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Coming Home will incorporate immersive games, virtual world expertise and virtual human intelligence. The institute is already familiar with creating virtual humans, and these humans will provide services that would have otherwise required a real human be logged in. Morie's team is also developing an online veterans center that will try to reduce post-traumatic stress disorder and give veterans a place to socialize and seek complementary and alternative medical interventions. "We're working with the Mindfulness Center in San Diego, and they'll be running classes in Second Life in our land with veterans," Morie said. "We'll see how the veterans respond to that and how the facilitators work.""

Virtual Worlds and (digital) identity; influence on self-esteem...

Efficacy in Virtual Worlds

Virtual Worlds & Collaboration spaces.

Rezzable created an on-line virtual questing environment to support Ytouring 's Starfish production where students learn through questing in a 3D environment about Scurvy and Clinical Trials. After seeing Starfish audiences are invited to enter Steamfish a specially created world. First they create their own character (avatar). In character they arrive on board the recently 'shipwrecked' Stella Maris. This is where they start their quest to learn more about scurvy and clinical trials.

Govt looking for info for possible funded research on impact of virtual worlds and games.

Thursday, February 25, 2010By justinccHi folks.  Just a brief blog post to remind people to take care when experimenting with Linden Lab's Beta Second Life Viewer 2 with the current OpenSim builds.  I've seen mixed reports of how well it works with OpenSim at the moment (some people seem to suffer a crash almost immediately while others seem to be able to use it to some extent). However, according to John Hurliman the version of the OpenMetaverse library currently being used by OpenSim has a problem dealing with at least one of the new inventory packets in the 2.0 Viewer.  This means that it's not impossible that using the viewer with OpenSim today could inadvertently destroy some of your inventory items.

The aim of our annual Unconference is to celebrate the year's discoveries and achievements and welcome SL residents both old and new to share their work... and you are invited to participate! Session could include workshops, presentations, panels or discussions and can be convened at the Islands of jokaydia or at your own location. The unconference is designed to provide opportunities for all experience levels to participate and is an opportunity for sharing, collaboration and exploration! No idea is too big or too small.... add your proposed sessions below!

This article, which follows a presentation at the West Virginia Law Review Digital Entrepreneurship Symposium, is the first to consider whether virtual worlds provide a rule of law that sets expectations for virtual business. Many consider the rule of law a catalyst for economic development, and there is reason to believe that it will be equally important in virtual economies, despite differences from the real world. As more people turn to virtual worlds to earn a livelihood, the rule of law will become prominent in encouraging investments in virtual business. The article finds - unsurprisingly - that virtual worlds now lack many of the elements of the rule of law. Which aspects fail is more surprising, however. Provider agreements and computer software, the sources of regulation that are most often criticized as "anti-user," provide the best theoretical hope for achieving the rule of law, even if they currently fail in practice. On the contrary, widely proposed "reforms," such as community norms, self-regulation, and importation of real-world law face both theoretical and practical barriers to implementation of the rule of law in virtual worlds. Part I of the article describes virtual worlds and their connection to business. Part II defines a framework to measure the rule of law in virtual worlds. Part III discusses the various types of regulation in virtual worlds, and Part IV critically analyzes how these regulations measure up against rule of law requirements. The article concludes with some suggestions about how providers might enhance legal rule in virtual worlds.