Virtual reality and its role in removing the barriers that turn cognitive impairments into intellectual disability

Early expectations of the contribution that virtual reality (VR) could make to education far exceeded actual applications. This was largely due to the initial immaturity of the technology and a lack of evidence base on which to base design and utilisation. While the early developments in computer based learning largely concentrated on mainstream education, leaving those with special needs behind, the potential of VR as an educational tool was exploited for those with intellectual disabilities right from the start. This paper describes the empirical evidence that has contributed to the development of educational virtual reality for those with intellectual disabilities: studies on transfer of learning from the virtual to the real world; how teachers might support those using VR; the design of virtual environments and what input/control devices best facilitate use of desktop VR. Future developments and ethical issues are also considered

Meeting basic needs? Forced migrants and welfare

As the number of forced migrants entering Britain has risen, increasingly restrictive immigration and asylum policy has been introduced. Simultaneously, successive governments have sought to limit the welfare entitlements of forced migrants. Drawing on two sets of semi-structured qualitative interviews, with migrants and key respondents providing welfare services, this paper considers the adequacy of welfare provisions in relation to the financial and housing needs of four different groups of forced migrants i.e. refugees, asylum seekers, those with humanitarian protection status and failed asylum seekers/‘overstayers’. There is strong evidence to suggest that statutory provisions are failing to meet the basic financial and housing needs of many forced migrants

Virtual reality in the rehabilitation of people with intellectual disabilities

Virtual reality (VR) possesses many qualities that give it rehabilitative potential for people with intellectual disabilities, both as an intervention and an assessment. It can provide a safe setting in which to practice skills that might carry too many risks in the real world. Unlike human tutors, computers are infinitely patient and consistent. Virtual worlds can be manipulated in ways the real world cannot be and can convey concepts without the use of language or other symbol systems. Published applications for this client group have all been as rehabilitative interventions. These are described in three groups: promoting skills for independent living, enhancing cognitive performance, and improving social skills. Five groups of studies are reviewed that utilize virtual technology to promote skills for independent living: grocery shopping, preparing food, orientation, road safety, and manufacturing skills. Fears that skills or habits learnt in a virtual setting would not transfer to the real world setting have not been supported by the available evidence, apart from those studies with people with autistic spectrum disorders. Future directions are in the development of more applications for independent living skills, exploring interventions for promoting motor and cognitive skills, and the developments of ecologically valid forms of assessment

The tutoring role of mentors working with adults and elderly people with learning disabilities using virtual environments

This article outlines the potential of virtual training environments in the rehabilitation of adults and elderly people with learning disabilities. Before such virtual training environments are developed, tutoring roles for mentors working with adults and elderly people must be investigated. This is because this group of people has far less expectation of and experience with computers than younger people with learning disabilities, for whom virtual training environments have already proved effective. Effective tutoring strategies employed, together with appropriate and well-designed virtual training environments, will be the outcomes of two methods suggested in this article

Effect of playing computer games on decision making in people with intellectual disabilities

People with intellectual disabilities have difficulty making decisions and this may hinder their independence and inclusion in society. Interactive computer software may give them the opportunity to practice the underlying components of this skill. This study aimed to discover if repeated sessions playing a computer game involving aspects of decision making, such as collecting relevant information and controlling impulsivity, would improve performance in two non-computer based tests of decision making. 12 adults with intellectual disabilities were randomly assigned to either an intervention group or control group. They were all exposed to 10 twice weekly sessions, playing either the intervention game or the control game, which involved simple reaction time only. After repeated sessions, the intervention group showed a significant improvement in game score, with researcher assistance significantly decreasing. At follow up, the intervention group showed a significant decrease from baseline in the number of guesses made before guessing correctly on both of the decision making tests. The decrease observed in the control group failed to reach significance

Water temperature dynamics in High Arctic river basins

Despite the high sensitivity of polar regions to climate change and the strong influence of temperature upon ecosystem processes, contemporary understanding of water temperature dynamics in Arctic river systems is limited. This research gap was addressed by exploring high-resolution water column thermal regimes for glacier-fed and non-glacial rivers at eight sites across Svalbard during the 2010 melt season. Mean water column temperatures in glacier-fed rivers (0.3-3.2 °C) were lowest and least variable near the glacier terminus but increased downstream (0.7-2.3 °C km ). Non-glacial rivers, where discharge was sourced primarily from snowmelt runoff, were warmer (mean: 2.9-5.7 °C) and more variable, indicating increased water residence times in shallow alluvial zones and increased potential for atmospheric influence. Mean summer water temperature and the magnitude of daily thermal variation were similar to those of some Alaskan Arctic rivers but low at all sites when compared with alpine glacierized environments at lower latitudes. Thermal regimes were correlated strongly (p<0.01) with incoming short-wave radiation, air temperature, and river discharge. Principal drivers of thermal variability were inferred to be (i) water source (i.e. glacier melt, snowmelt, groundwater); (ii) exposure time to the atmosphere; (iii) prevailing meteorological conditions; (iv) river discharge; (v) runoff interaction with permafrost and buried ice; and (vi) basin-specific geomorphological features (e.g. channel morphology). These results provide insight into the potential changes in high-latitude river systems in the context of projected warming in polar regions. We hypothesize that warmer and more variable temperature regimes may prevail in the future as the proportion of bulk discharge sourced from glacial meltwater declines and rivers undergo a progressive shift towards snow water and groundwater sources. Importantly, such changes could have implications for aquatic species diversity and abundance and influence rates of ecosystem functioning in high-latitude river systems

Multiparental mapping of plant height and flowering time QTL in partially isogenic sorghum families.

Sorghum varieties suitable for grain production at temperate latitudes show dwarfism and photoperiod insensitivity, both of which are controlled by a small number of loci with large effects. We studied the genetic control of plant height and flowering time in five sorghum families (A-E), each derived from a cross between a tropical line and a partially isogenic line carrying introgressions derived from a common, temperate-adapted donor. A total of 724 F2:3 lines were phenotyped in temperate and tropical environments for plant height and flowering time and scored at 9139 SNPs using genotyping-by-sequencing. Biparental mapping was compared with multiparental mapping in different subsets of families (AB, ABC, ABCD, and ABCDE) using both a GWAS approach, which fit each QTL as a single effect across all families, and using a joint linkage approach, which fit QTL effects as nested within families. GWAS using all families (ABCDE) performed best at the cloned Dw3 locus, whereas joint linkage using all families performed best at the cloned Ma1 locus. Both multiparental approaches yielded apparently synthetic associations due to genetic heterogeneity and were highly dependent on the subset of families used. Comparison of all mapping approaches suggests that a GA2-oxidase underlies Dw1, and that a mir172a gene underlies a Dw1-linked flowering time QTL

Effect of Ammonium Nitrate Solutions on Fertilization and Development of the Sea Urchin, Parechinus Angulosus

Eggs and sperm of Parechinus have been placed in sea water containing 1, 10 and 100 p.p.m. ammonium nitrate and the percentage fertilization as weD as the subsequent development of the embryos compared with controls. At 10 and 100 p.p.m. there is a marked reduction in fertilization. Abnormal forms are common at 100 p.p.m. and some 95 % of the population fail to reach the gastrula stage

Bayesian global-local shrinkage methods for regularisation in the high dimension linear model

This paper reviews global-local prior distributions for Bayesian inference in high-dimensional regression problems including important properties of priors and efficient Markov chain Monte Carlo methods for inference. A chemometric example in drug discovery is used to compare the predictive performance of these methods with popular methods such as Ridge and LASSO regression

Triggering information by context

With the increased availability of personal computers with attached sensors to capture their environment, there is a big opportunity for context-aware applications; these automatically provide information and/or take actions according to the user's present context, as detected by sensors. When wel l designed, these applications provide an opportunity to tailor the provision of information closely to the user's current needs. A sub-set of context-a ware applications are discrete applications, where discrete pieces of i nformation are attached to individual contexts, to be triggered when the user enters those contexts. The advantage of discrete applications is that authori ng them can be solely a creative process rather than a programming process: it can be a task akin to creating simple web pages. This paper looks at a general system that can be used in any discrete context- aware application. It propounds a general triggering rule, and investigates how this rule applies in practical applications