Towards Sneaking as a Playful Input Modality for Virtual Environments

Using virtual reality setups, users can fade out of their surroundings and dive fully into a thrilling and appealing virtual environment. The success of such immersive experiences depends heavily on natural and engaging interactions with the virtual world. As developers tend to focus on intuitive hand controls, other aspects of the broad range of full-body capabilities are easily left vacant. One repeatedly overlooked input modality is the user's gait. Even though users may walk physically to explore the environment, it usually does not matter how they move. However, gait-based interactions, using the variety of information contained in human gait, could offer interesting benefits for immersive experiences. For instance, stealth VR-games could profit from this additional range of interaction fidelity in the form of a sneaking-based input modality. In our work, we explore the potential of sneaking as a playful input modality for virtual environments. Therefore, we discuss possible sneaking-based gameplay mechanisms and develop three technical approaches, including precise foot-tracking and two abstraction levels. Our evaluation reveals the potential of sneaking-based interactions in IVEs, offering unique challenges and thrilling gameplay. For these interactions, precise tracking of individual footsteps is unnecessary, as a more abstract approach focusing on the players' intention offers the same experience while providing better comprehensible feedback. Based on these findings, we discuss the broader potential and individual strengths of our gait-centered interactions.Comment: to appear: accepted IEEE VR 2021 conference pape

Moderate-to-high intensity exercise with person-centered guidance influences fatigue in older adults with rheumatoid arthritis

Fatigue is described as a dominant and disturbing symptom of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) regardless of the advances in pharmacological treatment. Fatigue is also found to correlate with depression. The objective was to evaluate the impact of moderate-to-high intensity, aerobic and resistance exercise with person-centered guidance on fatigue, anxiety and depression, in older adults with RA. Comparisons were made between older adults (> 65\ua0years) with RA taking part in a 20-week moderate-to-high intensity exercise at a gym (n = 36) or in home-based exercise of light intensity (n = 38). Assessments were performed at baseline, at 20\ua0weeks, and at 52\ua0weeks. Outcomes were differences in Multidimensional Fatigue Inventory (MFI-20), Visual Analog Scale Fatigue (VAS fatigue), and Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS). Analysis of metabolomics was also performed. The subscales “physical fatigue” and “mental fatigue” in MFI-20 and symptoms of depression using HADS depression scale improved significantly at week 20 in the exercise group compared with the control group. Exercise did not influence global fatigue rated by VAS or subscales “reduced motivation”, “reduced activity” and “general fatigue” in MFI-20. No significant change was found on the anxiety index of HADS. The improvements in physical fatigue were associated with changes in the metabolism of lipids, bile acids, the urea cycle and several sugars. Moderate-to-high intensity exercise with person-centered guidance decreased fatigue and improved symptoms of depression and were accompanied by metabolic changes in older adults with RA

The cardioprotective effects of caffeic acid phenethyl ester (CAPE) on myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury

Oxidative stress plays a major role in causing reperfusion injury following prolonged ischemia. CAPE has been shown to have antioxidant, anti-inflammatory, and cardioprotective effects following regional myocardial ischemia/reperfusion injury. The effects and mechanisms of CAPE in global myocardial I/R injury are still unclear. In this study, CAPE was tested in isolated perfused rat hearts following global I (30 min)/R (60 min). We recorded left ventricular developed pressure (LVDP), left ventricular end systolic pressure (LVESP), the peak of the first derivative of left ventricular pressure (dP/dtmax), and infarct size. We found that untreated I/R hearts (n=11) recovered LVDP to 45 ± 8% (p\u3c0.05), LVESP to 106 ± 7% (p\u3c0.05), and dP/dtmax to 33 ± 5% (p\u3c0.05) of baseline values, respectively, at the end of 60 minutes reperfusion. By contrast, CAPE (40 mM, n=6) given at reperfusion for 5 minutes significantly restored LVDP to 75 ± 15%, LVESP to 133 ± 13%, and dP/dtmax to 54 ± 12% of baseline values, respectively (all p\u3c0.05). Moreover, CAPE also significantly reduced infarct size to 19 ± 2% (n=6) compared t

The Effectiveness of Coenzyme Q1 and Q10 in Mitigating Myocardial Reperfusion/Ischemia (MI/R) Injury

Mitochondria may be a principle source of oxidative stress causing MI/R injury. Coenzyme Q10 (CoQ10) is essential for electron transport in normal mitochondria, has antioxidant properties but its bioavailability is likely reduced due to oxidative stress during MI/R. Coenzyme Q1 (CoQ1) is a derivative of CoQ10, but is a more potent antioxidant than CoQ10 due to a shorter isoprene chain. We hypothesize that CoQ1 will exhibit better cardioprotective effects during MI/R. CoQ1 (MW=250 g/mol; 20 μM, n=5) and CoQ10 (MW=863 g/mol; 20 μM, n=5) were given at reperfusion in isolated rat hearts subjected to I (30 min)/R (45 min). We found that MI/R hearts (n=7) and MI/R+DMSO hearts (n=4) (0.2% DMSO was used to solubilize CoQ1 and CoQ10) exhibited significantly compromised cardiac contractile/diastolic pressures and coronary flow during reperfusion compared to those of sham hearts (n=5). By contrast, the final left ventricular developed pressure was significantly improved by CoQ1 treatment (56.0±5.3 mmHg), but not CoQ10 treatment (38.4±8.6 mmHg), when compared to that in MI/R hearts (33.6±6.2 mmHg) and MI/R+DMSO hearts (36.4±9.7 mmHg) (p\u3c0.05). Similarly, the final peak of the firstderivative of left ventricular pressure was significantly higher in CoQ1 treatment (1294.2±104.6mmHg/s), but not CoQ10 treatment (770.6±120.1 mmHg/s), when compared to that in MI/R hearts (700.6±134.7 mmHg/s) and MI/R+DMSO hearts (and 741.5±168.6 mmHg/s) (p\u3c0.05). CoQ1 and CoQ10 treated hearts showed no improvement on diastolic pressure and coronary flow compared to the controls. Moreover, infarct size was reduced by CoQ1 treatment (25±3%) and CoQ10 treatment (29±4%) compared to that in untreated MI/R (44±6%) and MI/R+DMSO (35±3%). In summary, our preliminary results indicate that CoQ1 was more effective than CoQ10 in restoring post-reperfused cardiac contractile function, but not infarct size during MI/R

A versatile tool for extraction of MOSFETs parameters, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2005, nr 1

Extraction of MOSFET parameters is a very important task for the purposes of MOS integrated circuits characterization and design. A versatile tool for the MOSFET parameter extraction has been developed in the Institute of Electron Technology (IET). It is used to monitor the technologies applied for fabrication of several groups of devices, e.g., CMOS ASICs, SOI pixel detectors. At present two SPICE MOSFET models (LEVEL = 1, 2) have been implemented in the extraction tool. The LEVEL = 3 model is currently being implemented. The tool combines different methods of parameter extraction based on local as well as global fitting of models to experimental data

The challenges of modeling and forecasting the spread of COVID-19

The coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic has placed epidemic modeling at the forefront of worldwide public policy making. Nonetheless, modeling and forecasting the spread of COVID-19 remains a challenge. Here, we detail three regional-scale models for forecasting and assessing the course of the pandemic. This work demonstrates the utility of parsimonious models for early-time data and provides an accessible framework for generating policy-relevant insights into its course. We show how these models can be connected to each other and to time series data for a particular region. Capable of measuring and forecasting the impacts of social distancing, these models highlight the dangers of relaxing nonpharmaceutical public health interventions in the absence of a vaccine or antiviral therapies

Climate model shows large-scale wind and solar farms in the Sahara increase rain and vegetation

More energy, more rain Energy generation by wind and solar farms could reduce carbon emissions and thus mitigate anthropogenic climate change. But is this its only benefit? Li et al. conducted experiments using a climate model to show that the installation of large-scale wind and solar power generation facilities in the Sahara could cause more local rainfall, particularly in the neighboring Sahel region. This effect, caused by a combination of increased surface drag and reduced albedo, could increase coverage by vegetation, creating a positive feedback that would further increase rainfall.Wind and solar farms offer a major pathway to clean, renewable energies. However, these farms would significantly change land surface properties, and, if sufficiently large, the farms may lead to unintended climate consequences. In this study, we used a climate model with dynamic vegetation to show that large-scale installations of wind and solar farms covering the Sahara lead to a local temperature increase and more than a twofold precipitation increase, especially in the Sahel, through increased surface friction and reduced albedo. The resulting increase in vegetation further enhances precipitation, creating a positive albedo–precipitation–vegetation feedback that contributes ~80% of the precipitation increase for wind farms. This local enhancement is scale dependent and is particular to the Sahara, with small impacts in other deserts.Y.L. acknowledges support from the National Key R&D Program of China (no. 2017YFA0604701). E.K. and S.M. acknowledge Lev Gandin funding (grant 2956713) provided by G. Brin. The authors thank the University of Maryland and the Univ. of Illinois for supercomputing resources—in particular, the Deepthought2 (http://hpcc.umd.edu) and Bluewaters (www.ncsa.illinois.edu/enabling/bluewaters) supercomputers—made available for conducting the research reported in this paper

TSSOI as an efficient tool for diagnostics of SOI technology in Institute of Electron Technology, Journal of Telecommunications and Information Technology, 2005, nr 1

This paper reports a test structure for characterization of a new technology combining a standard CMOS process with pixel detector manufacturing technique. These processes are combined on a single thick-_lm SOI wafer. Preliminary results of the measurements performed on both MOS SOI transistors and dedicated SOI test structures are described in detail