every retailer will include that pre-order bonus and it is not limited to a certain store, but we have to wait for more information.

The amount of betas going on right now is a little ridiculous. How anyone is able to find enough time to try all these games out is beyond me, but that still does not mean we should not try. Heroes & Generals is a new twist on the wargame genre as it combines a first-person shooter with real-time strategy. You can play the game like a tradtional FPS or switch things up and play it like an RTS to command vast armies. The choice will be yours, and if any of it sounds interesting to you, then head over to the Heroes & Generals website to sign up for the closed beta. The game itself is already looking good, and developer Reto-Moto wants to hear your thoughts on all aspects of Heroes & Generals. The game is PC exclusive and will be free-to-play, but Reto-Moto will include a single player campaign so you do not always have to play competitively against other people.

A great deal of information about a person is stored within their DNA. For example, their height, blood type, and particulars of their metabolism and immune system are all in that double helix. While all of this information is important for life, it is not so important for computation. Researchers at the Stanford University Medical Center have spent the past three years to develop a mechanism to make DNA a viable means of binary data storage. It took 750 attempts, but the researchers finally have their rewriteable bit.

For some time researchers have been able to use specific enzymes to flip sections of DNA from one direction to another. What has required all of this work was finding the balance between two of them, so the DNA section can be flipped back and forth when desired. Computer-literate people will call this nonvolatile memory, as the bits do not require energy to be stored as they are. Biotechnologists however will call it recombinase-mediated DNA inversion, but the name of the device is a blending of the two fields; recombinase addressable data (RAD) module.

This is definitely an important step towards the development of computers built into biological systems, but there is more work to do. This is just a bit of data after all, and the researchers believe it will take about a decade before we see a full byte encoded into DNA. While that may seem like a very long time, the researchers do believe the work will accelerate as they get to it, with each additional bit being easier to make than the previous.

VIA Technologies has announced that it is getting into the extremely small PC market that currently features offerings from Raspberry Pi among others. The company will be releasing a board built on the Neo-ITX form factor that will run Android 2.3 that it has dubbed the Android PC, or APC. The board will fit into a mini-ITX case and comes with a plethora of connectors available including HDMI and Ethernet. It is powered by an 800MHz ARM 11 SoC and has 512MB of DDR3 and 2GB of flash storage. The APC will only use a maximum of 13.5W and is capable of displaying resolution up to 720p. The $49 APC will be available in July. 

 

MSI gave a first look at the Z77A-GD80 motherboard at the Consumer Electronics Show in January of this year. The Intel Z77 chipset motherboard is now available and has several interesting features. The biggest feature of the board is that it is the first to feature the Thunderbolt transfer interface. This new interface will allow for very high speed connections to external devices, with full duplex transfer rates up to 10Gbps. This bandwidth will allow users to connect several devices at once, including high resolution monitors and storage devices. The board also features Military Class III components which have undergone third party certification of MIL-STD-810G specifications. The addition of MSI software like OC Genie II provides users with the ability to quickly and easily overclock their system.

As people grow older, their bodies generally, degrade. This is something that just seems to be true about aging, but that does not mean we cannot do something about it. Researchers at the University of Strathclyde and Stanford University have developed a new prosthetic retina to treat age-related macular degeneration.

Prosthetic retinas have been developed before and how they operate is by directly stimulating the neurons in the retina of the eye. Fortunately the degeneration only damages the photoreceptors and not the neurons. Unfortunately though, the surgery required to install these systems require installing not only the prosthetic but also wires to power it and drive a signal to it. What the researchers developed however is a different system that is much simpler to install.

Instead of using a wired prosthetic, the researchers are using a wireless solar cell made of silicon. Near infrared light produced by a pair of video goggles creates an electric current in the silicon device, which then stimulates the neurons in the back of the eye. The simplicity of this design not only makes the surgery required simpler but also should allow it to take advantage of the natural movements of the human eye as it normally attempts to process information.

The device is still in testing, but has shown promising results, so it may be available by the time we need it as our eyesight fails. We will just have to wait and see to find out.

Recently, some unfortunate Diablo III owners have discovered their accounts have been hacked and all gold and items are missing. The game has been out for a week and yet there are already account hacks affecting some users. Blizzard says these account hacks are just a common launch problem and  states that Battle.net and Diablo III are still safe. The studio says account hacks are normal whenever a World of Warcraft expansion is released, and says there is nothing out of the ordinary for Diablo III. Battle.net passwords are not case sensitive, so this could lead to an increased number of hacks. Blizzard stands by its Authenticators as "some of the most effective measures" to keep your account safe, however some of the compromised accounts are protected by an Authenticator. The response from Blizzard may agitate some and provide no real answer for many, but these account hacks have to beg the question of what security will be like when the real money auction house launches.

PageRank is the algorithm Google uses to determine what links are relevant to a query, as well as how relevant a specific webpage is. There are more kinds of searches than Internet searchers however, and researchers at Dresden University of Technology, as reported by the Public Library of Science, have applied a form of PageRank to their search for cancer biomarkers.

Biomarkers are chemicals or materials found in the body that can be used to identify something. In the case of cancer, not only will biomarkers tell you what kind of cancer it is, but how aggressive it is as well. With 20,000 different proteins relevant to the progression of pancreatic cancer though, and not all of those obviously connected, figuring out which are the most important is very difficult. This is where PageRank comes in because after a few tweaks are applied, to adapt it from the Internet to cellular processes, it is designed to find connections and rank relevancy.

While this work does show promise, it also needs to go through very thorough verification, and very likely will require several improvements. Fortunately a Dresden-based biotech company is working on a pancreatic cancer drug, which will give an opportunity to verify some of the biomarkers the researchers found.

The fifth Devil May Cry game is currently in production, but instead of continuing where Devil May Cry 4 left off, this one is set in a parallel universe with a teenage Dante. DmC Devil May Cry is being developed by Ninja Theory and serves as a reboot for the series, with the developer promising a "more brutal and visceral" experience. Today Capcom has announced when we can get our hands on the game and, like so many others, will not release this year. DmC Devil May Cry will launch on January 15th, 2013 for the PS3 and 360, but the PC version is listed as "later in 2013." Hopefully Capcom gets a solid release date for the PC version, but either way you look at it the start of 2013 is shaping up to be an incredibly crowded gaming time.

In myth and legend, invisibility is achieved by way of magical objects and spells. In reality though, invisibility is accomplished by redirecting light around an area, using metamaterials, or by destructive interference, using plasmonics. Researchers at the Stanford School of Engineering have created an invisible photodetector using plasmonics.

Light is an electromagnetic phenomenon, which means the electromagnetic properties of a material affect how it interacts with light. In this case the researchers used silicon and gold to drop the reflective scattering of light from the photodetector by a factor of 100. The silicon is the actual photodetector, because light striking it creates an electric current, which is why it is used in solar panels. The gold is added to create a dipole, which means that it has the opposite charge to the silicon. When these two opposite charges interact, they cancel out, which causes the light that would normally scatter off of the materials to also cancel out. The key is to make sure the gold and silicon are in tune with each other, to actually cause the destructive interference.

Some of you may be wondering about how much this affects the silicon's ability to absorb light. After all, the gold is in a coating around the silicon nanowires. Even though gold is a reflective material, and the silicon is invisible, the light absorbed is only a forth of what it would be with the silicon being completely visible. That is a small enough drop to not affect the function of the photodetector.

What use is an invisible photodetector? This approach could be used to make digital cameras sharper, by reducing the crosstalk between neighboring pixels. Even without invisibility, this is a valuable discovery because it shows that metal-semiconductor pairings can be tuned to manipulate how they interact with light, which can affect solar cells, chip-scale lasers, and more.

Not all existing computer cases natively support 2.5" drives. With the ICY DOCK MB994SP-4S mobile rack you can mount four 2.5” drives in a single 5.25” bay. The massive Thermaltake Frio Extreme sports six heatpipes and twin towers cooled by a pair of 140mm fans - and you thought CPU coolers couldn't get any bigger. Today's roundup also includes reviews on the ASUS P8 Z68-V/GEN3 Z68 chipset motherboard, the ASUS GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP GPU and more.

Cooling
Thermaltake Frio Extreme Heatsink @ Frostytech

Input Devices
G-Cube V-Track 310 Wireless Mouse @ Benchmark Reviews

Motherboards
ASUS P8 Z68-V/GEN3 @ LanOC Reviews

Storage/Hard Drives
ICY DOCK MB994SP-4S Mobile Rack @ ThinkComputers

Video
ASUS GeForce GTX 680 DirectCU II TOP GPU @ [H]ardOCP

Miscellany
Interview with Raspberry's Founder Eben Upton @ TechSpot

Fans of Left 4 Dead and PAYDAY: The Heist will soon be in for a treat, as Overkill Software announced it is working with Valve on an "in-depth" collaboration. Overkill's Game Director Ulf Andersson announced the collaboration will combine PAYDAY and L4D in a "very cool blend." Andersson did not say a whole lot else, other than saying some players may check into the hospital due to an excitement overload. Perhaps the combination will have you pull off heists as the survivors from L4D while trying to avoid as many infected as possible. There could be any number of possibilities for this collaboration and I suspect we will get some big news at E3. You can keep it right here for more information when it is revealed.

Apple has reportedly been on the receiving end of some special treatment in exchange for bringing its trademark Apple Stores to shopping locations around the country. Some of the benefits include deals on lease costs and tax incentives. However, Apple appears to be returning the favor in these cases whether it is direct or indirect. The company paid for $2.5 million in infrastructure improvements as part of the new store that opened up in Grand Central Terminal in New York, while Apple is reported to pay less per square foot in rent than other businesses. A second store is also on the way in Salt Lake City, Utah, and the shopping center is rumored to have offered five years in free rent. An additional benefit brought about by Apple Stores is the increase in revenue that many stores near the Apple Stores see simply by being near the popular destination for electronics.

According to StatCounter, Google Chrome has overtaken Microsoft Internet Explorer to become the most used web browser worldwide. Chrome has only been ahead for a week, but it has been on the upswing for some time, while IE has been declining for years. The exact numbers put Chrome at 31.88% and Internet Explorer at 31.47%. Internet Explorer is still on top in many regions around the world, no doubt being boosted as the default web browser on Windows computers. I still make it a point to download Chrome as one of the first things to do after a new install.

In 1960, the Isaac Asimov book I, Robot was first published. The book actually contains nine short stories dealing with the development of robots, before as their technology improves and with how they can be used to further humanity. One of these stories (Reason, specifically) is set on Solar Station #5, a satellite that captures the energy of the Sun and beams it back to Earth using microwaves. It appears Asimov was ahead of his time with this as researchers at the University of Strathclyde, Glasgow are working on satellites to do the same thing.

All solar panels on Earth are at an immediate disadvantage to any in space, because of the atmosphere and day-night cycle. In space the light is not filtered through the atmosphere and satellites can face the Sun more often than a solar farm on Earth. Satellites with solar panels and microwave emitters or lasers, energy could be very precisely beamed to any point on Earth.

The initial satellites the researchers are looking at would only be able to power a small village, but they intend to design larger satellites that could power an entire city. To achieve this, the researchers are also working on ways to assemble the satellites in orbit. Already a satellite system has been tested that put up a large web-like structure which acted as a base for other components to be built on to.

This article contains some good news along with some bad. The good news is that Aliens: Colonial Marines has a release date. The bad news is the release date is set for February 12th, 2013. The game was originally delayed to the fall, but then financial troubles hit Sega causing some layoffs in a few departments. Aliens was listed as a safe franchise but no new information came out until today. The good thing to take away from all of this is Aliens: Colonial Marines has a solid release date, even if it is next February. Developer Gearbox Software has said the company should have kept the game under wraps longer, with CEO Randy Pitchford saying the development process is on par with its other titles just the announcement was too early.

A new trailer has also launched to give everyone a new look at how Aliens: Colonial Marines is progressing. All of the footage is entirely in-game, and if the motion tracker beep does not get your blood pumping, you need help. The trailer is not safe for work due to language and violence, so just be sure you have headphones handy.

NSFW

Climate change and energy are two areas that are intertwined in a very deep way. Data shows the most common methods of creating useable energy are contributing in some way to changes in the atmosphere, because of the carbon dioxide (CO₂) being emitted. One way to address this problem is with carbon-capture technology that filters the CO₂ out of the emissions of fossil fuel power plants, for safe storage. This technology is often very expensive, requires large amounts of energy, special chemicals, and additional hardware at the plant. Researchers at MIT however thought of an interesting way to solve this problem by getting power plants to emit pure CO₂, while also increasing efficiency, at a low cost.

Instead of filtering the emissions of the power plant, the plan is to filter the air coming in for combustion from the normal 78% nitrogen, 21% oxygen combination to pure oxygen. To accomplish this, the researchers used a ceramic membrane that only lets oxygen pass through it. The researchers found the oxygen flow stops when the oxygen level of both sides equalizes, so they built a combustion system into their test reactor, to keep an oxygen differentially on the two sides of the membrane. This creates a "win-win situation" as the filtering the oxygen out to fuel the combustion is what allows more oxygen to be filtered. Also, by incorporating these two components into the same device it allows the system to be very small and very efficient, both in terms of energy and economy.

With the combustion fueling the process of oxygen retrieval, there is the potential for a chain reaction that gets the combustion going very hot as more and more oxygen feeds it. Though the ceramic membrane can withstand very high temperatures, the researchers did find the temperatures exceeding their tolerance. Ironically though, the flow of oxygen through the membrane was actually creating a protective layer to prevent the ceramics from overheating. So the system feeds itself and protects itself.

So how does this system of creating a pure carbon dioxide stream help combat climate change? It is much easier and cheaper to capture the all of the emissions of a power plant than to capture just part of it. This solution is essentially a pre-filter that may enable future fossil fuel power plants to become carbon neutral, or very close to it, and retrofitted power plants to do the same. Before we can see those power plants though, more testing has to be done to show the entire setup is durable enough to survive the operation of a power plant.