Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Posted on 21st Mar 2011 at 11:43 by Podcast with 9 comments

This weeks gaming podcast sees Harry, Paul, Joe and Clive sit down to discuss some of the games we've been playing and reviewing lately. First up for the bit-tech treatment is the Crysis 2 demo which Harry has been playing. It's only a small part of the multiplayer portion of the game but it's an interesting window into what direction the rest of the game will take.

We also discuss Clive's review of Shogun 2: Total War and what he liked and disliked about the game. After that Joe takes us through his experiences with Dragon Age 2 and why he doesn't like the game, but still gave it a 7/10.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition too, the lucky winner of which will walk away with a Mionix Propus 380 mousepad. This beast of a mouse mat should provide the perfect tracking surface, whichever mouse you choose to use.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. This edition of the podcast was also sponsored by Darkspore. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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U.S. Group Stirs Debate on Being ?Pro-Israel?

For an electric two hours on Wednesday, the sides fought bitterly inside a parliamentary hearing room. As they spoke, tensions on the Gaza border rose and turmoil spread across the Middle East; hours later a bomb went off in Jerusalem, killing one person and wounding dozens. Israelis are feeling increasingly insecure about any criticism they believe could help their enemies.

At the center of the parliamentary debate was a three-year-old American advocacy group, J Street, which calls itself pro-Israel and pro-peace, a left-leaning alternative to the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, or Aipac, the pro-Israel lobbying group in the United States. J Street opposes Israeli settlements in the West Bank and urged President Obama not to veto an antisettlement resolution in the United Nations Security Council recently.

The conveners of Wednesday?s hearing, a hawkish Likud legislator named Danny Danon and a conservative colleague from the centrist Kadima party, Otniel Schneller, wanted to expose J Street for what they believed it to be ? a group of self-doubting American Jews more worried about what their neighbors say than what is good for the state of Israel.

?This is a dispute between those who care what non-Jews will say and those who believe in being a light unto nations, between the mentality of exile and that of redemption,? Mr. Schneller said. ?J Street is not a Zionist organization. It offers love with strings attached. They say, ?We love you only if you behave the way we like.? ?

Jeremy Ben-Ami, J Street?s founder, came from Washington to defend his group, which claims about 170,000 supporters.

?We should work through our differences with respect, vibrant discussion and open dialogue,? he told the legislators. ?It only weakens Israel and the Jewish people to make differences of opinion into something greater and to accuse those who criticize Israeli policy of being anti-Israel or worse.?

The committee meeting, which drew a crowd and often descended into shouting matches, was unprecedented, according to many Israelis. No one could recall a debate inside Israel?s Parliament examining whether an American group calling itself pro-Israel was living up to the name.

But another parliamentary committee hearing is planned on a similar topic ? whether the foreign news media are covering Israel fairly. The focus of that debate will be a comparison of news media coverage of the recent killings of five members of a settler family with the coverage of the Israeli takeover last year of a Gaza-bound flotilla in which nine activists were killed by commandos.

Both hearings are part of a larger trend in this year?s Parliament ? a turn rightward. Two laws passed this week have been widely condemned by civil liberty groups and advocates on the left. The first is known as ?the Nakba bill,? in reference to the Arabic word for ?catastrophe? commonly used by Arabs to describe the birth of Israel in 1948. Arabs who are Israeli citizens often commemorate Israeli independence by noting their losses ? the destruction of hundreds of villages and the exile of hundreds of thousands of Palestinians.

The new law allows the Finance Ministry to remove funds from municipalities or groups if they commemorate Independence Day here as a day of mourning or reject Israel as a Jewish and democratic state. The original bill, which produced much alarm and was altered, would have imposed prison sentences.

The second new law that has drawn criticism from the left establishes admissions committees for small communities in the Negev and Galilee, areas with large Arab populations. The new law says that communities with 400 or fewer families may set up committees to screen potential residents for whether they fit in socially. At the last minute, a rider was added barring discrimination based on race, gender or nationality, but critics contend it will still serve to keep Arabs out of Jewish communities.

It is precisely such developments in Israel that J Street leaders say are driving many American Jews, especially younger ones, from devotion to Israel. Therefore, they say, J Street has a vital role in advocating its views here and in bridging the gap between liberal American Jews and an increasingly nationalistic Israeli society.

David Gilo, who is the chairman of J Street, said in the hearing that the contract that had long existed between Israel and Jews abroad ? one of unconditional support ? was expiring and a new one was being drafted. He argued that the new contract was good not only for those abroad but for Israel as well, since it would bring into the fold those who would otherwise be alienated. ?The new contract cannot be based on unilateral dictation of what is right, who is right and who is wrong,? he said. ?Only agreement on common values and a genuine attempt to understand where each party comes from can reinstate an Israeli-American Jewish partnership.?

Nachman Shai, a member of Parliament from Kadima, said at the hearing that J Street represented an important part of American Jewry, and that Israel should not turn a blind eye to it.

Shlomo Avineri, a political scientist at Hebrew University who did not attend the hearing, said J Street was in a problematic position because ?it is very difficult to be an advocacy group while criticizing the subject of your advocacy. It is difficult to say we are the greatest supporters of Israel but on every issue that arises we are on the other side.?

He added that the extreme right in Israel had always insisted that criticism of Israeli policy was unpatriotic. Now, the extreme right has more power than ever in the country?s history, he said, giving its views a greater platform.

Mr. Danon, the Likud chairman of the committee holding the hearing, said he would put to a vote in the coming two weeks a resolution calling J Street pro-Palestinian, asking it to ?purge from its ranks? anti-Zionist elements and urging Israeli government officials to refrain from contact with it.

Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu has consistently refused to meet with J Street officials.

Mr. Ben-Ami of J Street said afterward: ?This is a time of real uncertainty and threat in Israel, and what we saw at the hearing is part of a larger trend of Israel turning in on itself. It is redefining who is a Jew, redefining who is a citizen and now redefining who is a friend.?

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A Call for the Safer Handling of Nuclear Waste

Two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami, Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex continues to spread both radiation and distrust of nuclear power as the plant's situation lurches from hopeful to harrowing and back again.

This week, Tokyo Electric Power restored grid power to much of the plant's equipment, bringing instrumentation back to life and, in a few cases, restoring cooling to overheated reactors and spent fuel pools. But on Wednesday, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported that black smoke from Fukushima Daiichi's reactor unit 3 and a spike in radiation around reactor 2 had forced workers to temporarily abandon work to restart the cooling systems.

The struggle to regain control at Fukushima Daiichi has made the global nuclear industry jittery. Italy's cabinet has decided to put its plans for a return to nuclear energy on hold for one year. Earlier this week, U.S. utility NRG Energy and Japan's Toshiba said they were slowing plans to build new reactors at NRG's Bay City, Texas, nuclear plant next year. Their reasons for the delay were the possibility of shifting requirements from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and uncertainty over Tokyo Electric Power's ability to take a planned stake in the project.

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna says it has yet to identify any "significant risk to human health." But in Japan there have been reports of radiation in fresh foods and water, and Tokyo residents with infants were warned by municipal authorities Wednesday not to use tap water after radioactive iodine at roughly double Japan's safety limit for infants was detected at a Tokyo water treatment plant.

Meanwhile, radiation trackers have measured the fission products over North America to reveal the extent of radiation released by the Fukushima accident. The measurements showed that in the first four days following the March 11 quake and tsunami, Fukushima Daiichi released Iodine-131 packing 4x1017 Becquerels of radiation, says Gerhard Wotawa, a radiation tracker at the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna. His team generated the estimates using data from the global detectors installed to enforce nuclear weapons test bans.

Wotawa says Fukushima Daiichi released about one-fifth as much Iodine-131 as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Iodine-131 is short-lived, with a half-life of just eight days, but the resulting carcinogenesis plays out over decades. Elevated thyroid cancer rates linked to Chernobyl's radioactive iodine have yet to decline 25 years later, according to a U.S. National Cancer Institute study published last week.

Fukushima Daiichi released over 3x1016 Becquerels-worth of Cesium-137 in the incident's first four days?about half as much as Chernobyl,  according to Wotawa. Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years; land contaminated by it forced the permanent relocation of more than 100,000 residents from around Chernobyl.

The relatively high level of Cesium-137 is one of several factors suggesting that loss of cooling water protecting spent nuclear fuel in pools above Fukushima Daiichi's reactors caused some of the radioactive releases. Spent fuel contains little Iodine-131, which quickly breaks down once fuel is pulled from a reactor, but it retains lots of Cesium-137.

On Monday, NRC chief of operations William Borchardt said its experts had concluded that "radiation releases and the dose rates" observed at Fukushima Daiichi were "primarily influenced" by loss of cooling water at the fuel storage pools above reactor units 3 and 4.

Nuclear power experts and regulators say measures to reduce risks from fuel storage pools in the U.S. are a likely outcome of a 90-day review of safety requirements announced by the NRC on Monday. Borchardt said one item the NRC would likely review was backup power and cooling systems for spent fuel pools at the 104 reactors in the United States.

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A Call for the Safer Handling of Nuclear Waste

Two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami, Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex continues to spread both radiation and distrust of nuclear power as the plant's situation lurches from hopeful to harrowing and back again.

This week, Tokyo Electric Power restored grid power to much of the plant's equipment, bringing instrumentation back to life and, in a few cases, restoring cooling to overheated reactors and spent fuel pools. But on Wednesday, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported that black smoke from Fukushima Daiichi's reactor unit 3 and a spike in radiation around reactor 2 had forced workers to temporarily abandon work to restart the cooling systems.

The struggle to regain control at Fukushima Daiichi has made the global nuclear industry jittery. Italy's cabinet has decided to put its plans for a return to nuclear energy on hold for one year. Earlier this week, U.S. utility NRG Energy and Japan's Toshiba said they were slowing plans to build new reactors at NRG's Bay City, Texas, nuclear plant next year. Their reasons for the delay were the possibility of shifting requirements from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and uncertainty over Tokyo Electric Power's ability to take a planned stake in the project.

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna says it has yet to identify any "significant risk to human health." But in Japan there have been reports of radiation in fresh foods and water, and Tokyo residents with infants were warned by municipal authorities Wednesday not to use tap water after radioactive iodine at roughly double Japan's safety limit for infants was detected at a Tokyo water treatment plant.

Meanwhile, radiation trackers have measured the fission products over North America to reveal the extent of radiation released by the Fukushima accident. The measurements showed that in the first four days following the March 11 quake and tsunami, Fukushima Daiichi released Iodine-131 packing 4x1017 Becquerels of radiation, says Gerhard Wotawa, a radiation tracker at the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna. His team generated the estimates using data from the global detectors installed to enforce nuclear weapons test bans.

Wotawa says Fukushima Daiichi released about one-fifth as much Iodine-131 as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Iodine-131 is short-lived, with a half-life of just eight days, but the resulting carcinogenesis plays out over decades. Elevated thyroid cancer rates linked to Chernobyl's radioactive iodine have yet to decline 25 years later, according to a U.S. National Cancer Institute study published last week.

Fukushima Daiichi released over 3x1016 Becquerels-worth of Cesium-137 in the incident's first four days?about half as much as Chernobyl,  according to Wotawa. Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years; land contaminated by it forced the permanent relocation of more than 100,000 residents from around Chernobyl.

The relatively high level of Cesium-137 is one of several factors suggesting that loss of cooling water protecting spent nuclear fuel in pools above Fukushima Daiichi's reactors caused some of the radioactive releases. Spent fuel contains little Iodine-131, which quickly breaks down once fuel is pulled from a reactor, but it retains lots of Cesium-137.

On Monday, NRC chief of operations William Borchardt said its experts had concluded that "radiation releases and the dose rates" observed at Fukushima Daiichi were "primarily influenced" by loss of cooling water at the fuel storage pools above reactor units 3 and 4.

Nuclear power experts and regulators say measures to reduce risks from fuel storage pools in the U.S. are a likely outcome of a 90-day review of safety requirements announced by the NRC on Monday. Borchardt said one item the NRC would likely review was backup power and cooling systems for spent fuel pools at the 104 reactors in the United States.

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Leaked screenshot shows Windows 8?s System Restore and Reset functions

We love a good Windows 8 leak around these parts, and as it recently became known that Windows 8 will contain a very fast and capable restore/reset function, what we have today is especially interesting. If the following leak is genuine, and we believe that it is, then the image below is of the UI that will be employed by users to both restore and reset their computers. Take a look: The source for the image is the Chinese website Win7China which has been the genesis point for several other Windows 8 leaks. The source page for the leak is here, if you can read Chinese. It has been rumored that faster reset/restore capabilities in Windows 8 will help the OS lend itself to smaller, more mobile devices that are more often refreshed. If you are hungry for more Windows 8 news, check out our coverage of ?Aero Lite,? and be sure to peruse every detail that we have manged to glean from the people building the OS. Windows 8 is set to be, if comments from Microsoft employees hold true, a major refresh of the Windows franchise. Currently leaked screenshots do not yet reflect this shift. As always, more as it comes.

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Delayed Miranda Warning Ordered for Terror Suspects

A three-page F.B.I. memorandum, dated Oct. 21, 2010, also encouraged agents to use a broad interpretation of public safety-related questions. It said that the ?magnitude and complexity? of the terrorist threat justified ?a significantly more extensive public safety interrogation without Miranda warnings than would be permissible in an ordinary criminal case.?

?Depending on the facts, such interrogation might include, for example, questions about possible impending or coordinated terrorist attacks; the location, nature and threat posed by weapons that might post an imminent danger to the public; and the identities, locations, and activities or intentions of accomplices who may be plotting additional imminent attacks,? the memo said.

In the Miranda case, the Supreme Court ruled that if prosecutors want to use statements made by the defendant while in custody against him, police must have warned him of his rights before those statements were made. The court later created an exception for answers to questions about immediate threats to public safety.

The practice of reading Miranda warnings to terrorism suspects arrested in the United States has led to political disputes. In particular, Republicans, seeking to portray the Obama administration as soft on terrorism, criticized the reading of a Miranda warning to the main suspect in the failed bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009.

Obama administration officials said the warnings had not prevented interrogators from gaining intelligence from such suspects, and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, testified in July 2010 that agents were already using a broad interpretation of the public safety exception to the Miranda rule in terrorism cases.

Still, in May 2010 Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. floated the idea of seeking legislation that would ask courts to interpret the public safety exception to allow lengthier questioning of terrorism suspects before the warning. The administration never produced such a proposal. But the October memorandum shows that the Justice Department decided on its own to encourage agents to take a broad interpretation.

The existence of the memorandum was reported by The New York Times in December, but the Justice Department refused to make it public. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published an article containing excerpts from the document, and The Times later obtained access to a full copy.

Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said that the memo could not alter a constitutional right. He portrayed it as clarifying existing flexibility in the rule ? especially when investigators are willing to risk sacrificing the ability to use a suspect?s statements in trial.

In most cases, the memorandum said, after public safety questions have been exhausted, interrogators should advise the terrorism suspect of his rights. But in certain ?exceptional cases,? agents may continue to ask questions without a Miranda warning ?to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat.?

However, it said, such extended questioning must be approved by supervisors who would weigh ?the disadvantages.? A footnote listed precedents ruling that prosecutors could not use self-incriminating statements made by a defendant before a warning.

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Delayed Miranda Warning Ordered for Terror Suspects

A three-page F.B.I. memorandum, dated Oct. 21, 2010, also encouraged agents to use a broad interpretation of public safety-related questions. It said that the ?magnitude and complexity? of the terrorist threat justified ?a significantly more extensive public safety interrogation without Miranda warnings than would be permissible in an ordinary criminal case.?

?Depending on the facts, such interrogation might include, for example, questions about possible impending or coordinated terrorist attacks; the location, nature and threat posed by weapons that might post an imminent danger to the public; and the identities, locations, and activities or intentions of accomplices who may be plotting additional imminent attacks,? the memo said.

In the Miranda case, the Supreme Court ruled that if prosecutors want to use statements made by the defendant while in custody against him, police must have warned him of his rights before those statements were made. The court later created an exception for answers to questions about immediate threats to public safety.

The practice of reading Miranda warnings to terrorism suspects arrested in the United States has led to political disputes. In particular, Republicans, seeking to portray the Obama administration as soft on terrorism, criticized the reading of a Miranda warning to the main suspect in the failed bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner on Dec. 25, 2009.

Obama administration officials said the warnings had not prevented interrogators from gaining intelligence from such suspects, and the F.B.I. director, Robert S. Mueller III, testified in July 2010 that agents were already using a broad interpretation of the public safety exception to the Miranda rule in terrorism cases.

Still, in May 2010 Attorney General Eric H. Holder Jr. floated the idea of seeking legislation that would ask courts to interpret the public safety exception to allow lengthier questioning of terrorism suspects before the warning. The administration never produced such a proposal. But the October memorandum shows that the Justice Department decided on its own to encourage agents to take a broad interpretation.

The existence of the memorandum was reported by The New York Times in December, but the Justice Department refused to make it public. On Thursday, The Wall Street Journal published an article containing excerpts from the document, and The Times later obtained access to a full copy.

Matthew Miller, a Justice Department spokesman, said that the memo could not alter a constitutional right. He portrayed it as clarifying existing flexibility in the rule ? especially when investigators are willing to risk sacrificing the ability to use a suspect?s statements in trial.

In most cases, the memorandum said, after public safety questions have been exhausted, interrogators should advise the terrorism suspect of his rights. But in certain ?exceptional cases,? agents may continue to ask questions without a Miranda warning ?to collect valuable and timely intelligence not related to any immediate threat.?

However, it said, such extended questioning must be approved by supervisors who would weigh ?the disadvantages.? A footnote listed precedents ruling that prosecutors could not use self-incriminating statements made by a defendant before a warning.

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5 cool apps for the iPad 2

For those of you that have purchased the next-generation of iPad, you have access to a wide range of applications that utilize the device?s camera, processor and fullscreen 1080p video output. Aside from Apple?s iPad 2 apps such as iMovie and FaceTime, we?ve rounded up 5 third-party apps specifically designed or tweaked for your new device.

Sure, we?re able to video conference using the iPhone but a tablet is ideal due to the larger screen, especially when an app sports your cam in the picture-in-picture format. Bottom line, using a smartphone screen you can barely see if you?ve spilled coffee on your shirt.

Twitter for iPad

Twitter has just updated its iPad app with a new feature exclusively available for iPad 2 owners ? video and photo capture. Twitter?s official iPad app has been around for a while but now we?re able to send both video and images to the Twitterverse using either the front or back cam. The app is beautiful and combines your network with a built-in browser, real-time searches and trending topics. Managing Twitter on the iPad is a big step up from the experience on a smartphone and best of all, it has been tweaked to capture from the iPad 2. Twitter for iPad is available for free.

PocketBooth HD

Project Box has released a version of its popular iPhone app Pocketbooth specifically for the iPad 2. This photography app produces a strip of retro-style images just like a real photobooth. After snapping a few shots, PocketBooth HD spits out a photostrip of four images, which can be emailed, published to Facebook, printed (using AirPrint) or shared via Twitter. Having four variations of an image in strip-form makes for a cool photo and it encourages your friends to have some fun with the shots. The interface is sleek and it?s a lot cooler on the tablet?s larger screen. PocketBooth HD is compatible with the iPad 2 and costs $1.99.

Real Racing 2 HD

Firemint has just announced it?s rolling out the first iPad app to bring users a high-quality fullscreen experience on the HDTV, sans the black bars around the game.

Real Racing 2 HD?s update takes advantage of fullscreen 1080p output and enables users to plug-in their HDMI adapter to play the game on a bigger screen. As MacStories pointed out, ?The new feature doesn?t use scaling, it?s full HD being mirrored to the TV. It runs at 30 frames per second?. The game contains a 10-hour career mode, 30 cars, 15 racing environments and while you?re playing (on the TV) the iPad can be used as a real-time map of your car?s location. The update is coming soon but the app is available for $9.99 in Apple?s app store.

Magic Mirror

Total Immersion is a leader within the augmented reality space and has developed mind-blowing software like the AR helicopter we posted a few weeks back. Augmented reality is another genre not possible using a first generation iPad because it requires a camera to work. AR Magic Mirror will allow users to do things like try on glasses and try out new hairstyles using 3D objects. The app uses Total Immersion?s D?Fusion platform and will support facial recognition and facial tracking so the objects will stay in place (on your face) while you move. This app hasn?t hit the market yet but when it does, Total Immersion will be offering it for free.

Junaio for iPad 2

Metaio has accomplished some ground breaking stuff with its augmented reality browser Junaio. Last summer the company hit us with Junaio Man, an animated 3D object powered by its AR channel Glue. A new video that surfaced last week, confirms that the Junaio browser is coming to the iPad 2. By the looks of the video, the iPad 2?s display dramatically improves the AR experience because it captures a larger scope of objects within an environment. It will also support features such as 360 degree views of other environments that can be controlled by the iPad?s camera.

Many of the current iPad apps are being updated and optimized to run faster on the iPad 2. If you know of a great app or feature specifically design for the iPad 2, please post it in the comments. On a side note, if you?ve been dying to use iMovie on your iPad 1 there?s a way to do it by installing Apple?s iPhone Configuration Utility.

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A Call for the Safer Handling of Nuclear Waste

Two weeks after the earthquake and tsunami, Japan's crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power complex continues to spread both radiation and distrust of nuclear power as the plant's situation lurches from hopeful to harrowing and back again.

This week, Tokyo Electric Power restored grid power to much of the plant's equipment, bringing instrumentation back to life and, in a few cases, restoring cooling to overheated reactors and spent fuel pools. But on Wednesday, Japan's Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency reported that black smoke from Fukushima Daiichi's reactor unit 3 and a spike in radiation around reactor 2 had forced workers to temporarily abandon work to restart the cooling systems.

The struggle to regain control at Fukushima Daiichi has made the global nuclear industry jittery. Italy's cabinet has decided to put its plans for a return to nuclear energy on hold for one year. Earlier this week, U.S. utility NRG Energy and Japan's Toshiba said they were slowing plans to build new reactors at NRG's Bay City, Texas, nuclear plant next year. Their reasons for the delay were the possibility of shifting requirements from the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and uncertainty over Tokyo Electric Power's ability to take a planned stake in the project.

The International Atomic Energy Agency in Vienna says it has yet to identify any "significant risk to human health." But in Japan there have been reports of radiation in fresh foods and water, and Tokyo residents with infants were warned by municipal authorities Wednesday not to use tap water after radioactive iodine at roughly double Japan's safety limit for infants was detected at a Tokyo water treatment plant.

Meanwhile, radiation trackers have measured the fission products over North America to reveal the extent of radiation released by the Fukushima accident. The measurements showed that in the first four days following the March 11 quake and tsunami, Fukushima Daiichi released Iodine-131 packing 4x1017 Becquerels of radiation, says Gerhard Wotawa, a radiation tracker at the Central Institute for Meteorology and Geodynamics in Vienna. His team generated the estimates using data from the global detectors installed to enforce nuclear weapons test bans.

Wotawa says Fukushima Daiichi released about one-fifth as much Iodine-131 as the 1986 Chernobyl accident. Iodine-131 is short-lived, with a half-life of just eight days, but the resulting carcinogenesis plays out over decades. Elevated thyroid cancer rates linked to Chernobyl's radioactive iodine have yet to decline 25 years later, according to a U.S. National Cancer Institute study published last week.

Fukushima Daiichi released over 3x1016 Becquerels-worth of Cesium-137 in the incident's first four days?about half as much as Chernobyl,  according to Wotawa. Cesium-137 has a half-life of 30 years; land contaminated by it forced the permanent relocation of more than 100,000 residents from around Chernobyl.

The relatively high level of Cesium-137 is one of several factors suggesting that loss of cooling water protecting spent nuclear fuel in pools above Fukushima Daiichi's reactors caused some of the radioactive releases. Spent fuel contains little Iodine-131, which quickly breaks down once fuel is pulled from a reactor, but it retains lots of Cesium-137.

On Monday, NRC chief of operations William Borchardt said its experts had concluded that "radiation releases and the dose rates" observed at Fukushima Daiichi were "primarily influenced" by loss of cooling water at the fuel storage pools above reactor units 3 and 4.

Nuclear power experts and regulators say measures to reduce risks from fuel storage pools in the U.S. are a likely outcome of a 90-day review of safety requirements announced by the NRC on Monday. Borchardt said one item the NRC would likely review was backup power and cooling systems for spent fuel pools at the 104 reactors in the United States.

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Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Gaming 23 - The Touch of Gordon

Posted on 21st Mar 2011 at 11:43 by Podcast with 9 comments

This weeks gaming podcast sees Harry, Paul, Joe and Clive sit down to discuss some of the games we've been playing and reviewing lately. First up for the bit-tech treatment is the Crysis 2 demo which Harry has been playing. It's only a small part of the multiplayer portion of the game but it's an interesting window into what direction the rest of the game will take.

We also discuss Clive's review of Shogun 2: Total War and what he liked and disliked about the game. After that Joe takes us through his experiences with Dragon Age 2 and why he doesn't like the game, but still gave it a 7/10.


As always, we've also set up our weekly competition too, the lucky winner of which will walk away with a Mionix Propus 380 mousepad. This beast of a mouse mat should provide the perfect tracking surface, whichever mouse you choose to use.

As ever, the bit-tech hardware podcast features music by Brad Sucks, and was recorded on Shure microphones. This edition of the podcast was also sponsored by Darkspore. You can download the podcast direct, listen in-browser or subscribe through iTunes using the links below. Also, be sure to let us know your thoughts about the discussion in the forums.

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