When a herd of elephant ancestors walked through mud in the Arabian Desert about 7 million years ago, they unwittingly left their footprints—and clues about their behavior behind. Those prints now expose how the herd behaved: Just like modern elephants, they followed a female leader.

The remarkable 260-meter-long track-way, made by at least 13 proboscideans of different sizes, is at the site of Mleisa 1 in the Al Gharbia region of Abu Dhabi Emirate. Using a kite-mounted camera to take aerial photographs of the footprints,

At least four journals have been warned by an attorney this month to hold off distributing health data they may have under review. The admonition which concerns a large U.S. study of the effect of diesel exhaust on miners’ lungs—eame from Henry Chajet, an attorney at the Patton Boggs firm in Washington, D.C., and lobbyist for the Mining Awareness Resource Group, an industry coalition. Editors at two U.K.-based publications—Occupational and Environmental Medicine and The Annals of Occupational Hygiene—say they and others received a letter from Chajet advising against “publication or other distribution” of the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS) until it is vetted by Chajet’s industry clients and a U.S. House committee.

Chajet and others involved in the DEMS fracas, including researchers, declined to comment, as a court decision is pending. DEMS has been entangled in litigation almost from its start in 1992. The mining coalition has argued that DEMS is flawed, and it won a court order enforcing their right to preview data for 90 days before publication. DEMS leaders have argued against the restrictions in the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans, Louisiana.
A ruling is expected soon.

A protracted legal battle over an $11.5-million health study into whether diesel exhaust damages the lungs of miners has suddenly widened to take on scientific peer review. Editors with at least four research publications say they have received a letter advising them against “publication or other distribution” of data and draft documents. The warning, including a vague statement about “consequences” that could ensue if the advice is ignored, is signed by Henry Chajet, an attorney at the Patton Boggs firm in Washington, D.C., and a lobbyist for the Mining Awareness Resource Group, which works on behalf of the mining industry.

Chajet declined to comment, but his letter makes it clear that he seeks to persuade journals to delay publishing or distributing papers containing results from the Diesel Exhaust in Miners Study (DEMS), a government-funded research project. His letter pointed out that a coalition of mining industry groups are legally entitled to review data from the study before publication. Other lawyers and researchers involved in the case also declined comment because the 2-decade-long dispute over DEMS is now under review in the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans.

The diesel study, for which planning began in 1992, is run jointly by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health (NIOSH) and the National Cancer Institute (NCI). It has monitored the health of more than 12,000 miners exposed to diesel exhaust in underground spaces. One goal of the study (which controls for smoking) was to learn how many miners developed lung cancer. NIOSH currently classifies diesel exhaust as a “potential human carcinogen,” but new data could prompt a revision of that assessment.

The timing of the release of DEMS data is critical because two prestigious groups, the International Agency for Research on Cancer and the U.S. National Toxicology Program are set to review their standards on the health risks of diesel exhaust. Their decisions could have financial consequences for many users of diesel engines, particularly in lawsuits claiming harm.

An industry coalition, including the Mining Awareness Resource Group, has long argued that DEMS was scientifically flawed. The coalition first took the federal government to court in the 1990s arguing that the industry needed to be more involved in DEMS oversight. The case has gone through multiple hearings (details below), resulting in a court order that requires DEMS scientists to turn over all data related to DEMS, including drafts of scientific papers based on that data, to the mining coalition and to the U.S. House of Representatives Committee on Education and the Workforce, which claims jurisdiction over the study. The coalition and committee have the right to review the data for 90 days prior to publication.

Editors at two U.K.-based publications—Occupational and Environmental Medicine (OEM) and The Annals of Occupational Hygiene—say they have received the letter from Chajet warning them not to publish DEMS results or even pass around drafts of papers. Science obtained a copy of the letter, which says, in part, “We respectfully request that you and your counsel carefully consider any intent to publish these [DEMS] papers, as well as the impact and consequences of any such publication.” It continues: “[W]e provide you with advance notice of this situation in the hope that, if you are considering publication or distribution of these papers, you will refrain from doing so, until the court orders and congressional directions are complied with, or otherwise resolved.” (Read a full copy of the letter.)

Dana Loomis, editor of OEM and an epidemiologist at the University of Nebraska Medical Center in Omaha, says, “I was completely surprised” by the letter, especially since OEM does not have and never had any DEMS paper under consideration. “It’s a vague but threatening letter, and I think its vagueness is what makes it noteworthy,” Loomis says. “It demonstrates how the legal system can be used to restrain scientific communication.” Loomis says he doubts the legal rulings would even apply to scientific journals, especially ones based in another country.

Another recipient, The Annals of Occupational Hygiene, had already published some DEMS work in October 2010—a long, four-part explanation of DEMS’s methodology. (Parts one, two, three, and four available here. The Annals published a rebuttal from six scientists working for the mining groups a few months later, in April 2011.)

Trevor Ogden, a retired physicist and the editor of The Annals, says his journal accepted the four papers in February 2010. Publication usually takes 7 weeks after acceptance, but the various court actions delayed publication in this instance for months. The journal also accepted a fifth paper in February 2011, but is still waiting for permission from DEMS to run it.

Ogden says, “Despite our attempts to be neutral on various controversies, this journal has more frequently been accused of being on the employers’ side. However, I am disgusted by the many actions being taken to delay [the DEMS] publications and prevent their being open to public examination.” Ogden added that the letter he received was sent to two other publishers as well, but they declined to be named.

Loomis says the Journal of the National Cancer Institute already has a paper outlining the main findings of DEMS. A spokesperson refused to comment on whether JNCI had received a letter.

In skipping up and down through the court system, the legal case has stretched almost as long as DEMS and has turned multiple times on bureaucratic minutiae. Early disputes involved whether DEMS ought to include industry representatives on a scientific oversight committee. The two sides also disputed who exactly should have jurisdiction over DEMS. Eventually a court ruling forced DEMS to file a charter with a U.S. House committee. This should have gone through the House Committee on Education and the Workforce. But the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services (which oversees NIOSH and NCI) mistakenly submitted applications to a different committee. This inevitably brought new lawsuits, with accusations that DEMS was trying to “evade transparency.” DEMS personnel did file with the proper Senate committee.

Litigation about the mistaken filing went to the federal court in Lake Charles, Louisiana, where Judge Richard Haik ruled in March 2000 that DEMS had to turn over all data to the mining groups and the House Committee on Education and Workforce. Haik in effect granted them power to stop DEMS from publishing any results.

DEMS leaders appealed, and the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans overturned much of the lower court decision in May 2001, saying that DEMS had the right to publish. However, it affirmed that the scientists had to turn over all data and drafts to the mining coalition and to the House committee for review, and that these reviewers must get the materials at least 90 days before publication.

The legal fracas started up again in 2010 and 2011, as The Annals prepared to publish the four methodological papers. The mining groups charged that DEMS scientists had withheld data and not turned over drafts of papers before submitting them for peer review, violating court orders. The case went back to Judge Haik, who once again ruled in favor of the mining groups, holding the federal government in contempt of court and reaffirming that the DEMS scientists must turn over all data and drafts of any papers they plan to publish. The ruling also ordered the DEMS people to notify scientific journals that the journals were not allowed to circulate any drafts they had already received. This case has since been appealed and argued before the U.S. Court of Appeals in New Orleans; a ruling is expected soon.

Source: http://news.sciencemag.org/scienceinsider/2012/02/journals-warned-to-keep-a-tight.html

By boosting farm yields, Asia’s green revolution of the 1960s and 1970s prevented millions of people from starving. But it also created social and environmental problems, such as contamination of ground water, in some places. To help Africans avoid making the same mistakes, the Gates Foundation today announced a S10 million grant over 3 years to monitor the effects of agriculture on people and the environment.

Conservation International (Cl) will set up computer infrastructure to handle data collected in Tanzania, Ethiopia, Ghana, and two other African countries that are not yet determined. With Columbia University and the Council for Scientific and Industrial Research in South Africa, Cl will give money to local universities, museums, and other institutions to gather information—on the ground and via remote sensing—about agriculture, ecosystems, and human well-being in five regions each roughly the size of Oregon. All of these data will be synthesized into a half-dozen indicators that will be relevant to policymakers. “We want to move forward quickly in implementing this,” says Sandy Andelman, director of the Tropical Ecology, Assessment and Monitoring Net¬work at Conservation International.

Switzerland Janitor Satellites

Space researchers in Switzerland are seek¬ing funding to build a spacecraft, dubbed CieanSpaceOne, that would help reduce space debris in orbit around Earth. The spacecraft would home in on a redundant satellite, grab it, and drag it down to burn up when reentering the atmosphere.

Researchers at the Swiss Space Center at the ficole Polytechnique Federale de Lau-sanne have been working on the necessary technology for 3 years, says Swiss Space Center Director Volker Gass. He also says the spacecraft would cost an estimated $ 11 million to build and launch and could be ready between 2015 and 2017.

Using cameras, the semiautomatic probe would identify the target satellite and use ion microthrustcrs to move next to it and capture it. The combined object will have a new center of gravity, so the probe has to stabilize the trajectory and then guide itself onto a curve toward the atmosphere.

The probe’s potential first target would be a picosatellite called SwissCube, launched in 2009. “Switzerland is a country that likes to keep things clean,” Gass says. “So we decided to first get our own satellite down.”

Space is bad for your eyesight. Changes found in astronauts’ eye tissue may cause vision problems, and possibly even blindness.

Larry Kramer of Texas Medical School in Houston and colleagues carried out MRI scans on 27 NASA astronauts after they had spent an average of 108 days in space. Four had bulging of the optic nerve, three had kinks in the nerve sheath, and six had flattening of the eyeball (Neuroradiology, DOI: io.H48/radiol.i2iii986).

“If astronauts are showing these changes after only 100 days in space, what will happen on a three-year flight to Mars?” asks Jason Kring at the Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Florida.

Work groups with the most members with industry ties were considering illnesses treated by drugs

The new psychiatry “bible” has as many authors with ties to the drug industry as the previous version had. A study now raises concerns over the independence of the Diagnostic and Statistical Manual of Mental Disorders [DSM), published by the American Psychiatric Association (APA) and set for publication in May 2013. For DSM-5, the APA required authors to declare their financial ties to industry and limited the amount they could receive from drug companies to $10,000 a year and stock holdings to $50,000. Lisa Cosgrove of Harvard University and Sheldon Krimsky of Tufts University in Medford, Massachusetts, analysed the financial disclosures of 141 members of the “work groups” drafting the manual. Just as many – 57 per cent – had links to industry as was found in a previous study of DSM-IV (PLoS Medicine, DOI: 10.1371/ journal. pmed.1001190).

What’s more, the work groups that had the most members with industry ties were considering illnesses for which drugs are the front-line treatment and for which proposed changes to diagnosis are especially controversial.

James Scully, medical director of the APA, insists the association is “committed to evaluating and monitoring the issue of financial conflicts of interest”.

DSM-s has attracted criticism from psychologists, who tend to favour counselling over drug treatments. An online petition calling for greater involvement from psychologists has attracted more than 12,000 signatures, and is backed by professional bodies.

The APA has rejected a call for an independent scientific review of DSM~s. “There is no outside organisation that has the capacity to replicate the range of expertise that DSM-s has assembled to review diagnostic criteria,” said APA president John Oldham.

There is no point sending healthy animals out into the world if they’re just going to catch a deadly disease. Pacific tree frogs that can survive a normally lethal fungus infection are spreading it to species that cannot. Such “reservoir” species could threaten frogs released from captive breeding programmes.

Between 2003 and 2010, the deadly chytrid fungus slashed the populations of two frog species in the Sierra Nevada, while populations of a third species – the Pacific tree frog (Pseudacris regilla) – held steady.

That isn’t because the Pacific tree frogs avoided infection: two-thirds of the Sierra Nevada population carry the fungus, Vance Vredenburg of San Francisco State University has now found. That suggests they can tolerate infection and so could spread the pathogen to new areas (PLoS One, DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0033567).

Conservationists are breeding threatened amphibians in captivity in the hope of eventually re-establishing them in the wild. But reintroductions will fail if there is a reservoir species nearby, Vredenburg warns.

The solution may be to breed from frog populations already decimated by the chytrid fungus, says Matthew Fisher of Imperial College London. There is evidence that some frogs are evolving tolerance, and survivors from an affected population are more likely to have the vital genes. These frogs could be cross-bred with susceptible individuals, accelerating the spread of tolerance – although Fisher admits the approach will be expensive.

The climactic campaign duels can be ranked alongside some of the series’ adrenaline- pumping highs

Publisher SCE
Developer In-house (Studio Liverpool) Format Vita
Release: Feb 15, 2012 (US) »
ESRB: E10+
Genre: Driving

As Sony embraces the future with its new Vita handheld, Studio Liverpool rewinds the timeline of its poster-child sci-fi racer. Now grounded in a more relatable near-future setting, Wipeout 2048 trades the futurism of, say, Wipeout HD or Fury for an earthier tone than fans may expect. As such, many tracks have wide lanes and are surrounded by contemporary-style architecture, drawing on the modern more than the imaginary.

It’s a less exciting visual treatment than the series’ more typical – and luminous — industrial sci-fi, and the blander setting is yoked to some disarmingly easy initial stages. At first, it feels as if Studio Liverpool has loosened up to make way for casual newcomers to Vita, but the difficulty spikes considerably in the second of the three seasons, seeing the AI step up and tracks become more intimate. As races and challenges go from cosy to cutthroat, success requires a hop into the options to remove pilot assist along with a toggle into the firstperson camera view to secure those extra inches of racing line. It sounds serious, and it is – 2048 has not abandoned the series’ hardcore sensibilities, but simply provided an entry point for a more casual crowd. One case in point where well-honed twitch reactions are rewarded is the game’s ‘skill-cuts’, which provide a get-out clause for those who have been unfairly overwhelmed by a bad hand of pick ups. These shortcuts require razor-sharp timing of sidesteps – double-taps of the air brake that strafe your craft left or right — and demand dedication to master.

Indeed, learning 2048’s tracks inside and out is as crucial as in the best Wipeouts, and Vita’s responsive thumbsticks are more than capable of handling your delicate (or nervous) twitches, meaning you only have yourself to blame for botched barrel rolls. Speed pads and power-ups are the cornerstones of many challenges, and the restrictions laid out by the designers remix tracks to brilliant, nail-biting effect, with a cannon and leech-beam race through the Downtown map being a particular standout. The locus in 2048, more than any other Wipeout besides Fury, is combat. The wider lanes enable the team to squeeze more craft and effects onscreen, and give you the leeway to bob and weave as you rattle off an array of projectiles and mines.

Sadly, Wipeout 2048 routinely forces you to contend with the barrage of detail in each stage. With all the grittier textures, it’s sometimes difficult to make out the track from the world beyond it. For once. Vita’s screen feels small as you anxiously memorise tracks framed by towering architecture and populated with elements appropriate to the setting, from flocks of birds to confetti and floating balloons. Furthermore, with a group of warring racers onscreen, the framerate can suffer. It’s not game-breaking, and it doesn’t deter you from pressing on, but it is noticeable in a series built on speed and against the 6ofps perfection of Wipeout HD.

That said, Combat (previously known as Eliminator) and Zone modes also make the transition to 2048, and while the former in particular falls victim to framerate and visibility issues, Zone sees the game at its smoothest and most addictive. The later SOL and Empire Climb maps closely capture the ambitious, intricate layouts of classic Wipeout, and the game’s climactic campaign duels can be ranked alongside some of the series’ adrenaline-pumping high points.

Of course, a core component of any Wipeout is the soundscape, and here, as a Liverpudlian might put it, 2048 is sound as a pound. From the sonic boom of a speed pad to the robotic soundbites that announce pick-ups, the audio is as rich and detailed as the backdrops. The licensed music tracks have clearly been selected to complement the onscreen action, too, but it’s a shame 2048 doesn’t allow for custom soundtracks, and the playlist is a little lean.

A multiplayer campaign, cleverly threaded together with an unlock structure that mirrors the singleplayer game, adds weight and value to the package. It brings a unique slant to Vita’s solid online potential, essentially gamifying your experience with friends by encouraging you to pursue objectives across randomly selected maps to progress. With a raft of unlockables to collect, this re-engineering of a campaign game for multiple users is one of 204S’s key successes.

Ad Hoc play also features randomly assigned modes and tracks, offering voting options between sessions, but never handing full customisation over to hosts. The general lack of matchmaking options throughout is an interesting design choice, presumably intended to discourage power-hungry hosting, but it may also turn out to be a frustration for users looking to get a fix of a particular map and mode with friends. But Vita’s Near certainly makes game hunting feel much more personal than trawling through lobbies, and it’s therefore 2048 – of all the launch games – that most strongly hints at the handheld’s online social potential.

Overall, then, Wipeout 2048 shines brightest in the relative serenity of multiplayer, with four or fewer racers on the track. The blinkers on the online segment focus the experience further, channelling its thrills into unpredictable bite-size moments, and heightening the sense of achievement and reward.

Yes, Wipeout 2048 conjures a less fanciful racing grid than we’ve seen previously, and it’s also a less immaculate, less finessed racer than the home console iterations of the series we’ve played down the years. Instead, it’s an attempt to try something new cn the newest of platforms. While it may not offer something for everyone, when it flies, it soars.

Platforms: X360 & PS3

Final Fantasy XIII’s Active Time Battle (ATB) system was one expertly crafted change to the formula that came alongside some less welcome others. Key among these was that the usual sidequest-packed open-world structure had been replaced with a linear journey that offered the bare minimum of distractions. The reaction to FFXIII from fans and the press was mixed, which brings us to FFXIII-2, the sequel that Square Enix claims will give players what they wanted from the previous game. But while FFXIII-2 is a polished production that certainly diverges, unfortunately it’s also a baffling, boring and swampy thing to play.

It opens with a stunning cutscene in which Lightning – FFXIII’s hero, who’s now playing the role of warrior goddess — does battle with a cackling evildoer. The sequence in its entirety takes about 20 minutes to play out, during which you’re given limited control for brief stretches. This is a sign of things to come: a battle that is impossible to lose, a helping of QTEs, and some terrifically dull monologues. But FFXIII-2’s opening is so visually astonishing, featuring a gigantic city formed from crystal, monstrous armies clashing, and Lightning’s dazzlingly choreographed advance through it all. that it’s impossible to look away.

After this prelude, Lightning s off and you’re in control of her sister, Serah, and accompanied by a time traveller called Noel who resembles a Kingdom Hearts B-lister. This is your party for the whole game, leading to FFXIII-2’s first change to the ATB system: Pokemon.

The system is onre again built around three party members, each with certain roles that can be cycled through with a ‘Paradigm Shift’. With two slots used here for Noel and Serah, the third is left open for creatures. You acquire new beasts by defeating them, and then they can be levelled up, assigned to your party (up to three monsters can be in your battle team, although only one can fight), or even fed to other creatures in order to transfer desirable traits.

It’s simpler than it first appears, but the system is let down by the lack of space you have for combinations of roles (called‘paradigms’). Both Noel and Serah can learn multiple classes, and alongside your trio of monsters (each of which has a single speciality role) the number of possibilities is huge, but you’re always limited to six paradigms in the actual battles. Among the many strengths of the ATB system is its flexibility – which having multiple monsters in different roles would seem to emphasize – but the feature’s never given enough breathing space.

That’s arguably a matter of preference, but a much wider problem is the game’s lack of challenge. FFXIU-2 is the first game in the series with an adjustable difficulty mode — a choice between Normal and Easy — but even on Normal this is a very easy game indeed. Common enemies are walkovers, and despite often taking a good deal of punishment, bosses are rarely a threat. The time investment required to complete FFXIII-2 is huge, but our characters perished a mere handful of times. As an experiment, we left Serah and company to fend for themselves over the course of ten battles, with no player input. With an idle player character and two AI companions set up to attack and heal, our party emerged victorious from every fight.

The ATB system is still a fine achievement, and most of FFXIII-2’s tweaks are smart ones, but there’s just nothing worth fighting against. Only two bosses required retries throughout our entire runthrough. Meanwhile, the addition of QTEs, bringing a few simplistic flourishes at the end of big battles, does little to enhance your sense of satisfaction.

Combat isn’t the only area of FFXIII-2 where the execution lags behind the concept. For instance, the game’s structure is built around the ‘Historia Crux’, a level-select screen that allows you to jump between unlocked locations and alternate timelines at will. The idea of time travelling through FFXIII s universe is a great one, but certain areas have had a lot more energy spent on them than others. On one occasion we visited a new level, a cutscene played out, and that was it.

Many of the locations are entirely captivating, however, and FFXIII 2 further demonstrates the talent at work within Square Enix’s art divisions. In terms of construction, however, this is still a poky world full of invisible walls and fixed details. The .settings may have a sense of scope and majesty, but as interactive environments they get by with the bare minimum.

The lack of imagination in FFXIII-2’s subquests, which are a large part of its bulk, is what really drives this home. What do time travellers do? Well, these particular examples find lost watches, source old computer batteries, shear sheep, and beat up monsters. There’s the odd detail that’s more interesting – bringing back messages from the dead, or creating the right circumstances to light something in the future – but in general FFXIII-2 offers no more than cookie-cutter fetch quests that waste its theme’s potential.

This is a big game, clocking in at about the 40-hour mark, but the lack of challenge in combat combined with the formulaic missions and frequent cutscenes too often make it feel like a sticky trudge. The visual and audio design is marvellous at times, offering up the kind of setting that you drink in before taking a single step, but the journey is always the same. The apparently open structure disguises a simple closed network of locked doors and narrow environments, while the ATB system is wasted on enemies that would struggle to defeat a corpse. Perhaps this is indeed the game Final Fantasy nuts thought they wanted, but surely even PI they’ll be disappointed with the result.

BIND MOGGUNG
A new element in FFXIII’2′s random battles is the Moogle Clock. When enemies spawn, a circle appears around Serah and begins counting down During this time, you can either whack your foes to begin battle with a first-move advantage, or try to escape from the circle and avoid fighting altogether. As you play through FFXNI‘2, its main use becomes clear: skipping as many fights as possible, because monsters remain at their old strength when you revisit earlier areas And you thought it couldn’t get any easier.

Final Fantasy XIII-2 Locations such as Academia and the Bresha Ruins de deliver on the multiple-timelines conceit but far too much of the Historia Crux is made up of small environments that simply bulk things up

At certain points during FFXIII-2’s cutsccncs, the word ‘Live’ appears in the upper-left corner. It’s a strange juxtaposition, and one we’re more used to seeing on the evening news than in the midst of an overwrought JRPG interstitial. But Square Enix isn’t trying to add a layer of reality, it’s warning players who have put down the pad that their services will soon be required. Hey, you – pay attention!

The ‘Live’ cue means there will soon be a QTE, a finishing mechanic more familiar from the likes of God Of War or Bayonetta than the Final Fantasy series, and in the eyes of FFXHl-2’s developers this represents a move towards realtime combat. Yoshinori Kitase, the game’s producer, even commented to us in E236 that, “We see many players moving away from games that used turn- based systems and towards what you might term an action-RPG. That’s a trend, and you ignore things like that at your peril.” This remark caused not a little consternation among the series’ many fans.

Final Fantasy is one of gaming’s global brands, a franchise that sells as well in the west as it does in the east – for the time being. It is used to being top dog. But now it’s being squeezed from both sides, and standard of competition is high. Last both Dark Souls and Xenobladc Chronicles arrive from Japanese studios, while from the west there was Skyrim, and in a few months BioWare will round off the Mass Effect trilogy. None of those games are alike, hut you suspect it’s Dark Souls and Mass Effect 3 that have caused concern at Square Enix HQ. Heads have clearly turned among Final Fantasy’s developers, because there’s no other reason for FFXIII-2 to incorporate realtime elements into the ATB system — one of the best turn-based fighting setups ever created – nor for producers to drop vague hints about a more action-oriented future for the series.

The problem with toe dipping like this is that it doesn’t satisfy. The inconsistent appearance of QTEs and their ease means they’re a mild irritation rather than a thrilling injection of realtime action, and they sit terribly uneasily next to the battle animations you see thousands of times in rotation.

This disjointedness can also be seen with the Moogle Clock. Here, enemies spawn pre-battle, during which time you can hit them with your weapon via a button press. It’s presented as a realtime action in the overworld, but all it does is start the‘proper’ turn-based fight, giving you the first turn. Your character is performing a hitting animation. but if you hit enemies, you’re not actually hitting them. Does that make sense? Of course it doesn’t – and, as you might well imagine, controlling your character during the Moogle Clock sequences doesn’t feel anything like controlling a character in a thirdperson combat game.

Final Fantasy is not a realtime world — not when it comes to combat. And that’s not a problem. What is strange about FFXIJI-2 is the attempt to bolt realtime action onto its turn-based structure. It feels out of place, and that’s because it is. RPGs have been blending turn-based systems with realtime elements for many years now, but the truly great ones build everything around this. In ttXJlI-2, you have a couple of realtime mechanics (and not especially ambitious ones) layered on top of a structure that wasn’t designed for them, and that doesn’t really need them either.

It may well be the case that Final Fantasy XIV takes the series in a radical new direction. Some would say, given recent history, it has no choice. It is a great pity, as well as a great irony, that Square Enix created the thrilling ATB system from its turn-based legacy, but has thus far been unable to make a Final Fantasy game that deserves it. If the future of the series is realtime combat, it’s hard to escape the feeling that the baby may slide out of the frame along with the bath water.

When Tony Kemplen resolved to use a different film camera each week, he discovered a treasure trove of lost gems

Say the word ‘Instamatic’ and the first thing to come to mind (for those of a certain age) is likely to be the mass-produced, ultra-basic, chunky little cameras that were the staple of family and holiday snaps in the 1960s and ’ 70s. Made by the million, the Instamatics used the foolproof 126-cartridge system, taking 28x28mm square images on 35mm film and had just one perforation per frame. Even though the cartridges are no longer made, I bet many a household has one of these cameras tucked away somewhere. They are still a very common find in charity shops and at car-boot sales, but sadly the chances of using them are very slim. Short of reloading an old cartridge, a process which is elaborate and far from perfect, the only hope is to find an unused film, which will of course be considerably out of date and possibly wildly expensive. I’ve seen a 30-year-old cartridge fetch more than £20 on eBay, but luckily I managed to pick up a couple for less than a fiver each.

The Instamatic 500 is a cut above the run-of-the- mill point-and-shoot models. It has an f/2.8 Xenar lens, a built-in coupled exposure meter and a Compur shutter with a range of speeds. Mine was a car-boot sale find, and it has its own very smart leather case with metal trim. To me, the camera has a very 1970s look to it, so I was surprised to learn that it was actually made in 1963 – it must have looked ahead of its time.

Even though it is nearly half a century old, the built- in selenium exposure meter, which bears the badge of the respected meter manufacturer Gossen, still works perfectly. There’s a lot to be said for systems that don’t require batteries, which can be the bane of the collector-photographer’s life. The two main problems most often encountered are sourcing obsolete 41 kit, which I am becoming quite familiar with now

I took the Instamatic 500 with me on a trip to London and was able to make full use of the manual settings to take photos in dimly lit tube stations as well as in bright daylight, where I found the iconic Gherkin (see below left) made a tasty composition, especially when framed with a side order of film markings.

The decision to flaunt your format by including sprocket holes, frame numbers or sheet holder marks is a matter of individual choice. I must confess that when I first saw prints from large-format negatives that included the slide masks and batch numbers, I found it rather irritating. It screamed: ‘Look at me! I use a 10x8in camera!’ But now I’ve grown to like this look. The fact that there is a well-known, best-selling app for the iPhone that will add this effect to your digital image confirms that it remains popular to this day.

Such is the scarcity of 126 film that I decided I would use only half the cartridge in the Kodak, so I could transfer it into another camera. The following week I finished off the film in the Argus Instant Load 270, which is also unusually well specified.

I was pleased with the results from this 126 camera. The square format has always appealed to me, perhaps because of its associations with medium- format photography – something that the members of my school photographic society as budding photographers used to aspire to.

It may not be much to boast about, but look at me, I use safety film.