Game Developer David Braben (Elite creator) tells Eurogamer that the consumer version of the Raspberry Pi device (a $25 - $35 credit-card sized computer designed to give children of all economic backgrounds the ability to learn important computer skills - will be made available to the public in the third quarter of this year. A pre-order system for the developer version of the Raspberry Pi will be unveiled in the near future, Braben tells Eurogamer.

Oh, you wacky scientists.  What are you up to now?

Well, Informatics research scientists at the University of California, Irvine have built an Outrun arcade cabinet that can be driven on the road.  For real.

Former Academy of Interactive Arts & Sciences (AIAS) President Joseph Olin has been appointed Executive Director of The International Digital Media & Arts Association (iDMAa). In this new role, Olin is charged with taking the association in a new strategic direction as a "champion for educators and creators in the growing digital media arts arena. Olin previously led the Academy of Interactive Arts as president and during his tenure grew the membership from 3,000 to 20,000.

Games designed specifically to help improve mental fitness and to help the disabled and mental health sufferers to practice life skills are being explored by the Melbourne-based Young and Well Co-operative Research Centre.

Scientists are using a web-based video game to entice gamers to assist them in the study of genetic diseases.

The game, called Phylo and launched in November 2010, allows players to rearrange colored blocks that represent human DNA. Scientists have been studying the results and will release their findings soon. 

UK secretary of state for education Michael Gove came out in support of the call for computer science to be part of the National Curriculum. Gove made his comments while talking to students at Catmose College about information technologies in schools.

"What we should have is computer science in the future, and how it fits into the curriculum is something that we need to talk to scientists, to experts in coding, and to young people about, to make sure that that part of what happens in schools which deal with technology and computing is relevant," Gove said.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF) has asked the US Copyright Office to exempt jailbreaking devices such as the iPhone and PS3 from enforcement under the Digital Millennium Copyright Act (DMCA).

A teen from Cupertino, California has won a $100,000 science prize for research on cancer stem cells and two teens from Oak Ridge, Tennessee won the top team honor for using a video game to conduct research on the science of walking to benefit amputees who rely on prosthetics. The 17-year-old, Angela Zhang, won the top honors at the Siemens Foundation’s annual high school science competition. The top team prize went to two students from Oak Ridge, Tennessee, for their research using gaming technology to analyze motion while walking.

North Carolina State University researchers have received a $1 million grant from the National Science Foundation to develop a video game to improve computer science knowledge retention in middle school students. If the video game proves to be successful, it could be used nationally, according to North Carolina State University researchers.

An Oklahoma research team led by communications professor Norah Dunbar and the Air Force Research laboratory have managed to score an unprecedented grant of $10.7 million USD to develop a video game to train intelligence officers in the government.

Dunbar, along with Scott Wilson, associate director for Innovative Technologies at the OU K20 Center, is overseeing the development of the game, which is called Intelligence Crisis: codename MACBETH (or "Mitigating Analysts Cognitive Bias by Eliminating Task Heuristics").

University of Texas at Arlington economics associate professor Michael Ward will explain his findings about violence and video game usage in detail at 3 p.m. Friday (Oct. 21) in Business Building Room 609 as part of the Kuemmerlein Workshop Series at the university. Ward worked with A. Scott Cunningham of Baylor University and Benjamin Engelstatter of the Center for European Economic Research’s Information and Communication Technologies Research Group to study the effects of playing video games as it relates to violent crimes.

According to a Gamasutra report, the University of Abertay in Dundee, Scotland has invested £225,000 ($355,118 USD) in nine video game studios as part of its Abertay Prototype Fund. The fund is designed to support small start-up developers with staff costs related to new intellectual properties. The second round of funding awards £25,000 each to nine companies including Adamant Studios, Atomicom and Proper Games.

Students studying criminal justice at Fox Valley Technical College (Oshkosh, WI.) will use a first-person simulator game next semester to train for various hypothetical policing scenarios - from domestic disputes to lost children and traffic stops.

"It's a first-person perspective on interacting with a virtual crime scene," said FVTC Vice President for Instruction Chris Matheny. "Students will walk through this virtual environment in order to practice these (law enforcement) skills before applying them, ultimately, in the real world."

The New York Academy of Sciences' Science and the City will host a special game-related event on November 9 called "The Anthropology of Online Worlds." Anthropologist Thomas Malaby and game designer Lee Guzofski will discuss how humanity shapes virtual worlds. Thomas M. Malaby is from the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee and Lee T. Guzofski is from MMO maker G2G Enterprises.

The whole idea behind this special event is to dissect how humanity shapes virtual worlds through relationships, functional economies, complex societies, and rich cultures.

A letter hand-delivered to Sussex County Community College President Paul Mazur on February 14 has managed to net the school $35,000 dollars for a web domain. The story begins on that date when the new president of the community college received a letter offer of $7,500 for the domain name the school paid $5 to reserve: Skylanders.com. Skylanders happens to be the name of SCCC's athletic teams, the only college or high school with that team nickname in the country, in fact. It is also the name of an upcoming game from Activision.

The Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (DiGI) has been awarded a five-year, $500,000 grant by the U.S. Department of Commerce. DiGI launched in April of this year with the help of grant money provided by Worcester's Becker College and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative. The large chunk of grant money will be used to help the game industry with such things as marketing, business development, and hiring employees in the state.

A proposal revealed on Monday to merge Abertay and Dundee University in Scotland has caused a ruckus among students who immediately set about to protest against it. Today the Scottish Funding Council assured students and the public that, should such a merger occur, Abertay University’s games education courses would not be compromised. New proposals to unite the two institutions are part of a wider government austerity plan to cut costs. The SFC directs government funding to universities and colleges.

Dundee video game studio Proper Games has received a £25,000 grant as part of a £5 million government initiative to bolster the industry in the United Kingdom, reports Develop. Proper Games, best known for developing Capcom's XBLA game Flock, is the first of nine studios that will each receive an equal share of a £225,000 funding round. The other eight studios have yet to be announced.

Retired U.S. Supreme Court Justice Sandra Day O'Connor has teamed up with the Verizon Foundation to celebrate Constitution Day by launching a national contest for middle schools students. The goal of the contest is ultimately to teach youngsters about the importance of our country's most important document and about the important role of civics in modern society.

An interesting research project from Michigan University that polled middle-schoolers about their game playing habits found that nagging parents may be driving their kids to play even more video games than they normally would. Of course, researchers say that children could simply "perceive" that their parents are nagging them about their gameplay.

Atari founder and game industry legend Nolan Bushnell thinks his new education program Speed to Learn, can cut down the time it takes to complete high school - using his software and cloud computing.

Sony Computer Entertainment Asia has extended its partnership with Nanyang Polytechnic in Singapore for five more years. The partnership gives final-year students of the school's game design courses access to Sony development kits to create projects. The extension of the deal allows students to also create code for the PlayStation Vita. The partnership began in 2009, and helped to create the NYP Games Resource Centre - the only PlayStation development and educational facility in South East Asia.

Organizers of the first annual Entertainment Software and Cognitive Neurotherapeutics Society (ESCoNS) Meeting announced that it will take place September 19 -20, 2011 at the UCSF Mission Bay Conference Center in San Francisco, California. The two-day event brings together medical professionals and researchers whose work focuses on improving "neural system functioning through computerized training" using simulations and video games.

The third edition of Jeannie Novak's textbook on game development, "Game Development Essentials: An Introduction," was released earlier this month and is available at most major book stores and online book resellers. The book series is a popular resource for real-world, college-level game design programs.

Video game industry trade group the Entertainment Software Association (ESA) issued a press release today touting the popularity (and growing trend) of colleges offering programs in video game design, development and programming - and the number of programs continues to rise at American colleges, universities, art and trade schools across the country. According to new research from the ESA, American colleges and universities will offer around 343 programs in game design, development and programming.

We’re not going to point fingers but there are those who would attempt to protect children by banning violent video games.  Is that the best way?

Not according to Kansas State University professor Charles Smith.  He says, and you may want to sit down for this radical concept, that good parenting is a far better method than banning violent games.

I know, right?

"There is a mass hysteria about violence and video games, but it's the context and type of video game, and more importantly, it's the type of child,” said Smith, a professor of family studies and human services and parenting expert.

Nellie Mae Education Foundation (NMEF) has released a new report, "Integrating Technology with Student-Centered Learning," that points out the need to better prepare the youth of America for a college education that is heavily focused on technology.

The report was prepared by Education Development Center, Inc. (EDC) for NMEF's Research and Development Initiative. It examines current literature to better understand how technology might be used to personalize learning for students. The report examines the integration of computer- and web-based tools, applications, and games, as well as video and technology associated with mechanical and electrical engineering.

According to Rock, Paper, Shotgun, MIT’s Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab has found a way to improve the performance of game-playing AI by enabling it to read the manual prior to play. According to RPS, the AI was able to improve its performance in Civ by reading the manual considerably. Here's an excerpt from MIT's web site:

"When the researchers augmented a machine-learning system so that it could use a player’s manual to guide the development of a game-playing strategy, its rate of victory jumped from 46 percent to 79 percent."

A 30 percent increase in performance is pretty impressive, as is the AI's ability to translate the written instructions in the manual into actual gameplay. You can read an exhaustive report on this little experiment at MIT.

Epic Games announced its conference schedule for Epic Developer Day, to be held on July 13, and Unreal University, to be held on July 14, at De Vere West One in London. Epic Developer Day and Unreal University provide Unreal Engine 3 (UE3) developers with free hands-on learning led by senior members of Epic's engine team, UE3 technology partners and UE3 instructors. If you are a UE3 developer and don't have ticket's you're out of luck because it's sold out. On the plus side, Epic said today that it "plans to bring similar learning opportunities to other regions this year."

Researcher Anita Lynn Furtner says that the best way to train for a crisis is to use films and video games. She said crisis management training needs a change and that it is time to do away with lectures and boring PowerPoint presentations and consider films and video games.

"You have a lecture, you have a PowerPoint and a knowledge check and, there, you are considered trained and certified. And, most likely, you only do this once a year," said Furtner. She wrote her dissertation at the University of Arizona about the potential use of films and video games for crisis management training. She earned her doctoral degree in rhetoric, composition and the teaching of English in May

"That's not what I call motivating or engaging, and it doesn't lead to any long-term recall," added Furtner.