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Scratch is a simple, easy-to-learn programming language designed at MIT's Media Lab that lets anyone create and share video games and animated stories. Introduced just over a year ago, it has already attracted a wide following--particularly among kids aged 8 to 15--and a variety of uses that its creators never imagined. Now, Scratch users from around the world are gathering for the first of what is planned as an annual conference to discuss the software and its uses and to share ideas.

complex brains and sophisticated cognition have arisen multiple times in independent lineages of animals during the earth's evolutionary history.

Alice is an innovative 3D programming environment that makes it easy to create an animation for telling a story, playing an interactive game, or a video to share on the web. Alice is a teaching tool for introductory computing. It uses 3D graphics and a drag-and-drop interface to facilitate a more engaging, less frustrating first programming experience.

As my thesis work, I created and evaluated a programming system for middle school girls called Storytelling Alice that presents programming as a means to the end of storytelling. Storytelling Alice includes high-level animations that enable users to program social interactions, a gallery of characters and scenery designed to spark story ideas, and a story-based tutorial.

Brad Bird would say that none of us are the best animator in the world, but collectively we are the best in the world. So that approach of spending your money wisely, or giving everyone a shot to do everything is a really wise approach. It also helps keep egos in check, and you do the best work with what you're given. Every shot can be great, I firmly believe that.

A new Species-Environment Relations (SER) modeling approach depicts key ecological functions (KEFs) and key environmental correlates (KECs) of terrestrial plant and animal species, as part of a regional assessment of the Interior Columbia Basin Ecosystem Management Project. Assessing KEFs of species is one facet of understanding management effects and ecological integrity of ecosystems. A relational database was developed that ties species' KEFs with their key habitats, KECs, and distribution maps. In this way, potential management activities can be evaluated for how they influence: habitats and environmental correlates; associated plant, invertebrate, and vertebrate species; the array of ecological functions associated with those species; geographic functional ecology; and potential effects on ecosystem productivity, diversity, and sustainability.

The global spread of the H5N1 avian influenza has already extensively damaged economies worldwide and food security in developing countries. The spread of infection to new ecosystems results in viral adaptation to new hosts, including humans, which inevitably amplifies the potential for pandemic flu. H5N1 represents an unprecedented model of how influenza infections may become widespread. It is recognized that avian influenza viruses may be the progenitors of the next human pandemic virus, and for this reason their genetic evolution should be monitored and investigated in a timely manner. The full support of the international scientific community is therefore urgently required to better understand the spread and evolution of the virus, and the determinants of its transmissibility and pathogenicity in humans. This in turn demands that scientists with different fields of expertise have full access to comprehensive genetic sequence, clinical, and epidemiological data from both animal and human virus isolates.

A Digital Village is a space where a community expresses their identity though ICT and Digital Media. This may be from an artistic, heritage, or economic perspective or a mixture of all three.This can be done through poetry, digital stories, community newspapers online, image collections (old and new), audio (Internet radio, oral history), animations, video, and text. To engage in the activities the participants need to learn new skills and so the Digital Village also becomes a learning community.

Welcome to ITIS, the Integrated Taxonomic Information System! Here you will find authoritative taxonomic information on plants, animals, fungi, and microbes of North America and the world