Did you have one of those games, Operation, when you were a kid or did one of your friends? That was the game with the silly clown body on cardboard with cut out holes, in which you would find various white body parts that you had to remove with a pair of tweezers. But you had to watch out because if you touched the side of the hole, ZAP! The red nose lit up and a buzzer went off. You lost.
Since video games have come about, it’s not surprising to know that the old Operation games have been left in …read more

Move Over Cluedo…Fluedo has arrived
Trust the British to come up with a unique, even bizarre, way to combat Swine H1N1 flu.
Most governments are focusing on helplines, information on anti-viral drugs, and specialized clinics.
But British health chiefs have looked outside the square and created The Flu Pandemic Game.
It’s a role-playing game that simulates ‘the effects of a flu pandemic on staffing in an imaginary group of small businesses’ through the role of the dice and chance cards.
The players (3 to 60) assume staff identities at imaginary workplaces. The game has 15 rounds that represent 15 weeks of work. The players learn …read more

Despite all the smoking bans in place, there are still some places, such as casinos, where workers are still consistently exposed to second hand smoke.
A new study, funded by the Flight Attendent Medical Institute, finds that casino workers face higher risks of heart disease and lung disease because a smoke filled work environment.
In the study, the air quality in three Pennsylvania casinos was tested for levels of two indicators of tobacco smoke – cancer-causing chemicals and particles small enough to inhale. 
At the same time, eight volunteers, each of whom spent four hours in the casinos, provided urine samples which were …read more

People bet on the horses, football, basketball, and pretty much any sport in between. So why not bet on weight loss? That’s what over a 1,000 dieters in the United Kingdom have signed up for on the StickK website.
The American based start-up was created last year by two Yale professors who wanted to help people achieve their goals and objectives by enabling them to form Commitment Contracts.
Dieters in the UK have been joining up and betting on their ability to lose a specified amount of weight in a specified time frame. If  you don’t succeed,  you lose money.
But you don’t …read more

 A recent UK study has found that playing the computer based puzzle game Tetris soon after witnessing a traumatic event might just help erase memories of the events witnessed.
In the study, forty participants between the ages of 18 and 47 were subjected to a 12 minute video that featured horrific images of physical injury and death. After watching the video, all the participants were then kept busy for the next half hour filling out forms. Then 20 of the participants were installed in front of computers screens and instructed to play Tetris for 10 minutes. The other 20 participants were left to sit quietly …read more

Most of us use the toilet, well, to put it delicately, to relieve the body of no longer needed products.
But for two Belgian beer fans, that’s simply not enough. Seems that they think you should be able to relieve yourself and shot aliens or slalom down ski slopes at the same time.
To that end, they designed and have recently released the ‘Place to Pee’ video game. It’s set up in a booth and caters for two users at a time. Gamers (ie pee-ers) score by aiming and hitting sensors positioned on either side of the urinal.
And ladies, if you think …read more

Protein folding as a competitive sport?
Sounds bizarre but researchers at the University of Washington are hoping that Foldit, a new computer game will help uncover the key to medical mysteries ranging from Alzheimer’s Disease to vaccines.
There are more than 100,000 different kinds of proteins in the human body. These proteins form cells, make up the immune system, and determine the speed of chemical reactions.
Scientists already know the genetic sequence of many of the proteins but not how they fold up into the complext shapes that play the crucial biological roles within the human body.
This is where Foldit comes in.
This computer …read more

Fancy yourself a surgeon? You might want to try out this interactive online game. You’ve got 60 seconds to save Fred once his heart stops. Do you have the (sorry) right stuffing?
10mg Interactive / Bunny Surgery

Obviously, there are varying reaction times from person to person, but did you know that you have a fairly wide range of variance when it comes to your own personal reaction time? And it’s something most people can train themselves to improve. (Drag racers and FPS pwnrs take note.)
Check it out:
Reaction Time Trainer – Gamefudge

This is how you will die before you win Powerball, statistically speaking…

1 in 78: Automotive accident
1 in 314: Assault by firearm
1 in 1,313: Medical/Surgical complication
1 in 2,360: Fall down stairs
1 in 3,060: Drowning/submersion while in/falling into natural water
1 in 4,284: Choking on food
1 in 7,278: Pool drowning
1 in 8,988: Fall from a ladder
1 in 27,559: Caught between (non-automotive) objects
1 in 62,468: Legal execution
1 in 79,746: Lightning Strike
1 in 124,936: Explosion/rupture of pressurized device
1 in 340,733: Fireworks discharge
1 in 500,000: Struck by extra-terrestrial object
1 in 1,249,356: Ignition or melting of nightwear
1 in 1,874,034: Contact with venomous snake/lizard
1 in 146,107,962: Winning Powerball

Good …read more