Vampire fangs and fiction

Castlevania: Lords of Shadow was a revelation of sorts. It was filled to the brim with epic action and cool boss fights combined with dark setting involving holy knights and supernatural creatures. Throw in gorgeous art direction, graphics that hold up quite well even today and a long, meaty campaign, and it was one of the better purchases this generation.

Fast forward to 2014, Castlevania: Lords of Shadow 2 is a different beast. One not so enthralling as its predecessor. Sure the same team responsible for the first game, Mercury Steam made it, but the reasons for it being a disappointment are plenty. Lords of Shadow 2 has you in the role of the first game's protagonist Gabriel Belmont, now known as Dracula after being corrupted by the powers he sought to defeat. 

The premise has you seeking an end to your immortality. In order to do so you'll need to thwart the plans for Satan's resurrection. You'll find yourself traipsing around modern day cityscapes and the gothic environs off Dracula's castle in order to do so. While this mix of old and new should make for an interesting game, the reality is far from it. Most of what goes on seems disjointed. 

There are forced stealth sections wherein you'll find yourself dead in a matter of seconds (unlikely for someone as powerful as Dracula). These have you navigating dull grey corridors as a rat (yes, not a bat surprisingly) as you seek to avoid getting shot by mutated soldiers with canons. These are by far the most annoying bits of the game. The worst part is they're quite prevalent even until the end. 

Furthermore the plot is a nonsensical. What could have had the potential to turn into something brilliant is dumbed down to simply "save the world". The chain of events rarely make sense as does the pacing, making it an exercise in monotony that's best avoided by forcing yourself not to wonder why things happen the way they do. 

All is not lost however, the combat holds up surprisingly well. You have the series' trademark whip at your disposal as are a pair of enchanted weapons known as the void sword and chaos claws respectively. Throughout the game's many battles you'll find yourself switching between the three to defeat the foes that stand in your way. 

While most enemies you face are fodder with a predictable set of moves, the bosses are brilliant. Each of which require a bit of strategy to overcome. However stellar combat and great boss battles alone don't make up a game. The forced stealth, annoying pacing and wasted premise make Castlevania: Lords of the Shadow 2 one to be wary of.

CASTLEVANIA: LORDS OF SHADOW 2 Developer: Konami Platform: PC, PS3, X360Price: PC Rs 1,599; PS3 Rs 3,499; X360 Rs 3,699 Rating: **1/2 

TV signal powered gesture detection

Top: The AllSee prototype is integrated with a mobile phone. The tech enables new applications such as gesture recognition with the phone still in your pocket; Above: AllSee detects the unique signal changes (shown on the oscilloscope)

Researchers have created a battery-less gesture control system that uses TV signals to detect gestures and control almost any electronic devices, even when you can't see them.

Mute the song playing on your smartphone in your pocket by flicking your index finger in the air, or pause your podcast with a small wave of the hand. This kind of gesture control for electronics could soon become an alternative to touchscreens and sensing tech that consume a lot of power and only work when users can see their phones and tablets. 

University of Washington computer scientists have built a low-cost gesture recognition system that runs without batteries and lets users control their electronic devices hidden from sight with simple hand movements. The prototype, called AllSee, uses existing TV signals as both a power source and the means for detecting a user's gesture command. "This is the first gesture recognition system that can be implemented for less than a dollar and doesn't require a battery," said Shyam Gollakota, a professor of computer science and engineering. "You can leverage TV signals both as a source of power and as a source of gesture recognition." 

The researchers built a small sensor that can be placed on an electronic device such as a smartphone. The sensor uses an ultra-low-power receiver to extract and classify gesture information from wireless transmissions around us. When a person gestures with the hand, it changes the amplitude of the wireless signals in the air. The AllSee sensors then recognise unique amplitude changes created by specific gestures. 

Sensors use three to four times less power than existing gesture recognition systems by harvesting power from wireless transmissions. This allows for mobile devices to always have the gesture technology on and enabled. 

Gesture recognition already is possible on some mobile devices, including the Samsung Galaxy S4 smartphone. But users have to first manually enable the feature and be able to see the device for the gesture technology to work, and if left on, the gesture system quickly drains the phone's battery. 

In contrast, AllSee consumes only tens of microwatts of power and can always be left on. The user could gesture at the phone in a pocket or handbag to change the volume or mute the phone without having to touch or see the phone. 

This tech could allow sensors to be attached to household electronics, making it possible to interact with everyday objects using gestures and also connect them to the Internet and to each other in an "Internet of Things" world. "Beyond mobile devices, AllSee can enable interaction with Internet of Things devices. These sensing devices are increasingly smaller electronics that can't operate with usual keypads, so gesture-based systems are ideal," said Bryce Kellogg, a student. 

The team tested AllSee's capabilities on smartphones and battery-free sensors using eight different hand gestures such as pushing or pulling to zoom in and out. The prototype could correctly identify the gestures more than 90 per cent of the time while performed more than 2 feet away from the device. 

Researchers have tested the tech for response time and whether it can distinguish between other motions and those directed at it. They found that the technology's response time is less than 80 microseconds, which is 1,000 times faster than blinking an eye. 

"This enables a seamless and interactive experience for the user," said Vamsi Talla, another student of electrical engineering. The researchers also designed a wake-up gesture that allows the system not to confuse unintentional motions for actual gestures. 

This technology builds on previous work by Gollakota on leveraging WiFi signals around us for gesture recognition around the home. Prior wireless gesture recognition techniques, however, consume tens of watts of power and aren't suitable for mobile devices.

Sprouting garlic has heart-healthy antioxidants

Sprouted garlic - old garlic bulbs with bright green shoots emerging from the cloves - is considered to be past its prime and usually ends up in the garbage can. But scientists are reporting in ACS' Journal of Agricultural and Food Chemistry that this type of garlic has even more heart-healthy antioxidant activity than its fresher counterparts. 

Jong-Sang Kim and colleagues note that people have used garlic for medicinal purposes for thousands of years. 

Today, people still celebrate its healthful benefits. Eating garlic or taking garlic supplements is touted as a natural way to reduce cholesterol levels, blood pressure and heart disease risk. 

It even may boost the immune system and help fight cancer. But those benefits are for fresh, raw garlic. Sprouted garlic has received much less attention. 

When seedlings grow into green plants, they make many new compounds, including those that protect the young plant against pathogens. Kim's group reasoned that the same thing might be happening when green shoots grow from old heads of garlic. 

Other studies have shown that sprouted beans and grains have increased antioxidant activity, so the team set out to see if the same is true for garlic. 

They found that garlic sprouted for five days had higher antioxidant activity than fresher, younger bulbs, and it had different metabolites, suggesting that it also makes different substances. Extracts from this garlic even protected cells in a laboratory dish from certain types of damage. 

"Therefore, sprouting may be a useful way to improve the antioxidant potential of garlic," they conclude.

Guide: Chrometastic!

Google Chrome is a wonderful web browser, but what makes it really awesome are the great extensions available. Mihir Patkar rounds up some of his favourites which any Chrome user should have...

MXHERO TOOLBOX Link: bit.ly/NbRVpY 

This is the only Gmail extension you need. It lets you schedule messages, track who has opened your emails, set time to followup on emails, and even send selfdestructing messages. For free! 

IMAGUS Link: bit.ly/1fOjnET 

Instead of clicking on a thumbnail to see the full image, Imagus shows it you by just hovering your cursor over the thumbnail. It also has other neat tricks, such as a max height or width, hotkeys and more. 

DIIGO Link: bit.ly/1crQ3PN 

Diigo is great if you are researching a particular topic and need to mark pages with notes. It lets you colour-code highlights and turn all your notes into one list for easy reference. 

READABILITY Link: bit.ly/1dIOnlv 

Web pages are full of clutter, whether it's a side panel telling you what other articles to read or annoying ads popping up in the wrong places. If what you want is a clear reading experience with big fonts and free of clutter, then get Readbility. 

ADBLOCK PLUS Link: bit.ly/1mKx64X 

Nobody likes ads, right? Well, you don't have to put up with them if you run Adblock Plus, an extension that removes ads from any Web page, making your interface clutter-free, taking away annoying pop-ups, and loading pages faster. 

LAZARUS: FORM RECOVERY Link: bit.ly/1gH6Wso 

It's frustrating to lose what you typed in forms or comments online. Lazarus is a neat tool that saves the last few things you wrote online and auto-fills them when you next visit the page. 

VIBE Link: bit.ly/1kvfxAS 

Got an email from someone you don't know? Or maybe you saw an email listed online and want to find out more about that person? Vibe quickly shows a short bio, topics of interest and social accounts associated with any email id. 

STREAMUS Link: bit.ly/1eFL9i5 

YouTube is a fantastic resource for free music, so why not turn it into a music player? Meet Streamus, a simple app to queue up a playlist from YouTube. "It's fast and has keyboard shortcuts. 

HOLA UNBLOCKER Link: bit.ly/NCBaEe 

Are you blocked from accessing a site or a video because of region restrictions or your office firewall? Fire up Hola Unblocker, choose the country you want to appear to be from, and it'll reroute things so that you get access to anything online. 

ANY.DO Link: bit.ly/1hpNe74 

The best to-do list manager on the Web, Any.Do is available on almost all platforms. The extension makes it easy to add items to your task list and get alarms and reminders later. 

THE GREAT SUSPENDER Link: bit.ly/1crQdH9 

Does your Chrome hang or slow down terribly? That's probably because you have many tabs open, constantly asking for resources. Install The Great Suspender and it'll automatically suspend tabs that have been inactive for a long time without closing them. 

LASTPASS Link: bit.ly/1fw0eD6 

Trouble remembering passwords? With one master key, Lastpass can remember passwords for all your online accounts. What's more, it suggests secure passwords and auto-fills sign-up forms. 

BUFFER Link: bit.ly/1jFuEb0 

Sign up for a free Buffer account, connect it with your social networks and this will become the easiest way to post content on all your accounts simultaneously. Plus, you can auto-schedule it to post at a time when more people will read it. 

TOOMANYTABS Link: bit.ly/1d1otMF 

When you have too many pages open, the tab icons become too tiny. At such times, you need TooManyTabs. One click and it'll show you thumbnails of each tab, making browsing easy. And you can suspend idle tabs, sort them by date, or search! 

SHIELD FOR CHROME Link: bit.ly/OJKU0I 

Like any software installation, there's a chance that the extension you just got for has adware, spyware or malware. The easiest way to protect yourself is with Shield for Chrome, which lets you know extension you're installing is infected.

‘Dimmer switch’ for heart attacks in sight

Team has found a way to control blood flowing back into the heart

Melbourne scientists have come up with a way to fine tune the way the heart responds to medication. This will not only stop heart attacks but also reduce lethal long-term damage.

Monash University researchers have created a "dimmer switch" to control a protective protein in the heart, without dangerous side-effects that slow the heart or stop it beating. The team is believed to have found a way to control the intensity of blood flowing back into the heart after the patient is revived. 

"When a heart attack strikes, heart cells die because of a lack of oxygen and nutrients. But even more damage is caused when the blood rushes back to the heart cells and causes the release of inflammatory chemicals and damaging free radicals," said Professor Arthur Christopoulos from the Monash Institute of Pharmaceutical Sciences (MIPS). 

The damage means a high proportion of heart attack survivors die within five years. Current drugs, aimed at preventing damage, are dangerous because they could slow down, and even prevent the heart from beating altogether. 

However, Prof Christopoulos and his colleague Professor Peter Scammells led a team of scientists to combine molecular pharmacology and medicinal chemistry to fine tune the way heart responds to the medication. 

They studied a heart protein belonging to the family of G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs) found throughout the body. GPCRs play a role in virtually every biological process and most diseases, including, cardiovascular disease, obesity and diabetes, neuropsychiatric disorder, inflammation and cancer. Almost half of all current medications available use GPCRs to achieve their therapeutic effect. 

Current GPCR drugs work either by fully activating or completely blocking receptors, treating the protein like a simple "on-off" switch. 

"Correct dosage was a serious challenge in clinical trials. A dosage for this protein that is too high can stop the heart from beating. Too low, and the drug fails to prevent cell damage," said Prof Scammells. 

Their solution was to introduce a 'dimmer switch' by mixing two molecules together so they bind to a different site on the protein, without triggering the side-effects. "It means we can turn the receptor up and down like a dimmer switch and you only get the beneficial effects without slowing the heart rate," said Prof Christopoulos. 

He added, "Almost half of all medications available target protein receptors, so this method could be used to make more effective drugs for many conditions including schizophrenia and diabetes." 

The findings will inform the next phase of the research to develop a new drug that could potentially be made available for use by clinicians and emergency paramedics. The research was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.

Simple blood test could predict Alzheimer’s

The researchers started by taking blood samples from 525 healthy volunteers aged 70 and older

Scientists have discovered a blood test that can predict with greater than 90 per cent accuracy if a healthy person will develop Alzheimer's within three years.

Researchers in the United States say they have developed a prototype blood test that can tell with 90 per cent accuracy whether a healthy person will develop Alzheimer's disease within three years. The test looks for 10 signatures of fatty proteins called lipids. 

The findings published in Nature Medicine will now be tested in larger clinical trials. Experts said the results needed to be confirmed, but such a test would be "a real step forward". 

It could help families of people developing the cognitive disorder make early decisions on how best to care for them and may also aid the search for treatment, the authors said. Several years of clinical trials are likely to be needed to assess the prototype technique, the first blood "biomarker" to predict the tragic degenerative disease. 

Alzheimer's, caused by toxic proteins that destroy brain cells, is a currently incurable and fatal degenerative disease. Around 35 million people have the disease, a tally that is expected to reach 115 million people by 2050, according to the World Health Organization. 

"Our novel blood test offers the potential to identify people at risk for progressive cognitive decline and can change how patients, their families and treating physicians plan for and manage the disorder," said Howard Federoff, a professor of neurology at Georgetown University Medical Center in Washington. 

It could also help efforts to treat the disease, he said. 

Attempts to develop drugs for Alzheimer's have failed possibly because they are tested when the disease has progressed too far, Federoff said. 

These treatments may have a better chance of braking or reversing the disease if they are trialled at amuch earlier stage, he said. 

The researchers started by taking blood samples from 525 healthy volunteers aged 70 and older. Three years later, they looked at a group of 53 volunteers who had developed symptoms of early Alzheimer's or a memory-affecting condition known as amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). 

The blood samples from this group were compared against the samples from 53 otherwise healthy volunteers to see what the difference was. 

From this, the scientists spotted the 10 telltale lipid proteins, which appear to be metabolised residues of brain cell membranes. The lipids predict disease onset. It could be ready for use in clinical studies in as few as two years and, researchers say, other diagnostic uses are possible. The test could fill a major gap in strategies to combat brain degeneration which is thought to show symptoms only at a stage when it too late to treat effectively. 

"These findings are potentially very exciting," said Simon Lovestone, a neuroscientist at University of Oxford. "We desperately need biomarkers which would allow patients to be identified - and recruited into trials - before their symptoms begin," Lovestone added.

Stealth bomb

Thief: The Dark Project (1999) has been cornerstone of legions of stealth based games, from the massive Elder Scrolls to the recent Dishonoured. All have been built upon the revolutionary mechanics that the original Thief pioneered. Fast-forward to 2014, and Thief has been rebooted. 

You play as Garrett, a master thief who returns after a long time away to his hometown to find it worse than ever. After losing an accomplice on a job to a mysterious magic artefact, Garrett wakes up from a year long sleep and dives deep into the shadows of mystery that surrounds that fateful job. 

Thief expands of the original's mechanics by adding a sense of physical movement. In the right conditions sneaking is a beautiful fluid series of movements. You can swoop from shadow to shadow avoiding and sometimes robbing stupid guards. You get different arrow types to climb up ropes, or extinguish lights. The game is all about stealth, while it is allowed, violence is not a very good idea, though you can occasionally bonk a guard on the head if they're in the way. 

With excellent sneak mechanics, it feels like game does not know what to do with it in some cases. 

Thief is inconsistent in its gameplay, levels as well as its narrative. One of the worst parts is the stupidity of the AI, which sometimes makes the game feel like you're taking candy from a baby. Each mission is varied enough to keep you vested, but on larger missions expect to see a lot of the loading screen. The saving grace though, is the excellent side missions you get to do as a thief. 

With all its flaws, Thief is a superb game, beautiful in its steampunk and stone setting. Thief, however, gets more things right than it gets wrong. Recommended for those who love to sneak around in the shadows.

THIEF Rating: ***1/2 Developer: Eidos Platform: PS3, PS4, PC, X360 Price: PS3 Rs 2,999; PS4 Rs 3,499; PC Rs 999; X360 Rs 2,999