The NPD Group just released a study which found that there has been a significant increase in the total number of female gamers over the last year – up as much as 28%. While the report does break things down in detail, it fails to give any hard numbers that might be of real help to many of the male gamers who spend the majority of their life online. Specifically of concern, but conspicuously omitted – what are the real odds that the party’s scantily-clad Elven warrior-priestess you’ve been chatting online with for weeks isn’t secretly wielding a sword? Or the possibility that the flirty new shooter calling herself “ImH0t4W11″ in your Conduit clan doesn’t carry an extra piece in her belt?

Unfortunately, science may never be able to give us those kind of specifics. However, the report was able to offer this ray of hope for those so concerned:

“These types of players ["extreme" femal gamers] account for just four per cent of total gamers, says the report, however their playing habits have become a little less extreme. While they still spend an average of 39 hours a week playing games, that average is down seven hours from 2008.”

GamesIndustry.biz has a few more specifics of interest from the very dense report.

Professor Dirk Brockmann of Northwestern University has developed a model that predicts the spread of Swine Flu across the USA.

From Northwestern University:

We are using high performance computational techniques and multi-layer, large scale computer simulations to project the time course of the swine flu epidemic in the United States. Our simulations yield projections and risk assessments of the epidemic outbreak in a worst case scenario, in which no containment measures are taken to mitigate the spread. Therefore, the actual case numbers are expected to be smaller as mitigation strategies and containment efforts become effective. We are constantly updating our forecast, taking into account new information on confirmed cases and more precise information on the transmissibilty and disease-specific parameters.

View the animated charts and graphs here.

Not a week goes by when an article extolling the evils of video games is published, so it’s refreshing to see a positive piece appear. In an interesting bit of research, scientists have determined that people who play action-based video games, like first-person shooters, are 58% better at perceiving fine contrast differences in real life, such as shades of grey.

From LiveScience:

“If you are driving at dusk with light fog it could make the difference between seeing the car in front of you or not seeing it,” study leader Daphne Bavelier told LiveScience.

The ability to discern slight differences in shades of gray, or contrast sensitivity, is the primary limiting factor in how well one sees, said Bavelier, a professor of brain and cognitive sciences at the University of Rochester.

“Normally, improving contrast sensitivity means getting glasses or eye surgery—somehow changing the optics of the eye,” she said. “But we’ve found that action video games train the brain to process the existing visual information more efficiently, and the improvements last for months after game play stopped.”

How was the research conducted?

In the new study, her team tested the contrast sensitivity function of 22 students, then divided them into two groups: One group played the action video games “Unreal Tournament 2004″ and “Call of Duty 2.” The other played “The Sims 2,” which is richly visual, but does not require as much visual-motor coordination.

The volunteers each played 50 hours during the 9-week test. Then their vision was tested again.

Those who played the action games showed an average 43 percent improvement in their ability to discern close shades of gray — close to the difference Bavelier had previously observed between game players and non-game players — whereas the Sims players showed no improvement.