Open Science
August 2009
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Open Science
August 2009
Sci-O Magazine: The new Open Science’s Project Articles + News + Open Science(I+D) x Channels of communication and divulgation =
Sci-O Periodic publication. In our first number, there’s the public version of the article Channels of communication and divulgation for Science in Virtual Worlds, Open Science Group Project that we have done for SLACTIONS (http://www.slactions.org).
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CHANNELS OF COMMUNICATION AND DIVULGATION FOR SCIENCE IN VIRTUAL WORLDS, OPEN SCIENCE GROUP PROJECT- Work In Progress Noke Yuitza Ciència Oberta-Open Science http://www.cienciaoberta.tk/
Open Science, creating channels of communication between Science, Environment and People.
On the other hand, also we fomented the collaboration with other projects and use different disciplines, like arts, enriching the message, demonstrating that science is not something isolated that belongs to a minority, but that hides behind each thing which we see, even in ourselves, our body, our brain… We are science, without knowing it.
Platforms, formats and supports Website, audio-visual, publications, virtual worlds (metaverses) or videogames are some of the channels we are using and exploring, including here Second Life’s application.
Open Science in Second Life We started our activity in virtual worlds (VW) nearly a year ago as the result of writing a news article for our website about the uses of Second Life for educators and non-profit organizations (Noke Yuitza, 2008, Education and New Technologies, http://www.cienciaoberta.tk). The Open Science Group is the name of our project inside this application that consists in exploring new channels for the divulgation of the sciences.
Introduction CiOb-Open Science it’s a non-profit association, founded on 2008 in the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona, with the intention to approach science and environment to society through a fresh, dynamic and clear language. The idea arises from the necessity to foment a communication channel that serves to approach science to people.
Objective The main objective of Open Science is to promote the investigation, the divulgation and the education of sciences and environment by means of debates, conferences, seminaries, articles and exhibitions, among others, that imply the scientific community and the public into a feedback. For it we will use strategies of continuous innovation in the search of communicative systems that can facilitate that the scientific language arrives from more fluid and clear way to the people.
Open Science Group Project inside Second Life The project has the following sub-projects that we are running since October 2008: Science and People, The Creative Lab, Cultural Interchange, SL People and Virtual Feelings. We tend to integrate these ones into a same event to promote creativity and intercultural dialogue. Some of our future projects for 2009 and 2010 are: Art and Technology, The Mystery of the Sleeping Avatars, Animal Cartoons and Environment, Health and Behaviour Gymkhana.
Science and People Science and People is a cycle of events, as seminars and debates, that counts on two parts: in one hand we’ve got the scientific part, directed by an expert, in the other, the social one, running by a social evolved person. The objective is to approach the scientific knowledge to the people using the social experiences, implications and benefits as a mirror of the applications of the science to the life. Events included in this project that we have done:
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August 2009
Cancer, Cell Cycle and Checkpoints, Seminar and Open Debate, (November 2008, English). Pica clip, from Digi S Lab and alter ego of the PhD Leticia Cito, gave this seminar about cancer research. Leticia Cito is senior scientist of the CROM where she investigates the stomach cancer. Her supervisor, Alfa Roux, also was attending as a special guest. On the other hand, Fayandria Foley, from the American Cancer Society, told us her experience with melanoma cancer and also about how the people with this disease can face cancer. After the seminar, started a public debate about actual lines of investigation and support to the affected and their families.
The seminar was filmed and can be seen in these addresses: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afxH1VOOiOE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02_FETsta-M http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WUiilwvnjlM •
The Neuroscience of the Drugs, Seminar and Open Debate (November 2008, English and Spanish). Pippas Papp discussed the scientific aspect of the effect of drugs on neurology as teacher of Histology and Neuroscience at college in Portugal. Discussing the societal affects was Urkum Hultcrantz, from Comunidad Virtual del Conocimiento, who have worked helping drug addicts. Sexiamor Aabye, owner of No Drogas! Un SL Sin Drogas, was attending too as a special guess. After the seminar, started a public debate about the social problem of the drugs, their legalization and the business of some people in Second Life around the illegal drugs consumption.
Figure 1: Neuroscience of the Drugs’s graph. •
Think the Art, Origins Conference (Desember 2008). Graphic, artistic intervention and ambiance in collaboration with TeknoArtia. Sound recording in charge of CVC's group.
The videos can be watched in: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NCdPul1cmc8 CONCLUSIONS The people understand better science themes when can see the social applications and implications and can ask about and give it’s own opinion. The experience was too positive, especially in the debates, when we could see a high participation of the people that were attending.
The Creative Lab The Creative Lab was born as an innovating experiment in cultural events. It’s a channel for Second Life’s groups of different disciplines related to the culture, the science and the education. The two objectives: to foment the interchange of information and to harness the intergroup experiences. Events included in this project that we have done: •
The Neuroscience of the Drugs Seminar (November 2008, Spanish). Place, scenography, audivisual and graphic for the event in collaboration with TeknoArtia and Comunidad Virtual del Conocimiento. Collaboration in the organization of Drogas No group.
Figure 2: Think the Art, Origins’s graph. •
Stop Malaria Spot (January 2009). Filmed and edited with the collaboration of TeknoArtia
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Interview to Maximo Eames, of the USMP (January 2009). Video-interview in collaboration with TeknoArtia and the University of San Martin de Porres, Perú, in Second Life. 4
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International Women’s Day (March 2009): The Invisibility of the Women in the Art History Conference and Stories of Women in History Lectures and Debate. Organized with De-Generad@s and in collaboration with TeknoArtia.
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Virtual Feelings Cycle of Debates (April-May 2009). Artistic performances, ambiance and streaming in collaboration with TeknoArtia. Collaboration in the organization of De-Generad@s group.
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Advising in technologies of the communication for the Museum Karura Art Centre.
August 2009
Events included in this project that we have done: •
Noke Yuitza, Desember 2008, Interview to the artist Maria Grot.
CONCLUSIONS Although our group is obtaining good results in intergroup experiences (finding collaborations, realizing events and interchanging knowledge and information), if there isn’t a direct implication of Open Science, the other groups still just using the Creative Lab as a channel for the promotion of their events. We are working in new strategies for promote better the relations between groups.
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Noke Yuitza, Desember 2008, Interview to the writer Cristina García-Lasuen.
Cultural Interchange
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Noke Yuitza, January 2009, Interview to Maximo Eames, of the USMP.
The Cultural Interchange project consists in to create and generate a channel of interaction between the English community (include the countries with English as the official language) and the Spanish one (include the countries were Spanish is the official language). Events included in this project that we have done: •
Ants (Desember 2008). Exposition that we did in November in the Faculty of Biology of the University of Barcelona in Catalan and that later we transferred to TLE’s Zoo Museum in Second Life in tree languages: Catalan, Spanish and English.
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The Neuroscience of the Drugs Seminars (November 2008). This event was fist did in english in the USA’s sim The Learning Experience and a week later in Spanish in the Spanish sim TeKnoArtia.
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Virtual Feelings (February 2009, April-May 2009). Debate in English in TLE, cycle of debates in Spanish in TKA.
CONCLUSIONS The experience is positive, but we have to observe in one way that Spanish community is more open to have this type of intercultural interchange than English one and that the timetable differences between Europeans and Americans difficult also this.
SL People The SL People project is a serie of interviews to people that are using this application to promote education, arts and sciences. We publish this interviews in our website http://www.cienciaoberta.tk
Figure 3: Artist avatar Maria Grot.
CONCLUSIONS The website interviews have helped to the promotion of the people interviewed, our self promotion and Second Life application as a possible channel for education, arts and sciences.
Virtual Feelings Technology is changing our way of communication. Applications as Second Life do than people from different parts of the world being in touch, helping them to interchange information. But can the technology also change our way of feel? Can we virtualize our feelings? The Virtual Feelings project consists in investigate the effects of the uses of the virtual worlds over our emotions and the human capacity of adaptation and integration to them. Until now, we have done a cycle of debates runned by Izabelith Vella, the SL alter ego of the sexologist Flavia Limone, from De-Generad@os, under the name of: •
Virtual Feelings Debate (in TLE in February 2009)
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Virtual Feelings Cycle of Debates (in TKA in AprilMay 2009). This cycle included four debates: Virtual Appearance, Virtual Love, Virtual Art and Virtual Sex. We had as special guest who was attending too, the psychotherapist Kubrick Wylie.
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forward-in-human-evolution-(Ramachandran)(english--español).
New Projects For 2009 and 2010 we are planning the following projects: Ants, The Book of the Exhibition (SL’s publication), The Mystery of the Sleeping Avatars (a investigation-game about VW technologies), Sci-O and Animal Cartoons (periodic magazines), Art and Technology and Environment, Health and Behaviour Gymkhana (both last inside The Creative Lab project).
Final Conclusions As our experience is too short related to VW, we haven’t arrive yet to our final conclusions, but by the moment the use of Second Life as a channel for our activities and get our objectives are in general positive, saving certain technological problems of the application (lag, bugs, etc.). ACKNOWLEDGMENTS Our acknowledgments to: TeKnoArtia (TKA), Comunidad Virtual del Conocimiento, Drogas Noo)), Digi S Lag, The Learning Experience, De-Generad@os, MKAC and Semfyc. PHOTOGRAPHYC AND AUDIVISUAL MATERIAL Open Science’s Flickr: http://www.flickr.com/photos/open_science
Figure 4: Virtual Feelings’ graph. CONCLUSIONS “The feelings cannot be virtual cause behind the avatar there’s a person who lives the experience as a real one” and “Second Life is a channel to share relationships and emotions” were two of the sentences more repeated during the five debates, the English one and the four in the Spanish cycle. By the moment our conclusions are: •
That there are no cultural differences between these two cultural communities in how they perceive the way of feel in Virtual Worlds.
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That the SL’s community is worried about and like this thematic (these debates were the one’s with more quorum and participation we had had until this moment)
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And that the perception of the emotions in VW is probably related to mirror’s neurons, the ones that are implicated in the learning process, the capacity to recognize the emotions in the other individuals and to empathy with these (V.S. Ramachandran, Mirror neurons and imitation learning as the driving force behind "the great leap forward" in human evolution, http://www.esnips.com/doc/0b04a5db-f56e-4a38-8df188275cb19085/MIRROR-NEURONS-and-imitationlearning-as-the-driving-force-behind-the-great-leap-
CiOb TV, Mogulus (go to On Deman Library, then to Open Science in Second Life): http://www.livestream.com/open_science?origin=embedplayer TKA TV, Mogulus (go to On Deman Library): http://www.livestream.com/teknoartia?origin=embedplayer Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=afxH1VOOiOE http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=02_FETsta-M
Figure 5: CiOb TV.
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August 2009
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