Month: March 2016

Smelling one of these sets off a stress response in mice. (credit: Ohio Department of Natural Resources )

A mouse feels panicky. It freezes; its little nose twitches. Something is in the air, and it doesn’t like the smell of it. Not one… little… bit.

In mice, the scent of predators causes a surge of stress hormones to course through the blood and induces behavioral changes. Quite a lot is known about olfaction in mice—Richard Axel and Linda Buck split the Nobel Prize in 2004 for elucidating the organization of the thousand or so unique odorant receptors expressed by the sensory neurons in those little noses.

But the neural circuits that transmit a threatening scent from the nose to the hypothalamus, where the stress hormones are released, were not known. Until now.

(credit: Flickr)

Less than a year after Sony shuttered its PlayStation Mobile service—which brought PlayStation content to Android devices—Sony has launched ForwardWorks. The new division will "leverage the intellectual property" of PlayStation games to create games for iOS and Android devices, but only in Asia and Japan.

ForwardWorks will leverage the intellectual property of the numerous PlayStation dedicated software titles and its gaming characters as well as the knowledge and know-how of gaming development expertise which was acquired over the years with PlayStation business to provide gaming application optimized for smart devices including smartphones to users in Japan and Asia. The company will aim to deliver users with opportunity to casually enjoy full-fledged game titles in the new filed [sic] of the smart device market.

Details on ForwardWorks are thin on the ground, but Sony appears to be taking a similar approach to mobile gaming as Nintendo, which is using selected franchises, characters, and developers to create mobile-specific games. The first of Nintendo's efforts, Miitomo, launched in Japan earlier this month and was downloaded by a million users in just three days.

While ForwardWorks doesn't appear to be a platform as such, then—unlike PlayStation Mobile, which offered developers an SDK—Sony's statement does note that the divison will "deploy new services" as well as games when it launches on April 1.

An occupant of the SPHERE house, wearing a lot of sensors (credit: SPHERE)

In an unassuming two-story Victorian town house in Bristol, people are being filmed, monitored, and tracked 24/7. Invisible sensors constantly keep a watchful eye they go about their business. But what these folks lose in privacy could be our collective gain in life expectancy—that is, if the long-term data bears out.

Pivotal to the £15-million (~$21M) Sensor Platform for Healthcare in a Residential Environment (SPHERE) project, this house has been invisibly fitted with dozens of cameras and sensors while its occupants are asked to don wearable devices. The aim is to research how health is related to everyday lifestyle and living conditions over time.

The smart home observes everything, from how long the occupants slouch in front of the TV to their activity sitting or walking or exercising. The house captures such information and can contextualize it against each other. It takes note of how much and how frequently they eat and drink and which appliances are being used. It even records when occupants sleep and keeps track of temperatures around the house.