0747-5632/$ see front matter 2011 Elsevier Ltd. A doi:10.1016/j.chb.2011.05.011 ⇑ Corresponding author. Address: The P.R.O.S.E. University, 1 LMU Drive, Suite 4700, Los Angeles, CA E-mail address: [email protected] (R.L. Gilbe One hundred and ninety-nine participants, each of whom was currently involved in an intimate relationship within the 3D virtual world of Second Life, completed meas...

This paper examines the relationship between virtual identity and virtual consumption in Second Life. More specifically, we investigate the tendency to link the virtual world to reality through the concept of identity, and explore the role consumption and business endeavors play in this process. Information was obtained from comments posted on four Second Life forums, focusing on the general th...

Life-long learning is an instrument for knowledge workers to stay up-to-date in an innovative economy. So far higher education has not been very successful in realising life-long learning. A possibly helpful educational concept is the 'virtual learning organisation'. The newly founded Dutch Digital University, for example, has taken this concept on board. Virtual learning organisation, however,...

The Second Life platform unites various technologies: 3D virtual environments, virtual reality, Internet connection between participants and the possibility of customization of the three-dimensional content. It is a virtual collaborative environment that allows users to explore digital worlds and interact with others in real time. Increasingly, new peripherals to interact with virtual environme...

A progressive exasperation affects the relation men/society/environment and puts at risk its very evolutionary potentialities. At the same time the increasing influence on natural world by the virtual globalized powers accents and exasperates their separation and their reciprocal communications. Hence a new way of learning is needed beingable to re-constitute experiential modalities and encoura...

Independence in everyday life is a concern of many frail older people. There is a vision that in the near future this group will considerably gain independence and improve their quality of life by relying not only on human caregivers – who cannot grant round-the-clock assistance – but in addition on smart computer-based help capable of imitating human care-giving behaviour. This vision is expre...

In this paper, we describe our ongoing research project of Virtual Babel, a contextaware machine translation system for Second Life, one of the most popular virtual worlds. We augment the Second Life viewer to intercept the incoming/outgoing chat messages and reroute the message to a statistical machine translation server. The returned translations are appended to the original text message to h...

there are  many  definitions  about  economy . according  to  one of  the  famous  accepted  definitions , economic  laws  have  classified  to two  groups. both  of  them  are  influenced  by  social  structure  and  it’s  changes  so  they  are  different  in  various  societies . movement  from  one  society   to  another  happens  due  to “intellectualize” , principal  maximum  production  ...

Virtual environments can resolve many practical and pedagogical challenges within higher education. Economic considerations, accessibility issues, and safety concerns can all be somewhat alleviated by creating learning activities in a virtual space. Because of the removal of real-world physical limitations like gravity, durability and scope, virtual space allows for an expansion of possibilitie...