As more details emerge on the secretly negotiated trade agreement between Canada and the European Union, online rights activists are voicing their opinions on why it is a bad idea and why they are getting a strange sense of déjà vu. Critics of the Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement, which was ultimately voted down by the European Parliament, have warned that those forces in Europe and other parts of the world behind such treaties will continue to push parts of that treaty that most citizens do not want.

Sony Computer Entertainment Europe has teamed up with Birmingham City University (Birmingham, England) to give students in the Gamer Camp program the opportunity to receive scholarships and a job with Sony. This is the second year that Sony has given university game development students access to its PlayStation Academic Scholarships program.

Researchers at Deakin University (Melbourne, Australia) have come to the conclusion that pre-school aged children who play interactive video games (such as those found on the Wii) have better motor skills than those children who do not regularly play interactive games. Deakin University researchers and a researcher form the University of Wollongong conducted a pilot study in 2009 of 53 pre-schoolers ages three to six years old (31 girls, 22 boys) to determine if there was some sort of association between playing games and the fundamental movement skills of children.

Using the Unity 3D game development engine, researchers from North Carolina State (who are leading the development), Arizona State University, and Indiana University, have developed a simulation that allows crime scene investigators to look at a crime scene from multiple angles.

The highest court in Canada has delivered some depressing news for music and other rights holders today: they can't charge additional fees to educators, video game makers, and Internet service providers. In a ruling on multiple cases today the Supreme Court of Canada struck down five cases that had to do with tariffs.

In the old days, Supreme Court Justices had very little information to turn to outside of legal briefs presented by combatants and case law when making a ruling, but a new study by William & Mary law professor Allison Orr Larsen finds that justice are increasingly turning to information on the Internet to shore up their opinions. According to research from Larsen, there were more than 100 instances where justices used information on the Internet in their opinions.

Researchers at the University of Central Florida's Anxiety Disorders Clinic along with Atlanta-based company Virtually Better have created a virtual game world where children with social anxiety can practice to become more comfortable in social situations.

The UK government has decided to take the rigid requirements out of information and communication technology (ICT) curriculum, instead allowing teachers to create their own lesson plans and approaches to providing students the things they need to learn. Teachers will still be required to teach ICT. The Department for Education’s consultation document announcing the change indicated that the mandatory guidelines were not getting the job done and that educators didn't care all that much for it.

The winners of the National STEM Video Game Challenge were announced today at The Atlantic's Technologies in Education Forum in Washington, DC. The competition was designed to motivate youngsters throughout the country to promote the importance of science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) by making video games.

Stroke experts in the United Kingdom from Newcastle University have been working with Limbs Alive to create action-focused games that help patients overcome physical side effects through therapeutic gameplay that can be used at home. Limbs Alive was founded by Professor Janet Eyre and occupational therapist Janice Pearse in partnership with Newcastle University and The Newcastle upon Tyne NHS Hospitals Foundation Trust.

Children with cerebral palsy (CP) can greatly benefit from playing "active play" video games - as opposed to the kind that don't require any kind of physical activity. According to researchers from Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital and the University of Toronto.

UK video game industry trade group UKIE will sponsor the Games Britannia Festival, it announced today. Games Britannia is a week-long festival that brings British video game talent into the classroom, giving students a unique insight into the skills, techniques and qualifications required to have a successful career in the gaming industry. Over 1000 children, between the ages of 5 - 18 have already signed up to attend, according to UKIE. The event is scheduled to take place July 2 - 6.

Veteran Naughty Dog lead developer Richard Lemarchand is leaving the makers of the Uncharted series, according to a Gamasutra report. But Lemarchand isn't moving on to another studio or launching his own company; he has left the development studio to teach. After eight years working for Naughty Dog Lemarchand feels that he can do the most good by teaching at the School of Cinematic Arts at the University of Southern California.

Miami-Dade County, Florida public schools are preparing to launch the first-of-its-kind magnate school that focuses on video games this fall, according to the Miami Herald. Dubbed the iTech Academy at Miami Springs Senior High, students will be able to learn how to design and program video games. Educators backing the school believe that this special program will teach students how to better solve problems and also prepare them to work in the technology and gaming industries.

Local and State Law enforcement and parole officers in Washington are invited to take part in a one-day training program that deals with crimes in virtual worlds. The course is the result of a grant from the U.S. Department of Justice, Bureau of Justice Assistance to Drakontas and Drexel University.

The free one-day course, "Addressing Crime in Virtual Worlds & Online Gaming Worlds," aims to help law enforcement personnel "identify, investigate, and prevent crimes involving virtual worlds and online video game worlds."

Recently the Brookings Institute hosted a panel on the important role that social networking and gaming can have on education. The panel featured Constance Steinkuehler Squire, senior science and technology policy analyst for President Barack Obama; Janet Kolodner, information and intelligent systems program officer at the National Science Foundation, Maria Ucelli-Kashyap, policy analyst at the American Federation of Teachers; and Holly Sagues, chief policy officer at the Florida Virtual School.

Students who enroll in a new video game-based narrative writing course at the University of Iowa beginning in the fall will get a chance to explore worlds, characters and plotlines popularized by video games. They'll also get credits. The course is called "Specialized Reporting & Writing, Video Games & Communication," and is a step by the university to add video games into the curriculum, though video-game education experts say that analyzing off-the-shelf commercial games isn't the typical approach taken by universities.

University of Tennessee graduate student Charles Chin has won the Vol Court spring business pitch competition and is on track to develop and release a video game similar to SimCity that highlights the importance of energy production and consumption in the real world.

Thirty students from the University of New Mexico have created a video game to benefit a charity for children with diabetes. The students developed Alloy, a video game that lets players create robots out of scrap metal in a barren wasteland. The created bots are then used to find power crystals that power other robots. The crystals are wanted by others, so the robots have to engage in come "capture the flag" style gameplay in order to secure the crystals.

Sony Online Entertainment sent along a reminder to let anyone interested in applying for the fifth annual Gamers in Real Life (G.I.R.L.) Game Design Competition, that submissions are now being accepted. The G.I.R.L. Game Design Competition is an annual initiative to promote higher education among women and encourage their inclusion and participation in the video game industry.

An interesting research project at Northwestern University used the vast number of mobile users on campus to help academics retrieve photos and other pertinent data that they couldn't find simply by trolling data online. The problem researchers had to find an answer to was how to get users to go to places that they normally wouldn’t go to collect the data they needed.

On May 4 Campus Gamers will launch the 2012 Education and Gaming Symposium at California State University, Bakersfield. Leaders in the game industry will be attending the event to illuminate attendees on how the games they play can be used to improve education. Confirmed speakers include James Portnow (Extra Credits), Leslie Redd (Director of Educational Programming at Valve), and Geoffrey Zatkin (EEDAR).

Testing began on a video game created by researchers at the Oklahoma University funded by a $10.7 million grant it obtained in October of last year from the U.S. government. University students signed up to play the game and check for coding typos and other obvious problems, play tester and communications senior Chelsey Schuessler told the UO Daily. In the next phase of the project, which begins in August, researchers will test the game to see if does what it is intended to do: prevent biases in decision-making.

According to a new study from Baylor University (Waco, Texas), motion-based video games are more "realistic, give a greater sense of 'being there' and are more enjoyable. An article about these findings - based on two experiments - will be published in the upcoming issue of Presence: Teleoperators and Virtual Environments, an academic journal of MIT Press.

The White House passed along an advisory that the next meeting of the President’s Council of Advisors on Science and Technology (PCAST) will take place on March 9 at 10:00 a.m. EST. The meeting will run until 3:00 p.m. at the "Root Room" of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington D.C. While the focus of this meeting is not necessarily exciting, it is interesting to see how policy makers, academics, and government officials approach science and technology.

The Princeton Review released its third annual list of the best school to pursue an education in video game design. The latest list, the "Top Schools to Study Video Game Design for 2012," recommends a total of 50 schools. The full report on the 2012 list is available at princetonreview.com.

As part of an overarching feature about saving video games for posterity, Gamasutra managed to corner Junction Point front man Warren Spector on the topic, who has a strong message for gamers, game developers and publishers: It's up to us the preserve game software for the sake of history.

The Massachusetts Digital Games Institute (MassDiGI) revealed a new program for students looking to jump into the wonderful world of game development called the MassDiGI Summer Innovation Program. The summer program, which will being in May at Becker College (Worcester, Mass), will be preceded by the MassDiGI Game Challenge competition being held April 13-15.

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.