'Every drop counts': Spain's crops thrive on wastewater

With rainfall increasingly scarce, irrigating crops can be a major challenge, but farmers in southeastern Spain have long relied on recycled wastewater in a model that is winning attention abroad.

How hard-to-recycle plastic is being made as good as new

New recycling technologies currently being tested may allow plastics such as single-use food packaging, fibre-reinforced car parts and mattress foam—polymers which often wind up in landfills or are incinerated—to have ...

Understanding identity in online worlds

For Rosa Mikeal Martey, professor in Journalism and Media Communication, the relationship between identity in the offline world and identity construction in a virtual world has always been of research interest. For her dissertation, ...

Polymers pave way for wider use of recycled tires in asphalt

Each year, about 27 million tires end up in landfills, dumps and stockpiles, where they pose health and environmental hazards. These tires could get a second life as components of the roads they once traveled, but blends ...

World's largest all-solar-powered boat shines in NYC

The world's largest fully solar-powered boat, "Turanor PlanetSolar," docked in New York on Tuesday during a mission to study the effects of climate change on the Gulf Stream current.

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Second Life

Second Life (SL) is a virtual world developed by Linden Lab that launched on June 23, 2003 and is accessible via the Internet. A free client program called the Second Life Viewer enables its users, called Residents, to interact with each other through avatars. Residents can explore, meet other residents, socialize, participate in individual and group activities, and create and trade virtual property and services with one another, or travel throughout the world, which residents refer to as the grid. Second Life is for people aged 18 and over, while Teen Second Life is for people aged 13 to 17.

Built into the software is a three dimensional modeling tool based around simple geometric shapes that allows a resident to build virtual objects. This can be used in combination with the Linden Scripting Language which can be used to add functionality to objects. More complex three dimensional Sculpted prims (colloquially known as sculpties), textures for clothing or other objects, and animations and gestures can be created using external software. The Second Life Terms of Service ensure that users retain copyright for any content they create, and the server and client provide simple digital rights management functions.

This text uses material from Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA