On the Northeast edge of the island of Enterra a small settlement named the Arboretum has been founded by a faction of settlers calling themselves “Nathura”. As the name suggests, this is a nature-venerating society consisting primarily of scientists who refused to take sides in the ongoing conflict between Continoma and Noir; instead they chose to focus their knowledge and resources on the betterment of the last piece of inhabitable earth. Under the leadership of ex-Continoma Chief Geneticist Kiga, the people of the Arboretum have learned to be self-sufficient and to provide for themselves using only the natural resources that surround them. That leaves the settlement fairly independent from outside interests and allows Nathura to focus on taming the post-war mutated flora and fauna of the island and forming a peaceful and, even more important, symbiotic relationship between men and nature where both exist in perfect equilibrium and mutual benefit.

To the East of the Arboretum one will find the lush tree-gardens of the Bountiful Orchards. An unsuspecting observer might find this name misleading at first, as no fruit ever grows on the branches; however, these plants provide all of Nathura’s essential needs including energy, water, and food. Genetically engineered creatures called the Volvox labor day and night to extract all excess energy and nutrition elements not needed by the trees for an adequate rate of growth. Those colonial organisms then spread their harvest amongst their cells where a bio-chemical process occurs that both supplies the Volvoxes’ energy needs and transforms the leftover elements into different forms useful for the humans. Necessities such as clean water, bio-electricity and even an edible, but tasteless puree, are later deposited through the horn-like protrusion on the Volvoxes’ head in collectors stations where the creature has been programmed to breed and nest.

The World of Warcraft is one of numerous possibilities. Players can take on many roles, including: healing, tanking, and damage. The hunter class is one of the most popular DPS classes in the game. Many new players choose the class because it is the “coolest” in their opinion. Who wouldn’t want to have a gun or bow, and have a badass pet fighting for them? The hunter class offers new players a fun and fairly simple experience for their first character. I’ll admit, my first character was a dwarf hunter, and I played him for about two years. I love the hunter class! However, the main problem is the unfortunately named hunt@#d stereotype.

Definition of ‘Hunt@#d’: “A derogatory term used to refer to dumbass hunters in the MMORPG ‘World of Warcraft’ who are clueless about their class and how to play.” While not particularly the nicest way of putting it, that just about sums it up. While killing monsters may be simple for hunters due to their high damage shots and help from a pet, playing a hunter efficiently with groups and achieving maximum DPS (damage per second) is much more difficult. However, if you can play the class well, you can do some serious damage.

In group play, inexperienced hunters, or hunt@#ds, can cause major headaches for the other members of the party. Many small mistakes can cause big disasters. It only gets worse in endgame content. I’ve seen hunt@#ds cause 25 man raids to wipe because of a single stupid mistake. /facepalm ! This is why group leaders are often wary of bringing in hunters that they don’t personally know to a raid.

So you have just installed WoW and you think hunters are totally badass? Well they are! But you don’t want to be called a hunt@#d do you? Well, let’s talk about the most basic decisions. Horde vs. Alliance – it’s really up to you. I loved the look of the dwarves, so I chose alliance. Here are the classes that can hunt, and some info about them:

Here’s a chance for gamers to redeem themselves; to be specific those gamers who chickened out at the med school. Altus has announced that a new entry to its Trauma Center Series will come out in spring 2010, and it will be called Trauma Team. The game has been announced for Nintendo Wii. Trauma Team will make a departure from the usual stuff and will allow gamers to take on six different roles: general surgeon, diagnostician, EMT, orthopedic surgeon, endoscope technician or medical examiner. (The levels at this invites screw-ups is already making me rub hands in glee!). Atlus touts dynamic story sequences, hand-drawn art style, and quality voice acting that make Trauma Team “the ultimate medical entertainment experience!” Guess we’ll know when the time comes. Keep your gloves powered meanwhile.

The image atop isn’t what we intended to begin this informative narrative with, but the secrecy maintained by the departments developing the Robocop type arms detector leaves us no choice. The detector would make things easier for the officers who are under the constant threat of an unannounced attack as they are not able to detect weaponry on time. Thanks to this scanner, the policemen could now have an idea of the kind of weapon a suspect possess from a safe distance and hence parry an emergency protocol. This scanner uses microwaves to pickup reflections from a concealed weapon. It also employs a neural network technology that replicates the human problem solving process to make diagnoses, thereby identifying a weapon subtly from an everyday item.

I know the Robocop coming in 2010 (supposedly) will be bestowed with even better weaponry, but for the real world cops, even the scanner developed by Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), the Metropolitan Police and the Home Office Scientific Development Branch is a big enough blessing. We expect to see them being thoroughly used in a couple of years time as the current tests have been very promising. The rest is all a ‘secret’.