Video-game Technology may Give an Impetus to New Drugs' Development

A new technology employed in video games may assist in speeding up the development of new products and potentially life-saving drugs.

C and EN Associate Editor Lauren K. Wolf notes that consumer demand for life-like avatars and interactive scenery has pushed computer firms to develop inexpensive yet sophisticated graphics hardware called graphics processing units, or GPUs.

Mobile Video Game to Train You to Choose Healthier Diet
A candidate from Georgia Tech College of Computing has shown that playing health-related video games on a mobile device can help adults learn to live more healthfully by making smart diet choices.

The graphical units work in conjunction with traditional central processing units (CPUs) - the "brains" of desktop and laptop computers - and accelerate the rendering of three-dimensional images in games such as Prince of Persia and Guitar Hero.

Unlike the traditional general-purpose CPUs, GPUs are customized for graphics operations and have many more transistors.

The article notes that manufacturers have developed GPUs that are having a big impact on chemistry, breezing through computations that once would have required all the processing power of a supercomputer.

CT Scan Radiation can be Reduced With Video Game Processors
A new way to process X-ray data can help reduce the amount of radiation patients receive during cone beam CT scans.

Chemists have embraced the technology to simulate the movement of molecules in the quest to develop new drugs and materials for solar cells and other products.

The big edge GPUs have over CPUs is in speed, reducing processing times from years to months and months to weeks.

Brit Widow Got So Obsessed With a Video Game That She Starved Her Dogs to Death
A Brit widow and a mother of three children got so involved in the virtual world of computers for six months, that she forgot to make proper food for her kids.

The article was published in the latest issue of Chemical and Engineering News (C and EN), ACS' weekly newsmagazine.

Source-ANI

Heavy Rain: Video Game Meets Film Noir, Releasing This Week
With critics saying many Hollywood movies look like videogames, French game-maker Quantic dream this week bucks the trend with Heavy Rain , an interactive adventure that plays like