Since decades, the problem of deciphering the code that relates the amino acid sequence of a protein and its native three-dimensional structure has been the subject of innumerable investigations and, in spite of the many frustrations caused by its elusiveness, the interest in the problem is not fading away, on the contrary. What stands in our way, notwithstanding all these efforts, is the complexity of protein structures. In a protein structure thousands of atoms are held together by weak forces and give rise to a conformation that is only marginally stable. It is very unlikely that we can use the laws of physics to compute the native functional structure of a protein in the foreseeable future.

She is also responsible for the Bioinformatics and Systems Biology Laboratory in Pula (Sardinia) and the director of a Master in Personalized Medicine.

A brief discussion will cover the Ethical Theories and the topic of Moral Development as it relates to the age of the Internet. Ethical issues relating to health Informatics will be assessed in the form of theory and case discussions.

Abstract

Games were always central elements in the human society, serving a wide range of purposes, mainly sociological, cultural psychological and professional (Huzinga, 1949). In the digital era, especially during the last decade, with the great advancements in multimedia and communication technologies, many of the traditional face-to face games underwent a dramatic change, and were replaced by digital games; first by games that are played alone, and lately by cooperative games that are played in the Internet simultaneously, by remote gamers in different places on the globe. Today, the digital games invaded every country and every social or age group, gender or culture. The hundreds of millions of digital gamers in the world have become an international fast-growing and very active community, whose members devote much of their free time to playing with digital games, using almost every available digital platform: computers, game consoles, Internet, arcade shops, hand-held games and even cellular phones.

     Despite the global distribution of the digital games culture and the fact that games have become a multi-billion dollar market (DFC Report, 2004) , until today, only few studies that documented systematically the attitudes, preferences and usage pattern of gamers are available (e.g. Beentjes, 2001; Subrahmanyam et al., 2001; Fromme, 2003). Also, due to the fast changes in games and technological platforms, empirical data become obsolete after a short time, and there is a need for continuous efforts for collecting up-to date data on the digital games culture.

      The present paper presents results from an international survey of the digital games culture. The survey focuses on characterizing attitudes, gaming preferences and usage patterns among 750 youngsters (age 13-14) in Australia, Israel and England,

     The widespread penetration of digital games into every social group is expressed by the finding that "everyone is playing": More than 95% of the participants reported that they play some kind of digital games; more than 50% play every or most days, and the heavy players may play for as much as seven hours per day! Most participants rated digital gaming as their top preferred recreational activity. Computer games are the most common games, followed by video and Internet games. Arcade games are the least popular. 

      Analysis of the favorite game genres indicates that racing, shooter, action and sport are the most popular genres. Other types, such as simulation, role playing, fighting and adventure games receives lower scores. Educational games are the least popular game genres.

Analysis of sociological aspects of gamers' preferences reveals that gamers prefer the play-alone mode, despite the possibility to play cooperative Internet games. More than 70% said that they prefer to play alone and at home, indicating the possible contribution of digital games to reducing the amount of social activities performed by gamers, and to loneliness and home-confinement of youngsters. These finding are especially significant among the heavy gamers, who, according to our findings, devote much less of their free-time time to social activities, and are confined to their home more than the non-heavy players.

Violence and other intimidating scenes are common in most of the digital games (Fromme, 2003). Our findings indicate that participants in general, but mainly boys, are not troubled by these scenes and don't regard them as negative elements in the game. They also don't believe that they might be affected by these scenes. This may indicate the vulnerability of youngsters to "negative" norms that occur in games.

Results clearly indicate that digital games are "boy's games": Boys devote more time and play more than girls in almost all game platforms and types. Analysis of gender preference for game genres reveals that boys prefer more than girls the simpler games such as racing, shooter and sport, whereas girls have a higher preference for the more complicated and intellectually-challenging games such as simulation and role playing. Of special interest is the much higher preference of girls to action games compared to boys.

Analysis of the gamers' preferences by countries shows that in the peaceful countries of the research  (England & Australia) there is a much higher preference to shooter and other war games compared to the terror-stricken country of  Israel. Similarly, in the sport-leading countries (England and Australia), sport games are much less favored compared to Israel, which is very low in sport achievements.

In the literature, there are claims that digital games and Internet virtual communication enable users to better express their inner self (Amichai-Hamburger, 2002) and change their "expected" role" and function in social groups (Subrahmanyam et al., 2001;Juul, 2003).  More then that, psychological theories such as the Phantom Theory (Barak & Chohen, 2002) suggest that in online communication and in virtual games, people tend to do things that they miss or cannot do in "normal life". All these together might be used to explain some of the findings, as the very high preference of girls to action and fighting games, the high preference of gamers from a low-sport achieving country to sport games, and the high preference of gamers from peaceful countries to war games.

 Bibliography

• Amichai-Hamburger, Y. (2002). Internet and personality. Computers in Human Behavior, 18: 1-10.
• Barak, A., & Cohen, L. (2002). Empirical examination of an online version of the Self-Directed Search
• Beentjes, J. (2001). Children's Use of Different Media: For How Long and Why? In Livingstone, S.  & Bovill , M. (Eds.), Children and Their Changing Media Environment. A European Comparative Study.

• DFC Intelligence (2004). Historical Sales for the video game and interactive entertainment industry. DFC Report, http://www.dfcint.com/game_report/vghistorictoc.pdf

• Fromme, J. (2003). Computer Games as a Part of Children's Culture.  Games Studies. The International Journal of Computer Games Studies, International Journal of Computer Games Research, 3 (1), http://gamestudies.org/0301/fromme/

• Huzinga, J. ([1838] 1949). Homo Ludens- A Study of the Play Element in Culture. London: Routledge and K. Paul.

• Juul, J. (2003). The game, the player, the world: Looking for a heart of gameness. In Copier, M. and Raessens, J. (eds.), Level Up: Digital Games Research Conference Proceedings, Utrecht University Press, pp. 30-45. www.jesperjuul.net/text/gameplayerworld/

• Subrahmanyam, K., Greenfield., P, Kraut, R. and Gross, E. (2001) The Impact of computer use on children’s and adolescents’ development J. of Applied Developmental Psychology 22, 1: 7-30).

Bio

My academic education is variegated: Archeology & geography (B.A.-1977) and geology & Environmental Sciences (M.Sc.-1982 & Ph.D-1987.).

My professional experience is also variegated, lying between geology research and educational technology research and development.  For the last 15 years I devoted my career to researching and developing technology-based instructional materials in computer companies and in the academia. At the same time, I was a part-time senior researcher at the geological survey of Israel.  Today I'm an Assoc. Prof. and a faculty member at the Open University of Israel (Dep. Of Pssychology & Education). I'm the Head of the Chais Research Center of Educational Technologies and the Head of the Instructional Technologies Dep.  In the Tel Hai Academic College.

Abstract

The author presents a methodology that provides support to instructional designers faced with the challenge of designing for diverse cultures.  Using a review of the literature he argues that the cultural, social and ethnic background of an individual influences many aspects of their behavior and their likely responses to environmental stimuli. It is important for the designer to realize that these responses include the individual's reactions to computer-based interactions and therefore cultural differences affect the success of any interactive learning environment. Depending on the ethnic origin of the individual these reactions may be in complete contrast to those one might expect if they are based on typical western ethnic expectations. Since many of the designers of existing interactive learning environments are from stereotypical western cultures it is important that
any new systems should respect and if possible involve cross-cultural differences. With an increasingly international market for digital learning systems it is vital that designers are aware of the factors that may determine the success or failure of their products in such a global market.

Examples are provided from case studies using the authors methodology showing how simple changes to learning concepts; interface components or interaction methods can make major changes to the impact and the effectiveness of the learning system to potential users in diverse cultures.

The presentation concludes by describing possible ways to develop instructional software for diverse cultures and future directions for workers in this vital and expanding field.
 

Bio

Dr. Konrad Morgan is Professor of Human Computer Interaction and leader of the InterMedia research centre on Digital Learning and New Media at the University of Bergen, Norway.His research interests focus on understanding the human and social impact of information and communications technology (ICT). His scientific work includes a number of original contributions: The first empirical evaluations and explanations of why direct manipulation and graphical user interfaces are superior in usability terms; Some of the first explanations of gender differences and attitudes in ICT use; Revealing the role of personality types in computer based behavior and finally, the influence of early parental encouragement in later technology competence and attitudes. During recent research leave from his chair at Bergen he devoted himself to the issues of ICT as aid to least developed countries and attempted to address some of the most extreme gender imbalances in ICT by creating opportunities and role models for females in the Middle East.

• In 2002 he held the chair of computer science and information systems at the University of the South Pacific as part of a Japanese sponsored ICT aid programme to the 12 nations of the South Pacific.

• In 2001 he held the chair of Computing at the prestigious Abu Dhabi Women´s college in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) where he helped introduce an accredited ICT education for female UAE nationals in what can be an extremely male dominated society.

He is currently chair of the Ethics and Equity taskforce for the "Kaleidoscope" European Union Network of Excellence devoted to digital learning.
His most recent book “Human Perspectives in the Internet Society: Culture, Psychology, and Gender” by WIT press shows his continuing concern for equity and understanding in the digital environment.

In many visualization techniques, we use examples and perceptual cues from our everyday visual experiences. Most scalar field visualization techniques convert abstract data into geometric surfaces with proper shading and perspective foreshortening allowing for a natural understanding of the shape and hopefully the underlying scalar field. Vector fields or flow fields provide a more difficult challenge, in that we seldom see a flow field directly, rather we see its influence on surrounding or embedded objects. Visualizing these fields has been a challenging problem over the past decade. This talk will present two recent approaches developed at The Ohio State University, using advances in programmable graphics hardware and direct volume rendering. The first approach examines the task of generating anisotropic textures for volume rendering, such that the texture synthesis can be controlled to convey the directionality of the flow field. This research is then extended to provide animation of the textures and the illusion of continuous flow. A second approach examines representations and user controls to visual query the downstream propagation of material via the flow field. To study this, we build what we call an Implicit Flow Field that encodes information at every point in space about where the flow or a virtual streamline originated, the time it took to reach this location and possibly other information about the flow. I will conclude the talk with relevant issues and challenges that we are stilled faced with in providing an effective visualization for both three-dimensional flow fields as well as time-varying flow fields.

Roger Crawfis is an Associate Professor at The Ohio State University in the Department of Computer Science and Engineering, an Adjunct Professor in the Biomedical Engineering Department, and an Adjunct Professor in the Advanced Computing Center for Art and Design (ACCAD). Roger received a BS degree in computer science, as well as a BS degree in Applied Mathematics from Purdue University in 1984. He received his MS and PhD in Computer Science from the University of California, Davis in 1989 and 1995, respectively. From 1984 to 1996, he was a researcher at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratories, where he led the research efforts in scientific visualization. His research interests lie in the areas of medical and scientific visualization, including volume rendering, surgical simulation and training, flow field visualization, algorithms for multi-variate visualization or multi-modal visualization and algorithms and representations for comparison visualization. He serves or has previously served on the Editorial Board for the IEEE Transactions on Visualization and Computer Graphics, the IEEE Visualization conference series, the Eurographics/ACM visualization conference series and many smaller workshops. Roger has authored nearly 100 scientific publications, and is actively involved in the Scientific Visualization community. He is a member of the IEEE Computer Society and ACM SIGGRAPH. Since 2005, Roger also serves as the Chief Architect for DSCI, Inc.’s next generation simulation image generator, VISION. Vision provides the capability to render massive terrain databases with tera-byte image resolution using advanced algorithms and new features of the GPU.

AUTONOMIC COMPUTING: A FRAMEWORK FOR SOFTWARE ENGINEERING? By Dave Bustard University of Ulster, UK

Abstract

This talk will argue that autonomic computing has the potential to follow structured programming, graphical user interfaces and object-oriented development, as the next major advance in software engineering practice. Deficiencies in the current software engineering model are discussed. This is followed by a consideration of the autonomic paradigm and its implications for software construction and maintenance. Research challenges are also identified.

Bio

Dave Bustard joined the University of Ulster, Coleraine, as a Professor of Computing Science in 1990. Before that he was at Queen’s University (1974-90) and worked briefly in industry at Ferranti Digital Systems (1972-74) in Berkshire. He has also been a Visiting Scientist at the Software Engineering Institute, Pittsburgh (1990) and at BT Research Labs in Ipswich (1989).

At Ulster, he is Head of the School of Computing and Information Engineering (since 1998), and previously was Head of the Informatics Research Graduate School (1996-98).

Dave has taught in a number of areas associated with software engineering, especially programming and project management. His research interests are also in software engineering, especially in requirements engineering, agile software development, autonomic computing, and applications of Soft Systems Methodology.  He is currently Research Co-ordinator for the Centre for Software Process Technologies (CSPT) at the University. Much of his work has been in collaboration with industry, including projects with BT, Nortel, AVX and the Northern Ireland Civil Service.

ack