Although competition is regarded as a powerful motivator in game-based learning, it might have a negative influence, such as damage to confidence, on students who lose the competition. In this paper, we propose an indirect approach, substitutive competition, to alleviate such negative influences. The approach is used to develop a My-Pet v3 system,…

An oil spill occurs somewhere in the world almost every day of the year, and the consequences can be devastating. In this month's column, students explore the effects of oil spills on plants, animals, and the environment and investigate oil spill clean-up methods through a simulated oil spill. The activities described in this article give students…

In "Drosophila," calcium/calmodulin-dependent protein kinase II (CaMKII) activity is crucial in associative courtship conditioning for both memory formation and suppression of courtship during training with a mated female. We have previously shown that increasing levels of constitutively active CaMKII, but not calcium-dependent CaMKII, in a subset…