Lauren Lewis (UCI undergraduate and 2008 Calit2 SURF-IT fellow), Rebecca Black (UCI Education professor and Lauren's SURF-IT mentor), and I just finished editing the proofs for an article titled, "Let Everyone Play: an Educational Perspective on Why Fan Fiction Is, or Should Be, Legal." This article will be appearing in the inaugural edition of the International Journal of Learning and Media (IJLM), going to press in 2009. IJLM is published quarterly by The MIT Press, in partnership with the Monterey Institute for Technology in Education, and with support from the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation.

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Nearly 100 Calit2 employees at UCSD turned out for the institute's holiday shindig last night. The catered event featured a White Elephant Gift Exchange, a raffle with valuable prizes from around the world and the epic main event: Guitar Hero World Tour Battle of the Bands. Miss it? You missed out, but be sure to check out the party pics (including some from the December birthday event/Guitar Hero Encore today).

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Great story today on MSNBC about the use of Calit2's StarCAVE and the emerging field of neuroarchitecture being built by Calit2 and the Swartz Center for Computational NeuroScience. 

From the story,
"Although the team is still analyzing the results, Edelstein said the experiment supported the concept that scientists could synchronously record the brainwaves of individuals moving within a real-time virtual reality environment and correlate their brain activity and travel patterns in that virtual world. A larger-scale study, she hopes, will expand on results and delve into the behavior of navigating people."
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UCI visualization experts Steve Jenks and Sung-Jin Kim were featured in Friday's Entrepreneur's Forum, sponsored by OCTANe@UCI and the Office of Technology Alliances. The program took the form of an interview, with OCTANe's Luis Vasquez posing the questions.

The focus of the lunchtime program was Hiperwall, Inc., the spinoff company led by Jeff Greenberg. Greenberg, president of Tech Coast Works, specializes in commercializing UCI research.

Jenks said as he and Kim demonstrated the HIPerWall display wall in the Calit2 Center of Gravity, visitors often expressed interest in purchasing the technology.

After the wall was featured several times on national and international news programs, ...

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San Diego CityBeat picked up the story about Micha Cardenas and her "Becoming Dragon" performance for its current issue, placing particular emphasis on the potential psychological dangers of the project. Cardenas, a UCSD grad student in visual arts, will spend 365 consecutive hours totally immersed in the Second Life virtual world as a means of questioning the one-year requirement for "real-life experience" that transgender people must fulfill in order to receive gender confirmation surgery (Micha is currently undergoing hormone replacement therapy).

For more about the performance, check out Micha's daily blog, browse the "Becoming Dragon" project Web site or read an article on the Calit2 main ...

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