HONG KONG, March 7 /PRNewswire/ --

NetDragon Websoft Inc., a leading game developer and operator in the PRC (NetDragon, with its subsidiaries collectively known as the Group; stock code: 777), announced that the open beta testing for Way of the Five, a new cartoony turn-based online game, commenced on 7 March 2009.

(Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20090309/CNM002 )

I have been downloading a cartload of books on my new Kindle lately, since I really enjoy the idea of walking into the subway carrying a rather inconspicuous, very light, yet incredibly large library with me. One of these books is Samir Okasha’s Philosophy of Science: A Very Short Introduction, which I’m reading because I intend to review and promote it.

No, that isn't a New York Times headline(1), Swedish researchers really do say their studies of twins have showed significant genetic differences between men and women who smoke and develop lung disease -  women are more susceptible to the consequences of smoking than men.

The team, led by Professor Magnus Svartengren from the Karolinska Institute, has been looking at the interaction of the environment with the genes of nearly 45,000 twins over 40 years old. They were interested in twins with chronic bronchitis or emphysema.

Pleasure and desire are essential to all human behavior, says Oxford University neuroscientist Morten Kringelbach , and he challenges us to trust our animal instincts in pursuit of those.

Pleasure and our sense of reward are produced by the interaction of many different brain regions, processed consciously or unconsciously.  In the day-to-day routine of life, we may feel we are continually fighting our desires for what we really want.   But doing so, he argues, is irrational and a huge waste of energy and resources, for it is pleasure and desire that underlie all our decisions and actions, and, therefore, our experiences.

A new species of Antarctic fish, Gosztonyia antarctica, has been discovered at a depth of 650 meters in the Bellingshausen Sea in the Antarctic Ocean, an area which had not been studied since 1904 and where the fauna is "completely" unknown. Jesús Matallanas, the Spanish researcher responsible for the find, collected four specimens of the new species during Spanish Institute of Oceanography (IEO) campaigns in the southern hemisphere summers of 2003 and 2006.

Gamers caught an early glimpse of the future of serious games aimed at the health sector during the PlayMancer project’s demos at the latest Vienna Science Fair.   The European PlayMancer project is working hard to improve the technology for serious game engines and tools for 3-D networked gaming.

The platform is being tested and validated  physical rehabilitation and behavioral and addictive disorders with the inclusion of innovative multimodal I/O devices.

“We want to build actual games, serious games, around serious health-related problems like bulimia and chronic pain,” PlayMancer’s project manager Elias Kalapanidas tells ICT Results. “Using gaming in this way is really breaking new ground.”

Revered in India as "holy powder", the marigold-colored spice known as turmeric has been used for centuries to treat wounds, infections and other health problems. In recent years, research into the healing powers of turmeric's main ingredient, curcumin, has increased as scientists have examined claims of antioxidant, anti-cancer, antibiotic, antiviral and other properties, though little has been learned about exactly how curcumin works inside the body.

University of Michigan researchers led by Ayyalusamy Ramamoorthy now say that curcumin acts as a disciplinarian, inserting itself into cell membranes and making them more orderly, a move that improves cells' resistance to infection and malignancy. 

SANTA CLARA, California, March 7 /PRNewswire/ --

Finesse Solutions, LLC, Santa Clara, CA, a manufacturer of measurement and control solutions for life sciences process applications, announced the technical demonstration of TruFluor(TM) pH, a single use optical pH measurement system, at Interphex in New York on March 17, 2009.

The TruFluor pH and temperature sensor is a single-use solution consisting of a disposable sheath, an optical reader, and a transmitter. The single-use sheath can be pre-inserted in a disposable bioreactor bag port, and irradiated with the bag, in order to both preserve and guarantee the sterile barrier. All wetted materials of the sheath are USP class VI compliant.

SANTA CLARA, California, March 7 /PRNewswire/ --

Finesse Solutions, LLC, Santa Clara, CA, a manufacturer of measurement and control solutions for bioprocess applications, and Nova Biomedical, Waltham, MA, a world leader in biotechnology process monitoring announced the release of a TruBio(TM) plug-in for OPC connectivity between TruBio control software and Nova FLEX(R) analyzers. OPC is the de facto standard for data exchange between process control systems and different hardware platforms.