iACToR Weekly Newsletter #41

[James Cullen]

Opening Statement

Hello iACToR members,

After a very successful 2011 conference, the 19th Annual Medicine Meets Virtual Reality (MMVR) Conference will be held on February 9th – 11th, 2012 at the Newport Beach Marriott Hotel & Spa.
MMVR stimulates singular interactions among developers and end-users. It promotes unorthodox problem-solving as the complement to rigorous scientific methodology. Technology pioneers have found it an encouraging environment for assessing new work. Experienced researchers interact with tomorrow's leaders in the field, guiding future progress. At MMVR, a shared language and vision evolve, enabling more intelligent solutions to healthcare challenges. The conference welcomes scientists, physicians, engineers, educators, students, military, industry, psychologists, designers, futurists, and others who are involved with medicine's future.
To learn more about MMVR19, please visit http://www.nextmed.com/index.html.

Want to feature your latest project, study or conference in a future iACToR Weekly newsletter? Please contact the Communications Director of iACToR, Mr. James Cullen at [e-mail] or through his iACToR profile at http://iactor.ning.com/profile/JamesCullen.

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Calls, Conferences and Capital

International Society for Presence Research Annual Conference (ISPR 2011)
Academics and practitioners interested in presence (short for telepresence) are invited to participate in the Annual International Conference on Presence, to be held in Edinburgh on October 26-28, 2011. The presence community comprises researchers in communication, computer science, psychology, entertainment, philosophy, the arts, education and other fields.

Presence exists in two overlapping flavors – social presence and spatial presence. Social presence is the sense, the feeling and the experience of being with other people mediated by technologies such as teleconferencing, collaborative virtual environments, social networking, mobile communications and so on. In contrast, spatial presence is the sense, the feeling and the experience of being in another place by way of technologies such as immersive and non-immersive virtual reality, movies, games, mixed reality systems and books.

ISPR 2011 follows a series of 12 successful PRESENCE conferences and provides an ideal forum for presentation of presence scholarship and applications that allow attendees to join together in synthesizing and expanding our collective knowledge and visions for the future regarding this compelling topic.

To register for the conference, please visit http://ispr.info.

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Top CyberPsychology News

Flight Simulator Gives 360-Degree Immersion
TG Daily - Belgian company Barco has unveiled what's probably the most advanced flight-training simulator in the world, a fully immersive, 360 degree system using rear projection. The RP-360 is designed to give pilots the most realistic view possible, and can be hooked up to other simulators so that several pilots can carry out mission training together. It's claimed to be the first flight sim to give the pilot a completely uninterrupted 360-degree view, and can be used to simulate a number of different fighter jets. To read more, please visit http://bit.ly/oN6ZlN.

Monkeys Demonstrate Brain-controlled Arm with a Sense of Touch
Popsc - The holy grail of prosthetics research is and has been a kind of “Luke Skywalker hand” interface--prosthetics that respond to stimulus from the brain and function just as the original appendage it is replacing. But ideally the prosthetic wouldn’t just respond to stimulus from the brain--it would also provide sensory stimulus to the brain. It would have a sense of touch. And in a paper published today in Nature, we see the groundwork for just such a breed of prostheses. A study at Duke University Medical Center has trained monkeys to operate a virtual reality hand that provides them with tactile feedback via microwave implants that have been inserted into the part of the cortex responsible for processing such nerve stimulus. That kind of two-way communication demonstrates the feasibility of prosthetics that can both sense and carry out motor commands. To read more, please visit http://bit.ly/oEIjQf.

Bolton University Opens a Virtual Campus
The Bolton News - BLUE skies and swaying palm trees might not be the first things that spring to mind when you think of the University of Bolton campus, but thanks to the magic of cyberspace that is exactly what students will be able to enjoy. The University has opened a campus in the virtual world of Second Life, an online community which allows users to create their own “avatars” and interact with each other. To read more, please visit http://bit.ly/u82FVs.

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Create your own reality!

Brenda K. Wiederhold, PhD, MBA, BCIA
Secretary General
International Association of CyberPsychology, Training, & Rehabilitation (iACToR)