RESUMEN

Public participation in science and gamification of science are two strong contemporary trends, especially in the area of emerging techno-sciences. Involvement of the public in research-related activities is an integral part of public engagement with science and technologies, which can be successfully achieved through a participatory game design. Focusing on the participatory dimension of educational games, we have reviewed a number of existing participation heuristics in light of their suitability to characterize available mobile and browser science games. We analyzed 87 games with respect to their participatory and motivational elements and demonstrated that the majority of mobile games have only basic participative features. This review of the landscape of participative science games in the domain of life sciences highlights a number of major challenges present in the design of such applications. At the same time, it reveals a number of opportunities to enhance public engagement using science games.

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RESUMEN

The philosophical and scientific debate about definitions of life-as-we-know-it and its value is very diverse. How do non-biologists characterize these issues? We held focus groups to shed light on the role of the term life in laypeople's understanding. Results show that features of early childhood cognition dominate the understanding of the term life even in adulthood. Textbook knowledge and definitions derived from specific knowledge systems and beliefs are of minor importance. For an ethical differentiation between life forms the ability to feel and to suffer is seen as the crucial criterion. We conclude that lay perspectives on the concept of life can shape a normative discourse on existing as well as on new life forms in a crucial way. In addition, these perspectives may also strongly influence the expectations towards the life-as-it-could-be that is brought forward by the artificial life community. While some concepts like metabolism exist both in scientific and in everyday reasoning as criteria for life, the normative discussion on life is dominated by such ideas as a hierarchical order of living kinds, which emphasize "easy to think" concepts of a moral differentiation. These can also form a basis for the moral standing of artificial life.

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RESUMEN

We present insights from a study on communicating Synthetic Biology conducted in 2008. Scientists were invited to write press releases on their work; the resulting texts were passed on to four journalists from major Austrian newspapers and magazines. The journalists in turn wrote articles that were used as stimulus material for eight group discussions with select members of the Austrian public. The results show that, from the lab via the media to the general public, communication is characterized by two important tendencies: first, communication becomes increasingly focused on concrete applications of Synthetic Biology; and second, biotechnology represents an important benchmark against which Synthetic Biology is being evaluated.