[From Scientific American’s Observations blog, where the post includes a video] [Image: Using a virtual reality maze and brain imaging system, Princeton researchers have detected a form of neural activity the formation of short-term memories used in decision-making. The panel shows the view of the virtual reality maze as seen by the mouse. A cue or sign indicates to the mouse to turn right to receive a water reward. (Image courtesy of Nature, Christopher Harvey and David Tank; more information from Princeton is here)] Animals Exposed to Virtual Reality Hold an Emergency Meeting [Video] By Ferris Jabr | March 22,…

[From FierceHealthIT] California hospitals bring telehealth into the NICU March 7, 2012 | By Sara Jackson The University of California-San Diego Medical Center has teamed up with nearby Tri-City Medical Center to bring telehealth into the hospital’s neo-natal ICU unit, the hospitals recently announced. The program offers full audio and video conferencing, which Tri-City physicians can use to consult with UCSD’s neonatal specialists on high-risk and emergency cases. The hope is to speed diagnoses and treatment plans for infants in distress, and possibly even reduce the need to transport fragile babies the 40 miles from Tri-City to UCSD, officials said.…

[From SIGNAL Online] Navy Pursues a Better Attack Submarine Virtually By Max Cacas, SIGNAL Online Exclusive March 21, 2012 Technical advances in the field of virtual reality, also known as virtual worlds (VWs), are making it possible for the U.S Navy to tap into the collective expertise of its best submariners to design and build the next generation of attack submarines. At the Naval Undersea Warfare Center (NUWC) in Newport, Rhode Island, designers are able to create collaborative environments for submarine development using a fully immersive virtual reality application similar to the popular Second Life environment, which enables them to…

[From Business 2 Community] Virtual World Real Potential By Michael Katz, Published March 20, 2012 Walking into a bar or nightclub alone and striking up a conversation with a stranger is daunting for the majority of people. By nature, most people have insecurities which inhibit them from doing such a thing. But now, the latest addition to the world of virtual reality enables people to feel comfortable doing exactly that. Based within an application inside Facebook, Dot Friends allows users to determine exactly how they look, what they wear and even how they move on the dance floor. The application,…

[From The Miami Herald;  the Cisco press release, which includes links to images, video and other coverage of the event, is available here] Region’s first ‘virtual summit’ should set the trend By Andres Oppenheimer aoppenheimer@MiamiHerald.com March 7, 2012 The presidents of Mexico, Colombia, Peru and Chile did a smart thing the other day, which could save Latin America a lot of time, money and insufferable speeches in the future: they held the region’s first virtual summit. The four leaders, who are preparing to launch a free trade bloc in June that will be known as the Alliance of the Pacific,…

[From Atomic] Virtual Reality comes to Skyrim Killing the chickens at Whiterun never felt so good, but man, you will look like an idiot in this homebrew VR gear! By Vito Cassisi March 19, 2012 The idea of virtual reality interaction has intrigued the minds of many generations, yet has struggled to get a foothold in mainstream acceptance. Potential users have core expectations for VR technology including reliability, convincing immersiveness, and the ability to play without throwing up all over company. An entrepreneur by the name of Chris Zaharia has produced his own “immersive” VR solution for playing Skyrim on…

[From The Verge’s Vox Games] Creating the illusion of emotion or why you care about ones and zeroes By Brian Crecente on March 12, 2012 As much as you may love video games and the stories they help you tell, it’s impossible to escape the fact that much of your experience is a trick of the mind. The thing that separates video games from other forms of media, the ability to interact with and perhaps shape a virtual world, is mostly powered by the artificial intelligence of the characters that populate that experience. But at its best gaming artificial intelligence systems,…

[From Voice of San Diego; more information, including a comparison of answers by the virtual candidate and the iPhone’s Siri, is available here] The Tragic and Fascinating Life of Carl DeMaio Posted: Tuesday, March 13, 2012 | Updated: Wed Mar 14, 2012 by Liam Dillon Carl DeMaio’s favorite color is blue. He usually eats dessert before his dinner. He’s afraid of heights, loves zombie movies and one time, when he was a high school freshman, he caught his tie in a newspaper vending machine. DeMaio freed himself from the machine by surrendering his neckwear. He still remembers how the tie…

[From Ars Technica] [Image: Forth Dimension’s display technology packs all the pixels of a new iPad into a display less than an inch across, diagonally] Virtual reality that doesn’t suck: My time inside Half-Life 2 By Kyle Orland | Published March 13, 2012 For decades now, the futuristic dream interface for video games has been some sort of head-mounted display (HMD) that removes the world around you and projects an all-encompassing, head-tracked 3D environment across your entire field of vision. But this dream has been largely dead in the water since the mid-’90s, when everyone from Nintendo and Sega to…

[From Boston.com; much more information is available in an article in Eurgamer] ‘Heavy Rain’ game creator debuts high-tech ‘Kara’ March 08, 2012 | Derrik J. Lang, AP Entertainment Writer The future of performance-capture technology is right around the corner, and its name just might be “Kara.’’ David Cage of video game developer Quantic Dream unveiled a new way to simultaneously capture and digitize an actor’s performance — including voice, face and body — during a presentation Wednesday at the Game Developers Conference in San Francisco. The innovation came in the form of a 7-minute non-interactive demonstration titled “Kara.’’…

[From The Times Union in Albany, New York] [Image: RPI doctoral student, Yiming Gao wears a motion capture suit in a room as an array of 12 3D motion capture cameras with infrared LEDs capture his movement which is seen on the computer screen at the RPI Nuclear Engineering Lab on Thursday, March 8, 2012 in Troy, NY. Members of the Rensselaer Radiation Measurement & Dosimetry Group have been working on the virtual reality and motion capture systems for use with radiation dose analysis. (Paul Buckowski / Times Union)] Virtual practice for real disasters RPI research centers on how to…

[From O’Reilly Radar] [Image: Screenshot from Apple’s trackpad tutorial.] Buttons were an inspired UI hack, but now we’ve got better options Josh Clark on the future of touch and other types of UI. by Jenn Webb | @JennWebb | +Jenn Webb  | 7 March 2012 If you’ve ever seen a child interact with an iPad, you’ve seen the power of the touch interface in action. Is this a sign of what’s to come — will we be touching and swiping screens rather tapping buttons? I reached out to Josh Clark (@globalmoxie), founder of Global Moxie and author of “Tapworthy,” to…