What became of the Nintendo Game Girl?
In the summer of 1992, Nintendo of Europe announced a new version of its then-stylish Game Boy at a press conference. Codenamed “Persephone” and informally referred to as the “Game Girl”, the machine had only two major differences from the eponymous handheld that was already conquering the pockets of gaming freaks across the planet – it was pink and where the Game Boy logo should have been, it was blank.
The design of “Persephone” was originally derived from a “design your own Game Boy skin” art contest which ran in Nintendo Power magazine during the summer of 1991. While the competition drew numerous entries of highly-detailed and elaborate designs, and many which featured the likes of superheroes popular at the time, the winning design was, in contrast, a rationally stark and simple, but striking design – bright pink with the words “Game Boy” replaced with “Game Girl”.
Unfortunately for Nintendo however, the trademark “Game Girl” had already been registered and was in use by a Kagoshima-based Christian video game developer called Joy Kelly. Released in Japan and Europe in 1989 and the United States shortly thereafter, Game Girl saw the player controlling an unnamed angel through a variety of different biblical-themed levels. The company later went on to develop a series of short-lived secular titles, including a curious pen-shaped “Virtual Friend” children’s toy – a precursor to the Tamagotchi.
All references to Persephone disappear from 1992 onwards, but it can be safe to assume that Persephone was little more than a project in market research, since the inner workings remained essentially unchanged from the original Game Boy from which its name is derived. Nintendo later went on to develop colored versions of each of the Game Boy’s various iterations including a pink-colored one aimed at girls, but this time, it was called a Game Boy – the Game Girl logo was nowhere to be found.
As for Joy Kelly? The company folded in 1997 and all associated assets (including the rights to the “Game Girl” trademark) were transferred to Hangzhou-based synthetic resin manufacturer Tianjin Tianxilai Chemical Co. for an undisclosed sum. After this point in the story, the details become blurry. References to the Game Girl can be found in cached versions of the Tianjin Tianxilai Chemical Co. website from 1999 until 2002 but it is currently unknown if anything was developed from it. Today, the trademark remains unused (although it was renewed in 2010) and its parent company, Joy Kelly, is now known in the upper Zhejiang region as a popular brand of children’s tableware, it’s place in Nintendo’s history all but forgotten.
Fossil find provides “missing link” in kiwi evolution
Despite being recognized as the national bird of New Zealand, the evolutionary history of the small, flightless kiwi is considered to be one of the greatest unexplained mysteries of evolutionary biology, but Dr. Zachary Hutchins of the Harold S. Gillies Institute for Comparative Genomics and Proteomics believes that all that is soon about to change.
While the moa was traditionally regarded as the closest living relatives of the kiwi, comparisons of their DNA in a paper published in 2005 suggested moa were more closely related to the Australian emu and cassowary, and to a lesser extent, the African ostrich. However, in a bizarre twist, newer research published in 2010 found that the moa’s closest cousins were not the emu and cassowary but smaller terrestrial South American birds called the tinamous which are able to fly.
“While the classical evolutionary story suggested that the moa and kiwi were descendants of a single ratite ancestor derived from the breaking away of New Zealand from the Gondwanan supercontinent, these findings suggested that the kiwi was a completely unique thing… An evolutionary mystery,” says Hutchins.
He then adds, “However, after analyzing newly discovered fossils of a dwarf subspecies of emu, including that of a juvenile specimen, and comparing these skeletons with that of the adult kiwi, we have uncovered striking similarities in their respective homologies.”
According to Hutchins, the kiwi is a classic example of pedomorphism, a process by which the members of a species become progressively similar to the juveniles of their ancestral past. He claims that the particular subspecies of dwarf emu in question, known as the Kangaroo Island emu, already exhibited a vast array of pedomorphic characteristics and the kiwi was simply the next logical step, a process almost certainly exacerbated by evolutionary forces acting on a small initial population living in a completely different environment to its parent population. “Certain species are prone to pedomorphic selection, and the emu is already recognized as being one of them. The evidence is simply too much to ignore,” he adds with an air of confidence.
When questioned about the differences in the length of their necks and beaks, Hutchins replied, “The difference is largely superficial. An evolutionary drive towards foraging could achieve the same results in less than ten to twenty generations.”
The idea has generated considerable controversy even among Hutchins’ colleagues, being labeled as preposterous and devoid of substance especially with little genetic evidence to substantiate these claims. “You can’t just look at femur and say that it looks similar to the femur of a completely different species and say that the two must be related. No matter which way you look at it, that’s not sound science,” says Professor Johann van Hudde of Monash University. Hutchins counters these claims by showing the considerable variation that exists between the various subspecies of moa and kiwi alive today.
In lieu of mixed genetic results supporting and opposing Hutchins’ hypothesis, other scientists have reinterpreted the results of the Hutchins study to propose the idea that the kiwi and emu were just two members of a larger collection of ratite species distributed across the ancestral Australo-Gondwanan supercontinent, all of which interbred whilst maintaining periods of accelerated evolutionary change during periods of geographical instability.
Meanwhile, the very suggestion that the kiwi is, according to Hutchins’ words, a “dwarf emu with a reduced neck and longer, modified beak for foraging” is unlikely to sit well with New Zealanders, for whom the small, flightless bird is nothing less than a national icon.
Counterfeit EPA Energy Star labels seized in China
Authorities in Chaoyang have seized over 300,000 counterfeit EPA Energy Star labels used to “certify” fake energy efficient products originating from the region.
The Energy Star program was created in the early 1990′s by the United States Environmental Protection Agency in an attempt to reduce energy consumption and greenhouse gas emissions. Initiated as a voluntary labeling scheme designed to identify and promote new energy efficient products, Energy Star began with labels for computer and printer products, later introducing labels for heating and cooling systems and new homes. Today, more than 40,000 new Energy Star products are available from a wide range of items including major appliances, office equipment, lighting, home electronics, and more.
China Daily, the country’s largest state-funded English language newspaper, reports that the raid took place in the city of Jingtong in the autonomous Chaoyang region after police were alerted to a series of postings on the Internet which claimed to be offering the labels in batches of up to 10,000. The paper also reports that the factory where the counterfeit labels was in the official business of printing sales letters and distance learning materials, according to its business license.
China has long held a reputation as a center of the counterfeiting trade, with some estimates holding that counterfeit goods make up as much as ten percent of the country’s entire GDP.
Simulating politics and economics on a computer?
What does it mean to apply research in computer science to political science?
Meet Matthew Harvnik, an honors student at the University of South Carolina who is currently performing innovative new research on the use of computer simulations as effective tools for the modeling of political, social, and economic systems, in preparation for his master’s degree research project thesis in computer science with a minor in political science.
“Of course, computer modeling can be of great use for politics,” he says.
“Since we’ve already figured out how certain political and economic systems tend to unfold, this knowledge of our past can serve as a starting point for developing exciting simulations with increasingly greater accuracy. Also, such simulations can serve as rudimentary “proofs” for both new and existing political and economic theories. For example, a theory that claims that increasing the minimum wage can increase consumption and boost the economy is strengthened by a computer simulation that exhibits similar results in similar time scales under suitable parameters.”
Examples of political and economic systems that have already been simulated through computer models by Harvnik’s team include the likes of anarchy, democracy, direct democracy, monarchy, communism, social democracy, meritocracy, technocracy, feudalism, parliamentary democracy, fascism, oligarchy, plutocracy, market capitalism, state socialism, libertarianism, and many combinations thereof.
Of particular interest were the simulations that examined the results of applying libertarian economic policies on a society with the same population size and demographic characteristics as that of the United States.
Harvnik discovered that increasing the number of employers in a population almost always resulted in a steady rise in the median standard of living. According to Harvnik, this can be explained as the result of increased competition between employers to provide workers with a larger paycheck and better working conditions. In other words, with enough employers in the population, an employee will almost always succeed in finding a more generous employer and so the workers will start gravitating towards these companies, thereby culling off the employers who are far less generous. Consequently, decreasing the number of employers in a given population almost always resulted in a steady drop in the median standard of living as workers began to consider their employment as a scarce good, leading to more and more situations where they accepted a job offer no matter how bad or unfair the terms of the contract were.
When left to its own devices, a libertarian free market economy that operated under laissez-faire principles naturally assumed a situation where there was a high ratio of employers to employees, resulting in a lower median standard of living compared to a mixed or social market economy.
Even more interesting was the discovery that a simulated population with no employers and where the workers completely owned and operated the means of production produced a median standard of living that rivaled that of a population with an excess of employers or about 2.7 standard deviations higher than a value derived from an analysis of our current society, a result that completely refutes actual observations of historical communist nations. Such a centrally planned economy fared poorly during volatile conditions, however, as it lacked many of the self-correcting mechanisms inherent of a capitalist free market economy.
But some researchers remain skeptical as large scale simulation of many finer individual economic processes seems a distant goal. “Take the results with a grain of salt. No matter how fascinating the results are, if the model is wrong then there is no advancement in our knowledge of society,” says Dr. Basharasma Begum, an economist at the Wall Street Journal.
Meanwhile, Harvnik’s research has been nominated for the West Bank Prize in Financial Economics and he has already received job offers from the likes of IBM and the United States Bureau of Economic Analysis.
ECON3 and DAC31-02: Crystals that imitate life
Scientists from NASA and other institutions have discovered two unique, previously unknown types of crystals called ECON3 and DAC31-02 that can crystallize in a manner earlier thought to be impossible. Both crystals occur underground and have the unique ability to form a mutually beneficial relationship with each other to the point where neither would exist in any significant amounts if they were to exist independently.
While fundamentally hexagonal in its crystalline structure, the macroscopic structure of ECON3 is analogous to that of a helix. New tectosilicate minerals are incorporated into the growing helix which can, after many years, allow the helical “corkscrew” to grow to a length of four to six inches. Surrounding the ECON3 is a crystal with a similar composition called DAC31-02. Unlike ECON3 however, DAC31-02 forms a rigid lattice-like structure that helps to stabilize the ECON3 crystals which are embedded in its interior. As the corkscrew grows, it forcibly removes the surrounding calcite and aragonite by drilling into the calcium carbonate and leaving cracks that allow for the passage of water, thereby dissolving the calcium carbonate and carrying it away in solution.
The newly formed cracks in the bedrock are then quickly filled in by the DAC31-02 which incorporates the residual water left remaining in the spaces to form a soft, blue inorganic hydrate that is capable of extremely rapid growth in the new environment. Disruption of the crystalline lattice by incorporation of water molecules then initiates the branching phase of the ECON3 which causes the helical crystals to radiate outward in all directions, grow, and begin the process all over again.
The researchers found the crystals in Lake Greeson, a reservoir on the Little Missouri River, about six miles north of Murfreesboro, Arkansas. The lake has an abnormally high concentration of dissolved tectosilicates and similar efforts are being made to identify the same crystals near surrounding lakes. Meanwhile, the scientific community can barely contain themselves about the findings. Chemist Matt Deane, from the New York Foundation of Applied Inorganic Chemistry points out that the complex mutualistic relationship between ECON3 and DAC31-02 is a fine example of crystals imitating life.
The results of this study will inform ongoing research in many areas, including the study of Earth’s geology, inorganic chemistry, geochemical cycles, and meteorological systems research. These findings also will open up new frontiers in applied geotechnical engineering and other novel areas of inquiry.
CITO technology: A printer that uses no consumables
Contrary to popular belief, pencils have never been made from lead. Rather, the modern pencil dates back to the 16th century with the discovery of large deposits of highly pure graphite on the approach to Grey Knotts from the hamlet of Seathwaite in England. The value of this graphite was soon realized when the locals found that it was very useful for marking sheep. These early pencils often took the form of a simple stick wrapped in string or sheepskin for stability, only later to be replaced by wood.
Similarly shaped writing instruments include the Roman stylus, which was made of lead. The lead in the stylus left dark streaks on papyrus, and it is due to this similarity between the graphite in modern pencils and the lead in Roman styli that we call them “lead” pencils.
Graphite leaves gray or black marks on paper and it is the physical properties of graphite which make it highly suited for this purpose. Graphite consists of isolated, flat, plate-like particles which can be easily sloughed off due to friction and deposited on a surface, usually paper. Unlike graphite, however, lead is peculiar in that very little to no actual lead atoms are actually deposited onto the paper. Consequently, it is almost impossible to remove lead streaks from paper. Why is this so?
The reason for this is simple. Friction between the atoms of the lead and the paper create heat which allows for the transfer of the outermost layer of electrons from the surface of the paper to the lead. The part of the paper which makes contact with the lead is therefore oxidized by the loss of electrons and becomes discolored. Any excess electrons are distributed evenly across the surface of the metal and are allowed to dissipate into the surrounding environment. As a metal, lead is unique in that such friction-induced oxidation of cellulose fibers occurs at temperatures only slightly higher than room temperature. Most metals require much higher temperatures to achieve the same effect.
Charge-induced thermal oxidation (CITO) is a technology designed to exploit the unique properties of lead and its compounds for the purposes of printing and copying grayscale versions of images and text. In CITO, an electric current is passed through a tiny lead needle with a blunt tip. The tip is programmed to pass over a sheet of paper and make contact with the paper at particular points. Electrons from the paper are transferred to the tip and carried out of the needle by the electric current, thereby avoiding an accumulation of charges within the interior of the machine and a possible fire hazard. The results are often comparable to traditional sepia toning, as selective oxidation of the paper tends to produce a document with an attractive (but not necessarily useful) brown-grey hue.
The brown hue inherent of CITO printing can be circumvented by the addition of a small amount of black ink at the points of oxidation, but this has raised significant concerns about the safety of current charge dissipation mechanisms which aim to separate the electrical charges contained within the needle from the volatile compounds that make up the majority of the inks in the market today.
In summary, the benefits of CITO printing are obvious. CITO printers do not require any replacement of toners or ink cartridges, nor do they require the user to purchase special thermal paper although the technology makes use of thermal oxidation and using it could give better (or worse) results. And while some professionals may choose to replace the (cheap) lead tip once every few years, it is unlikely that many people will notice a difference. Research on CITO printers is continuing and it is expected that many, if not most manufacturers will incorporate various aspects of CITO technology into their products to increase the lifespan and efficiency of otherwise conventional inkjet and laser printers.