Online multiplayer communities are social networks built around multiplayer online computer games. Members of these communities typically share an interest in online gaming and a great deal of the interaction between them is technologically mediated. Marko Siitonen from University of Jyväskylä studied social interaction in online multiplayer communities in his doctoral thesis of speech communication.

- Online multiplayer gaming is a playground which can give us clues about the future of social and technological developments, Siitonen states.

Online multiplayer games enable the formation of lasting relationships

Online multiplayer games typically encourage interaction between players: some go even as far as demanding it.

Quick: You’re walking by a store window and you see a sign that says, “20% off the original price plus an additional 25% off the already reduced sale price.” So, how much is the discount" Consumers often mistakenly think the total discount is 45% off the original price when, in fact, the true discount is 40%. A thought-provoking new study from the October issue of the Journal of Consumer Research explores why consumers frequently think a double discount is a better deal than a single discount of the same total magnitude.

“Retailers frequently use the strategy of double discounts for their regular promotions or to induce customers to open a credit card account with them. Such errors in peoples’ judgments of the net effect of multiple price discounts . . .

An international team of astronomers might have discovered the missing link in the evolution of the so-called magnetic cataclysmic variable stars. They determined the spin and orbital periods of the binary star Paloma. They found that the Paloma system has a weird way of rotating that fills the gap between two classes of magnetic cataclysmic stars. Their results will soon be published in Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Cataclysmic variables (CVs) are a class of binary stars made up of a white dwarf [1] and a normal star much like our Sun. Both stars orbit so close to each other that the white dwarf accretes matter from the companion star. In most of the several hundred CVs known, the matter spirals around the white dwarf, forming a disk, before being accreted and incorporated into the star.

An interesting Economist article about sex differences in a visual task calls an evolutionary explanation a “just-so story.” I don’t know if the late Stephen Jay Gould, evolutionary theorist, Harvard professor, and “one of the most influential and widely-read writers of popular science of his generation” (Wikipedia), invented this form of dismissal, but certainly he was fond of it. Here, for example:

Using atom-level imaging techniques, University of Michigan researchers have revealed important structural details of an enzyme system known as "Mother Nature's blowtorch" for its role in helping the body efficiently break down many drugs and toxins.

The research has been detailed in a series of papers, the most recent published online this month in the journal BBA Biomembranes.

The system involves two proteins that work cooperatively. The first, cytochrome P450, does the actual work, but only when it gets a boost from the second protein, cytochrome b5. To complicate matters, the two proteins can interact only when both are bound to a cell membrane.

Many neuronal disorders, including epilepsy, schizophrenia and lissencephaly – a form of mental retardation -, result from abnormal migration of nerve cells during the development of the brain. Researchers from the Mouse Biology Unit of the European Molecular Biology Laboratory (EMBL) in Italy, have now discovered that a protein that helps organising the cells’ skeleton is crucial for preventing such defects.

The voltage sensor of voltage-gated ion channels is a conserved protein domain that senses millivolt changes in transmembrane potential, to regulate ion permeation through the channel. A recently discovered protein, Ci-VSP, has a voltage sensor that is coupled not to an ion channel but to a phosphatidylinositide phosphosphatase, the activity of which depends on membrane potential.

In a new paper published in The Journal of Physiology, Murata and Okamura, from the Okazaki Institute for Integrative Bioscience, examine a voltage-sensitive phosphatase that converts an electrical to a chemical signal; they directly demonstrate that the enzyme activity of Ci-VSP changes in a voltage-dependent manner through the operation of the voltage sensor.

The brand-new Large Binocular Telescope (LBT) in Arizona has a gotten off to an astronomical start, helping an international team of astronomers learn that a recently discovered tiny companion galaxy to our Milky Way, named the Hercules Dwarf Galaxy, has truly exceptional properties: unlike the round tiny dwarf galaxies found so far, this neighbor 430,000 light years away is shaped more like a cigar.

The stars in many large galaxies are arranged in a disk-like configuration, like our Milky Way, but among the millions of well-studied tiny dwarf galaxies none has ever been observed to have a cigar-like shape before now.

An explanation for the galaxy's unusual shape is that it is being disrupted by the gravitational forces of the Milky Way.

Cholesterol level testing at about 15 months of age could prevent heart disease later in life, say doctors in a study published by British Medical Journal today.

Their rationale? Hereditary high cholesterol, known as familial hypercholesterolaemia, affects about two in every 1000 people and causes very high levels of low density lipoprotein (LDL) or ‘bad cholesterol’ in the blood. It carries a high risk of death from coronary heart disease.

Treatment to lower cholesterol reduces the risk substantially, but is it worth the expense to test all children for something that will impact .2% of the population?

The area covered by sea ice in the Arctic has shrunk to its lowest level this week since satellite measurements began nearly 30 years ago, opening up the Northwest Passage – a long-sought short cut between Europe and Asia that has been historically impassable.

In the mosaic image above, created from nearly 200 images acquired in early September 2007 by the Advanced Synthetic Aperture Radar (ASAR) instrument aboard ESA’s Envisat satellite, the dark gray colour represents the ice-free areas while green represents areas with sea ice.

Leif Toudal Pedersen from the Danish National Space Centre said: "We have seen the ice-covered area drop to just around 3 million sq km which is about 1 million sq km less than the previous minima of 2005 and 2006.