An anonymous reader wrote to mention a ScienceDaily article about the social status effects of bullying on mice and men. From the article: "The results reveal neural mechanisms by which social learning is shaped by psychosocial experience and how antidepressants act in this particular brain circuit. They also suggest new strategies for treating mood disorders such as depression, social phobia and post-traumatic stress disorder, in which social withdrawal is a prominent symptom ... He and his colleagues also discovered that social defeat triggered an upheaval in gene expression in the target area of the circuit, the nucleus accumbens, located deep in the front part of the brain -- 309 genes increased in expression while 17 decreased."

null_functor asks: "I need to create an ultra-stable, crash-free application in C++. Sadly, the programming language cannot be changed due to reasons of efficiency and availability of core libraries. The application can be naturally divided into several modules, such as GUI, core data structures, a persistent object storage mechanism, a distributed communication module and several core algorithms. Basically, it allows users to crunch a god-awful amount of data over several computing nodes. The application is meant to primarily run on Linux, but should be portable to Windows without much difficulty." While there's more to this, what strategies should a developer take to insure that the resulting program is as crash-free as possible?

The lexicon and gameplay in Massively Multiplayer games can be confusing and, for some people, counterintuitive. Just the same, the genre has grown by leaps and bounds over the last year. Everquest 2, City of Heroes/Villains, Guild Wars, and a little game called World of Warcraft have all grown the market beyond the wildest dreams of MMG commentators. As such, there are a lot of folks who are either playing these games for the first time, or want to play one of these games for the first time. Scott Jennings steps from the shadows of the internet past, filling the role of advisor to a whole generation of n00bs. His book, Massively Multiplayer Games for Dummies, is a straightforward text on what to and what not to do in any Massive game you're likely to play. Read on for my impressions of a massively multiplayer reference for the rest of us.

An anonymous reader writes ScieceDaily is reporting that researchers at Ohio State University may have identified a new and unusual tumor suppression gene that could effect cancers of the lung, head, and neck. From the article: "The gene, known as TCF21, is silenced in tumor cells through a chemical change known as DNA methylation, a process that is potentially reversible. The findings might therefore lead to new strategies for the treatment and early detection of lung cancer, a disease that killed an estimated 163,510 Americans in 2005. The study could also lead to a better understanding of the molecular changes that occur in tumor cells during lung-cancer progression."

thetan asks: "Like a lot of Slashdot readers, I've played a little NetHack as a teenager. Alright, quite a lot - but it was no big deal and I just sort of grew out of it. Now I'm not proud of this, but I got my gf hooked and she's been using daily for a few years now. After she tired of the game, I tried sating the monkey on her back with new fixes like Angband and ADOM. Now, I no longer want be a party to her addiction and self-destruction. She acknowledges the problem but is not yet ready to take that first step. What can I do to help ween her off? Could interactive fiction act as a methadone - or does it result in just as much harm? What other strategies have users employed to get clean? Does anyone know of NetHack addiction support groups or a 12-step? I'm desperate to get her back!"

SleepyHappyDoc asks: "Lots of people around the world seem to experience more sadness and depression around the holiday season, than in other times of the year. There could be any number of reasons why this is, but my question is: how do you deal with it? Have you managed to find any coping strategies or activities that make things feel less bleak?"

Nochiel writes "What is open source and why should businesses care? Why is innovation important and why isn't our company innovative? Why does it seem like everyone else is innovating while we aren't? How can we leverage Open Source? How can we implement an Open Source business strategy?" Read on for Nochiel's review.

jsuda writes "Core Web Application Development with PHP and MySQL is an intermediate to advanced-level guide for programmers and developers. It bills itself as >everything one needs to know about building robust database applications. That is a bit of puffery but this is a comprehensive practical guide for designing and building production-quality, database-enabled applications." Read the rest of John's review.

John Garrett writes "The Search Engine Marketing Kit is a kit aimed at professional web developers and Search Engine Marketing professionals who are seeking proven strategies and techniques for improving the search performance of websites. In fact anyone who has an interest in how well a website ranks on searches related to the website’s content or target market could benefit from the tips found in this kit." Read the rest of John's review.

I've been reading a new book from O'Reilly which, despite my intense aversion to books of this type, outshines its class. Scott Berkun, has written The Art of Project Management. While my own review of it is tardy and still forthcoming, he & the fine folks at ORA have sent us an excerpt. Below is Chapter 13 - well worth reading, and getting the book.

tyko writes "CoolTechZone.com takes a look at all three consoles from Microsoft, Sony and Nintendo and presents a nice overview of the strategies behind the products. From the article: 'Now that Microsoft has put its weight firmly behind HD-DVD, it seems obvious that Xbox 360 will have HD-DVD support. If recent rumors are anything to go by, Xbox 360 will not have support for HD-DVD games at launch because it won't ship with the needed HD-DVD drive. Whether or not the support will come later as an optional accessory is not clear either. Needless to say, this has added more confusion to the product that is due for launch in just two weeks.'"

Late in September we gave you the chance to put your questions to eminent game designer Sid Meier, the man behind the Civilization series. Creator of a series that has squandered the spare time of many a reader of this site, he took time out of the Civ IV release window to hand us back some thoughtful responses to your queries. Read on for the results of "Ask Sid Meier".

uptime asks: "I've got a friend that needs some help with his web server availability. On two separate occasions, his server has had a problem that caused it to be unavailable for a period of time. One was early on and was probably preventable, but this latest one was due to two drives failing simultaneously in a RAID5 array. As a web business moves from a small site to a fairly busy one, availability and reliability becomes not only more important, but more difficult to accomplish it seems. Hardware gets bigger, services get more expensive, and options seem to multiply. Where could one find material on recommended strategies for increasing server availability? Anything related to equipment, configurations, software, or techniques would be appreciated."

ILuvJoesMom writes "Hot on the heels of Wednesday's news story, Warcry has an editorial up with strategies for defending the video game industry from the oncoming hordes. 'If you're sick of hearing politicians kvetch about video games, make it worth their while to stand up for them by voting for them and supporting them. Given the choice between a hundred thousand overprotective moms with ballots in hand and a million gamers at their computers, I'm going 'mom vote' every time, and I imagine any politician hoping to stay a politician feels the same. This is that 'elected' thing I was talking about earlier. If you're over 18 and not a felon, then odds are you have the right to vote, and that's more powerful than a thousand 'I think Congress sucks, who's with me?' threads on the message board of your choice.'"

Jim Holmes writes "Mary and Tom Poppendieck's Lean Software Development: An Agile Toolkit is a great read for anyone interested in agile software development. That includes developers, leads, and managers interested in speeding up development cycles, improving quality, and getting their customers the best value. This book's been out since May, 2003, but it's well worth picking up. The concepts within are absolutely applicable now, and will continue to be for quite a few years." Read on for the rest of Holmes' review.

1up.com has an in-depth look at the Halo 2 Map Pack released by Bungie. Besides details and strategies for all of the new maps, they also include screenshots and footage to make sure you get the feel for the new playing area. From the article: "Halo 2 carries the same name, characters and clever design from Bungie, but the rebalancing, retooling and re-imagining the multiplayer mode received has resulted in a game that remains true to Halo: CE, but for competitive play, Halo 2 is a totally different game. Instead of focusing on individual skill, Halo 2's map design, weapon sets and game types demand a cohesive unit functioning on all cylinders for success. From symmetrical maps designed to pit flat-out skill versus flat-out skill to asymmetrical maps created for objective-driven multiplayer content, Halo 2's online modes and maps require as much teamwork as any console FPS available. So here's a head start on getting together your strats for the recently released Halo 2 Multiplayer Map Pack."

nazarijo writes "Plenty of people are curious as to how to become an information security professional. It's a profession that has a bit of an establishment atmosphere to it where entry to various levels is granted in secret. And it's often hard to understand where to start. Infosec Career Hacking attempts to demystify this process and show you not only generic strategies for employment, but ones specific to the information security field." Read on for the rest of Nazario's review.

LilG writes "Over at Particletree, Ryan Campbell writes about Successful Strategies for Commenting Your Code. His essay gives advice and examples on proper commenting, and details some different strategies."

PabloHoffman writes "Have you ever wondered what would it take to make your (unfortunately) IE-only web app to work on Firefox?. IBM published an interesting article about migrating Internet Explorer specific web applications to Mozilla-based browers. It covers basic cross-browser development techniques, and some developing strategies for overcoming the differences between both browsers."

Jim Holmes writes "Marc Holmes's Expert .NET Delivery Using NAnt and CruseControl.NET is an outstanding book for development teams wanting to build a reliable, automated delivery system. The book clearly lays out the case for having a standard delivery process, then dives into specific details of implementing such a process via NAnt and CruiseControl.NET. The book also covers several other tools, both open source/freeware and commercial, including NDoc, FxCop, NUnit, Red Gate's SQL Bundle, and Eric Smith's CodeSmith code generation tool. This book, like Steve Loughran's Java Development with Ant has crucial concepts and patterns which are useful to folks even outside its target .NET audience. This is because the author is so emphatic about the criticality of process and standards, something applicable to anyone developing and delivering software." Read on for the rest of Holmes' review.