Polymer for iPhone review: an addicting shape-creating puzzle game

Here's another gem to add to your puzzle game collection - Polymer for iPhone. In Polymer, your goal is create shapes, called polymers, by sliding around the rows and columns. A polymer isn't complete unless all the ends (which are marked with black dots) are closed.

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Mommy & Me: Victoria and Harper Beckham?s Chic Travel Style

See the mother-daughter duo's chic travel outfits for their China trip.

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Google asks car makers 'Ullo John, wanna self-driving motor?'

Larry Page's tenure as Googler-in-chief has heralded the death of many ambitious experiments, but even he refuses to kill the self-driving car. His project head, Anthony Levandowski, has now asked the car makers of Detroit to sign up with Mountain View for hardware testing, saying that if driverless cars are not ready by the next decade, then it's "shame on us as engineers." There's still some way to go before the tech is road-worthy, but Google is already working with insurers to work out how your car is going to handle making that call to Geico when things go wrong.

Continue reading Google asks car makers 'Ullo John, wanna self-driving motor?'

Google asks car makers 'Ullo John, wanna self-driving motor?' originally appeared on Engadget on Thu, 26 Apr 2012 06:29:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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'Five-Year Engagement' More 'Real' Than Most Rom-Coms

'It's a very real exploration of how a couple, the power dynamic changes after five years,' Jason Segel tells MTV News.
By Matt Goodhue, with reporting by Kara Warner

Emily Blunt and Jason Segel in "The Five-Year Engagement"
Photo: Universal Pictures

Romantic comedies all seem to follow the same cinematic blueprint: Boy meets girl. Boy and girl fall in love. An obstacle tears them apart. The two overcome all and get together right before the end credits roll.

While movies of this genre are great for a first date, the story can usually be predicted before entering the theater (and perhaps sometimes by just reading the film's title). With Jason Segel and 's latest movie, The Five-Year Engagement, the two stress that the story avoids the traditional, sappy rom-com formula and presents a fresh look at the genre.

"This starts with the engagement," Segel told MTV News. "I think it's a very real exploration of how a couple, the power dynamic changes after five years."

Segel is certainly one for comedic performances. But with a recent role in "Jeff Who Lives at Home" under his belt, the multitalented actor proves he can deliver an honest, reflective performance as well. Blunt ("Salmon Fishing in the Yemen" and "The Adjustment Bureau") is no stranger to dramatic roles either. "It's got a little bit of everything, that's what I love about it," Segel said. "It's hilarious, and there are some broad [comedic] moments and there are very sad, solemn moments."

Relationships are far from perfect, which is certainly not the case in most Hollywood films. But "The Five-Year Engagement" promises an organic and truthful portrayal of a young couple.

"What's nice about this is it does feel like a very, very real relationship," Blunt said. "They're desperately struggling to be together and make it perfect. And they are incredibly loving of each other, but yet they're struggling. Life gets in the way and the dynamics change."

It will be refreshing to see Segel and Blunt portray such a natural and troubled relationship onscreen. While the film is certain to give the audience laughs, it also seems like the story will hit home for lots of couples sitting in the audience.

"It's one of the things I'm most proud of in my entire career," Segel said.

Check out everything we've got on "The Five-Year Engagement."

For breaking news, celebrity columns, humor and more — updated around the clock — visit MTVMoviesBlog.com.

Related Videos

• MTV Rough Cut: 'The Five-Year Engagement'

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Dropbox Morphs into Megaupload With Direct Sharing of Anything in Your Account [Dropbox]

There's no more fussing about with shared folders when using Dropbox any more, as the cloud storage service has just added the ability to share ANY file in your Dropbox account. More »

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DIY Cellphone has the footprint of an ice cream sandwich, definitely doesn't run ICS (hands-on)

Building your own wireless communications device isn't for the faint of heart, or the law-abiding -- the FCC tends to prefer placing its own stamp of approval on devices that utilize US airwaves, making a homegrown mobile phone an unlikely proposition. That didn't stop a team at the MIT Media Lab from creating such a DIY kit, however. Meet the Do-It-Yourself Cellphone. This wood-based mobile rig, while it's currently in the prototype phase (where it may indefinitely remain), would eventually ship with a circuit board, control pad, a fairly beefy antenna and a monochrome LCD. Sounds like it'd be right at home at some kid's garage workshop in the early '80s, not showcased at an MIT open house. The argument here is that people spend more time with their phone than with any other device, so naturally they'd want to build one to their liking. Nowadays, folks expect their pocketable handset to enable them to not only place and receive phone calls, but also store phone numbers, offer a rechargeable battery, and, well, in some cases even send and receive email, and surf the web -- none of which are available with such a kit.

The prototype we saw was fully functional. It could place calls. It could receive calls. There was even Caller ID! The phone does indeed feel homemade, with its laser-cut plywood case and a design that lacks some of the most basic gadget essentials, like a rechargeable battery (or at very least some provisions for replacing the 9-volt inside without unscrewing the case). Audio quality sounded fine, and calls went out and came in without a hitch -- there's a SIM card slot inside, letting you bring the nondescript phone to the carrier of your choice. Does it work? Yes. Is it worth dropping $100-150 in parts to build a jumbo-sized phone with a microscopic feature set? No, there's definitely nothing smart about the DIY Cellphone. If you want to throw together your own handset, however, and not risk anyone questioning the legitimacy of your homemade claim, you might want to keep an eye out for this to come to market. The rest of you will find everything you need in the video just past the break. We're just happy to have walked away without any splinters.

Gallery: MIT Media Lab: DIY Cellphone

Continue reading DIY Cellphone has the footprint of an ice cream sandwich, definitely doesn't run ICS (hands-on)

DIY Cellphone has the footprint of an ice cream sandwich, definitely doesn't run ICS (hands-on) originally appeared on Engadget on Wed, 25 Apr 2012 12:22:00 EDT. Please see our terms for use of feeds.

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Polar bears emerged far earlier than thought, DNA study indicates (+video)

Polar bears were previously thought to have split from brown bears some 150,000 years ago. But a study of the bears' mitochondrial DNA indicates that they became a distinct species about 600,000 years ago.?

Polar bears have been chilling on the ice far longer than is generally thought, new research suggests, and they probably interbred with brown bears at one point after the two species separated.

Skip to next paragraph Flocke the baby polar bear in this video was taught to crawl by the zookeepers at Nuremberg Zoo.

The new German study contradicts data from a study published last July in the journal Current Biology that suggested polar bears?separated from brown bears?150,000 years ago. The new study analyzed the bears' mitochondrial DNA, a special "additional genome" that lives in the cell's energy factories and is passed down only from the mother. The new study concludes that the bears became separate species closer to 600,000 years ago.

If the polar bears were only 150,000 years old, as suggested by the previous study, they would have had to evolve many specialized traits in a curiously brief time, the German researchers said.

"I've been long puzzled by the suggestion that the polar bears would have been such a miraculous and rapidly evolving species," Frank Hailer of the Senckenberg Nature Research Society in Frankfurt told LiveScience. "I had this lingering question: Is it really true?"

Nuclear problem solver

Hailer and his colleagues looked at the polar bear's nuclear DNA, which comes from both parents and is much larger than the mitochondrial genome. [Fun Facts About Polar Bears]

They compared 9,000 base-pair sequences (the chemicals that make up the "rungs" of DNA's ladderlike molecule) from the nuclear DNA of 45 polar, brown and black bears. This comparison let the researchers build a family tree, with the idea that the greater the genetic differences between the species, the farther they were apart in evolutionary time. They were able to estimate when the polar bears and brown bears separated.

"We found that polar bears are much older than we previously knew from other studies; their appearance dated to about 600,000 years ago," Hailer said. "That would make sense around that time for something like a?polar bear to evolve, because Arctic habitats were much larger than they are today, so there would have been much larger habitats that would have been suitable for a species like a polar bear."

Adapting to environment

The researchers say the mitochondrial DNA data could have come from a hybridization event between polar and brown bears 150,000 years ago during the last warm interglacial period. During that time, sea ice melted and polar bears took to the shores, where they came into?contact with brown bears.

The researchers say this hybridization (similar to the hybrid "grolar" or "pizzly" bears seen in recent years in Canada) would have introduced the brown bear mitochondrial DNA into the polar bear population. If the DNA from the brown bears helped the polar bears survive the warm period, it's possible it could have easily spread throughout the population.

It seems "the polar bear population at the time they?hybridized with brown bears?was very small," Hailer said. "The impact of hybridization was very large, so the piece of mitochondrial DNA that came from brown bears to polar bears replaced all the original polar bear mitochondrial DNA."

This study appears in the April 20 issue of the journal Science.

You can follow LiveScience staff writer Jennifer Welsh on?Twitter, on?Google+?or on?Facebook. Follow LiveScience for the latest in science news and discoveries on?Twitter?and on?Facebook.

Copyright 2012?LiveScience, a TechMediaNetwork company. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

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