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| Photo By Getty Images |
The robot – made by Xenex Disinfection Services – is being used in 250 hospitals, including the Dallas hospital where the first US Ebola victim died.
The $115,000 machine – which looks like a cross between a large kitchen appliance and a Dalek – uses ultraviolet light to decontaminate hospital rooms, a potentially risky job for humans. The robot can disinfect a room in 5-10 minutes.
The UV light – emitted in pulses – destroys bacteria, viruses, bacterial spores and other nasty bugs on the surface the light lands on.
The Ebola virus – which is transmitted in blood, urine, faeces and vomit – can survive for up to six days on solid surfaces. Given that it can be a messy disease – with bleeding, vomiting and diarrhoea – it can require quite a lot of clean-up after an infected patient has been in a hospital room.
Although it seems to only be transmitted through direct human-to-human contact, the virus is so aggressive that it’s important to eliminate any sources of infection.
Source: Mirror.com
by Unknown |
in
Games
at 06:21
We’re pleased to announce Killzone Shadow Fall Intercept, an expansion for Killzone Shadow Fall. Slated for a June release, this pack adds a brand new, four-player online co-op mode to the game.
Killzone Shadow Fall Intercept places you and up to three of your friends on the elite VSA team known as Intelligence Squad Alpha.
Operating behind enemy lines, your team is on a mission to intercept and relay Helghast military transmissions back to VSA headquarters.
To succeed, you’ll need to keep Helghast interlopers at bay long enough to establish a Hacking Uplink and transmit the data. Thankfully, the members of your team have all been trained in unique Combat Roles — from close-quarters Assault and mid-to-long range Marksman roles to supportive Medic and Tactician roles.
To successfully fend off the enemy and transmit the intel back to HQ, teamwork is absolutely essential. Your Team Score indicates how close you are to establishing a Hacking Uplink; increase it by defending your Uplinks from Helghast capture attempts, or by “banking” the Personal Score you’ve accumulated from kills, ability uses, and recaptures. You can even earn bonuses such as artillery strikes and jetpacks!
Always be on your guard, though: if you lose an Uplink to the enemy or have to respawn after critical injury, your Team Score will incur a penalty. If all members of your team are dead and your Team Score is too low to allow respawning, the mission is a failure.
by Unknown |
in
Games
at 12:37
This time around, players will find themselves in the nation of Kyrat, deep in the Himalayan mountains, struggling against a despotic self-appointed king.
The game is being developed by Ubisoft Montreal—Assassin’s Creed IV, Child of Light, Watch Dogs, etc.—along with Red Storm Entertainment, Ubisoft Toronto, Ubisoft Shanghai, and Ubisoft Kiev.
“Following the success of Far Cry 3, we wanted to take the franchise to the next level and create a game that will surprise players and exceed fans’ expectations,” said Dan Hay, Executive Producer, in a statement. “Given the unique setting, we feel Far Cry 4 will stand out as a top first-person shooter and we’re eager to reveal more about the game in the coming months.”
by Unknown |
in
Mobile
at 00:15
We've been hearing a lot about Samsung's upcoming AMOLED tablet, which will allegedly be called the Galaxy Tab S. The latest about the tablet is that it is scheduled to launch on June 12 in New York, according to Samsung Mobile head J.K. Shin.
In an interview with the Wall Street Journal, Shin stated that a Samsung is getting ready to launch new tablets next month.
Shin didn't mention the Galaxy Tab S by name, but considering that the tablet was spotted undergoing certification at the FCC yesterday, it is likely that Samsung will launch the device next month.
While we haven't heard a great deal about other tablets in the Galaxy Tab S series, it is possible that Samsung might launch a 13.3-inch variant and an 8.4-inch version in addition to the 10.5-inch slate, according to a leak we came across earlier this week.
Samsung is known to offer three variants of a tablet, as seen by the Galaxy Tab and the Galaxy Tab Pro series, but this will be the first time we'll see a 13.3-inch tablet from the manufacturer. The Galaxy Tab Pro 12.2 is already a gargantuan tablet and is often too heavy to use comfortably, so it should be interesting to see how Samsung markets the 13.3-inch slate.
In addition to the tablet statements, Shin announced that the Galaxy S5 is off to a great start, and that the device has accrued 11 million sales since its launch last month. A report from earlier this week quoted 10 million shipments, so it is possible that Shin was referring to shipments to carriers and vendors rather than end users. The strong sales of the Galaxy S5 are said to boost Samsung's profit margins, as is usually the case after a flagship launch.
by Unknown |
in
Games
at 07:28
The race-car, created by BMW Group Design combines many years of their motorsports experience and signature performance design, portraying a sense of speed and power, even while standing still.
The technology in the BMW Vision Gran Turismo is a powerful three-litre six-cylinder inline engine with M TwinPower Turbo technology delivers a maximum power of 404 kW/549 hp between 6,200 min and 7,300 min. Its peak torque of 680 Nm is developed at just 1,900 rpm.
A sequential six-speed transmission, operated by gearshift paddles on the steering wheel, distributes engine power to the driven rear axle. The outstanding performance characteristics of the BMW Vision Gran Turismo, which weighs only 1,180 kilograms, include perfect 50:50 axle load distribution.
by Unknown |
in
Other
at 12:33
Ask any serious watch aficionado why they're hesitant to switch to a smartwatch, and their reasons will have nothing to do with functionality—but everything to do with how ugly the current crop of smartwatches are.
The Modillian, a replacement strap buckle that adds Bluetooth, hopes to fix that by adding basic smartwatch capabilities to more stylish timepieces.
It doesn't take pictures, let you read email, or even control your music. But with a Bluetooth connection to your Android device, and eventually iPhone and iPads too, the Modillian will provide custom vibrating alerts so without looking at a screen you can tell if you've just got an email, text message, or need to answer your phone.
Set to launch on Indiegogo starting on June 10, the creators of the Modillian are targeting a $200 price point, with various sizes eventually being available. Since it's designed to replace the standard ardillon buckle on a leather or fabric strap, it won't work with watches using a metal bracelet, but the creators are optimistic that if the first version is successful, they will introduce new models later that can make any mechanical watch even smarter.
by Unknown |
in
Games
at 12:13
Aiden Pearce is crouched behind cover in a dark alley. From the safety of his vantage point, he spots two guards directly in his path. He then hacks his way from one rooftop security camera to another, spotting several more. At this point, Aiden has a multitude of options.
Perhaps he’ll hack into a fuse box, setting off an explosion that’ll kill one guard and draw several others away from their spots. Or maybe he’ll distract the first guard by setting off a car alarm, sneak past him, then distract the next by remotely opening a garage door.
Maybe he’ll open fire with a machine gun, mowing down all his foes aggressively and with prejudice. Or, he could hack into one guard’s earpiece to trigger a head-staggering burst of sound, then hack another guard’s phone to stop him from calling for backup. All these options – and more – are available for players.
In development for six years, Watch Dogs was started long before the next-gen arrived, and years before the team at Ubisoft Montreal had any clear insight into the exact specs they’d find in the PlayStation 4, Xbox 360 and present-day PCs. Yet Watch Dogs was designed from the very start to be a next-gen experience, regardless of the technology.
How so? “We focused on what kind of experience players want to play next,” says Creative Director Jonathan Morin. “That’s more important for me than defining what technology can do.”
Fast-forward to today, and we’re a few weeks from the May 27 release of Watch Dogs. The game will be available on both console generations, yet Morin is confident it’ll deliver a unique experience that speaks to the notion of next-generation gaming – regardless of what platform you play it on.
“The next generation of gameplay is any form of entertainment and interaction that will bring your brain to a place it’s never been,” Morin says. Indeed, that was one of the early goals in Watch Dogs’ development: to create an experience in which players can interact in completely new ways.
The key to success: dynamism. Players had to feel like they could truly influence the world around them. This goal came to life through Aiden’s hacking abilities, along with Watch Dogs’ contemporary urban setting of Chicago: an open-world city where everything is hyper-connected – but there are flaws in the system, allowing savvy operators to interact with their environment in new ways.
But simply offering the newly created game mechanic isn’t enough. “It’s one thing to invent something like hacking in an open city, and another to make sure it’s done in such a way that when you’re in a stealth situation or a combat situation or a car chase situation – even though you understand driving, shooting, reloading and all of those things – you start feeling like every traffic light around you is a valid solution,”
Morin says. “Every fuse box you can use in combat will help you turn the tide. All those elements come together so that when the player puts the controller down he or she can say, I really like this. And when they pick up the controller to play another game, they try to hack the traffic lights, but that option’s not there anymore.”
And that’s what hacking is ultimately about: real choices with real consequences. As Morin says, hacking isn’t a switch that you turn on and off, like when other games go from pure stealth to all-out action. Hacking allows players to influence their world – to move from stealth to action to driving and back again, in any way they choose. The world around Aiden will react accordingly, and new choices will emerge. Every action causes an appropriate reaction, and the player can’t help but be further immersed in Watch Dogs’ Chicago because their choices matter.
“Players can express themselves,” Morin says. “The big challenge is to make sure the game responds to their plan.” In other words, if a plan makes sense, it should work. And if the player makes a “mistake” along the way, he can improvise and the game should respond accordingly.
For example, if you blow up a guy while hidden in a dark corner, no one will have any idea that you’re there. If you destroy a fuse box, it will look like an accident. If you hack into an explosive that an enemy is carrying and he starts freaking out trying to get the bomb off and it kills his friend, he won’t turn around and say,
There’s the player! “That would feel wrong because you were playing well,” Morin says. ‘PLAYERS CAN EXPRESS THEMSELVES. THE BIG CHALLENGE IS TO MAKE SURE THE GAME RESPONDS TO THEIR PLAN.’ “The game shouldn’t do that.” Instead, enemies will behave appropriately: they’ll get stressed; they’ll group up and start searching for clues; they’ll get frustrated and angry at objects (instead of you) because they assume they’re broken.
“That was tough to do because there’s really no reference for it,” says Morin. “But it creates a new layer of gameplay where you can mess around with AI. That’s one of the things that feels completely different about the game compared to what I’ve played before.”
And therein lies the heart of the next-gen experience in Watch Dogs. It’s about player agency. It’s about action and consequences. It’s about choice. It’s about a dynamic and ever-changing world that’s a full simulation, with NPCs who react appropriately in a city that demonstrates a full range of weather, time, density and naturally occurring situations. (For more on the citizens of Chicago, check out: Watch Dogs – Animating a Next-Gen City.) Then you layer in Watch Dogs’ innovative approach to seamless online gameplay that smoothly blends a range of multiplayer experiences without disrupting the single-player experience, and you have a next-gen game regardless of which system you play it on.
Yes, Watch Dogs is coming May 27, 2014, to both generations of consoles and, yes, the game is almost exactly the same. The single-player experience is largely untouched, aside from the density of Chicago – there’ll be fewer NPCs in some areas, but not in a way that affects the core gameplay. The seamless online is also intact, as that’s “part of the essence of the game,” Morin says. The only missing modes on PS3 and Xbox 360 are the Decryption competitive multiplayer mode and the ability to free roam with multiple players (which Morin describes as more of a “bonus” than a core gameplay experience). But all the other online modes are fully intact.
The game also looks great on both generations of consoles. On new-gen systems the game will run at 900p on PS4 and 792p on Xbox One, at 30 frames-per-second on both consoles. While some new-gen games now offer native 1080p, Morin says it’s much more important to deliver an amazing next-gen experience than it is to push a few more pixels onto a screen. “Resolution is a number, just like framerate is a number. All those numbers are valid aspects of making games,” he says. “But you make choices about the experience you want to deliver. In our case, dynamism is everything.
Exploration and expression are everything. You want to have a steady framerate, but you want to have dynamism at the core of the experience. The same goes with resolution. People tend to look at corridor shooters, for example, where there’s a corridor and all the effects are on and it’s
unbelievable, and they forget that if you apply those same global effects to an open city with people around and potential car crashes and guys in multiplayer showing up without warning, the same effect is applied to a lot of dynamic elements that are happening in every frame. So it becomes magnified in cost.”
Which, naturally raises the question: why not focus on increasing the resolution during the game’s recent delay? Because, Morin says, that was never the goal. Instead, that extra time was spent ensuring the team could fully realize their vision for Watch Dogs, polishing all aspects of the gameplay and making sure hacking is fully integrated into every system. (For more, see: Why Was Watch Dogs Delayed?) “The effort was split on continuing dynamism and making sure players can express themselves through hacking without ever being disappointed in how the game responds to them, whether it’s visually or through gameplay,” Morin says. “That’s important. Resolution has nothing to do with that. That’s why stuff like resolution can scale a bit down so that we never compromise the soul of Watch Dogs.”
And now, with Watch Dogs just a few weeks from release, Morin is confident the team at Ubisoft Montreal will deliver a true next-gen experience. “From a gameplay standpoint and an experience standpoint, the player is living something brand new,” he promises. “That’s how we proceeded with Watch Dogs. That’s why everything is connected. That’s why there’s seamless multiplayer. That’s why there are Digital Trips, which are like a way for the player to get a break from the serious tone. It’s an experience that surprises you at every level. Then, slowly but surely, through those surprises the players start changing the way they express themselves in a game.”
Players will assume the role of Aiden Pearce, a new type of vigilante who, with the help of his smartphone, will use his ability to hack into Chicago’s central operating system (ctOS) and control almost every element of the city. Aiden will be able to tap into the city’s omnipresent security cameras, download personal information to locate a target, control systems such as traffic lights or public transportation to stop a chase, and more. The city of Chicago is now the ultimate weapon.
