Do you care what happens to a baby’s blood sample? – New Scientist

Do you care what happens to a baby’s blood sample? – health – 21 May 2010 – New Scientist:

“In all 50 US states – as in many countries worldwide – newborns’ heels are pricked to collect spots of blood that are tested for inherited conditions such as cystic fibrosis and phenylketonuria, or PKU.

The screening is mandatory. Given the health benefits, that may be justified. But in some states, cards with dried blood samples are retained for years, and later used for a variety of research projects. This is where the debate about consent gets heated.”

.

Second Life Provides Real-World Benefits

Second Life Provides Real-World Benefits: “Second Life Provides Real-World Benefits”

“The Internet and immersive user-generated online worlds like Second Life are changing the way that college students gather and process information in all aspects of their lives. At a time when students will turn to Google rather than visit the library, or search Wikipedia instead of asking for a reference librarian, professors need to rethink how we use technology in our classrooms.”

Hard Lesson Learned about reporting of research

Hard Lesson Learned about reporting of research:

By: Earle Holland

“And when it comes to scientists misjudging the importance of how they deal with the news media, those experiences can be painful indeed.  An anthropologist at a North Carolina university just got a crash course on how quickly minor potholes in the road can become giant crevasses.”

.

Developing virtual worlds: The interplay of design, communities and rationality F. Ted Tschang, Jordi Comas

Developing virtual worlds: The interplay of design, communities and rationality

F. Ted Tschang, Jordi Comas

First Monday, Volume 15, Number 5 – 3 May 2010

Abstract

This paper examines the evolution of virtual worlds from the developer’s perspective. What are the motivations of developers? What are the specific challenges of the governance of user-generated content? User-created virtual worlds may be characterized according to their degree of design or emergence. On one end is the ‘the designer as god’ perspective and on the other is the unforeseeable and perpetually emergent ‘user creativity.’ Utilizing a theoretically derived sample of virtual worlds, we illustrate how governance is more complex as designers contend with three major issues. In general, across all three worlds, developers had to come to grips with the limits of their ability to design virtual worlds for premeditated outcomes. Secondly, communities forming within worlds, as opposed to atomized users, are central to the (creative) building, usage and governance of virtual worlds. Developers have a range of choices for how to interact with communities ranging from arm’s length monitoring to engagement. Thirdly, developers have to manage instrumentally rational aspects of their business which can lead to tensions with the design and community goals, and, ultimately, lead to the failure of a world’s business model. A fuller accounting of governance will have to accommodate the complex interplay between purposeful design, emergent community, and the logic of the marketplace..