Source: http://news.feedzilla.com/en_us/stories/politics/top-stories/301520851?client_source=feed&format=rss
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Friday, April 26, 2013
5 presidents appear at Bush library dedication
DALLAS (AP) ? The five living U.S. presidents are appearing together at the dedication ceremony for the George W. Bush Presidential Center.
Bush and President Barack Obama, along with former Presidents Bill Clinton, Jimmy Carter and George W. Bush's father, George H.W. Bush, were introduced to the gathering, along with their wives.
Obama along with the former presidents are all expected to give remarks on the stage flanked by American flags in front of the entrance to the library.
The center on the campus of Southern Methodist University includes the presidential library and museum along with the 43rd president's policy institute. The center opens to the public May 1.
A crowd of about 10,000 was gathered for the outdoor ceremony under clear blue skies with morning temperatures in the 50s.
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/5-presidents-appear-bush-library-dedication-151544494.html
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Watch a Woman from the 1990s Explain What a Computer Is
One of the things that will never fail to make me happy: seeing people stuck in time explain what modern day technology is. Kim Komando hosted an educational series about computer and explains the basics of its hardware, DOS, Microsoft Windows, Writeand more.
A few of my avorite quotes:
"What happens when you press the wrong button? Does it blow up?"
"That's how simple DOS is. It's like house cleaning"
"This is called pointing. There's also click"
"We're going to use the clock program now"
"It's not tough to use a computer. And nothing even blew up!"
Gotta love the people educating the Luddites of the tech world who thought if anything messed up in your computer, you'd get blown up. What's amazing is that Kim Komando still hosts a radio show about technology (as it is still on the air). [Komando via DeeprUnderstanding via Laughing Squid]
Source: http://gizmodo.com/5995358/watch-a-woman-from-the-1990s-explain-what-a-computer-is
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Thursday, April 25, 2013
Kendrik HR boosts Angels over Rangers in 11
By JOE RESNICK
Associated Press
Associated Press Sports
updated 1:39 a.m. ET April 24, 2013
ANAHEIM, Calif. (AP) - For the second time in three days, the Los Angeles Angels went extra innings and got a game-ending home run.
Howie Kendrick hit his second homer of the night in the 11th inning Tuesday and finished with four RBIs, leading the Angels to a 5-4 victory over the Texas Rangers.
On Sunday against Detroit, it was Mark Trumbo who provided the winning drive in the 13th.
"It's a great feeling to know that you can leave the other team on the field," Kendrick said. "But to get the victory is the most important thing. Every game against these guys is really tough because neither team lays down, and it seems like by the time the ninth inning rolls around, it's always a tie score."
In the series opener Monday, A.J. Pierzynski hit a go-ahead homer in the ninth against Angels closer Ernesto Frieri.
Kendrick, who hit a two-run shot in the sixth off Alexi Ogando and an RBI single in the first, drove a four-seam fastball from rookie Joe Ortiz (2-1) to left-center on a 1-1 count with one out for his third homer of the season.
"I was just trying to get a pitch to drive," Kendrick said. "He was trying to go in there and just left it out over the plate a little bit. He threw me a really good changeup the pitch before, and he was working pretty quick. So I was trying to take my time before I got back in the box."
Dane De La Rosa (1-0) pitched two perfect innings for his first major league win.
The Rangers tied it 4-all in the eighth with an unearned run against Scott Downs, following a couple of costly errors by the Angels - one physical and one mental.
Andrew Romaine, who replaced Brendan Harris at shortstop to start the inning, allowed Nelson Cruz's grounder to skip between his legs after Adrian Beltre's leadoff single. That put runners at the corners for Pierzynski, who hit a routine grounder to first base.
Trumbo saw Beltre break for the plate and immediately threw to catcher Chris Iannetta without looking the runner back to third, and Beltre alertly stayed put.
With the bases loaded, David Murphy grounded into a double play as Beltre scored the tying run. Downs minimized the damage by striking out Mitch Moreland after an intentional walk to Craig Gentry.
The Rangers had a runner at third with two outs in the ninth against Frieri, but left fielder Mike Trout robbed Beltre of an extra-base hit with a full-out diving catch on the warning track.
"That was phenomenal. That saved the game right there," Kendrick said. "I mean, with guys like him and Peter Bourjos out there covering that much ground, two of the fastest guys in baseball, not much really falls out there. And then to have him come up with a clutch play like that was huge for our team."
Beltre couldn't believe that Trout was able to catch up with the ball.
"When I hit it and I saw where he was playing, I thought he had no chance to get there because it was hooking away from him. But I was wrong," Beltre said. "It's not fair to have three center fielders playing outfield here (Trout, Bourjos and Josh Hamilton). I tried right-center field the first at-bat and Bourjos got over there. I don't know how. Then in the ninth inning, I hit what I thought was a double for sure and then that guy got there. It's not fair. I mean, where am I supposed to hit it?"
Someone suggested over the fence, to which Beltre replied: "That sounds like a good idea. I'll try that tomorrow."
The Angels had a golden opportunity to win it in the 10th with the bases loaded and one out, but Beltre turned Albert Pujols' grounder to third into a force at the plate and Hamilton grounded out to second.
Jason Vargas, winless in four starts for the Angels, allowed three runs and seven hits over seven innings. The left-hander, working on six days' rest, pitched with runners on base in each of the first six innings and gave up a three-run homer by Cruz in the sixth after getting staked to a 4-0 lead.
Cruz drove Vargas' 3-2 pitch to left-center for his 23rd career homer against the Angels. It was only the second by the Rangers against a left-handed pitcher this season.
"He's a really good hitter and he's given me some problems in the past," Vargas said. "I was trying to throw a slider there and bury it. But I hung it up there for him and he took advantage of it."
Ogando allowed four runs - two earned - and six hits in seven-plus innings.
The Angels took the lead in the first with two-out RBI singles by Trumbo and Kendrick. It could have been worse for Ogando had it not been for a sensational catch by left fielder Jeff Baker, who raced full speed toward the corner on Hamilton's slicing drive and caught the ball as he slid across the foul line. But he bruised his left knee crashing into the short wall fronting the grandstand, and was replaced by Murphy.
Kendrick made it 4-0 in the fourth with his first home run since a solo shot against Cincinnati's Mat Latos in the second game of the season.
"Howie came through big for us tonight. That's what you expect out of these guys in the lineup," Vargas said. "When you've got one through nine like this, you come to expect those things. And we look for more of it."
NOTES: Baker, who has played four positions this season, made his second start in left. ... The Rangers are the only team that hasn't lost consecutive games.
? 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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More newsPlenty to prove still
HBT: Justin Upton may lead the majors in home runs, but most of them have been solo shots. He still needs to prove he can drive in runners.
HBT Extra: Are Jays biggest disappointment so far?
??HBT Extra: The Blue Jays may be the most surprising disappointment so far this season along with the Angels' Josh Hamilton dropping in the batting order. HBT analyst Craig Calcaterra talks about which under-talented team is beating the odds early.
Source: http://nbcsports.msnbc.com/id/51641651/ns/sports-baseball/
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Novel therapeutic approaches may cure chronic HBV infection
Apr. 25, 2013 ? Exciting new data presented today at the International Liver Congress? 2013 include results from early in vitro and in vivo studies targeting covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA), which may form the basis of a cure for chronic hepatitis B virus (HBV) infection.
HBV cccDNA is organized into mini-chromosomes within the nucleus of infected cells by histone and non-histone proteins. Despite the availability of efficient therapies against HBV, long-term persistence of cccDNA necessitates life-long treatments to suppress the virus. The following three experimental studies demonstrate effective HBV-cccDNA targeting/depletion using novel therapeutic approaches which offer the potential of a cure.
Liver regeneration induces strong reduction of viral replication and cccDNA levels, but not complete cccDNA eradication; without antiviral treatment, de novo HBV infection can be re-established.
Key findings of research in HBV-infected human hepatocytes using the uPA/SCID chimeric mouse system show that liver regeneration induces strong reduction of viral replication and cccDNA levels, with rapid formation of cccDNA-free hepatocytes. However, because complete cccDNA eradication is not achieved, in the absence of antiviral treatment, de novo HBV infection could be re-established in quiescent (non-dividing) human hepatocytes. This suggests that induction of hepatocyte turn-over together with antiviral drugs inducing viral suppression, such as nucleoside analogues and IFN, or blocking cell entry, may accelerate the clearance of the viral minichromosome.
Targeting epigenetic control of nuclear cccDNA minichromosome to suppress HBV transcription and replication may form basis for other therapeutic approaches to curing chronic HBV infection.
In the infected liver cell the rate of replication of HBV is regulated by the acetylation or methylation of histone proteins which surround the cccDNA minichromosome -- so called epigenetic regulation. In a separate innovative study, the suppression of HBV transcription and replication by small molecules that target the epigenetic control of nuclear cccDNA minichromosome was investigated. The different classes of small molecules studied included: Class I, II and III histone deacetylase inhibitors (HDACi); p300 and PCAF histone acetyltransferases (HAT) inhibitors; hSirt1 activators; JMJD3 histone demethylase inhibitors.
The combined inhibition of p300 and PCAF HATs resulted in an evident reduction of HBV replication which mirrored the decrease of pgRNA transcription. The hSirt1/2 activator MC2791 and the JMJD3 inhibitor MC3119, albeit with different efficiency, inhibited both HBV replication and cccDNA transcription. Results represent a proof of concept that activation of hSirt1 and Ezh2 (through the inhibition of its functional antagonist JMJD3) by small molecules can induce an active epigenetic suppression of HBV cccDNA minichromosome similar to that observed with IFN?, and lead to persistent cccDNA silencing.
Lymphtoxin beta receptor (LTbR) agonisation represents basis for novel alternative therapeutic approach to curing chronic HBV infection.
The final study demonstrated that stimulating the lymphtoxin beta receptor (LTbR) provides an effective, long lasting and non-cytopathic mechanism for achieving effective HBV-cccDNA depletion in infected hepatocytes. Cell culture models including HBV-infected HepaRG cells and primary human hepatocytes were used to test the effect of antibodies stimulating human LTbR (BS1 or CBE11). Results show that a strong and dose-dependent anti-HBV effect was achieved by activation of the LTbR. All HBV replication markers were decreased with this treatment, including cccDNA in cells where HBV infection was already established.
Hepatitis B is the most prevalent cause of chronic viral hepatitis and a major global health problem. Prof. Fabien Zoulim, EASL Educational Councillor commented on the exciting new data: "In chronic hepatitis B infection, the viral genome forms a stable minichromosome -- the covalently closed circular DNA (cccDNA) -- which can persist throughout the lifespan of the hepatocyte."
"Current treatments focus on suppression of HBV and discovery of compounds directly targeting cccDNA has been one of the major challenges to curing HBV infection; but these preliminary data show novel therapeutic approaches can be applied to successfully target cccDNA with the long-term aspiration of finding a cure" added Prof. Fabien Zoulim.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by European Association for the Study of the Liver, via EurekAlert!, a service of AAAS.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/top_health/~3/oorJAU_URNI/130425091612.htm
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Wednesday, April 24, 2013
Robot & baby sea turtles reveal principles of motion
Apr. 23, 2013 ? For sea turtle hatchlings struggling to reach the ocean, success may depend on having flexible wrists that allow them to move without disturbing too much sand. A similar wrist also helps a robot known as "FlipperBot" move through a test bed, demonstrating how animals and bio-inspired robots can together provide new information on the principles governing locomotion on granular surfaces.
Both the baby turtles and FlipperBot run into trouble under the same conditions: traversing granular media disturbed by previous steps. Information from the robot research helped scientists understand why some of the hatchlings they studied experienced trouble, creating a unique feedback loop from animal to robot -- and back to animal.
The research could help robot designers better understand locomotion on complex surfaces and lead biologists to a clearer picture of how seat turtles and other animals like mudskippers use their flippers. The research could also help explain how animals evolved limbs -- including flippers -- for walking on land.
The research is scheduled to be published April 24 in the journal Bioinspiration & Biomimetics. The work was supported by the National Science Foundation, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) Program, the U.S. Army Research Office, and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund.
"We are looking at different ways that robots can move about on sand," said Daniel Goldman, an associate professor in the School of Physics at the Georgia Institute of Technology. "We wanted to make a systematic study of what makes flippers useful or effective. We've learned that the flow of the materials plays a large role in the strategy that can be used by either animals or robots."
The research began in 2010 with a six-week study of hatchling loggerhead sea turtles emerging at night from nests on Jekyll Island, one of Georgia's coastal islands. The research was done in collaboration with the Georgia Sea Turtle Center.
Nicole Mazouchova, then a graduate student in the Georgia Tech School of Biology, studied the baby turtles using a trackway filled with beach sand and housed in a truck parked near the beach. She recorded kinematic and biomechanical data as the turtles moved in darkness toward an LED light that simulated the moon.
Mazouchova and Goldman studied data from the 25 hatchlings, and were surprised to learn that they managed to maintain their speed regardless of the surface on which they were running.
"On soft sand, the animals move their limbs in such a way that they don't create a yielding of the material on which they're walking," said Goldman. "That means the material doesn't flow around the limbs and they don't slip. The surprising thing to us was that the turtles had comparable performance when they were running on hard ground or soft sand."
The key maintaining performance seemed to be the ability of the hatchlings to control their wrists, allowing them to change how they used their flippers under different sand conditions.
"On hard ground, their wrists locked in place, and they pivoted about a fixed arm," Goldman explained. "On soft sand, they put their flippers into the sand and the wrist would bend as they moved forward. We decided to investigate this using a robot model."
That led to development of FlipperBot, with assistance from Paul Umbanhowar, a research associate professor at Northwestern University. The robot measures about 19 centimeters in length, weighs about 970 grams, and has two flippers driven by servo-motors. Like the turtles, the robot has flexible wrists that allow variations in its movement. To move through a track bed filled with poppy seeds that simulate sand, the robot lifts its flippers up, drops them into the seeds, then moves the flippers backward to propel itself.
Mazouchova, now a Ph.D. student at Temple University, studied many variations of gait and wrist position and found that the free-moving mechanical wrist also provided an advantage to the robot.
"In the robot, the free wrist does provide some advantage," said Goldman. "For the most part, the wrist confers advantage for moving forward without slipping. The wrist flexibility minimizes material yielding, which disturbs less ground. The flexible wrist also allows both the robot and turtles to maintain a high angle of attack for their bodies, which reduces performance-impeding drag from belly friction."
The researchers also noted that the robot often failed when limbs encountered material that the same limbs had already disturbed. That led them to re-examine the data collected on the hatchling turtles, some of which had also experienced difficulty walking across the soft sand.
"When we saw the turtles moving poorly, they appeared to be suffering from the same failure mode that we saw in the robot," Goldman explained. "When they interacted with materials that had been previously disturbed, they tended to lose performance."
Mazouchova and Goldman then worked with Umbanhowar to model the robot's performance in an effort to predict how the turtle hatchlings should respond to different conditions. The predictions closely matched what was actually observed, closing the loop between robot and animal.
"The robot study allowed us to test how principles applied to the animals," Goldman said. While the results may not directly improve robot designs, what the researchers learned should contribute to a better understanding of the principles governing movement using flippers. That would be useful to the designers of robots that must swim through water and walk on land.
"A multi-modal robot might need to use paddles for swimming in water, but it might also need to walk in an effective way on the beach," Goldman said. "This work can provide fundamental information on what makes flippers good or bad. This information could give robot designers clues to appendage designs and control techniques for robots moving in these environments."
The research could ultimately provide clues to how turtles evolved to walk on land with appendages designed for swimming.
"To understand the mechanics of how the first terrestrial animals moved, you have to understand how their flipper-like limbs interacted with complex, yielding substrates like mud flats," said Goldman. "We don't have solid results on the evolutionary questions yet, but this certainly points to a way that we could address these issues."
This research has been supported by the National Science Foundation under grant CMMI-0825480 and the Physics of Living Systems PoLS program, the U.S. Army Research Laboratory's (ARL) Micro Autonomous Systems and Technology (MAST) Program under cooperative agreement W911NF-08-2-0004, the U.S. Army Research Office (ARO) and the Burroughs Wellcome Fund Career Award. Any conclusions are those of the authors and do not necessarily represent the official views of the NSF, ARL or ARO.
Video: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CkHA3tL4z5U&feature=youtu.be
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Georgia Institute of Technology, Research Communications. The original article was written by John Toon.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Nicole Mazouchova, Paul B. Umbanhowar and Daniel I. Goldman. Flipper-driven terrestrial locomotion of a sea turtle-inspired robot. Bioinspiration & Biomimetics, 2013
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: Views expressed in this article do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/qkoK9zihsW0/130423211711.htm
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The new Apple
Tuesday evening?s Apple results were beyond dramatic. The company buried a massive 18% drop in profits under an even bigger pile of cash, announcing that it will take on debt and create value for investors by increasing its stock buyback and dividend programs to return $100 billion to investors between now and 2015. The stock immediately shot up by more than 4.5% in after-hours trading, but those gains were completely wiped away when CEO Tim Cook announced that Apple doesn?t have plans to launch any exciting new products until this coming fall. Quite the roller coaster ride, indeed.
[More from BGR: Samsung Galaxy S4 review]
As analysts? downgrades began to pour out on Wednesday morning, a piece penned Tuesday evening by Reuters?finance blogger Felix Salmon does a terrific job of explaining exactly what?s happening. We?re now looking at a completely different stock than we were this time last year, and the new Apple is going to take some time to get used to.
[More from BGR: BlackBerry Q10 review]
?Apple is officially no longer a high-growth tech stock, valued on its monster potential,? Salmon wrote. ?Instead, it has become a cash cow, valued on its ability to pump hundreds of billions of dollars into its shareholders? pockets.?
The transition we?re currently seeing at Apple happened so fast that investors are having trouble processing it, hence Tuesday night?s roller coaster ride that continued into Wednesday morning?s pre-market session as Apple shares continued downward and were trading below $400. Again.
On the flip side of the coin, Apple CEO Tim Cook is a numbers man first ? unlike late co-founder Steve Jobs, who was a geek first ? so the new Apple may play right into his wheelhouse.
What was once a high-yield stock that attracted a rush of investors is now becoming a safe low-yield investment that will attract a more conservative crowd. That fundamental shift will clearly take some time to adjust to, and volatility will likely continue for some time as a result.
?Apple is trading at an astonishingly low valuation, with a p/e ratio in single digits, because it has now become that animal investors like least: a slow-growing tech stock,? Salmon wrote. ?Either one is fine on its own, and both slow-growing stocks and fast-growing tech stocks can support much higher multiples than Apple is seeing right now. But conservative investors, who like slow-growing stocks with high dividends, are constitutionally uncomfortable with the volatility inherent in the tech world. And technology investors, who are happy taking that kind of risk, want to see substantial growth. Apple, notwithstanding the fact that it?s one of the most valuable companies in the world, is falling through the capital-markets cracks.?
This article was originally published on BGR.com
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/apple-151056155.html
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'Toggle switch' to burn fat identified
Apr. 23, 2013 ? For a long time, scientists have dreamt of converting undesirable white fat cells into brown fat cells and thus simply have excess pounds melt away. Researchers at the University of Bonn have now gotten a step closer to this goal: They decoded a "toggle switch" in mice which can significantly stimulate fat burning.
The results are now being presented in the journal Nature Communications.
Many people not only in industrialized nations struggle with excess weight -- but all fat is not alike. "Love handles" in particular contain troublesome white fat cells which store excess food. Brown fat cells are the exact opposite: they burn excess energy as the desirable "heaters" of the body. Scientists at the University of Bonn working with Prof. Dr. Alexander Pfeifer, Director of the Institute for Pharmacology and Toxicology, have spent years using animal models to explore how the undesirable white fat can be converted into sought-after brown fat. "In this way, excess pounds may be able to simply be melted away and obesity combated," says Prof. Pfeifer.
A kind of "trigger switch" spurs fat burning
The researchers have now decoded a "microRNA switch" in mice which is important for brown fat cells. Micro-RNAs are located in the genome of cells and very quickly and efficiently regulate gene activity. The researchers studied a specific microRNA: microRNA 155. The gene regulator micro-RNA 155 inhibits a certain transcription factor, that controls brown fat cell function. Surprisingly, Prof. Pfeifer and his team found that the transcription factor also regulates the levels microRNA 155 establishing a tight feed-back loop that works like a toggle switch: When the microRNA is highly expressed brown fat cell differentiation is blocked; conversely, if the transcription factor wins the upper hand, brown fat is produced at an increased level and this in turn boosts fat burning in the body.
In knockout mice, the gene for Micro-RNA 155 was silent
The researchers at Bonn University and their colleagues from the Federal Institute of Drugs and Medical Devices (BfArM) and from the University of Regensburg worked with so-called transgenic and knockout mice in whom the gene for micro-RNA 155 was either increased or silenced. "The mechanism was already set in motion when the micro-RNA 155 was only halved in the mice," reports lead author Yong Chen, graduate student of the NRW International Graduate School BIOTECH-PHARMA. The mice then had significantly more brown fat cells available than did the control gro up -- and had even converted white fat cells into brown fat cells.
Clues to the causes of lipid metabolism diseases
The micro-RNA functions as an antagonist to the brown fat cells. "As long as enough micro-RNA 155 is present, the production of brown fat cells is blocked," says Chen. Only if it falls below a certain proportion does this brake let up; the blueprint for brown fat can be read and implemented by the cell -- the desired fat burners can develop. These findings help scientists better understand the causes of lipid metabolism diseases.
Hope for new therapies against obesity
The scientists at the University of Bonn see in their results a potential starting point for drugs to combat obesity. The researchers have clues to the fact that the results, if anything, can be transferred from mice to humans. Thus, for example, researchers in Leipzig found increased levels of micro-RNA 155 in significantly overweight patients. This corresponds to findings from animal models: A lot of micro-RNA 155 is associated with reduced fat burning. "However, we are still in the basic research stage," says Prof. Pfeifer. The path to suitable drugs is still a long one.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Universit?t Bonn, via AlphaGalileo.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- Yong Chen, Franziska Siegel, Stefanie Kipschull, Bodo Haas, Holger Fr?hlich, Gunter Meister, Alexander Pfeifer. miR-155 regulates differentiation of brown and beige adipocytes via a bistable circuit. Nature Communications, 2013; 4: 1769 DOI: 10.1038/ncomms2742
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
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Tuesday, April 23, 2013
?My mother?s cockatoo has spent ten years trying to kill me? (video) (Americablog)
Monday, April 22, 2013
Marketer Survey - Business Insider
Mad Men, AMC What would Don's Twitter handle be?
It's clear brands are still experimenting with emerging digital channels like social, mobile and "native" advertising.
What's not clear is the consensus. What's working? What's a total waste of time? Will the almighty banner finally die a quiet death? Will Facebook and Twitter eat ad networks for lunch? What's all the fuss about RTB, DMP and PE?
Whether you work for a brand, agency, or publisher, we'd like your two cents on the matter. Tell us about shifting paradigms, advertorials, and other marketing buzzwords you're probably tired of hearing.?
Click here to?take the survey >
Thanks in advance for your candid answers!
?
Source: http://www.businessinsider.com/marketer-survey-2013-4
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Sunday, April 21, 2013
Rocker Jack White's Nashville store offer "do-it-yourself" records
By Tim Ghianni
NASHVILLE (Reuters) - Rock musician Jack White celebrated Record Store Day on Saturday by giving customers a chance to record their own voices on vinyl on a vintage machine at his record shop near downtown Nashville.
White, who has embraced vinyl over digital both as an artist and as the head of Third Man Records in Nashville, treated customers to a Voice-O-Graph, a record booth from 1947.
"We'll have the record booth open and available for people to come in, sing a song and get a copy of it on record," Third Man Records executive Ben Blackwell said in an interview on Wednesday.
"It's a refurbished 1947 Voice-O-Graph record booth," Blackwell said. "As far as we can tell, it will be the only functioning record booth open to the public in the world."
Record Store Day, which is marked internationally on the third Saturday of each April, aims to encourage people to visit independent record stores.
In addition to the recording booth in the store's "Novelties Lounge," Third Man Records will be staging in-house performances by some of the music label's artists.
Blackwell said record booths were popular in the 1940s and 1950s and could be found in public places, like train stations, along with photo booths.
"They were used as a way to record an audio postcard and send it to someone you love or to go in and sing a little song so you can hear what your voice sounds like," he said.
The Voice-O-Graph is about the size of a telephone booth and fans will pay a fee to produce their own record.
"Just think of it as a blank vinyl record and when you are singing, it is making the grooves into the record," Blackwell said.
White's Third Man Records has been known for experimenting with vinyl, having in the last few months added a record lathe that enables live acts performing in the Blue Room, the company concert venue, to be recorded directly to discs.
Blackwell said the contemporary music fan has "never been faced with the technology to put their voice and their thoughts on a record" and take it home.
"Jack has been looking for a long time for one of these machines," Blackwell said. "After years and years and years he finally crossed paths with one. It was a no-brainer to get it up and running for our Novelties Lounge."
Blackwell said the booth will remain after Record Store Day, and he expects it to be a popular attraction to the store, which sells exclusively Third Man recordings - albums by various artists as well as by White and his three group configurations: The White Stripes, Dead Weather and The Raconteurs.
(Reporting by Tim Ghianni; Editing by Mary Wisniewski and Vicki Allen)
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/rocker-jack-whites-nashville-store-offer-yourself-records-144417718.html
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Saturday, April 20, 2013
HPV Vaccination Sends Genital Wart Cases Plummeting: Study ...
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Source: http://news.health.com/2013/04/18/hpv-vaccination-sends-genital-wart-cases-plummeting-study/
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Friday, April 19, 2013
School denies California teen Audrie Pott reported bullying
SAN FRANCISCO? - A California couple who said their teenage daughter killed herself after classmates shared a photo of her being sexually assaulted filed a legal claim against school officials, who denied the girl ever reported being bullied.
Saying school administrators mishandled their daughter?s bullying complaints, the parents of Audrie Pott filed a government claim that preserves their right to take future legal action against the Los Gatos-Saratoga Union High School District, their lawyer, Robert Allard, said on Wednesday.
The school district denied on Wednesday that Pott, who committed suicide in September at age 15, had ever reported being bullied before or after the alleged sexual battery that resulted in charges against three boys from her school.
On Monday, her parents filed a wrongful-death suit against the three 16-year-old boys, accusing them of sexually assaulting their daughter and scribbling vulgar markings on her body while she was passed out from drinking during a Labor Day weekend party at a friend?s home.
She took her own life days later, sending shock waves through her hometown of Saratoga, an affluent northern California community near San Jose.
Her parents say she was driven to suicide after learning that a photograph showing one of the boys violating her had been circulated at school, along with other photos and electronic communications falsely suggesting she had been a willing participant.
The three boys were arrested last week on criminal charges of sexual assault by digital penetration and of distributing a photo of a minor in sexual positions - both felonies.
The local sheriff said the boys, described by Pott?s parents as onetime friends of their daughter, also faced misdemeanor charges of inappropriate touching.
Pott?s parents have said the assault was a culmination of bullying she had endured from classmates since entering high school.
In the government claim they filed with the school district in March, they accused the district of failing to document a meeting with administrators the previous spring about the bullying of their daughter at Saratoga High School, Allard said.
The parents also cited a number of instances in which they claimed the school district mishandled its reaction to their daughter?s suicide and ensuing death investigation, including its refusal to expel the three boys accused in the case.
But the school district issued a lengthy statement disputing the parents? assertions.
?Since her death, we have thoroughly examined our counseling records and interviewed our staff to see if there were any warning signs or indications that Audrie was being bullied or harassed at school,? the district said. That review, it said, ?showed that she never reported or sought counseling for bullying before or after the alleged sexual assault.?
The district also said that since Pott?s accused attackers were criminally charged, their parents have agreed that the boys would not return to campus until the case is resolved. ?If they are found guilty, then expulsion could occur,? it added.
Lawyers for the three defendants, whose names have been kept confidential because they are minors, issued a statement last week saying their clients should be ?regarded as innocent.?
Allard said on Wednesday that his office would continue to investigate the district?s potential liability for Pott?s death and bring a civil lawsuit if enough evidence supports it.
?
Source: http://www.lfpress.com/2013/04/18/school-denies-calif-teen-reported-bullying
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OpenSignal Finds the Best Mobile Data and Wi-Fi Connections on iOS
iOS: OpenSignal is a do-it-all toolkit for improving your mobile data and Wi-Fi connectivity. Previously only available for Android, iPhone users can now use this handy utility for maximizing their connection on the go.
OpenSignal offers many features in one little package. It can help you locate the strongest mobile signals, with coverage and cell tower maps as well as a compass to show you where your signal is coming from. You can also test and track your data speeds, find nearby hotspots, and select the best wireless carrier based on its coverage of your area.
The free app is available now in the iTunes App Store.
OpenSignal | iTunes App Store
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Wednesday, April 17, 2013
Virus-like particles provide vital clues about brain tumors
Apr. 17, 2013 ? Exosomes are small, virus-like particles that can transport genetic material and signal substances between cells. Researchers at Lund University, Sweden, have made new findings about exosomes released from aggressive brain tumours, gliomas. These exosomes are shown to have an important function in brain tumour development, and could be utilised as biomarkers to assess tumour aggressiveness through a blood test.
"Current wisdom says that cells are closed entities that communicate through the secretion of soluble signalling molecules. Recent findings indicate that cells can exchange more complex information -- whole packages of genetic material and signalling proteins. This is an entirely new conception of how cells communicate," says Dr Mattias Belting, Professor of Oncology at Lund University and senior consultant in oncology at Sk?ne University Hospital, Lund, Sweden.
Exosomes are small vesicles of only 30-90 nm. They are produced inside cells and act as "transport vehicles" of genetic material that can be transferred to surrounding cells. Since their first discovery, exosomes have been found in blood, saliva, urine, breast milk and other body fluids.
Mattias Belting's research group has investigated exosomes released from tumour cells of patients with gliomas. The tiny exosome particles are delivered from the tumour to healthy cells of the brain and may prime normal tissue for efficient spreading of the tumour. The researchers in Lund have now shown that the aggressiveness of the tumour is reflected in the exosome molecular profile.
"We have succeeded in developing a method for the isolation of exosomes from brain tumour patients through a relatively simple blood test. Our analyses indicate that the content of exosomes mirrors the aggressiveness of the tumour in a unique manner," says postdoctoral researcher Paulina Kucharzewska.
Exosomes could thus be utilised as biomarkers, i.e. to provide guidance on how the patient should be treated and to monitor treatment response. This possibility is particularly attractive with brain tumours that are not readily accessible for tissue biopsy. However, analysis of exosomes from the blood may also prove important with other tumour types. The value of conventional tumour biopsies is limited by the heterogeneity of tumour tissue, i.e. the tissue specimen may not be fully representative of the biological characteristics of a particular tumour. Exosomes, however, may offer more comprehensive information, according to the researchers.
The second international meeting on exosomes has just opened in Boston, and Mattias Belting and members of his team are there.
"It is very exciting to be part of the emergence of a novel research field. It can be anticipated that the most influential researchers in this area may one day be awarded the Nobel Prize," says Dr Belting.
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The above story is reprinted from materials provided by Lund University.
Note: Materials may be edited for content and length. For further information, please contact the source cited above.
Journal Reference:
- P. Kucharzewska, H. C. Christianson, J. E. Welch, K. J. Svensson, E. Fredlund, M. Ringner, M. Morgelin, E. Bourseau-Guilmain, J. Bengzon, M. Belting. Exosomes reflect the hypoxic status of glioma cells and mediate hypoxia-dependent activation of vascular cells during tumor development. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 2013; DOI: 10.1073/pnas.1220998110
Note: If no author is given, the source is cited instead.
Disclaimer: This article is not intended to provide medical advice, diagnosis or treatment. Views expressed here do not necessarily reflect those of ScienceDaily or its staff.
Source: http://feeds.sciencedaily.com/~r/sciencedaily/top_news/~3/IQHKFWaUCc0/130417105931.htm
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Target warns first-quarter profit will miss forecasts
Apr 15 (Reuters) - Leading money winners on the 2013 PGATour on Monday (U.S. unless stated): 1. Tiger Woods $4,139,600 2. Brandt Snedeker $3,137,920 3. Matt Kuchar $2,442,389 4. Adam Scott (Australia) $2,100,469 5. Steve Stricker $1,935,340 6. Phil Mickelson $1,764,680 7. Dustin Johnson $1,748,907 8. Jason Day $1,659,565 9. Hunter Mahan $1,553,965 10. Keegan Bradley $1,430,347 11. Charles Howell III $1,393,806 12. John Merrick $1,375,757 13. Russell Henley $1,331,434 14. Michael Thompson $1,310,709 15. Kevin Streelman $1,310,343 16. Bill Haas $1,271,553 17. Billy Horschel $1,254,224 18. ...
Source: http://news.yahoo.com/target-warns-first-quarter-profit-miss-forecasts-120942680--finance.html
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Tuesday, April 16, 2013
Jessica Simpson's Second Baby Shower Sounds More Elaborate ...
Some of Jessica Simpson's giftsEvery pregnancy is exciting. Whether it's your first, second, or fifth child, it's cause for a (non-alcoholic) champagne toast. But, is it cause for an elaborate baby shower? Some think so. Jessica Simpson had her second baby shower over the weekend, and while the whole event (yes, it was an event) sounds like it was adorable, was it really necessary?
First off, let me make something clear here -- I am not a Jessica Simpson hater. I think she's sweet and lovely and I may or may not own the entire Newlyweds series on DVD. But two balls-to-the-wall baby showers? Especially when the pregnancies are so close to one another? (It's not like Jess is dealing with baby stuff that's from the 1970s.) Seems a little bit like overkill.
I know that Jessica is having a boy this time around, so she wants to stock up on blue onesies instead of pink, and mini-Jordans instead of ballet flats, but -- just saying here -- can't she get all those things without a party? (She's rich!) Again, pregnancies are always beautiful, and they ought to be celebrated, but a Tom Sawyer-themed baby shower, complete with a grilled cheese station, just doesn't seem necessary this go 'round. I kind of feel like a "sprinkle" would have been more apropos here. But that's just me.
Regardless, congrats, Jess.
Did you have two or more baby showers?
?
Source: http://thestir.cafemom.com/pregnancy/154106/jessica_simpsons_second_baby_shower
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Senators plan to unveil immigration bill Tuesday
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Monday, April 15, 2013
92% The Gatekeepers
All Critics (86) | Top Critics (30) | Fresh (79) | Rotten (7)
The film and its talking head participants paint the picture in both broad strokes and fine detail.
Whatever one's political stripe regarding Israel, it's hard to dispute the impressions and perspective of the film's six eyewitnesses.
The level of candor here may not satisfy hard-liners of either stripe, but it can help viewers begin to formulate new questions about the philosophical, strategic and moral challenges of conflict, in particular "wars on terror."
Ultimately the movie feels evasive, and its flashy, digitally animated re-creations of military surveillance footage unpleasantly evoke the Call of Duty video games.
It offers startlingly honest insight into the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from some of those who called the shots.
As a political testament, the result is revealing and important.
It's a depressing movie, yet there is encouragement to be found in the manifest decency and reasonableness of these six honest, articulate men ...
The former heads of Israel's military anti-terrorism agency Shin Bet break their silence in this unnerving, eye-opening documentary.
The film, though based on the exploits of Shin Bet, gives us reason to think about the drones that take out more than just terrorists.
Makes for truly bracing viewing.
A fascinating film offering a startling look inside one of the most tightlipped intelligence agencies on the planet, and providing powerful resonances with the US and UK's "war on terror".
A compelling overview of a modern security agency - bred in a moral grey area, organising state-sanctioned violence, but uncertain of the strength of its political safety net.
While memorable in sometimes unexpected ways (1980 head Avraham Shalom's long unwashed nails), there is always the nagging feeling that any revelations are being pushed or sold a little too hard.
Dror Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary is riveting, haunting and depressing in equal measure, offering a sobering assessment of the Israel-Palestine conflict from a unique perspective.
[T]he Oscar-nominated documentary in which the six living former heads of Shin Bet, the ultrasecretive Israeli domestic security agency, talk about their antiterrorism work...
Although The Gatekeepers may not be quite theatrical nor dramatic enough for it to be highly recommended as a cinematic experience, this does feel like a film that really should be seen.
Many secrets are revealed and examined in director Dror Moreh's mind-blowingly fine film. If I have a quibble, it's that he never reveals the most tantalizing secret of all: how the hell he pulled it off.
[An] absorbing documentary, which charts the Israeli-Palestinian conflict from the Six Day War to the presentday.
Insightful, revelatory and profound, Moreh's Oscar-nominated documentary combines riveting interviews, archive footage and - yes - state-of-the-art photographic effects to offer a unique perspective on the Israel-Palestine issue.
Both journalistic coup and unsettling confirmation of the idea that 'you can't make peace using military means.'
Much like Errol Morris' "The Fog of War," Dror Moreh's film is a sobering inside look inside history, at mistakes made and opportunities missed.
Moreh employs a direct interviewing style, reminiscent of Errol Morris' work, to get the men to talk about their days leading Shin Bet.
Moreh gets some startling confessions and insights from each man but also misses the opportunity to truly challenge his subjects on their regard for democracy, basic human rights and their own accountability.
Director Dror Moreh doesn't rest on his scoop
A powerful look inside the Israeli defense establishment
A deadly serious and detailed examination of and meditation upon the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, The Gatekeepers makes no attempt to find a silver lining.
Source: http://www.rottentomatoes.com/m/the_gatekeepers_2012/
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Chained CPI, a tale of the Rich and the Rest (Americablog)
Digital Foundry vs. the ultimate gaming PC ? Articles ? Eurogamer.net
OK, so perhaps there's just a certain level of exaggeration to the title of this article. After all, the strength of PC technology is its astonishing level of scalability, from the humble Intel Atom found in Windows 8 tablets, through dual CPU server set-ups all the way up to the Cray XK7 super-computer with 18,688 16-core AMD Opterons and an equal measure of Nvidia Tesla K20 graphics cards. But if money were no object and you were looking to construct an absolute top-end PC based on consumer level parts, the chances are that the system you'd create would be very similar indeed to what we have here: an Intel Sandy Bridge-E hex-core processor working in concert with three Nvidia GeForce Titans in SLI. That's what Nvidia thought when it commissioned this particular PC, sending it to Digital Foundry to assess what all that power translates into in terms of an actual gameplay experience.
We've covered the Titan before of course. At around ?850 it is one of the most expensive graphics cards money can buy, and it's the most powerful single-chip GPU on the market. Computational metrics are difficult to translate into game performance, but the Titan offers a tangible 50 per cent performance boost over Nvidia's previous flagship, the GeForce GTX 680. The fact that it is based on a single processor (rather than two like the GTX 690 or AMD's Radeon HD 7990) allows for additional flexibility and scalability via SLI - the process of adding multiple graphics cards together and combining their power. In theory there's nothing stopping you adding a fourth Titan to the mix, but it's at this point that the laws of diminishing returns kick in savagely - three of these behemoths in parallel should do the job quite nicely.
While the Titans are running at stock frequencies, Intel CPUs are very, very simple to overclock and the 3970X seemed quite happy to run at 4.8GHz, kept within operating temperatures by a meaty Phanteks high performance air cooler. Providing the necessary wattage we have a 1200W Corsair AX1200i power supply while everything is beautifully encased in a Silverstone Fortress FT02 unibody aluminium case. We'd never even considered the merits of a ?175 chassis before but this is a superb enclosure with absolutely no compromises to quality we could pick up on. Over and above the aesthetic we particularly liked the way the rear of the motherboard is on the top of the case, the various ports easily accessible and cabling kept tidy via a mesh shroud that clips on once all of your leads are in place.
It is without a shadow of a doubt the most visually striking PC we've seen, but of course, the real appeal of this particular set-up is the sheer level of processing power it offers. If a console generation is defined by a 6x to 8x boost in performance over existing hardware, what this machine could well represent is a generational leap beyond the capabilities of key components in the PlayStation 4. What we have here is a PC that offers up the kind of raw power we may well be getting eight or nine years down the line - if indeed there is a new wave of consoles after the next Sony and Microsoft machines have run their course.
The Titan SLI PC - full spec
For those interested in a full technical readout worthy of R2-D2 himself, here's how the Titan SLI PC stacks up in terms of each major component. We ran the Titans at stock speeds, but overclocked the i7 to a mouth-watering 4.8GHz.
- Processor: Intel Core i7 3970X, 3.5GHz Hex Core + Hyperthreading, 15MB Cache
- Graphics: 3x 6GB EVGA GTX Titan, 837Mhz GPU, 2688 Cores, 6088Mhz GDDR5
- System RAM: 32GB Total (4x8GB) Corsair Vengeance LP, 1600MHz
- Motherboard: Asus Rampage IV Extreme, Intel X79 Chipset
- Sound Card: Asus Xonar Essence STX, Audiophile Sound Card
- Chassis: Silverstone Fortress SST-FT02B-W Black Aluminium Case USB 3.0 with Side Window
- CPU Cooler: Phanteks Premium Edition
- Power Supply: 1200W Corsair Professional Series Gold 1200AX
- Storage: 240GB Corsair Neutron GTX, Read 555MB/sec, Write 511MB/sec
- Optical Drive: LG 16x Blu-ray Writer
The price of all this technology? Getting it prebuilt by a company like Scan - as Nvidia did - will probably set you back well over ?4,000. The EVGA Titans alone account for ?2,700 of the bill. A dual Titan system with the cheaper (but still very, very good) Core i7 3930K is currently advertised for ?3,771.
So let's take stock - does this "next-gen's next-gen" claim actually hold water? Let's break down this seemingly ludicrous assertion in terms of the core components: obviously the GPU set-up takes centre-stage here. At stock, the GeForce GTX Titan is rated at 4.7TFLOPs up against the 1.84TF in PlayStation 4, a 2.55x factor increase. This is impressive enough in itself, but running three Titans in parallel effectively moves that up to a 7.66x boost in computational power - towards the upper-end of the 6x to 8x increase in performance we expect in moving from one console generation to the next.
Not quite so easy to quantify is the comparison in terms of CPU performance, not least because AMD's upcoming low-power Jaguar architecture has yet to be analysed. Both PlayStation 4 and Durango have eight of these 1.6GHz AMD cores while our PC has six Intel Sandy Bridge-E cores overclocked to 4.8GHz. Clock speed and core count isn't everything though. Intel has proved its complete domination over AMD in single-core performance; combine that with the 3x boost to clock speed and despite the lower core count, we're still looking at what must surely be something approaching the generational leap in performance we're striving for.
Similarly, RAM isn't so easy to pin down. Each of our three Titans has 6GB of GDDR5 memory running at higher clock speeds than the 8GB in the PS4. However, in SLI, memory usage is mirrored on all participating GPUs - we have 18GB of GDDR5 in total but only 6GB is really being put to use. But let's not forget that we also have 32GB of DDR3 at 1600MHz in our system too - not quite an 8x boost over PS4, but in fairness, it could easily be upgraded (we have four spare DIMM slots left). Doing so would be entirely pointless though, unless we set up a RAM disk and copied entire games into system memory. Thinking about it, that might have been quite an amusing experiment.
The memory point raises an interesting question though. The beauty of PC technology is that you can scale it as high - or indeed as low - as you want. The question is, in sinking ?5,000 into a gaming computer, are there actually any uses for all that power? Surely nobody would create a graphics engine that would max out a 15TFLOP graphics array in a meaningful way? Well, you might be surprised.
Extreme power and what to do with it
There are fundamental differences emerging between PC and console gaming, much of it centred on the location of gameplay. For console, it's predominantly in the lounge, while PC gaming remains very much a more office or den-based activity. Keyboard and mouse remain the primary interface and that usually involves a desktop being factored into the equation, with the display right in front of you. Valve wants that to change with its Steambox initiative of course, but in the here and now we're looking at two entirely different contexts for the way we play games. Viewed up close, in a desktop environment, resolution matters more. Next-gen consoles are quite rightly targeting the now-standard 1080p HDTV displays we find in the living room, but PC is already moving on.
27-inch 2560x1440 displays start at ?250-?300 for Korean imports, offering a 77 per cent increase in resolution over 1080p, and 4x the pixels of standard current-gen 720p. Having purchased a ?413 Dell U2713HM for the purposes of testing more capable GPUs, it's proven to be something of a revelation. Once you've upgraded, you'll find it very hard to accept "full HD" again, the difference is so striking. It's not just about the resolution: typically these screens utilise IPS display technology, offering much richer colour than typical PC/laptop monitors or all but the most high-end living room plasmas and LCDs.
But this is just one option. The beauty of PC gaming is that the choice available to gamers is extraordinary. There are supports for 120Hz 1080p displays, meaning you can double maximum frame-rate from 60FPS to 120FPS - resulting in ultra-precision response and an almost unearthly kind of smoothness to gameplay, something to bear in mind when increasing evidence suggests that next-gen console will settle on 30FPS action. If one screen isn't enough for you, why not use three? Set up a trio of monitors in a pseudo-surround configuration with a custom 5760x1080 resolution, or even three 2560x1440 monitors for a mammoth 7860x1440. Field of view isn't just a tweakable in the options menu any more, it's a core element of your hardware set-up and for the most part, it all "just works" on PC, whether you're using AMD or Nvidia cards. Access the GPU control panel, set up a new resolution to cover the multiple screens and it should just pop-up as a selectable in most games.
There's also the small matter of the upcoming 4K standard - in its current HDMI 1.4 configuration, maximum frame-rate is 30FPS, but some of the really expensive displays feature four 1080p60 DVI inputs, each powering a quarter of the screen. So in theory, there's nothing stopping a multi-GPU system providing a cutting-edge 60Hz experience at the very highest resolution. In our recent experiments with a single GTX 680 we got some encouraging results. However, on the three-way SLI Titan set-up, the experience was profoundly improved. Now, obviously 4K is an emerging, extremely expensive standard unlikely to be adopted by many in the short term, but the fact is that PC gaming is so flexible, so scalable, that you plug in the display and it just works.
But let's return to our more affordable, emerging 2560x1440 standard. Is there a game that appears to tax our Titanic PC to its limits? Well, yes. Yes there is.
Can it run Crysis?
For five years, Crysis was the benchmark that defined the cutting-edge in PC performance. The new Crysis 3 is thankfully rather more scalable, but as far as we can gather, it does have the ability to humble any PC that dares explore the very highest of its quality presets. Yes, even our 15 TFLOPs monster.
"There are brutal expectations around the PC version of Crysis 3. So this time we promise to melt down PCs," said Crytek's Cevat Yerli. "There is unfortunately always in a multi-platform development that kind of compromise that we have to take, but at the same time we are trying not to take it, so we try to make sure that the PC version looks fantastic, plays fantastic... This time we're saying, 'Okay, let's not compromise the PC but let's try to push the consoles to make the PC version happen.'"
Run Crysis 3 at 2560x1440 at the very high (maximum) preset with 8x MSAA or 4x TXAA and you'll do so with a marked hit to performance. In our tests, we could only achieve 40-45 frames per second - not quite what we expect from an enormously expensive PC that is effectively the most powerful piece of consumer-level gaming machinery money can buy. Scaling things down to 2x SMAA reduces the computational load and still offers excellent reduction of aliasing, and here is where you get a measure of return on your investment.
"Crysis 3 melts down any PC - even one boasting three Titans and six CPU cores. Minor tweaks to anti-aliasing resolve the issues and the experience is breathtaking."
We tried and failed to run Crysis 3 at 2560x1440 with very high settings at a consistent 60FPS in our Titan review. Utilising SLI effectively gets us to the goal and the result is quite beautiful in action.
Alternative Analysis #1: Crysis 3, 2560x1440, 2x SMAA, very high, v-sync - one GTX Titan.
Alternative Analysis #2: Crysis 3, 2560x1440, 2x SMAA, very high, no v-sync - GTX 680 vs. GTX Titan.
Now we aren't going to tell you that Crysis 3 is the best game ever made. The chances are that at the very least you raised a Roger Moore-esque eyebrow at Cevat Yerli's claims that it is a "masterpiece". But in fairness to Crytek's big cheese, you probably haven't played the game in the same way he has. Scaled up to its fullest extent and running on the most powerful hardware available, it is simply a revelation in technological terms. Every nook and cranny has been intricately designed, there is no dead space, the level of detail is simply unprecedented. Lighting, effects, the beautifully rendered organic look to the environments - the sheer scale of some of them... it's breathtaking stuff. Crysis 3 perhaps isn't a game you'll love, but the technological accomplishment is like nothing seen before and for that it deserves some measure of respect.
Things take on a new level once you move up the chain to 4K. The combination of the intricate art style, the attention to detail, the epic post-processing effects work - even though we were limited to the 30 frames per second ceiling of 4K on the current HDMI 1.4 standard, we achieved pretty much a locked, consistent experience and the game looks nothing short of magnificent. We'd always trade frame-rate for pixels, but at a locked 30FPS at 4K with this detail level, the game is breathtaking to behold. Out of interest, we scaled back to one Titan here and found we could achieve the same locked 30 frames per second by moving down to the medium setting. Still a beautiful game for sure, but not really in the same league. Crytek spend $66m on Crysis 3 - Cevat Yerli is probably quite frustrated that the full extent of his team's achievements (not to mention the budget invested) simply won't be seen by most gamers for a very, very long time.
That said, considering the same settings yielded a 30-40FPS performance profile at 2560x1440 on a single Titan, we expected more from three of them. Unfortunately for us, our tests on Crysis 3 took place before the developer released its latest patch, which addresses some SLI performance issues. These are especially prevalent in the first level, where peering through any kind of glass surface caused a 10FPS dip to performance. In the 4K video, you can see that the effects work used in moving the play area out of focus in order to select a new weapon type caused similar issues. Perhaps it also addresses another curious aspect we encountered. Throughout our testing we had the PC plugged into a power meter, producing some fascinating - if not alarming - metrics. This monster drinks at least 160W at idle, scaling up according to load. Across all of our testing we hit about 980W at the max - enough to keep the room heated during the recent cold snap. However, Crysis 3 topped out at around 770W. We had the power to do better but it simply wasn't being utilised.
"The law of diminishing returns kicks in the more GPUs you add to the SLI set-up. Two cards offers the single biggest leap, while four appears to lack much in the way of tangible support."
Crysis 3 at 4K on very high settings. The 30FPS cap on 4K gameplay on the current standard works out fairly nicely - with v-sync unchecked, average performance only rises to around 38FPS on average. Although YouTube offers native 4K playback (select 'original' on the res settings), the compressed video stream simply doesn't match the actual experience.
On this version of the game at least, we reckon that we would have got at least 90 per cent of the experience from two Titan cards in SLI. Take a look at the same level running on one Titan and you'll see that we should really be hitting 80-90FPS with ease here if we were getting a decent level of scalability across all three cards. Turning off v-sync unlocks the frame-rate, giving us some idea of the full power we do have available and we never hit 70FPS. Moving onto 4K resolution, the same process only yields us around 38FPS on average. Maybe the recently released patch addresses that. After all, Crysis 2 - running on the same engine - could easily sail past the 900W level, with 4K frame-rates averaging well above 60FPS, peaking at 90FPS. Here the power drain lends evidence to the theory that we're utilising the potential of all three cards.
All of which opens up an interesting new debate and one of the reasons we were keen to produce this piece. How scalable is SLI generally? Does investing two or three times the money in your graphics hardware result in an equal scaling of performance? Similarly, away from Crysis 3, to what extent can we max out this system using actual game technology?
Maximum performance
Our first test was a return to some unfinished business - a re-run of our circa 2008 grail quest - running Crysis at 1080p at 60 frames per second. At the time, Nvidia's dual-chip GeForce GTX 295 couldn't get close to realising the dream, not even with anti-aliasing disabled, and not even by moving on to the more optimised Crysis Warhead. With this PC, we can run Crysis at a completely locked 1080p60 with 16x AA and we're barely drawing 350W from the mains.
Having already ascertained that we could run Crysis 2 at anything up to 90FPS at 4K, we tried another of our GPU benchmarks - Battlefield 3. The testing Operation Swordbreaker level that still manages to drop frames at 1080p/ultra on a GTX 680 soars to 70-90FPS at 4K. What's especially impressive on Battlefield 3 especially is that the many of the ultra settings are not really essential at 4K. The sheer wealth of pixels makes the deferred multi-sampling anti-aliasing seem somewhat redundant - post-process alone looks just fine.
Moving on to our other testing, let's cut to the chase and unleash this monstrous system across a range of in-game benchmarking tests, with v-sync disabled to really see what the PC is capable of. We ran the tests three times: first with just one Titan at 2560x1440, then with SLI engaged, in order to get an idea of how performance actually scales. Then, finally, we re-ran all the tests again - this time in 4K resolution. The games we chose include a range of PC staples along with titles like Sleeping Dogs and Hitman Absolution, where performance on max settings has been known to bring enthusiast PCs to their knees.
"The Titan SLI set-up produces excellent results on virtually all gaming benchmarks - even on settings so absurd you're unlikely to use them during gameplay. It comes into its own at extreme resolutions and multi-monitor gameplay."
| 2560x1440 GTX Titan x1 | 2560x1440 GTX Titan x3 | 3840x2160 (4K) GTX Titan x3 | |
|---|---|---|---|
| BioShock Infinite, DX11 Ultra | 65.1 | 139.4 | 80.5 |
| Tomb Raider, Max Settings, FXAA, TressFX On | 54.0 | 80.9 | 39.3 |
| Metro 2033, Max Settings, 4x MSAA, PhysX On | 29.0 | 74.5 | 36.0 |
| Batman Arkham City, Max Settings, 32x CSAA, PhysX Max | 56.0 | 82.0 | 66.0 |
| Hitman Absolution, Max Settings, 8x MSAA | 30.9 | 68.0 | 42.7 |
| Sleeping Dogs, Max Settings, SSAA+FXAA | 34.1 | 93.2 | 41.7 |
| Crysis GPU Test, DX10, Max Settings, 16x AA | 37.8 | 83.3 | 45.6 |
To add to the fun, we captured the proceedings on one of our prototype Ultra-HD workstations while the Titan SLI machine went about its business. This gives you some idea of what's actually being rendered on-screen to bring about these benchmarks. The Hitman Absolution test is quite something.
In terms of SLI scalability, it's interesting to note that the two biggest performance disappointments - Batman: Arkham City and Tomb Raider - are the games where we had PhysX (High) and TressFX engaged. Turning them off appears to see an improved level of scalability. Elsewhere we see anything from a 2.2 to 2.8 increase in performance with SLI engaged across the three cards: some games clearly scale better than others, but we get the feeling that most optimisation is at the 2x SLI level, with more modest gains on average as we move to three. For the ultimate in Titan SLI testing, Newegg TV's four-way Titan benches demonstrate that the law of diminishing returns kicks in at three Titans, with the introduction of a fourth being borderline pointless in most applications.
SLI is something we hope to return to in a little more depth in the future, but we'll leave you with this enticing takeaway: the GeForce GTX Titan is an ?850 graphics card, capable of some phenomenal performance - but it is a massively expensive luxury. With a sweetspot in price vs. performance defined by using two cards in SLI, the chances are that you can attain Titan-level frame-rates on a great many games by operating a dual GTX 660 Ti set-up. We reckon that's a saving of around ?420.
"On paper we may well have the computational might to offer a next generation leap over the PlayStation 4, but the reality is that we don't have the dedicated software to actually put that power to the best possible use."
The GTX Titan SLI PC takes on some of PC gaming's toughest rendering challenges at 2560x1440 resolution on maximum settings with v-sync disengaged to ensure maximum GPU throughput. This gives you some idea of what the table above actually represents.
Alternative Analysis: Game engine benchmarks re-run at 3840x2160 (4K).
The ultimate games PC: the Digital Foundry verdict
It's difficult to fully assess this remarkable array of PC componentry. On paper we may well have the computational might to offer a next generation leap over the PlayStation 4, but the reality is that we don't have the dedicated software to actually put that power to the best possible use.
We are taking current-gen games and scaling them up as much as we can via higher quality presets, and in many cases the sheer computational effort required isn't directly proportional to the increased quality in the overall experience. Take Sleeping Dogs for example: it's combining super-sampling anti-aliasing with post-process AA for an ultra-pristine presentation - at 4K no less - but we'll never see such an approach in a console game where cost is always measured against the quality of the result. If game coders were actually targeting 15TFLOPs, those resources will be deployed elsewhere - indeed, the horsepower is there to deploy entirely new rendering paradigms.
Overall, putting this kit through its paces has been a remarkable experiment, occasionally thrilling - particularly in the case of Crysis 3 where the experience is genuinely transformed - but ideally, what we'd really like to do is revisit this PC in a year or two year's time and see what this phenomenal piece of machinery can offer over and above the next-gen Xbox/PlayStation 4 console experience, once we have some idea of the standard set by these new pieces of hardware. But of course, by then, the set-up we have here will have been surpassed with even more powerful technology.
In the meantime, what best sums up our time in testing this hardware is the way in which it emphasises what we love about PC gaming - the ability to "roll your own" experience, leaving behind the confines of 1080p and 30FPS, exploring 4K, cranking up temporal resolution to 120FPS, or running gameplay across multiple screens - and in the case of this PC, doing any or all of that without having to compromise the quality of the experience. While this year we'll see initiatives designed to bring the PC into the living room and closer to the mainstream, this phenomenal machine is a love letter to the niche, to the hardcore, to the enthusiasts who demand something different, something unique.
Source: http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-vs-the-ultimate-gaming-pc
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