?The iPhone can already do a lot of things, but here?s a new trick: An app released today by Rolocule Games pairs with users? Apple TVs and turns the phone into a Wiimote-style motion controller,? Eric Johnson reports for AllThingsD.
?The end result: Just in time for Wimbledon, a tennis game app designed for your TV (or computer) that turns swinging your iPhone into an onscreen avatar swinging a virtual racket,? Johnson reports. ?The novelty is that the game runs on the phone as-is, without the need of any peripheral hardware besides the Apple TV.?
Johnson reports, ?The game, Motion Tennis, works over Apple?s AirPlay Mirroring technology, which can beam the audio and video from most iPhones, iPads and iPod touches over Wi-Fi onto second- and third-generation Apple TVs. ?
Read more in the full article here.
[Thanks to MacDailyNews Reader "Dan K." for the heads up.]
BAGHDAD (AP) ? Iraq is open to greater American military cooperation as U.S. commanders explore ways to boost security assistance to the country, a top Iraqi official said Thursday as a fresh wave of bombings claimed 16 lives.
The Chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Martin Dempsey, has recommended that military American commanders look for ways to help improve the military capabilities of Iraq and Lebanon, which both face the risk of spillover from the civil war in neighboring Syria.
Dempsey said Wednesday that the assistance would not involve sending U.S. combat troops, but could involve the U.S. sending in training teams and accelerating sales of weapons and equipment.
The last American combat troops left Iraq in December 2011, ending a nearly nine-year war that cost nearly 4,500 American and more than 100,000 Iraqi lives.
About 100 military and civilian Department of Defense personnel remain in Iraq as an arm of the American Embassy to act as liaisons with the Iraqi government and facilitate arms sales. The U.S. has similar offices in other countries.
Ali al-Moussawi, the media adviser for Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki, told The Associated Press that Baghdad would welcome increased arms sales and faster weapons deliveries along with U.S. training teams to help it confront rising regional instability and terrorist threats.
"We welcome this kind of cooperation and we consider it a part of the existing agreement between us," al-Moussawi said when asked about Dempsey's comments.
"Because of the high risks the region faces, I think there should be bigger cooperation and coordination between all countries threatened by terrorism."
Iraq is struggling to contain a resurgent al-Qaida that is one of the main drivers behind the country's worst uptick in violence in half a decade. More than 2,000 people have been killed in car bombings and other violent attacks in Iraq since the start of April.
More violence rocked Iraq late Thursday when bombs struck cafes in and around Baghdad, killing 16 and wounding dozens. The attacks struck in quick succession at the start of the local weekend while the cafes were filled with patrons watching a soccer match.
Police reported five people killed and 17 wounded in Baghdad's largely Sunni neighborhood of Azamiyah, and another three dead and 14 wounded in Shiite-dominated Umm al-Maalif, in the southwestern suburbs of the capital.
Another blast struck the Shiite town of Jbala, about 50 kilometers (35 miles) south of Baghdad, killing 8 and wounding 25.
Hospital officials confirmed the casualty toll. All officials spoke on condition of anonymity because they weren't authorized to release the information to journalists.
The upsurge in violence comes as Iraqi fighters have been traveling to fight on both sides of Syria's civil war. The Iraqi branch of al-Qaida is pushing to make itself a player in the conflict, and now calls itself the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant to highlight its cross-border ambitions.
Iraq has acquired billions of dollars' worth of American-made military equipment, including howitzers, armored personnel carriers and Abrams tanks in recent years.
It has yet to receive the first of as many as 36 F-16 fighter jets it has ordered, and Baghdad has been pressing U.S. officials to speed delivery of the warplanes.
Also on Thursday, a spokesman for Iraq's Independent High Electoral Commission said a voting list backed by influential Sunni politicians has won the biggest single bloc of seats in provincial elections in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar.
Safaa al-Moussawi, a spokesman for the Independent High Electoral commission, said the United list led by Iraqi Parliament Speaker Osama al-Nujaifi won 8 of 30 seats in Anbar's provincial council. A bloc backed by al-Maliki came in second with five seats.
The western province of Anbar, a former al-Qaida stronghold, has been the center of anti-government rallies protesting what Sunnis say is their second-class treatment by the Shiite-led government.
Residents in Anbar and neighboring Ninevah province voted last week in local elections that had been delayed due to security concerns.
___
Associated Press writers Sameer N. Yacoub and Adam Schreck contributed.
According to the Wall Street Journal, Google might make another foray into living room hardware as it's currently developing an Android powered gaming console. Since that's just not enough of a rumor bomb, the talkative "people familiar with the matter" also claim a wristwatch and followup to its "postponed" Nexus Q project are on the way. If you believe the rumors, its reason for jumping into all these categories is to beat products Apple is reportedly developing in the same categories, with at least one of them launching this fall. Finally, the leaks indicate Google's next major Android update will be "tailored to low-cost devices in developing countries," and are ready to go in a much wider variety of devices.
That could mean laptops or even appliances running the rumored Key Lime Pie flavor of Android, built by manufacturers like Samsung which is already working on a watch of its own. Also mentioned is HP, which the report goes on to claim is building laptops that run Android. Companies like Ouya, Mad Catz, Pebble and GEAK probably think Mountain View is already late to the party, but official OS-level support and heavily marketed hardware could take these segments to the next level.
One of the best parts of home ownership (I imagine) is having a place that's all to yourself. Unfortunately, in the beautiful Wall House you'd have to share some space, but when that space looks like this, it'd be hard to mind it.
The psyllid is seen in 2008 University of Florida photo provided by the University of California, Davis. The psyllid, discovered eight years ago in Florida citrus groves, has proven problematic for researchers and farmers alike.
University of California, Davis/AP
The psyllid is seen in 2008 University of Florida photo provided by the University of California, Davis. The psyllid, discovered eight years ago in Florida citrus groves, has proven problematic for researchers and farmers alike.
University of California, Davis/AP
With its pleasant climate, Florida has become home to more exotic and invasive species of plants and animals than any other state in the continental U.S. Some invasive species have been brought in deliberately, such as the Burmese python or the Cuban brown snail. But the majority of species are imported inadvertently as cargo.
Amanda Hodges, who heads the Biosecurity Research lab at the University of Florida, says until recently, scientists saw about a dozen new bugs arrive in Florida each year.
"But we've seen in the last few years, we've actually seen an increase in the number of new introductions," Hodges says. "We've seen more like 24 new arthropods."
These new bugs are being studied inside the biosecurity lab. After signing and putting on a lab coat ? measures designed to make sure the invasive pests being studied don't escape ? you would find graduate student Ashley Poplin. She's studying one of the newest threats to American agriculture: the brown marmorated stinkbug.
"These are the little guys. They're pretty tiny; kind of have an orange abdomen and black markings," she says. "It almost looks like a black spider but of course this has six legs instead of eight."
The bug was first discovered in Allentown, Pa., but has now spread nationwide. In Florida, it threatens vegetable crops and the state's ornamental plant industry. With time, researchers are confident they'll identify natural predators and parasites that will help them control the stinkbug. It's a strategy that takes time and work but almost always pays off.
But there's one pest in Florida that so far has defied the best efforts of scientists and the agriculture industry. It's a tiny bug called a psyllid, and it poses a huge threat to Florida's $9 billion a year citrus industry. The bug was only discovered eight years ago in Florida's citrus groves, says University of Florida entomology professor Marjorie Hoy. Since the discovery of the psyllid, Hoy says Florida lost a good portion of its crops.
"It's been a disaster since then," she says, "From 860,000 acres, I think we're down to roughly 600,000 acres or less."
For decades, Hoy and other researchers used parasites and predators to successfully combat a series of invasions by bugs that preyed on citrus trees. But with this latest invasion, entomologists may have met their match. The psyllid, combined with bacteria it carries, causes citrus greening, a disease that kills orange trees and makes the fruit unusable.
To combat it, citrus growers have turned away from biological controls and are using pesticides and nutrient sprays. For Hoy, it's been disheartening.
"It's a very sad situation because Florida citrus was one of those premier examples of how to grow citrus with the least number of pesticides," Hoy says. "It's just heartbreaking."
The citrus industry is reeling from greening, not just in Florida, but also in California and Brazil. Meanwhile, researchers are scrambling to develop better traps, stronger trees and possibly even transgenic solutions. Scientists are studying ways to alter the genome of citrus to make it more resistant to greening.
Wallpapers generally come flat. While we don't expect (or want) anyone to pop on a pair of 3D glasses to change that, you can add some attractive depth to your desktop with isometric renderings.
An Isometric Race
Download this wallpaper | mister-meh on deviantART 2000x1306
Google City
Download this wallpaper | NASC 1920x1357
Project Eternity
Download this wallpaper | PC Gamer 1920x1080
3D Cubes
Download this wallpaper | Passy's World of Mathematics 2560x1440
Lit Cube
Download this wallpaper | ATSkill on deviantART 1920x1200
Neopets
Download this wallpaper | Rick Acosta 1600x995
Canterlot
Download this wallpaper | BreAuna on deviantART 2600x2472
For more great wallpapers, check out our previous Wallpaper Wednesdays. Got any great wallpapers you'd like to share? Email me a link with "Wallpaper Wednesday" in the subject line. Submitting your own work is highly encouraged!
Contact: Richard Lewis richard-c-lewis@uiowa.edu 319-384-0012 University of Iowa
University of Iowa study shows how 3- and 4-year-olds retain what they see around them
When young children gaze intently at something or furrow their brows in concentration, you know their minds are busily at work. But you're never entirely sure what they're thinking.
Now you can get an inside look. Psychologists led by the University of Iowa for the first time have peered inside the brain with optical neuroimaging to quantify how much 3- and 4-year-old children are grasping when they survey what's around them and to learn what areas of the brain are in play. The study looks at "visual working memory," a core cognitive function in which we stitch together what we see at any given point in time to help focus attention. In a series of object-matching tests, the researchers found that 3-year-olds can hold a maximum of 1.3 objects in visual working memory, while 4-year-olds reach capacity at 1.8 objects. By comparison, adults max out at 3 to 4 objects, according to prior studies.
"This is literally the first look into a 3 and 4-year-old's brain in action in this particular working memory task," says John Spencer, psychology professor at the UI and corresponding author of the paper, which appears in the journal NeuroImage.
The research is important, because visual working memory performance has been linked to a variety of childhood disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, developmental coordination disorder as well as affecting children born prematurely. The goal is to use the new brain imaging technique to detect these disorders before they manifest themselves in children's behavior later on.
"At a young age, children may behave the same," notes Spencer, who's also affiliated with the Delta Center and whose department is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, "but if you can distinguish these problems in the brain, then it's possible to intervene early and get children on a more standard trajectory."
Plenty of research has gone into better understanding visual working memory in children and adults. Those prior studies divined neural networks in action using function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). That worked great for adults, but not so much with children, especially young ones, whose jerky movements threw the machine's readings off kilter. So, Spencer and his team turned to functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which has been around since the 1960s but has never been used to look at working memory in children as young as three years of age.
"It's not a scary environment," says Spencer of the fNIRS. "No tube, no loud noises. You just have to wear a cap."
Like fMRI, fNIRS records neural activity by measuring the difference in oxygenated blood concentrations anywhere in the brain. You've likely seen similar technology when a nurse puts your finger in a clip to check your circulation. In the brain, when a region is activated, neurons fire like mad, gobbling up oxygen provided in the blood. Those neurons need another shipment of oxygen-rich blood to arrive to keep going. The fNIRS measures the contrast between oxygen-rich and oxygen-deprived blood to gauge which area of the brain is going full tilt at a point in time.
The researchers outfitted the youngsters with colorful, comfortable ski hats in which fiber optic wires had been woven. The children played a computer game in which they were shown a card with one to three objects of different shapes for two seconds. After a pause of a second, the children were shown a card with either the same or different shapes. They responded whether they had seen a match.
The tests revealed novel insights. First, neural activity in the right frontal cortex was an important barometer of higher visual working memory capacity in both age groups. This could help clinicians evaluate children's visual working memory at a younger age than before, and work with those whose capacity falls below the norm, the researchers say.
Secondly, 4-year olds showed a greater use than 3-year olds of the parietal cortex, located in both hemispheres below the crown of the head and which is believed to guide spatial attention.
"This suggests that improvements in performance are accompanied by increases in the neural response," adds Aaron Buss, a UI graduate student in psychology and the first author on the paper. "Further work will be needed to explain exactly how the neural response increaseseither through changes in local tuning, or through changes in long range connectivity, or some combination."
###
Contributing authors include David Boas from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and Nicholas Fox, research assistant at the UI.
The National Institutes of Health (grant number: P41 14075) funded the research through a grant to Boas. Other funding came from the UI's funding of the Delta Center's Child Imaging Laboratory in Development Science (CHILDS) facility. This is the first study from data collected from the CHILDS facility.
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Contact: Richard Lewis richard-c-lewis@uiowa.edu 319-384-0012 University of Iowa
University of Iowa study shows how 3- and 4-year-olds retain what they see around them
When young children gaze intently at something or furrow their brows in concentration, you know their minds are busily at work. But you're never entirely sure what they're thinking.
Now you can get an inside look. Psychologists led by the University of Iowa for the first time have peered inside the brain with optical neuroimaging to quantify how much 3- and 4-year-old children are grasping when they survey what's around them and to learn what areas of the brain are in play. The study looks at "visual working memory," a core cognitive function in which we stitch together what we see at any given point in time to help focus attention. In a series of object-matching tests, the researchers found that 3-year-olds can hold a maximum of 1.3 objects in visual working memory, while 4-year-olds reach capacity at 1.8 objects. By comparison, adults max out at 3 to 4 objects, according to prior studies.
"This is literally the first look into a 3 and 4-year-old's brain in action in this particular working memory task," says John Spencer, psychology professor at the UI and corresponding author of the paper, which appears in the journal NeuroImage.
The research is important, because visual working memory performance has been linked to a variety of childhood disorders, including attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), autism, developmental coordination disorder as well as affecting children born prematurely. The goal is to use the new brain imaging technique to detect these disorders before they manifest themselves in children's behavior later on.
"At a young age, children may behave the same," notes Spencer, who's also affiliated with the Delta Center and whose department is part of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, "but if you can distinguish these problems in the brain, then it's possible to intervene early and get children on a more standard trajectory."
Plenty of research has gone into better understanding visual working memory in children and adults. Those prior studies divined neural networks in action using function magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). That worked great for adults, but not so much with children, especially young ones, whose jerky movements threw the machine's readings off kilter. So, Spencer and his team turned to functional near-infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), which has been around since the 1960s but has never been used to look at working memory in children as young as three years of age.
"It's not a scary environment," says Spencer of the fNIRS. "No tube, no loud noises. You just have to wear a cap."
Like fMRI, fNIRS records neural activity by measuring the difference in oxygenated blood concentrations anywhere in the brain. You've likely seen similar technology when a nurse puts your finger in a clip to check your circulation. In the brain, when a region is activated, neurons fire like mad, gobbling up oxygen provided in the blood. Those neurons need another shipment of oxygen-rich blood to arrive to keep going. The fNIRS measures the contrast between oxygen-rich and oxygen-deprived blood to gauge which area of the brain is going full tilt at a point in time.
The researchers outfitted the youngsters with colorful, comfortable ski hats in which fiber optic wires had been woven. The children played a computer game in which they were shown a card with one to three objects of different shapes for two seconds. After a pause of a second, the children were shown a card with either the same or different shapes. They responded whether they had seen a match.
The tests revealed novel insights. First, neural activity in the right frontal cortex was an important barometer of higher visual working memory capacity in both age groups. This could help clinicians evaluate children's visual working memory at a younger age than before, and work with those whose capacity falls below the norm, the researchers say.
Secondly, 4-year olds showed a greater use than 3-year olds of the parietal cortex, located in both hemispheres below the crown of the head and which is believed to guide spatial attention.
"This suggests that improvements in performance are accompanied by increases in the neural response," adds Aaron Buss, a UI graduate student in psychology and the first author on the paper. "Further work will be needed to explain exactly how the neural response increaseseither through changes in local tuning, or through changes in long range connectivity, or some combination."
###
Contributing authors include David Boas from Massachusetts General Hospital and Harvard Medical School and Nicholas Fox, research assistant at the UI.
The National Institutes of Health (grant number: P41 14075) funded the research through a grant to Boas. Other funding came from the UI's funding of the Delta Center's Child Imaging Laboratory in Development Science (CHILDS) facility. This is the first study from data collected from the CHILDS facility.
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AAAS and EurekAlert! are not responsible for the accuracy of news releases posted to EurekAlert! by contributing institutions or for the use of any information through the EurekAlert! system.
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Public release date: 27-Jun-2013
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