Month: February 2019

Enlarge / The logo for Dar. Mario World. (credit: Nintendo / Twitter)

Nintendo announced last night that it will be bringing the classic color-matching puzzle game Dr. Mario to Android and iOS devices in 60 countries as Dr. Mario World early this summer.

Nintendo said the game will be "free to download with optional in-app purchases," but didn't go into detail on how exactly the monetization system would work. Many mobile puzzle game (such as the Candy Crush series) use timer-based "energy" systems to limit the amount you can play without paying in a certain period. Nintendo has used similar cooldown timers in games like Animal Crossing: Pocket Camp and Fire Emblem Heroes, though other Nintendo-developed mobile titles have used other monetization methods.

Dr. Mario World is being co-developed by Line, a Japanese mobile developer mainly known for the messaging app of the same name. Nintendo had previously partnered with Line for sticker packs in that app, but had relied on a partnership with DeNA for games like Super Mario Run and Miitomo. Nintendo also owns a five percent share of mobile developer Cygames, which released action-RPG Dragalia Lost with Nintendo last year.

Enlarge / LSD blotter paper (credit: campusdrugprevention.gov)

What exactly happens in a brain when it is hit by a hallucinogen? Lots of drugs have effects that are obvious extensions of our normal body processes; they raise moods, dull pain, or boost our energy. But hallucinogens are notable for giving their users experiences that are anything but normal.

Now, a team of Swiss researchers have used MRI imaging to follow the brain as it's under the influence of acid. And their results support the idea that hallucinogens cause the breakdown of the system that helps the brain keep track of which information is coming from the real world and which is generated by the brain itself.

Cortex overload

The brain receives a steady flow of information, some from the outside world, some from the body, and some generated by its internal thought processes. Your brain has to essentially decide which of it to take seriously and raise to the level of consciousness, which to monitor subconsciously, and which to discard. Hallucinations, whether due to drugs or mental disorders, appear to involve a breakdown in this information processing.

Enlarge / Scientists with Italy's DAMA/LIBRA collaboration have been claiming to see a seasonal shift in "dark matter wind" for over 20 years. New results don't support that, and a new hypothesis might explain what the collaboration is really seeing. (credit: X-ray: NASA/CXO/Fabian et al.; Radio: Gendron-Marsolais et al./NRAO/AUI/NSF Optical: NASA/SDSS)

Over 20 years ago, a team running an underground experiment in Italy announced that it had detected evidence of dark matter—a claim the collaboration maintains to this day. But many physicists remain unconvinced that the signals detected were really due to dark matter, and outside experimental results have been mixed.

A new paper in Nature reporting on results of a different, complementary experiment found nothing to support the controversial claim. And a draft paper posted to the online arXiv proposes an alternative hypothesis for what the Italian collaboration might really be seeing in their data. But neither paper is sufficient to put the matter to rest once and for all.

Seeing the dark

Dark matter is a mysterious substance that physicists believe comprises around 27 percent of the Universe. (The ordinary matter we see everyday accounts for just four percent, with the remaining 69 percent due to the even more mysterious dark energy.) The most likely candidate for the source of dark matter is a class of particles known as weakly interacting massive particles (WIMPs), named because they rarely interact with ordinary matter.

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  A Raptor engine on the test stand in Texas. [credit: Elon Musk/Twitter ]

On Thursday night, SpaceX founder Elon Musk shared photos of Raptor rocket engines that recently left the company's factory in Hawthorne, Calif., headed out to be tested at its facility near McGregor, Texas. "Preparing to fire the Starship Raptor engine," he said by way of a caption on Twitter.

The photos were interesting, but Musk had additional comments about the engine that revealed much about how the company is proceeding with overall design of the vehicle it will power. SpaceX's approach seems focused on keeping costs down and moving as quickly as possible towards a launch of the Starship spacecraft and Super Heavy rocket in the early 2020s.

For example, Musk said, "Initially making one 200 metric ton thrust engine common across ship & booster to reach the Moon as fast as possible. Next versions will split to vacuum-optimized (380+ sec Isp) & sea-level thrust optimized (~250 ton)."

Enlarge / The #77 Mazda Team Joest, Mazda DPi (Oliver Jarvis, Tristan Nunez, Rene Rast, Timo Bernhard), the #7 Acura Team Penske, Acura DPi, (Helio Castroneves, Ricky Taylor, Alexander Rossi), and the #31 Whelen Engineering Racing, Cadillac DPi (Felipe Nasr, Eric Curran, Mike Conway, Pipo Derani) racing on Saturday at Daytona (credit: Rolex)

Although we usually cover our own travel arrangements, in this case Rolex flew me to Orlando and provided two nights in a hotel in Daytona Beach.

DAYTONA BEACH, FLA.—This past weekend, much of the world's racing fraternity turned out for the annual Rolex 24 endurance race at Daytona International Speedway. First held in 1962, the race around the clock on a 3.5-mile (5.6km) mix of 31-degree banking and flat infield is probably IMSA's highest-profile event and one of the toughest 24-hour races on the calendar. 2019's event was no cakewalk, particularly once Mother Nature showed up to spoil the party.

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  The start of the 2019 Rolex 24 at Daytona. The racing was good, but we got less than 12 hours of green flag action thanks to cautions and then the weather. [credit: Rolex ]

Regular readers will no doubt be familiar with the IMSA series. But if you've never heard of it or are wondering what we're doing in Florida in January when the Daytona 500 isn't until February: this is the US' top-tier sports car racing series. There are four different categories of car, all of which race at the same time. The fastest of these is the DPi class, for 600hp (kW) prototype race cars from Acura, Cadillac, Mazda, and Nissan. Well, sort of, because the DPis are actually based on the other prototype class, LMP2. LMP2 cars are also carbon-fiber prototypes, but all of them use the same 4.0L Gibson V8 engine.