Will Wright's original SimCity has now gone open-source under the GNU General Public License. Though the name and some code have been changed due to EA's requirements, the core of the title remains intact and is now open for the public. This follows the inclusion of SimCity into the OLPC project.

Originally written in C, the open-source version has been "recast into C++ classes, integrated into Python, using the wonderful SWIG interface generator tool." For tinkerers, a lot of the old bugs and code issues remain intact.

The open-source version is now available on Don Hopkins' web site.

One Laptop Per Child.

1. America’s Army
2. Warsow
3. Wild Metal
4. Afterburner 3D
5. Wolfenstein Enemy Territory
6. Flight of the Amazon Queen
7. King’s Quest 3
8. Maniac Mansion Deluxe
9. Ultima IV
10. Trackmania Nations
11. Swine
12. Xenon 2000
13. Harmotion
14. Retro River Raid
15. SWIV
16. Utawareru Mono
17. One Must Fall
18. Secret Maryo Chronicles
19. Scorched Earth
20. Winigolf

A team led by biophysicist Jeremy Smith of the University of Tennessee and Oak Ridge National Laboratory has taken a significant step toward unraveling the mystery of how proteins fold into unique, three-dimensional shapes. Using ORNL's Cray XT4 Jaguar supercomputer as well as computer systems in Italy and Germany, the team revealed a driving force behind protein folding involving the way its constituents interact with water.

Proteins are the workhorses of the body, taking on a wide variety of tasks. They fight infections, turn food into energy, copy DNA and catalyze chemical reactions. Insulin is a protein, as are antibodies and many hormones.

Scientists are still very interested in deciphering how proteins work.

A protein is a string of amino acids, and what it does is determined by the shape it takes. That shape is determined by the sequence of the amino acids. Like a piece of biological origami, the protein folds itself into the form necessary to carry out its job. Without the shape the protein would be worthless.

Working on a smaller chain of amino acids known as a peptide, the group showed that the folding is determined largely by how parts of the peptide interact with water. Areas that shun water are said to be hydrophobic, and the team's results show that the way water wets these hydrophobic areas determines the ultimate shape and behavior of the peptide.

But when you get hydrophobic entities as long as several water molecules, the water molecules have a problem with that. They can't cloak themselves around the hydrophobic surface anymore, and there is a dewetting or drying effect as they are repelled from the surface.

"Our simulations have shown that Chandler's theory works for peptides, and, moreover, that the drying effect determines which structure our peptide adopts. It's kind of 'dry it off then fold it up.'"

"The runs were a couple of microseconds, which was adequate for the peptide that was simulated," Smith explained. "But the team is looking forward to increased computing capacity as it moves forward. The technique used is molecular dynamics simulation, and it needs high-performance leadership supercomputing to reach the length and timescales needed to fold a complete functional protein in the computer. With the projected capability improvements in Jaguar over the next couple of years, we will soon be approaching that goal."

Smith made it clear that the achievement would represent a watershed in the field.

"When we do eventually find out how to calculate protein structure from sequence," he said, "then a major revolution will come upon us, as we will have the basis to move forward with understanding much of biology and medicine, and the applications will range from rationally designing drugs to fit clefts in protein structures to engineering protein shapes for useful functions in nanotechnology and bioenergy."

The impulse to make video games easier can be traced to a fundamental change in perception over what a game should be. The older school of thought, which dates back and beyond the days of Space Invaders to the era of pinball, is that a game should measure the player's skill. Arcade games, in fact, must make it difficult for a player to last for any great length of time in order to keep money coming into the coin box. The newer concept is that a game should provide an experience to the player. The player is to feel like some character, or like he's participating in a story, or that he's making some difference in a fictional realm. ..

The article covers the following games:

1. Defender & Stargate
2. Kaboom!
3. Cobra Triangle
4. Sinistar
5. Solomon's Key
6. Adventures of Lolo, a.k.a. Eggerland, series
7. The Tower of Druaga
8. Monkey Ball, a.k.a. Super Monkey Ball
9. Wetrix
10. One Man and his Droid
11. Phantoms of the Asteroid
12. Faster, Harder, More Challenging Q*bert
13. Blast Corps
14. The Legend of Zelda (particularly the second quest)
15. Deadly Towers
16. Mr. Driller
17. Mischief Makers, a.k.a. Yuke Yuke!! Troublemakers
18. Rogue
19. The Bard's Tale II: Destiny Knight
20. Lode Runner series

• How is information coded in neural activity?

  It is likely that mental information is stored not in single cells but in populations of cells and patterns of their activity. Although traveling bursts of voltage can carry signals across the brain quickly, those electrical spikes may not be the only—or even the main—way that information is carried in nervous systems. ­

• How are memories stored and retrieved?

  Almost all theories of memory propose that memory storage depends on synapses, the tiny connections between brain cells. When two cells are active at the same time, the connection between them strengthens; when they are not active at the same time, the connection weakens. Out of such synaptic changes emerges an association.

  There is no good theory to explain how memory retrieval can happen so quickly. Moreover, the act of retrieval can destabilize the memory. When you recall a past event, the memory becomes temporarily susceptible to erasure.

• What does the baseline activity in the brain represent?

  Some of the baseline activity may represent the brain restructuring knowledge in the background, simulating future states and events, or manipulating memories. Most things we care about—reminiscences, emotions, drives, plans, and so on—can occur with no external stimulus and no overt output that can be measured.

  The awake state may be essentially the same as the dreaming state, only partially anchored by external stimuli. In this view, your conscious life is an awake dream.

• How do brains simulate the future?

  Many neuroscientists have suggested over the past few decades that perception arises not simply by building up bits of data through a hierarchy but rather by matching incoming sensory data against internally generated expectations.

  Your memories about your life may come to be understood as a special subtype of emulation, one that is pinned down and thus likely to flow in a certain direction.

• What are emotions?

  Emotions are measurable physical responses to salient stimuli: the increased heartbeat and perspiration that accompany fear.

  Modern views propose that emotions are brain states that quickly assign value to outcomes and provide a simple plan of action. Thus, emotion can be viewed as a type of computation, a rapid, automatic summary that initiates appropriate actions.

  One goal of emotional neuroscience is to understand the nature of the many disorders of emotion, depression being the most common and costly. Impulsive aggression and violence are also thought to be consequences of faulty emotion regulation.

• What is intelligence?

  Recent experiments explore the possible relationship of intelligence to the capacity of short-term memory, the ability to quickly resolve cognitive conflict, or the ability to store stronger associations between facts; the results are not yet conclusive. Many other possibilities—better restructuring of stored information, more parallel processing, or superior emulation of possible futures—have not yet been probed by experiments.

• How is time represented in the brain?

  Your notion of the smooth passage of time is a construction of the brain. Clarifying the picture of how the brain normally solves timing problems should give insight into what happens when temporal calibration goes wrong, as may happen in the brains of people with dyslexia. Sensory inputs that are out of sync also contribute to the risk of falls in elderly patients.

• Why do brains sleep and dream?

  In humans, continuous wakefulness of the nervous system results in mental derangement; rats deprived of sleep for 10 days die.

  There are at least three popular (and nonexclusive) guesses. The first is that sleep is restorative, saving and replenishing the body’s energy stores. However, the high neural activity during sleep suggests there is more to the story. A second theory proposes that sleep allows the brain to run simulations of fighting, problem solving, and other key actions before testing them out in the real world. A third theory—the one that enjoys the most evidence—is that sleep plays a critical role in learning and consolidating memories and in forgetting inconsequential details. In other words, sleep allows the brain to store away the important stuff and take out the neural trash.

  Dreaming is akin to an off-line practice session.

• How do the specialized systems of the brain integrate with one another?

  While the brain’s ability to do parallel processing is impressive, its ability to rapidly synthesize those parallel processes into a single, behavior-guiding output is at least as significant.

  There is no special anatomical location in the brain where information from all the different systems converges; rather, the specialized areas all interconnect with one another, forming a network of parallel and recurring links. Somehow, our integrated image of the world emerges from this complex labyrinthine network of brain structures.

• What is consciousness?

  The mechanisms underlying consciousness could reside at any of a variety of physical levels: molecular, cellular, circuit, pathway, or some organizational level not yet described. The mechanisms might also be a product of interactions between these levels. One compelling but still speculative notion is that the massive feedback circuitry of the brain is essential to the production of consciousness.

It's an odd combination of Navier-Stokes equations and NASCAR driving. Computer scientists at the University of Washington have developed software that is incorporated in new technology allowing television audiences to instantaneously see how air flows around speeding cars.

The algorithm Model Reduction for Real-time Fluids, first presented at a SIGGRAPH computer graphics conference last August, was since used by ESPN and sporting-technology company Sportvision Inc. to create a new effect for racing coverage. The fast-paced innovation hit prime time in late July when ESPN used the Draft Track technology to visualize the air flow behind cars in the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard, a NASCAR race at the Indianapolis Motor Speedway.

The Draft Track application calculates air flow over the cars and then displays it as colors trailing behind the car. Green, blue, yellow and red correspond to different speeds and directions for air flow when two or more cars approach one another while driving at speeds upward of 200 miles per hour.

"What ESPN wanted to do is tell the story for the viewer of how drafting works because it's such a big part of the event," said Rick Cavallaro, chief scientist at Sportvision. "How the drivers use drafting to save gas, pick up speed, et cetera."

Zoran Popović, an associate professor in the UW's department of computer science and engineering, and two students wrote the code that dramatically speeds up real-time fluid dynamics simulations. To make the simulation work in real time and be interactive, "you kind of need to rethink the math problem," he said. The new algorithm first simulates all the ways that smoke, fire -- or in this case, modified stock cars -- can behave. Then it runs the simulation for a reduced number of physically possible parameters.

Popović imagined that the first applications would be introducing interactive simulations in video games that would allow players to drive through a smoky fire, interact with the weather in a flight simulator, or drive racecars in a virtual wind tunnel. Other research results from his lab were licensed to the game industry and then adopted in video games.

Sportvision creates technology to enhance sports coverage. The company has already developed add-ons for ESPN's NASCAR coverage, placing Global Positioning System receivers, inertial measurement systems and telemetry on each car that can determine each car's speed and position several times a second. Now company engineers will use data from those sensors to model and display the air flowing over the cars.