Saturday, January 31, 2009

The usually inhibited desert locust Schistocerca gregaria, which wiles away the months as a solitary, insignificant grasshopper can shift into horrifying swarms due to a chemical commonly found in people’s brain, a research showed.

The solitary and gregarious phases of locusts are so different that they were considered distinct species until 1921. Scientists have known for several years that touching a solitary desert locust on the hind legs, or allowing it to see or smell other locusts, is enough to transform it into the gregarious phase. This week, Science magazine published strong scientific evidence that the behavioural and physical makeover is effected by serotonin, a carrier of nerve signals in virtually all animals.

Researchers from the University of Sydney, University of Oxford, and University of Cambridge have pinpointed a single neurochemical – serotonin – as the cause of an instinctive behavioural change from the locusts’ solitarious phase to become gregarious and form disastrous swarms of millions.

Serotonin (5-hydroxytryptamine, or 5-HT) is a monoamine neurotransmitter synthesized in serotonergic neurons in the central nervous system (CNS) and enterochromaffin cells in the gastrointestinal tract of animals including humans. Serotonin is also found in many mushrooms and plants, including fruits and vegetables.

In the central nervous system, serotonin plays an important role as a neurotransmitter in the modulation of anger, aggression, body temperature, mood, sleep, human sexuality, appetite, metabolism, as well as stimulating vomiting. Keeping serotonin levels high is the aim of many anti-depressant drugs. “Serotonin profoundly influences how we humans behave and interact,” said co-author Dr Swidbert Ott, from Cambridge University. “So to find that the same chemical is what causes a normally shy, antisocial insect to gang up in huge groups is amazing,” he explained.

Prior to swarming, the locusts undergo a series of physical changes – their body colour darkens and their muscles grow stronger. The ‘Phase change’ is at the heart of the locust pest problem, for locusts are one of the world’s most destructive insect pests, affecting the livelihoods of 1 in 10 people on the planet. “To effectively control locust swarms, we must first understand exactly how it is that a single shy locust becomes a highly social animal that swarms,” said University of Sydney Professor Steve Simpson who led the research for almost 20 years.

The ‘phase change’ was caused by stimulation of sensory hairs on the hind leg of locusts. Professor Simpson’s team began to investigate the neurological and neurochemical basis of this effect. Dr Michael L. Anstey, of the University of Oxford, supervised by Professor Simpson, and Dr Stephen M. Rogers, part of Professor Malcolm Burrows‘ team at Cambridge, led the research investigating this novel field. “Here we have a solitary and lonely creature, the desert locust. But just give them a little serotonin, and they go and join a gang,” said Malcolm Burrows.

Of 13 neurochemicals in locusts that were gregarious (swarming form) and solitarious (non-swarming), the only neurochemical that showed a relationship with social behaviour was serotonin. “It was clear that as locusts switched from solitarious to gregarious, the amount of serotonin in their central nervous systems also increased,” explained Professor Simpson. “The next step was to determine if this relationship actually meant that serotonin was the cause of gregarious, and thus swarming, behaviour in locusts,” he added.

To do this, the researchers either added serotonin or prevented the production of serotonin in locusts. The results show unequivocally that serotonin is responsible for the behavioural transformation of locusts from solitarious to gregarious. Serotonin was also found to be involved in social behaviour of species across the animal kingdom, including crustaceans, rats, and humans.

The team has found that swarm-mode locusts had approximately three times more serotonin in their thoracic ganglia, part of the central nervous system, than their calm, solitary peers. “The question of how locusts transform their behaviour in this way has puzzled scientists for almost 90 years,” said co-author Dr Michael L. Anstey, from Oxford University. “We knew the [physical] stimuli that cause locusts’ amazing Jekyll and Hyde-style transformation. But nobody had been able to identify the changes in the nervous system that turn antisocial locusts into monstrous swarms. Now we finally have the evidence to provide an answer,” he added.

“The fact that serotonin causes the transition from a shy, antisocial animal into a party animal means that pharmacologically, gregarious locusts are on Ecstasy or Prozac,” said Professor Simpson, who also explained that “(whilst a very good idea, in reality) it would be difficult to create a locust control agent that interferes with serotonin.”

Professor Simpson’s team has significantly discovered that “locusts offer an exemplar of the how to span molecules to ecosystems – one of the greatest challenges in modern science.” He also offered an explanation on the problem of using a locust control agent: “Because social behaviour in so many animals depends on serotonin, if we used unspecific serotonin antagonists in the environment, we run the risk of affecting other processes in locusts, as well as severely impacting animals other than locusts. We would need to be sure that locusts have a unique serotonin receptor that causes phase change, which we haven’t identified yet. Any locust control agent would have to be specific for this serotonin receptor in locusts.”

This study, which was sponsored by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council of England, England’s Royal Society, the Australian Research Council Federation, and the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada. The scientists that the conclusions of the study will provide a hint as to how to solve the problem of locust infestations, which affect China, Africa, and Australia. Dr. Rogers said the landmark discovery has opened a new area of study into ways of blocking specific serotonin receptors, “something that would allow us to break apart these swarms before they develop.”

Charles Valentine Riley, Norman Criddle, and Sir Boris Petrovich Uvarov were also involved in the understanding and destructive control of the locust. Research at Oxford University has earlier identified that swarming behaviour is a response to overcrowding. Increased tactile stimulation of the hind legs causes an increase in levels of serotonin.

This causes the locust to change color, eat much more, and breed much more easily. Green locusts turn bright yellow and gain large muscles. The transformation of the locust to the swarming variety is induced by several contacts per minute over a four-hour period. It is estimated that the largest swarms have covered hundreds of square miles and consisted of many billions of locusts.

“Locust” is the swarming phase of short-horned grasshoppers of the family Acrididae. The origin and apparent extinction of certain species of locust—some of which reached 6 inches (15 cm) in length—are unclear. These are species that can breed rapidly under suitable conditions and subsequently become gregarious and migratory. They form bands as nymphs and swarms as adults — both of which can travel great distances, rapidly stripping fields and greatly damaging crops. Though there are about 8,000 currently known species of grasshoppers, only 12 form locust swarms.

In the history of the insect Desert locust (Schistocerca gregaria) is probably the most important because of its wide distribution (North Africa, Middle East, and Indian subcontinent) and its ability to migrate widely. Adult Desert Locusts grow to between 2-2.5 inches in length, can weigh 0.05-0.07 oz, and are excellent fliers. In religious mythology, the eighth Plague of Egypt in the Bible and Torah, a swarm of locusts ate all the crops of Egypt. “The gregarious phase is a strategy born of desperation and driven by hunger, and swarming is a response to find pastures new,” Steve Rogers from Cambridge University emphasises.

The extinction of the Rocky Mountain locust (Melanoplus spretus) in the late 19th century has been a source of puzzlement. Recent research suggests that the breeding grounds of this insect in the valleys of the Rocky Mountains came under sustained agricultural development during the large influx of gold miners, destroying the underground eggs of the locust. That species of locust had some of the largest recorded swarms.

In the 1915 locust plague, which lasted from March to October 1915, locusts stripped areas in and around Palestine of almost all vegetation. This invasion of awesome proportions seriously compromised the already-depleted food supply of the region and sharpened the misery of all Jerusalemites. The plague resulted in several increases to the price of food. On April 25, 1915, the New York Times described the price increases: “Flour costs $15 a sack. Potatoes are six times the ordinary price. Sugar and petroleum are unprocurable and money has ceased to circulate.”

In the 2004 locust outbreak, the largest infestation of Desert Locust happened in Western and Northern Africa, affected a number of countries in the fertile northern regions of Africa. These infestations covered hundreds of square miles and involve billions of vegetation-munching insects, which repeatedly devastated agriculture, and cost huge amounts of money to control.

In November, a locusts swarm 3.7 miles (6km) long devastated parts of Australia. Along the process of their active phases, these insects can eat their own bodyweight daily, and can fly swiftly, in swarms of billions covering 60 miles in five to eight hours in search of food. Researchers are now considering the development of sprays that convert swarming locusts back into solitary insects.

“We hope that this greater understanding of the mechanisms causing such a big change in behaviour will help in the control of this pest, and more broadly help in understanding the widespread changes in behavioural traits of animals.” Malcolm Burrows said. However, according to Paul Anthony Stevenson of Germany’s University of Leipzig, the discovery will not likely to a short-term pest control solution.

“To be effective, antiserotonin-like chemicals would need to be applied when the animals are solitary locusts and scarce targets in vast expanses of desert — about three locusts per 100 square meters (1,076 sq ft),” Stevenson explained. “Current serotonergic drugs are not designed for passing through the insect cuticle and sheath encasing the nervous system, nor are they insect-selective, hence their use is ecologically unjustifiable,” he added.

Sunday, June 11, 2017

While Theresa May remains Prime Minister of Britain, her party, the Conservative Party, won Thursday’s general election but lost its majority in Parliament.

The next scheduled general election was not until 2020. May requested this general election, called a snap election, in April, when polls indicated it would strengthen the then-slight majority the Conservatives held in Parliament. Talks to establish the specifics of Britain’s departure from the European Union are set to begin June 19. Last year, British voters decided to leave the EU, but many of the specifics of the United Kingdom’s new relationship with the rest of Europe have yet to be established. May and the other Conservatives favor a “hard Brexit”, in which Britain would lose its current level of access to Europe’s single market and have to deal with higher tariffs and more complicated customs processes but it would regain full control of its borders with respect to trade and immigration. An increase in the number of Conservative Parliamentary seats would have supported this plan.

“Officially Theresa May is still the partner in Brexit negotiations,” said senior German MP Stephan Meyer, “but the political reality is different after this disastrous defeat. I can’t imagine that May will be able to remain prime minister.”

Jean-Claude Juncker of the European Commission said, “As far as the Commission is concerned we can open negotiations tomorrow morning at half past nine […] First we have to agree on the divorce and exit modalities, and then we have to envisage the architecture of our future relations. I do hope that the result of the elections will have no major impact on the negotiations we are desperately waiting for.”

A Parliamentary majority requires 326 of the organisation’s 650 seats. The Conservative Party holds 318 outright, including May’s own seat in Maidenhead, and the Labour Party holds 262, having gained about 30 in this election. In Britain, the leader of whichever political party has the most seats becomes Prime Minister, though they are also formally appointed by the monarch. Theresa May became leader of the Conservative Party on July 11 of last year and was appointed by Queen Elizabeth II two days later. Cases in which no political party wins outright are called a hung Parliament, and then two or more parties rule together in coalition. Britain had a coalition government from 2010 to 2015. Northern Ireland’s Democratic Unionist Party has pledged an unofficial alliance with the Conservatives, which would bring them up to 328.

This would make May the second Prime Minister in a row to call an election with unexpected results. David Cameron called for a referendum on Britain’s EU membership, not expecting the voters would reject it.

May’s current ministry said most of her senior officials, including Treasurer Philip Hammond, Foreign Secretary Boris Johnson, and Home Secretary Amber Rudd, will remain in the Cabinet.

May met with Queen Elizabeth II yesterday to request her permission to form a government in her name, a traditional formality.

Monday, February 27, 2006

Buffalo, New York —Wikinews was the first to tell you that the Elmwood Village Hotel development in Buffalo, New York was to undergo “significant changes”.

The Elmwood Village Hotel is a proposed project that would be placed at Elmwood and Forest Aves. in Buffalo. In order for the development to take place, at least five buildings that house both businesses and residents, must be demolished.

To confirm and to get more information about the changes, Wikinews interviewed Eva Hassett, Vice President of Savarino Construction Services Corporation, the development company in charge of building the hotel.

Wikinews: The hotel proposal is being redesigned. Could you comment on that? What changes are being made? Are they significant?

Eva Hassett: The hotel has been resized as a 72-room, four story building. This is 10% smaller in number of rooms and a full story lower. We are also redesigning the facades in a way that will minimize the mass – more of a vertical feeling than horizontal. Different materials, windows, details. The smaller size of the hotel also makes the number of on-site parking spaces more appropriate and hopefully represents less of a challenge to an already difficult parking situation.

WN: Will you still be going before the city’s planning board as scheduled on February 28? Same for the Common Council?

Hassett: We will be on the Planning Board agenda this Tuesday morning but I do not expect that the Board will vote on the item that morning. I think we will be mainly explaining the new design and hearing input/questions.

WN: Will there be anymore public meetings?

Hassett: We would be happy to do one more big public meeting. We will be talking to Forever Elmwood about that on Monday (February 27, 2006). We would like to see if there is support for the new design and we also want to honor the public’s request for another meeting. I am hopeful that meeting can take place the week of March 6th.

WN: Is Savarino considering Mr. Rocco Termini’s design/proposal? If no, do you (Savarino) support/oppose?

Hassett: We are hopeful that we can build the hotel as redesigned. We think it would be a great addition to the Elmwood Ave. area, a good way for out-of-towners to see what Buffalo offers and a big help to the businesses there.

WN: Are you considering more time for the community to make a judgment?

Hassett: As I mentioned above, we expect to have one more meeting to get public reaction to the new design, and I think the Planning Board may want an additional meeting to make their determination. We do however, have constraints that will limit the amount of extra time. We still think it is a great project for the City and Elmwood; and we still want it to be something that the community wants as well.

So far, the City of Buffalo’s City Planning Board is still scheduled to meet at 8:00 a.m. (Eastern) on February 28, 2006 followed by the Common Council meeting at 2:00 p.m. on the same day.

Images of the design are not yet available. “We are working on the renderings this weekend, but I will likely have some early in the week,” stated Hassett.

Monday, September 5, 2005

OpenTheGovernment.Org, a coalition of conservative and liberal nonprofit groups, released a 2005 report (PDF, 12 pages) saying that all branches of the U.S. Federal Government are being significantly more secretive, and spending significantly more money on document secrecy. In 2004, federal officials classified 15.6 million new documents, which is 81 percent more than in 2001. Over the same period, the cost of classifying those new documents rose from $4.7 billion to $7.2 billion. These figures do not include documents classified by the CIA, as that agency’s information is itself secret.

The report is also critical of the fact that only $48.3 million was spent on declassifying old documents in 2004. They concluded that for every dollar spent on declassification, the federal officials spent $148 creating and storing new secrets, more than in any previous year. It is estimated to cost $460 to classify one document.

The state secrets privilege allows the executive branch to classify federal court hearings and documents. On average, the Bush administration has used this privilege 33 times more per year than cold war administrations (1953-1976), and nearly three times the 1977-2001 average. The report sees other measures of government secrecy, such as the number of secret patents on the rise as well.

The report does not explore the larger economic impact of the increase in secrecy per se. However, it observes that taxpayer savings due to whistleblower activity is on the rise despite the elimination of traditional whistleblower protections.

It also notes that 64% of advisory meetings were closed to the public. Such meetings provide lawmakers with advice on scientific and technical matters which are supposed to be free of special interest. Legislation covering such meetings states or assumes that they are open to the public, but some agencies, like the Department of Defense, have traditionally been permitted to hold closed meetings. Once such agencies are excluded, the report finds a threefold increase in closed meetings since 2001.

The report is critical of poor funding for processing Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests, with which the majority of federal agencies surveyed can not keep up. There is concern that more of the financial burden for such requests may be being born by those organizations making the requests, instead of the agencies holding the classified documents. FOIA requests increased by 25% between 2003 and 2004, to 4 million, while funding for processing such requests increased by only 5%.

How much of this secrecy directly relates to various current events, such as the War in Iraq or terrorism, is unclear. In 2004, the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court approved 1,754 requests from law enforcement officials last year to conduct surveillance on foreign nationals within the United States, double the number issued four years ago.

The report is also critical of the rise of “sensitive but unclassified” information, as well as new state based secrecy initiatives.

Friday, November 30, 2012

Qatari non-profit organization Gulf Organization for Research and Development (GORD) launched a low emissions car at the 2012 United Nations Climate Change Conference (COP 18) in Doha. The car was designed and developed in Qatar.

Revealed during a press conference at the Qatar National Convention Centre, the car in addition to an internal combustion engine, includes an automotive thermoelectric generator designed to capture waste heat to produce hydrogen. GORD expects the heat waste collecting system to be compatible with any gasoline or compressed natural gas car.

GORD chairman Dr Al-Horr summarised the key concepts of the invention in a statement saying, “Our car produces electricity at no cost by capturing thermal waste energy, reducing costs and eliminating the need for an external source of electricity. Also, bulky compressed-hydrogen cylinders are a thing of the past, as our concept accomplishes the production of hydrogen by using water through fuel cells integrated within the car.”

Most of the energy in Qatari vehicle comes from the the car’s gasoline tank, supplemented by a thin film photo-voltaic panel on the roof. Normally in a combustion engine, chemical energy stored in a fuel, such as gasoline, is converted into heat energy through combustion. This heat energy is then converted into mechanical energy, manifested as an increase in pressure in the combustion chamber due to the kinetic energy of the combustion gases. The kinetic energy of these combustion gases are then converted into work; because of the inefficiencies in converting chemical energy into useful work, internal combustion engines have a theoretical maximum effiecincy of 37% (with what is achievable in day to day applications being about half of this). Of the chemical energy in the consumed fuel used by an internal combustion engine 40% is dissipated as waste heat. However, the Qatari vehicle uses a thermoelectric generator to convert this waste heat into electricity. Such generators are used in space vehicles, and produce electricity when thermoelectric materials are subjected to a temperature gradient, the greater the gradient the greater the amount of electrcity produced. In the GORD vehicle the electricity produced is used to electrolyse potable water to produce hydrogen which can be introduced into the vehicle’s existing fuel system.

The researchers showed that the heat waste collection engine caused a decrease in the car’s emissions, including a decrease of carbon monoxide and nitrous oxide emissions by more than 50%, the fuel efficiency increasing by 20%. On its website, GORD said that the heat waste collector engine is universal, “Any car can be adapted to accommodate the system as it doesn’t alter any electro-mechanical systems”.

Thursday, June 1, 2006

If you’ve always wanted to live in a world populated by elves, dwarves and wizards, you don’t need to pay for a World of Warcraft subscription or buy the Special Extended DVD Trilogy Edition of The Lord of the Rings just yet. You could instead give Battle for Wesnoth a try — an open source turn-based strategy game in a fantasy setting. For the practically minded, “open-source” means that the code which the game is made of is available to anyone who wishes to use, redistribute or change it. It was created by volunteers and can be freely shared. Even the multiplayer online part of the game is free (no ads or spyware either).

But Wesnoth, as it is often abbreviated, is notable not only because it is free. While its graphics are simple by modern standards, the sheer number of units and scenarios that are available for the game is staggering. This is where the “open source” philosophy comes truly into play: anyone can contribute art or new campaigns. As of May 2006, the forum where users can share and discuss their own art contained over 25,000 messages. Most of this art is made available under the same open source terms as the game itself.

Battle for Wesnoth lets you command armies of units such as archers, swordmen, mages and gryphons during the course of a campaign consisting of multiple missions. Typically, your mission is to defeat an enemy leader, but some scenarios let you liberate a prisoner, find a lost artifact, traverse dangerous territories, and so on. Your best units can be taken from one mission to the next, “levelling up” in the process. Even units of the same type vary in their abilities, making the tactical use of the right unit at the right time very important.

The game is reminiscent of turn-based strategy classics such as Heroes of Might and Magic or Warlords. Throughout each campaign, the player is informed of the progress of the story. For instance, in the “Heir to the Throne” campaign, the player follows the story of Prince Konrad, who must reclaim the throne of Wesnoth from an evil queen.

The game was originally designed by David White, who is still the project’s lead developer. We exchanged e-mails with David about the state of open source gaming, the future of Wesnoth, and the collaborative aspects of game development.

David, thanks for taking our questions. Open source games suffer from the problem that very few people have all the abilities needed to make a good game: programming, graphics, story development, sound effects, music, and so on. When you started Battle for Wesnoth, how did you deal with this?

Not very well. 🙂

Version 0.1 of Wesnoth was developed entirely by me, and it was ugly. It had awful graphics, and no sound or music at all.

I think the best way to deal with the problem is to make an early version of the game which showcases the desired gameplay. Then, people with the appropriate skills who like the game will contribute. This worked out well with Wesnoth, anyhow, as I soon attracted a fine artist, Francisco Munoz, and once the graphics were decent, more people started wanting to help.

I noticed that the forum allows anyone to submit art for the game. How important have contributions from ordinary players been for development?

Well, as with almost any free software project, contributions from users have been very important. In the area of art, this is definitely so, though making a substantial contribution of art generally requires a reasonable amount of skill, so the number of people who can contribute art is somewhat limited.

This has meant that the number of people who contribute art is much smaller than, say, the number of people who contribute bug reports or feature requests. Still, there are plenty of good pixel artists out there, and we have had many good contributions from our community.

Also, within the game itself, it’s possible to directly download new campaigns from the Internet, many of which have been created by players. Do you think that, in essence, we are seeing the beginnings of applying “wiki” principles to game development?

On one hand, I see the ability to directly download new campaigns as a mild convenience — it wouldn’t be much more difficult for the user to, for instance, go to a web page and download campaigns.

On the other hand, it does blur the line between ‘developer created content’ and ‘user created content’ and so, like a Wiki, makes it much easier for any user to contribute to the game.

I think that for an Open Source game, making it as easy as possible for users to contribute content is a key way to help make the game succeed. We have tried hard to do this in Wesnoth. I don’t think that with something dynamic like a game, it’s quite as easy to make absolutely anyone be able to edit it or contribute as easily as they can in a Wiki, but we have tried to make it as easy as possible.

How do you moderate user-submitted content? Are there scenarios or graphics you have rejected because they crossed a line — sexual content, excessive violence, etc.?

Well, there are basically three levels of content acceptance:

1. ‘Official’: content can be accepted into the game itself — the content will reside in our SVN repository, and will be in the tarballs released by developers.
2. ‘Campaign Server’: Content can be allowed on the campaign server (the server which users can connect to in-game to download more content).
3. ‘Disallowed’: Finally, content can be disallowed on the campaign server, which means that the creator could only distribute it using their own channels (for instance, having a web site people could download it from).

Content only makes it to (1) if the developers happen to like it very much. We don’t have any firm rules as to what is allowed and disallowed, and a campaign that has short-comings from the developer’s point of view might still be allowed if it is exceptional in other areas. As an example of this, the campaign ‘Under the Burning Suns’ contained explicit references to religion. To avoid controversy, we wanted to avoid references to religion in Wesnoth. However, recognizing the exceptional quality of the campaign, we decided to accept it into the official version of Wesnoth in spite of this one aspect we didn’t like.

Artwork containing nudity has also been a controversial point in the past, as has violence (particularly explicit depiction of blood). We generally take the point of view that we will review each item as it comes, rather than making blanket rules.

With regard to whether we allow things onto the campaign server, (2), our general policy is that to be allowed onto the campaign server, the content need only be licensed under the GPL. However, we reserve the right to remove content that we consider to be distasteful in any way. Fortunately, our content submitters are generally very reasonable, and we haven’t had to exercise this right.

Our aim is to keep Wesnoth appropriate for users of any age and background — of course, it contains some level of violence, but this is not depicted very explicitly, and only parents who do not want to expose their children to animated violence of any level need be concerned. For this reason, we also do not allow expletives on our forums or IRC channels.

How do you feel about games like “Second Life”, where players trade user-generated content for money?

I’ve never understood the appeal of games like that. I don’t enjoy cheating in games, and to me buying items with real money seems like cheating — except worse, since it actually costs money.

What changes to the game or gameplay do you anticipate in the coming months and years?

Well, we’ve avoided making many gameplay changes at all, since very early on in Wesnoth’s development. Wesnoth is meant to be a simple game, with simple gameplay, and ‘changing’ gameplay will probably lead to it being more complex. We want to keep it simple.

Changes will probably focus on improving existing features, and making the engine a little more customizable. Enhancing the multiplayer component is big on the list — we’ve progressively added more and more features on the server. We also want to add more graphical enhancement. For instance, a particle system to allow various combat effects.

If you had unlimited resources at your disposal to improve the game, what would you change about it?

Wesnoth was always designed to be a simple game, with simple goals. It has exceeded all the expectations I originally had for it. There is still some ‘polishing’ work going on, but really I don’t think there is too much I would dramatically change.

Probably the largest thing I can name is a much better AI than we currently have. I’m pretty happy with the AI developed for Wesnoth — I think it’s much better than AIs for most commercial games — but it could be better. That’s the only area of Wesnoth that I think could really be very dramatically improved.

I am pretty happy with our in-game graphics. Some people compare our graphics to modern commercial games, and think our graphics are laughably poor. We often get comments that our graphics are around the same quality as those seen in SNES or Genesis games, or PC games from a decade ago. (These people should try playing a strategy game on the SNES/Genesis/PC from this long ago; Wesnoth’s graphics are much better).

I am very happy with our graphics overall. I think our artists have done an excellent job of making the game look attractive without detracting from functionality. Adding 3D graphics, or changing the style of the 2D graphics would only be wasted effort in my mind — I think we’ve achieved a great balance of making the game easy and clear, while making it look good.

With unlimited resources, I would like some more storyline/cutscene images, and a nice new title screen, but these are relatively small concerns I think.

There are some enhancements to multiplayer I would like added — multiplayer campaigns is a long-time feature request. As are more options and features on the multiplayer server.

Overall though, if I had ‘unlimited resources’, I’d much rather develop an entirely new game. We don’t have enough good Open Source games — it’s a waste to pour all the resources we have into one. 🙂

Wesnoth has dwarves with guns, World of Warcraft has gnomes and goblins with explosives and flying machines — where do you, personally, define the limits of the fantasy genre? Are there scenarios playing in a steampunk world, or ones with modern technology? Would you allow those?

Actually we have Dwarves with ‘Thundersticks’ 🙂 — mysterious weapons that make a loud sound and do lots of damage, but are clumsy and unreliable. The developers do not comment on whether or not these ‘thundersticks’ are or are not like ‘guns’ on earth. We like to keep Wesnoth slightly mysterious, and leave some things up to the player’s interpretation, rather than spell it out.

We once used to have dragoons with pistols, and other weapons like that, but we made a very intentional decision to remove them.

I don’t like categorizing things into ‘genres’. Many people debate whether Wesnoth is an ‘RPG’, or ‘strategy game’, etc. I think the debate of what genre something is in is largely irrelevant.

We do have a vision for what the world of Wesnoth is like though — and Wesnoth is a world of ancient-era weaponry, with a little magic. Of Elves and Dwarves and Orcs. Very much inspired by Tolkien. I actually originally chose this setting because my focus was on technical excellence — writing a good, solid engine — not on creating a new fantasy world. I decided to stick with a very well-known, proven theme, figuring I couldn’t go wrong with it.

We probably wouldn’t allow anything that departs dramatically from the world we’ve made into the official version of the game, but we’d be happy to have it on our campaign server. The main attempt at a ‘total modification’ of Wesnoth is a project known as Spacenoth, which has a sci-fi/futuristic theme.

At this time though, there is no release of this project. I hope they do well though.

How do you feel about turn-based games like “Heroes of Might and Magic” with their massive army-building and resource management? Do you think there’s going to be an open source equivalent of this type of game soon?

I haven’t played Heroes of Might and Magic very much. The few times I have played it, I thought it was boring to be honest. I don’t like the type of game where one marches armies around a ‘large map’ and then must ‘zoom in’ to a different ‘battle field’ every time a battle takes place. I find games like that to take far too long, and tend to become tedious.

I would prefer a civilization or perhaps colonization type game. FreeCiv is nice, though it’s close to being a clone of Civilization II. I’d like an original game that had the same sort of theme as civilization, but with new and innovative rules.

Every online game and community is also a social space. Have you met interesting people through Wesnoth whom you would not have met otherwise? Are there other stories you can tell from the community — have there been real world meetups, chat rooms, etc.?

I’ve come into contact with lots of very interesting people through Wesnoth, and have learned a great deal from them. The Wesnoth developers — many of whom are from Europe — used the LSM conference in France in 2004 as an opportunity to meet each other. Nekeme, an organization dedicated to developing and promotion Free games was kind enough to sponsor two developers to go. Unfortunately, I was not able to attend, but the developers who did had a very nice time.

We have several IRC channels on irc.freenode.net, and the most popular ones — #wesnoth and #wesnoth-dev are usually fairly busy with both discussion about Wesnoth, and friendly discussion of other topics.

Also, the developers have tried to make a habit of playing “co-operative multiplayer” games against the AI. During these games, we use the in-game chat facility to get to know each other better, and discuss improvements to the game.

Are there other open source games that have personally impressed you, or that you enjoy playing?

I’m afraid I haven’t played many. I like RPGs, and I know lots of people love NetHack and similar games, but I much prefer party-based and generally more storyline-oriented RPGs.

FreeCiv is pretty well-done, though I am happy to play commercial games, and so I think Civilization 3 and Civilization 4 are both technically superior in virtually every regard. I think that’s an inevitable problem when you make an Open Source game a straight clone of a commercial game.

Probably the most promising Open Source game I’ve seen is GalaxyMage, but it still has a long way to go.

Honestly, I don’t play that many games. I like playing commercial RPGs, usually console-based, with my wife, and I occasionally like playing the commercial Civilization series. To play an Open Source game, it’d have to be very good, and appeal to my tastes, and I haven’t found any Open Source games like that, sadly.

Saturday, May 24, 2008

Thailand’s National Film Archive in Salaya, Nakhon Pathom unveiled a new museum and cinema on Thursday night for the 100th anniversary celebration of the birth of Rattana Pestjoni, a filmmaker who is considered the “father of contemporary Thai cinema”.

With Pestonji’s family, movie stars, filmmakers, government officials and fans on hand, the National Film Archive’s museum was opened for tours, and the facility’s 120-seat cinema hosted the screening of a documentary film, Signature: The Life and Work of R.D. Pestonji.

Pestonji was born in Bangkok on May 22, 1908, to a Parsi-Indian (ethnic Persian) family. For his first short film, Tang, in 1937, he received an award from Alfred Hitchcock at a film festival in Scotland. Pestonji directed his first feature film, Dear Dolly, in 1951. He was known for his skills as a cinematographer, and he shot the first Thai feature film to be submitted to an overseas film festival. Pestonji also pushed for innovations in the Thai film industry, such as using 35mm film, and raising the level of cinematography as an artistic element of the films, said film historian Dome Sukwong, director of the National Film Archive.

The now-lost Santi-Weena was submitted to the Asia-Pacific Film Festival in 1954 in Tokyo. Pestonji served as cinematographer on it as well as Forever Yours, in 1955. He then directed four features, Country Hotel in 1957, Dark Heaven in 1958, Black Silk in 1961, and Sugar Is Not Sweet in 1964. His films were never box-office successes, which led to Pestonji retiring from feature-film work to make television commercials, Sukwong said.

Pestonji died of a heart attack on August 17, 1970 at the Montien Hotel Bangkok, while giving a speech to government officials and film industry executives about the prevalence of Hollywood films in Thailand’s cinemas.

Contemporary directors who were influenced by Pestonji include Wisit Sasanatieng and Pen-ek Ratanaruang (Last Life in the Universe). Sasanatieng was among the filmmakers present at Thursday’s event.

“Prae Dum [Black Silk] is the film that remains my single major influence,” Sasanatieng was quoted as saying by the Bangkok Post. Sasanatieng’s colorful features, Tears of the Black Tiger and Citizen Dog bear many of the hallmarks of Pestonji’s films. “Khun Ratana was not simply a master storyteller … he knew how to use color, art direction and camera angles to create subtle nuances and charge the movie with strong emotions.”

Pestonji’s sons, Santa and Edel, have continued in the film business. The Bangkok film production house their father started now houses a firm that hires out equipment and film crews to foreign films shooting on location in Thailand. Films that the company has been involved with include Heaven & Earth and The Beach. Pestonji’s daughter, Ratanavadi Ratanabhand, was the lead actress in 1961’s Black Silk.

The Pestonji centennial celebration was the first major event held in the new facilities at the National Film Archive, which moved around 10 years ago to the Fine Arts Department compound in Nakhon Pathom Province, about 50 kilometers from Bangkok, where the archive had been previously located. The museum and cinema complex were built in the last year, and Thursday’s event was the first major function held at the facility, said Chalida Uabumrungjit of the Thai Film Foundation, which has worked closely with the National Film Archive to preserve Pestonji’s legacy. The foundation holds the rights to Pestonji’s films and plans to issue a DVD set of his works later this year.

The centerpiece of the archive’s museum is a wax figure of Pestonji, seated with his prized Mitchell camera in front of a recreation of the set from his 1957 musical comedy Country Hotel.

In a manner similar to Grauman’s Chinese Theatre in Hollywood, handprints, footprints and signatures of celebrities are being collected in the concrete outside the museum’s cinema. That initiative started on Thursday with actor Prompong Nopparit, a spokesman for the Ministry of Culture, being the first to make his marks.

Other stars making impressions included actor Suthep Wongkamheng, who starred in Pestonji’s Dark Heaven. A rain storm dampened the festivities, but didn’t keep 1970s action star Sombat Metanee from making his mark in the slab, albeit under cover of umbrellas. Other figures adding their marks to the wet cement were pioneering animator Payut Ngaokrachang and Santa Pestonji, Ratana’s eldest son.

Sunday, December 20, 2009

A conservative Democratic United States senator has agreed to supply the key 60th vote needed for passage of a sweeping health care reform package. Senate Democrats have reached a breakthrough in their struggle to pass sweeping heath care reform legislation, lining up the 60 votes needed to overcome fierce Republican opposition. Senators met Saturday in Washington, D.C. during a driving snowstorm in a frenzied effort to move forward on President Barack Obama’s top domestic priority.

The spotlight was on moderate Democratic Senator Ben Nelson of Nebraska, who had been the last holdout as Senate Democrats raced against the clock and against determined Republican opposition to pass their health care bill by their self-imposed deadline of December 25th, Christmas.

Nelson said he is now ready to vote for cloture, which would advance the bill. “Change is never easy, but change is what is necessary in America today and and that is why I intend to vote for cloture, I intend to vote for cloture and for health care reform,” he said.

Nelson said he decided to support the bill after winning new concessions from Democratic Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to limit the availability of abortions in insurance sold under the new legislation along with millions of dollars in Medicaid funding for Nebraska.

The legislation would extend health benefits to more than 30 million uninsured Americans and impose new regulations on the health insurance industry.

Senator Reid of Nevada has been working for months to win over one holdout Democratic senator after another, repeatedly altering the bill to satisfy different demands. Reid says reform is essential. “The broken system cannot continue and it will not continue. When President Obama signs this bill into law, we will officially end the era in which insurance companies win only when patients lose,” he said.

Nelson’s support should pave the way for Senate Democrats to win the first of a series of crucial procedural votes scheduled to begin at one o’clock in the morning on Monday and set to conclude — if everything goes smoothly for them — with final passage on Christmas Eve.

Republicans have been using a number of parliamentary procedures to delay action on the bill, including forcing a reading on the Senate floor Saturday of Reid’s 338-pages of last minute amendments. Republican Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell of Kentucky responded to the apparent Democratic breakthrough. “And Democrats are forcing a vote on it, as I indicated, over the weekend, counting on the fact that the American people are preoccupied with Christmas and not paying much attention to what they are doing,” he said.

Republicans are unified in their opposition, saying the bill is too expensive and will not solve the problems with the current health care system. Senator McConnell dismissed claims by Democrats that the bill is historic. “The history that is being made here, make no mistake about it, the history that is being made here, is the ignoring of the will of the American people,” he said.

Senator John McCain of Arizona echoed those comments in the weekly Republican radio address saying, “Regrettably, there’s nothing in this legislation that effectively addresses the problem of health care hyperinflation. In fact, experts tell us the Democrat legislation makes matters worse.”

Democrats say they have been trying to reform the nation’s health care system for close to 70 years, ever since President Franklin Delano Roosevelt was in office. Senator Christopher Dodd of Connecticut was emotional as victory seemed within reach. “All we are trying to do is to guarantee that if you are a fellow citizen of ours, and you are struck with illness or a loved one is, that you will never again have that fear, that you will end up losing your home, your job, your retirement and your life savings because you have been afflicted with an illness through no fault of your own.”

If the Senate is able to pass a bill next week, it would be viewed as a major victory for President Obama. But the bill would still need to be reconciled with a health-care reform bill passed last month by the House of Representatives before the president could sign it into law next year.

Thursday, September 28, 2006

Gerasimos Macridis, 39-years-old, left the court room discharged without conviction after hacking into the New Zealand Reserve Bank’s phone system and then asking for money for his services after pointing out these security flaws to both the Reserve Bank and Telecom New Zealand in May, 2006, and offering to fix them. He had identified himself as a security consultant.

The New Zealand Police then raided his home and took his computer on 21 September. Macridis told police that he did not think it was illegal, but knew he was not authorised to access the phone systems. Telecom then took him to court.

Colin McGilicray, police prosecutor, said: “Macridis has a significant number of previous fraud convictions and it appeared he was trying to obtain money through virtue of his technical knowledge.”

Macridis, who represented himself, told the court that for 11-years he had worked as a casual security consultant and he had worked for Telecom, police and Department of Internal Affairs.

Macridis thought himself as an honest, law abiding citizen as his 1994 conviction had ‘turned his life around’.

Judge Ian Mill said this case was very unusual and also noted that Macridis ended his offending over 10-years ago.

Mill said: “Macridis used his talents to identify security risks and he had identified a grave risk to the Reserve Bank and its customers. Macridis provided a report of his findings, requested payment albeit without a contract and for his troubles was prosecuted. He did not pass the information on to others and did not use it for personal gain.”

“In my view his intentions were honourable,” Mill added.

Mill discharged him without conviction on the basis that a conviction would be out of proportion with his actions.

Saturday, September 12, 2009

This past week, British Commandos saved a British journalist, Stephen Farrell from what could have been a very dangerous situation as he had been abducted by Taliban insurgents in Kunduz Province, Afghanistan last weekend. During the raid, one of the rescuers and the journalist’s translator were killed in addition to about three others according to conflicting reports.

Farrell, a journalist from The New York Times and dual British-Irish citizen, and his Afghan interpreter, Sultan Munadi, were taken captive by the Taliban while covering a September 4th bombing by coalition aircraft not far from Konduz City, Afghanistan. A local Afghan reported that while Farrell was interviewing individuals that witnessed the bombing, he received a warning from another Afghan that he should leave the area. Soon after, gun-shots were heard and the Taliban was said to be approaching. Reportedly, police warned journalists covering the strike that insurgents controlled the area surrounding the tanker and that they should take precautions for their personal safety.

When Farrell was taken, few major news outlets reported his capture for security reasons. NY Times Executive Editor Bill Keller earlier said “We feared that media attention would raise the temperature and increase the risk to the captives.”

According to Farrell, while he was treated well — given food, water, and other provisions — his captors taunted Munadi. During their captivity, Farrell commented that his captors would drive within 1500 feet of NATO and Afghan outposts with weapons displayed to prove their daring. Six to eight guards took turns monitoring the captives.

Farrell is the second NY Times journalist to be taken captive in Afghanistan in less than a year. In November 2008, reporter David S. Rohde and his colleague Tahir Ludin were taken captive south of Kabul and moved to Pakistan before they managed to escape in June of this year. Farrell was also kidnapped in April 2004 while on-assignment in Fallujah, Iraq.

Kidnappings are done for ideological reasons by some Taliban members but are also conducted by local insurgents for ransom. At least 16 journalists have been kidnapped since the beginning of the Afghan war.

According to Keller, the possibility had arisen that Farrell and Munadi would be moved, possibly to Pakistan, which may have caused the military to act much sooner. On the morning of September 9th, Mohammad Sami Yowar, a spokesman for the Konduz Governor’s Office, briefed that British Commandos conducted a helicopter assault on the house in which the captives were held and subsequently a gun-battle erupted. A Taliban commander inside the house where Farrell and Munadi were being held was reportedly killed during the raid. Munadi was killed during the firefight and British officials said that they could not rule out the possibility he was killed by one of the Commandos. The Konduz Governor, Abdel Wahid Omar Khil, indicated that a woman and child probably caught in the crossfire were also killed during the raid. Farrell indicated that he was not harmed.

Reporters Without Borders has called for an investigation of the Munadi killing stating that “The tragedy that took place this morning in northern Afghanistan raises many questions.” U.S. military officials confirmed the raid was carried out by NATO and Afghan soldiers; no further details were provided.