Validating Game Design with Game Analytics in a Location-based Game

Game analytics has grown from a trend to a norm in almost all types of games, and with the availability of tools and information, leveraging benefits has never been easier. Additionally, mobile location-based games are a great platform for applying game analytics due to location information being bound to almost every facet of such games, thus enabling developers to understand where and how their games are played. This thesis is based on a research project at the University of Turku, of which a part was to create a pirate-themed location-based mobile game. The game was then studied in terms of how it was played with the help of telemetry data from the game. In this thesis, the player data is used to find out how the game's design can be validated in terms of healthiness and whether a game's design can have a positive influence on a player's health. The player data was plotted as routes for each individual player, and then inspected for different kinds of behaviour. Players were found out to play in different kinds of areas, and play during or after riding a vehicle, and play the game on the same routes repeatedly. Physical activity of players can be increased by making walking between locations a requirement, but the game mechanics have to be interesting enough, as the novelty of walking in itself is not sufficient. Ultimately, players were shown to increase their physical activity by playing the game, which meant travelling between objectives

Heterogeneous Multi-Sensor Camera

Today's security cameras typically capture either color images based on visible light or grayscale images based on both visible and near-infrared (NIR) light. This means that the performance is limited in situations where it is unclear which kind of image to capture. At dusk, for example, the visible light may not be sufficient to capture good-quality color images. On the other hand, capturing grayscale images at dusk means that useful color information is disregarded. Thus, there is a need for a hybrid-mode camera which can utilize the best of both the color and the grayscale images. In order to build a prototype camera which can achieve just this, a dichroic beam-splitter was placed in between the lens and the image sensor of a conventional camera. This way, the incident light is split up into its visible and NIR components which then can be detected separately by two image sensors. Different approaches on how to merge color and grayscale images into one superior image were investigated, where the basic idea was to extract the overall intensity from the color image and partly replace it with the intensity of the grayscale image. The prototype camera developed proved to outperform conventional security cameras in certain situations, such as in low light conditions as well as when the illumination is highly varying. While more development is needed, the technique looks promising overall and should offer new imaging capabilities to the security camera market

Modular Web Queries — From Rules to Stores

Even with all the progress in Semantic technology, accessing Web data remains a challenging issue with new Web query languages and approaches appearing regularly. Yet most of these languages, including W3C approaches such as XQuery and SPARQL, do little to cope with the explosion of the data size and schemata diversity and richness on the Web. In this paper we propose a straightforward step toward the improvement of this situation that is simple to realize and yet effective: Advanced module systems that make partitioning of (a) the evaluation and (b) the conceptual design of complex Web queries possible. They provide the query programmer with a powerful, but easy to use high-level abstraction for packaging, encapsulating, and reusing conceptually related parts (in our case, rules) of a Web query. The proposed module system combines ease of use thanks to a simple core concept, the partitioning of rules and their consequences in flexible “stores”, with ease of deployment thanks to a reduction semantics. We focus on extending the rule-based Semantic Web query language Xcerpt with such a module system though the same approach can be applied to other (rule-based) languages as well

One-step volumetric additive manufacturing of complex polymer structures.

Two limitations of additive manufacturing methods that arise from layer-based fabrication are slow speed and geometric constraints (which include poor surface quality). Both limitations are overcome in the work reported here, introducing a new volumetric additive fabrication paradigm that produces photopolymer structures with complex nonperiodic three-dimensional geometries on a time scale of seconds. We implement this approach using holographic patterning of light fields, demonstrate the fabrication of a variety of structures, and study the properties of the light patterns and photosensitive resins required for this fabrication approach. The results indicate that low-absorbing resins containing ~0.1% photoinitiator, illuminated at modest powers (~10 to 100 mW), may be successfully used to build full structures in ~1 to 10 s

Pluggable silicon photonic MEMS switch package for data centre

Consumers' thirst for data has led to the development of various silicon photonic switching devices that are highly scalable while maintaining their relatively compact form factor at the same time. This demands a paradigm shift in the way these devices are being packaged, as optical and electrical ports are involved. In this article, we proposed a pluggable silicon photonic MEMS switch package with passive optical coupling assembly. This approach shifts fibre coupling away from the package, keeping it “purely electrical.” The pluggable concept is separately demonstrated through spring contacted hybrid assembly and pairs of vertically stack surface gratings. Insertion losses are comparable to planar fibre-to-grating coupling, with relatively broadband transmission and assembly tolerance

128 × 128 silicon photonic MEMS switch package using glass interposer and pitch reducing fibre array

We design and fabricate the packaging of 128 × 128 silicon photonic MEMS switch device using through glass via (TGV) interposer and pitch reducing fibre array. The switch device contains 16384 MEMS switch cells and 272 grating couplers spaced at 63.5 μm in a compact footprint of 17.4 mm × 16 mm. The apodised grating couplers designed for 1300 nm have an insertion loss of 2.5 dB/facet at 10° coupling angle. The 0.5 mm thick glass interposer contains 512 electrical vias while the pitch reducing optical coupling array is polished to 40° for planar coupling

Formate overflow drives toxic folate trapping in MTHFD1 inhibited cancer cells

Cancer cells fuel their increased need for nucleotide supply by upregulating one-carbon (1C) metabolism, including the enzymes methylenetetrahydrofolate dehydrogenase-cyclohydrolase 1 and 2 (MTHFD1 and MTHFD2). TH9619 is a potent inhibitor of dehydrogenase and cyclohydrolase activities in both MTHFD1 and MTHFD2, and selectively kills cancer cells. Here, we reveal that, in cells, TH9619 targets nuclear MTHFD2 but does not inhibit mitochondrial MTHFD2. Hence, overflow of formate from mitochondria continues in the presence of TH9619. TH9619 inhibits the activity of MTHFD1 occurring downstream of mitochondrial formate release, leading to the accumulation of 10-formyl-tetrahydrofolate, which we term a 'folate trap'. This results in thymidylate depletion and death of MTHFD2-expressing cancer cells. This previously uncharacterized folate trapping mechanism is exacerbated by physiological hypoxanthine levels that block the de novo purine synthesis pathway, and additionally prevent 10-formyl-tetrahydrofolate consumption for purine synthesis. The folate trapping mechanism described here for TH9619 differs from other MTHFD1/2 inhibitors and antifolates. Thus, our findings uncover an approach to attack cancer and reveal a regulatory mechanism in 1C metabolism.In this study, Green, Marttila, Kiweler et al. characterize one-carbon metabolism rewiring in response to a dual MTHFD1 and MTHFD2 inhibitor. This work provides insight into one-carbon fluxes, and reveals a previously uncharacterized vulnerability in cancer cells created by folate trapping

Fosmidomycin Uptake into Plasmodium and Babesia-Infected Erythrocytes Is Facilitated by Parasite-Induced New Permeability Pathways

., a mouse malaria parasite. and related parasites. Our data provide further evidence that parasite-induced new permeability pathways may be exploited as routes for drug delivery