Alprazolam, better known as Xanax, is used to treat anxiety disorders and panic attacks. It is also one of the most prescribed psychiatric drugs in America. Notice the caveat: psychiatric drugs. When it comes to the most prescribed drugs in America, my favorite comes in at number 9: Amoxicillin (antibiotic). The number one prescribed drug in America is a combination of Hydrocodone and Acetaminophen. You might recognize acetaminophen as the active ingredient in Tylenol. 128.2 million prescriptions were written in 2009. The online magazine Good has published an infographic on the top prescribed psychiatric drugs in America. Click on the link below to see the full graphic.
The pharmaceutical industry spends a lot of money marketing their newest psychiatric drugs to Americans. And we take a lot of them. In fact, in 2009 alone, U.S. doctors wrote more psychiatric prescriptions than there are people in this country. This is a look at 2009′s 10 most prescribed psychiatric drugs (in both their brand-name and generic forms). Don’t worry, there’s a pill for that.
Autodesk’s new 3dsMax 2011 comes with the newly updated Mental Ray 3.8, but doesn’t expose all of the new features. In an article for CGSociety, Jamie Cardoso takes a look at it and breaks down what you can and cannot get to from the 3dsMax UI, and some of the details involved. He gets into such details like:
Although the ctrl_ghost_settings for 3ds Max 2011 come with additional features supported by mental ray such as Final Gather; Image Based Lighting; progressive rendering; Iray; Ambient Occlusion Cache; etc, most of them are still being optimised, fixed and/or not fully integrated. Currently, the features that users may find quite useful for production are the importons and irradiance particles.
A supernova occurs when a star explodes. This can occur when a massive star runs out of fuel for nuclear fusion and undergoes a gravitational collapse into a neutron star or black hole. Another way that it can occur is when two white dwarf stars merge, or one white dwarf star parasitically accumulates mass from a nearby star. On average, one supernova will occur in the Milky Way every 50 years.
Researches at the Max Planck Institute for Astrophysics in Garching have carried out the most detailed computer simulations of a supernova. Their simulation looks at a supernova generated by a massive star undergoing a gravitational collapse.
This is a three-dimensional explosion simulation at about 0.5 seconds after core ignited. The bluish, almost transparent surface is the shock front with an average radius of 1900 km. (Credit: Image: Max Planck Institute)
An interesting statistical analysis of the 10 most popular pets in the US, based on data from the US Humane Society and the American Veterinary Medical Association, comes from the New York Times.
A nice clean design that does a good job conveying the information, and forgoes splashy color for clarity. I was a bit surprised to see so few Hamsters in the world.
The Support Our Law Enforcement and Safe Neighborhoods Act is a controversial law that says an alien must carry legal documents while in Arizona, or else it is state misdemeanor crime. This has lead to calls for people, businesses, and others to boycott the state. Mint takes a look at what the cost of such a boycott would be in their latest infographic. Click on the link below to see the full graphic.
Arizona is under fire — and not because of its dry climate. Ever since April 23, when Governor Jan Brewer signed a new bill that aims to identify, prosecute and deport illegal immigrants, the state has found itself the target of stark criticism and numerous boycott threats. Conferences and conventions scheduled to take place in Arizona have been canceled and headed to other states, and some groups are calling for baseball players to boycott the 2011 MLB All Star Game, slated to take place in Phoenix. Here, we take a look at the potential losses Arizona stands to suffer if Americans were to boycott its services or goods.
The European Commission for Economic and Financial Affairs has published an interactive graphic showing the members of the European Union. When you click on a country in the EU, you can find out what the economic forecasts are for the county. Given the recent troubles with Greece, let us hope that their forecasts are worth something. Anyway, the statistics that they give you are:
GDP growth
Inflation
Unemployment Rate
Public budget balance
Current account balance
It is nice to see more governments doing things like this.
Everyone who’s programmed in OpenGL is familiar with the trademark ‘Red Book’, the foundation of OpenGL reference material. This week’s resource goes out to that classic Tome and adds in the OpenGL Shading Language into a great box set, the OpenGL Library (5th Edition).
This boxed set includes:
The best-selling OpenGL®Programming Guide, Seventh Edition, which covers the latest releases of OpenGL, Versions 3.0 and 3.1, and includes a 16-page color insert. This is the definitive guide to graphics programming with OpenGL, the platform-independent standard for professional-quality 3D graphics.
The popular OpenGL®Shading Language, Third Edition, which addresses the more integrated nature of the shading language in OpenGL 3.0 and 3.1, with key coverage of special shading techniques, light and shading techniques, light and shadow shaders, and multipass shaders.
Plus: A bonus schematic poster of the OpenGL Machine for both the 3.0 and 3.1 versions of OpenGL
All of the Apple-lovers in your life have a reason to be happy today, as this is the Launch Day of Valve Software’s Steam platform for Mac (which we’ve been anxiously awaiting for 3 months!). Not only the game distribution platform, but some of their most popular games. On launch (today) they have Portal, and a 3rd party title named Torchlight. They plan to release new games every Wednesday as they continue to port their library of games to the new platform. But games aren’t the only thing:
In addition to bringing the online functionality of Steam to the Mac, Valve will also make its Steamworks suite of publishing and development tools available on the Mac platform. These include product key authentication, copy protection, auto-updating, social networking, matchmaking, anti-cheat technology, and more. The features and services available in Steamworks are offered free of charge and may be used for both electronic and tangible versions of games.
Autodesk’s new 3dsMax 2011 comes with the newly updated Mental Ray 3.8, but doesn’t expose all of the new features. In an article for CGSociety, Jamie Cardoso takes a look at it and breaks down what you can and cannot get to from the 3dsMax UI, and some of the details involved. He gets into such details like:
An interesting statistical analysis of the 10 most popular pets in the US, based on data from the US Humane Society and the American Veterinary Medical Association, comes from the New York Times.
All of the Apple-lovers in your life have a reason to be happy today, as this is the Launch Day of Valve Software’s Steam platform for Mac (which we’ve been anxiously awaiting 
VizWorld.com 
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