Women\u27s experiences on the path to a career in game development

This chapter seeks to identify whether there is a dominant, presupposed career pipeline to a career in game development and then looks for women and women’s experiences at each stage of that pipeline. It concludes that a dominant pipeline does exist and that this pathway both disadvantages women who attempt it and marginalizes other pathways. Along the way women deal with obstacles that can delegitimize their choices and experiences and/or make the assumed pathway inhospitable. This chapter relies on published literature as well as data from the 2014 and 2015 Developer Satisfaction Surveys (DSS) conducted by the International Game Developers Association (IGDA) in partnership with the authors

Use of biogenic silica nanoparticles derived from biomass in polymeric formulations and their applications

In view of moving towards a post-petroleum society, several attempts are being made to reconcile resource scarcity and environmental objectives with the use of biomass for multisector industrial applications. ReInvent project aims to deliver novel bio-based materials as additives/bio-nanofillers for insulation and structural products used in buildings and lightweight soft foams for vehicle interior products. The extraction/fractionation processes from biorefineries aim to provide sustainable raw-materials for the development of functional bio-nanosilica particles to be incorporated in polymeric matrices, to produce new advanced cellular and composite materials. Particularly, this work lies on the extraction, purification and characterization of bio-nanosilica extracted from rich-silicate residues (e.g. rice husks, hempshells, hempfibres, oil pressing solid residues). The extracts were examined using scanning electron microscopy, and their textural properties were evaluated by surface area and pore measurements. Influence of bio-nanosilica on the rheological behaviours of biobased furan and greened indirect polyurea resins was studied in terms of possible prepregging of both resins. A comparison of influence of bio-nanosilica dispersed in isocyanate and waterglass (WG) components on the chemo-rheological behaviour of the resin was performed, showing a strong increase of viscosity at ambient conditions, but no obvious difference at typical processing temperatures between 60‑90 °C.Thus, similar processing conditions, improved handling and storage ability of related prepregs were ensured. Obvious reduction of reaction speed, confirmed by slower increase of viscosity, was characteristic for IPU resin containing bio-nanosilica particles, especially when dispersed in WG, potentiating longer shelf-life of such highly reactive prepregs at cold storage conditions

Supplementary Material for: Fatigue-related changes of daily function: most promising measures for the digital age

Background: Fatigue is a prominent symptom in many diseases, and is strongly associated with impaired daily function. The measurement of daily function is currently almost always done with questionnaires, which are subjective and imprecise. With the recent advances of digital wearable technologies, novel approaches to evaluate daily function quantitatively and objectively in real life conditions are increasingly possible. This also creates new possibilities to measure fatigue-related changes of daily function using such technologies. Summary: This review examines in immune-mediated inflammatory and neurodegenerative diseases, which parameters may have the greatest potential to reflect fatigue-related changes of daily function. Key Messages: Results of a standardized analysis of the literature reporting about perception-, capacity- and performance-evaluating assessment tools indicate that changes of the following parameters: physical activity, independence of daily living, social participation, working life, mental status, cognitive and aerobic capacity, and supervised and unsupervised mobility performance have the highest potential to reflect fatigue-related changes of daily function. These parameters thus hold the greatest potential for quantitatively measuring fatigue in representative diseases in real life conditions, e.g. with digital wearable technologies. Furthermore, to the best of our knowledge, this is a new approach to analysing evidence for the design of performance-based digital assessment protocols in human research, which may stimulate further systematic research in this area