Topic Page for Tech Tuesday
Health research in virtual worlds. Morphine and Corrupted Blood Part 2
(This post appears as part of our Tech Tuesday series.)
In last week's post I mentioned how Second Life is being used to teach Bioethics to undergraduates. Second Life is an ideal virtual world for many types of research. Researchers can create their own island, control access to that island, and closely monitor the experiment. You can even recreate the famous Milgram study.
There is also the possibility of looking at natural experiments within virtual worlds. This is the case with the Corrupted Blood incident.
World of Warcraft is an incredibly popular (over 11 million paying subscribers) virtual world where players assume the role of a fantasy character and battle monsters and dragons. Often times they work in groups of up to 40 players when battling the most difficult enemies.
In 2005 an update was added to the game that introduced a new dungeon where players would group together to fight a new enemy that had an unique ability; he could place a virus on players that would slowly drain their health. This virus could also spread to other players in the immediate area.
The game designers had created this virus so if a player left the dungeon the virus would not go with them. However, an exploit was found.
Players discovered that if they used a pet to attack the enemy and that pet was infected with the virus, they could place the pet in their inventory and it would remain infected.
Later when the player was in an outpost or town they could remove the pet from their inventory and the virus would spread.
The effect was pretty devastating:
Within hours Corrupted Blood had infected entire cities such as Ironforge and Orgrimmar because of their high player concentrations. Low-level players were killed in seconds by the high-damage disease. For days carpets of skeletons riddled the highest populated towns and were rendered uninhabitable by the persistent plague.
This is interesting to health researchers because it is an excellent example of a natural experiment and how people may act during a pandemic. Researchers requested data from Blizzard, the game developer, so it could be analyzed and at least two articles have appeared in peer-reviewed journals about the incident. One in Epidemiology and another in The Lancet Infectious Diseases.
From Reuters:
What made Corrupted Blood so interesting was the way players responded -- providing an insight into the psychological response to plague that most computer models can never hope to capture.
Some players selflessly rushed to help, using their healing powers and acting as first responders despite the risk.
"Their behavior may have actually extended the course of the epidemic and altered its dynamics... keeping infected individuals alive long enough for them to continue spreading the disease, and by becoming infected themselves and being highly contagious when they rushed to another area," the Lancet article said.
Others got infected on purpose and strolled around populated areas -- leading some security analysts to say the incident may provide insight into how terrorists would exploit a pandemic.
And from a related Reuters article:
Fefferman, a medical epidemiologist, immediately recognized human behaviors she had not ever factored in when creating computer models of disease outbreaks. For instance, what she calls the "stupid factor".
"Someone thinks, 'I'll just get close and get a quick look and it won't affect me,'" she said.
Eventually the exploit was fixed and the virus in now confined to Zul'Gurub.
There are also other natural experiments waiting to be looked at in virtual worlds such as WoW. For example, in a game where you have a great deal of control in how your character looks, racism is still a pretty big issue.
Posted by: Staff on May 12, 2009
Category: Corrupted Blood; Second Life; Tech Tuesday; Virtual Worlds; WoW
Health research in virtual worlds. Morphine and Corrupted Blood
(This post appears as part of our Tech Tuesday series.)
Recently I attended a Works in Progress lecture sponsored by Case Western's Department of Bioethics on the topic of Bioethics in Second Life.
Paul Lauritzen, who is the director of the Applied Ethics program at John Carroll University, presented a still under construction virtual hospital room that undergraduate students will use to explore issues in bioethics.
In the situation that was demonstrated, a student would be presented with a virtual hospital room that has a patient complaining of severe pain. This 'patient' is not controlled by a real person but programmed in advance and operated by the system. The room has all the trappings of a 'real' hospital room. There is a bed, a window, ambient sounds, and a morphine drip that is connected to the patient.
The student, acting in the role of a doctor, has the ability to increase the amount of morphine being administered. With each increase the patient provides feedback as to how their pain has been affected. The student can continue to increase morphine dosage in an attempt to eliminate all the patient's pain. However something interesting happens along the way.
If the student increases the morphine dose past the point where only mild pain is reported - the patient also starts to hallucinate. Continue to increase the dosage until all pain is gone and the hallucinations become severe.
This seems to put the student in an interesting ethical situation. Is it preferable to have a patient experience no pain but suffer from hallucinations or experience mild pain with no hallucinations?
Next Tuesday we'll look at virtual worlds and Corrupted Blood.
EXTRA: Here is a tech tip for researchers on the Case Network. If you access Pub Med from the following link you will be able to view the full text of the article directly from the Pub Med site.
Posted by: Staff on May 05, 2009
Category: Bioethics; Morphine; Second Life; Tech Tuesday
Changes to the Health Disparities Blog
(This post appears as part of our Tech Tuesday series.)
Over the past few weeks there have been several updates made to the Health Disparities Blog. This installment of our Tech Tuesday feature will highlight a few of them.
You can now subscribe to a daily digest of updates to the blog. You will receive only 1 email per day and only on days when the blog is updated. These emails will contain the full content of all posts for that day. No longer will you need to click through to continue reading. Here is the link: Subscribe to the Health Disparities Blog Daily Digest.
The Health Disparities Blog and its companion site The Case Center for Reducing Health Disparities now utilize a customized Google search feature. Any search done on one site will automatically pull related results from the other. You can find the search box on the left side of any page.
If you like to Tweet you can follow the Health Disparities Blog on Twitter. Our Twitter ID is @ReduceDisparity.
At the top of each post you will find a single box that will allow you to share that post with your favorite bookmarking or sharing site. If you are on the main page and click the share button you will be sharing a link to the main page. To share a link to a specific entry you need to go to that entry's page. You can do this by clicking on the time of the entry which appears at the end of the post.
One of the best new features we have is Lunch Break Reading. Each weekday around noon EST links are posted to current news stories related to health disparities. You can view this directly by visiting our link page on Delicious.
And of course you can view video presentations on a range of topics in our Audio / Visual section.
Upcoming improvements to the blog may include videos of the Health Disparities Class that is offered each fall.
Stay tuned.
EXTRA: Someone's gotta watch the bottom line.
Posted by: Staff on April 28, 2009
Category: Customized Google Search; Delicious; Digg; Tech Tuesday; twitter
Alternatives to Google
(This post appears as part of our Tech Tuesday series.)
Without a doubt Google is the number one player in the area of search. Whenever your brand becomes a verb you know you've made it. But there are more than a few reasons to utilize other search engines.
Google has a bit of a bad track record in the area of free speech. They have been known to change results on their image pages to satisfy the censors in certain countries. Others are concerned with Google's scan first and ask permission second policy. And privacy advocates are concerned with Google using your personal data for targeted behavioral advertising.
So if not Google then who?
Scroogle is a terrific website that queries Google's search engine on your behalf. As a result, Google never stores a cookie on your computer and they never see your IP address.
Cuil boasts having what may be the deepest index of the web. With over 120 billion pages searched you are bound to find what you're looking for. They also boast a simple privacy policy that includes the statement, "We do not keep logs of our users’ search activity."
Kosmix has decided to throw the plain interface that Google made cool out the window. A search on the Kosmix page will return information from a wide variety of sources and mediums. You'll find info from Twitter, Reuters, Google, Facebook, YouTube, and even Ebay. Note - Kosmix's privacy policy states they do collect information such as your IP address and they do track your search activity with a cookie.
Ixquick states on their privacy page that:
In June 2006 we started to delete our users' privacy data within 48 hrs.
As of January 2009 we do not even record our users' IP addresses at all anymore.
Ixquick's biggest selling point is that they are a metasearch engine. They query 11 search sites with your request and score the results. A result is given 1 star for each search engine that places it in the top 10. More stars mean more search engines agreed on a particular result.
Finally, looking forward Twitter Search may be the next big thing as it allows you to see in real time how your keywords are being used.
Do you have issues with Google? What search engines do you use?
Posted by: Staff on April 21, 2009
Category: Cuil; Google; Ixquick; Kosmix; Scroogle; Search; Search Engines; Tech Tuesday; Twitter Search; twitter
How to spot a fake link
(This post appears as part of our Tech Tuesday series.)
Nearly every day I get an email that seems to come from a bank or PayPal asking me to click a link and enter my information to correct some error or issue. These are almost always attempts to steal personal information. Let's look at how this scam works.
Typically a link is created using code similar to this:
<a href="http://www.yahoo.com">http://www.yahoo.com</a>
Which ends up being displayed as:
The link (actually text) you see displayed is what appears just before the </a>.
I could place any text in that space and the link would still work. For example:
<a href="http://www.yahoo.com">http://www.LOOKATME.com</a>
would display as:
but still direct you to www.yahoo.com. You can check to see where the link directs by mousing over the link and looking in status area of your browser. Usually this is in the bottom left hand corner.
So the code that creates the link has two distinct parts - the actual link to where you will go if you click on it - and whatever is displayed.
In fact, what is put in the second part of the code doesn't even need to look like a link. I can do something like this:
<a href="http://www.yahoo.com">Cleveland is nice in the summer.</a>
and the link would still lead to yahoo.com if you clicked on it.
Now we can see that the way a fake link works is the first part of the code directs you to a bad website but the second part of the code leads you to believe that you are going to someplace legit.
If I take the time to add more context around the fake link it becomes even easier to fool someone.
With the falling economy it is important that every dollar you have invested works hard for you. You can visit our site where you can learn how to get great interest rates.
Go ahead and click on that link. It's ok.
Here is the code for that:
<a href="http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oHg5SJYRHA0">great interest rates.</a>
To make matters even more complicated these scammers register domain names and create subdomains with names that are the same as popular financial institutions.
A scammer might register the domain name - importantsecuritycheckforyou.com - and create the subdomain of metropolisbank. So a link to this fake page would lead you to:
metropolisbank.importantsecuritycheckforyou.com
At first glance this looks legit. But the first part of the web address is NOT the actual website but rather a subdomain of the actual website. An example of how this could be used is:
We are sorry to inform you that your account may have been compromised. Please log into your account at http://www.metropolisbank.com.
So what is a web user to do? Never click on a link to any financial website. If you do click on a link make sure you are coming from a reputable webpage and that you have checked in the status area of your web browser to see the actual address you are being directed to.
The WOT (Web of Trust) Firefox add-on is a useful tool to help keep you safe while on the web. (You did check to make sure that link was legit didn't you?)
Note - the problem is even greater when you consider link shortening services like tinyurl.com. These services reduce the length of the link making them more friendly for social media sites like Twitter. But beware, it is very difficult to know in advance where you will be taken if you click on a tinyurl link.
Posted by: Staff on April 14, 2009
Category: Bad URL; Fake Links; Internet Scams; Link Fraud; Social Media; Tech Tuesday; Tinyurl; twitter
My Firefox Extensions
(This post appears as part of our Tech Tuesday series.)
The single biggest reason why Firefox is my browser of choice is the wide variety of add-ons.
Here is a list of my Firefox tweaks and extensions with a short explanation of each.
Delicious Bookmarks - allows me to quickly post links to our Health Disparities Blog page at Delicious.
Feed Sidebar - this add-on allows any RSS feeds you have in your Live Bookmarks to be displayed in the sidebar.
Adblock Plus - helps to make webpages less noisy by restricting many banners and advertisements.
Firefox PDF Plugin for Mac OS X - one of the most annoying things on a Mac is clicking on a PDF file only to have it download to the desktop before opening. This plugin will allow Firefox to open the PDF directly.
Twitterfox - allows you to view tweets and update your status via Firefox. Also allows you to manage multiple accounts.
Zotero - a terrific add-on that allows you to save snapshots of webpages for offline viewing. It can also be used as a reference manager similar to EndNote and works with Microsoft Word and Open Office. Version 1.5 Beta includes a sync function where you can store your reference library in the cloud for access from a different computer.
CustomizeGoogle - My favorite feature of CustomizeGoogle is the streaming search results. No longer do you need to click page after page to get more results. As you near the bottom of the first page of results CustomizeGoogle streams the next page of results. All you need to do is continue scrolling down.
What are your favorite FF tweaks and add-ons?
Posted by: Staff on April 07, 2009
Category: Firefox; Tech Tuesday; end note; tech stuff; zotero
Why Twitter Works
(This post appears as part of our Tech Tuesday series.)
Twitter is the new social media darling. It has entered the domain of health, sports, entertainment, and emergency rescue. You can even find recipes in 140 characters or less.
Yesterday, people confirmed an earthquake via Twitter.
But with all this hype and promise does anyone know why Twitter works?
Henning von Vogelsang offers up a list of 10 things that make Twitter work. James Howard gives an example of Twitter working in the 'Great Conversation.'
But it's Daniel Miessler who I think gets closest to the mark. On his blog he writes:
Twitter, on the other hand, by having the deepest personal penetration (mobile phone) combined with the most ease of use (text message), has an effort rating that falls below most people’s natural resistance to participate, and its positive reward ratio is much higher because people are far more likely to respond to a text message than almost anything else.
Or as I would put it in 140 characters or less, Twitter works because it's simple.
Follow the Health Disparities Blog on Twitter.
Posted by: Staff on March 31, 2009
Category: Tech Tuesday; twitter