Gaming Capital of the World

Think of the cities of the world which are renowned as hotbeds of innovative technology and Helsinki might not be near the top of the list.  However, the often snow-covered streets of this relatively quiet northern European capital are home to some of the most ambitious and successful games makers in the world.


The first Angry Bird was flicked across the screen of an iPad in Helsinki, it's home of major games studios like Clash of Clans maker Supercell, and is also the place Netflix has chosen to set up its first ever internal gaming studio. "Why Helsinki? It is home to some of the best game talent in the world," the streamer has said.  As a result of all this, the Finnish capital is considered by many to be the capital of mobile gaming, an industry currently worth an estimated £120bn to the global economy.


Which leads to an obvious question, how did it develop this reputation?  In the 1980s and 1990s, Finland wasn't considered to be one of the wealthiest countries in the world.  Much of the population relied on computers that were far from top of the range. The restrictions that came with that would help fuel what was known as the "demoscene" - a subculture which saw programmers create art presentations, music and games that pushed the technology of the time to the limits of its power.


Finns became used to doing a lot with very little, and then along came Nokia.  Sonja Ängeslevä, CEO of Phantom Gamelabs, which is based in Helsinki, says this foundation is a significant reason behind the success of the games industry in the city today: "Nokia showed an example that we could build something big from here," she explains.


As a games maker, board member of the successful console developer Remedy games and the founder of a new development studio, Sonja knows the Finnish games sector inside out.  READ MORE...

Scent Dogs

 Background

As the COVID-19 pandemic continues to spread, early, ideally real-time, identification of SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals is pivotal in interrupting infection chains. Volatile organic compounds produced during respiratory infections can cause specific scent imprints, which can be detected by trained dogs with a high rate of precision.

Methods
Eight detection dogs were trained for 1 week to detect saliva or tracheobronchial secretions of SARS-CoV-2 infected patients in a randomized, double-blinded and controlled study.

Results

The dogs were able to discriminate between samples of infected (positive) and non-infected (negative) individuals with average diagnostic sensitivity of 82.63% (95% confidence interval [CI]: 82.02–83.24%) and specificity of 96.35% (95% CI: 96.31–96.39%). During the presentation of 1012 randomized samples, the dogs achieved an overall average detection rate of 94% (±3.4%) with 157 correct indications of positive, 792 correct rejections of negative, 33 incorrect indications of negative or incorrect rejections of 30 positive sample presentations.

Conclusions
These preliminary findings indicate that trained detection dogs can identify respiratory secretion samples from hospitalized and clinically diseased SARS-CoV-2 infected individuals by discriminating between samples from SARS-CoV-2 infected patients and negative controls. This data may form the basis for the reliable screening method of SARS-CoV-2 infected people.  >>>TO READ ENTIRE ARTICLE, CLICK HERE...