Human bodies as interaction materials for somatic, social, and multisensory Virtual Reality experiences

Recently, the field of Human-Computer Interaction has begun to embrace the crucial role of our bodies across our cognitive and social processes. The movement of embodied interaction has been followed by a somatic and material turn that strives to design technology for richer multi-sensory somatic experiences. Despite the booming developments in tangible and wearable technologies, there is strikingly limited research exploring the potential of our own physical and virtual bodies to become the material for the design of interaction, in the same ways that tangible materials are. In this position paper, we propose a series of approaches for designing technology for social interaction, that integrate human bodies as interaction materials to elicit a multisensory embodied experience. We illustrate this approach with examples of several virtual reality experiences that we have designed for supporting social connection

How are you feeling? Using tangibles to log the emotions of older adults

The global population is ageing, leading to shifts in healthcare needs. Home healthcare monitoring systems currently focus on physical health, but there is an increasing recognition that psychological wellbeing also needs support. This raises the question of how to design devices that older adults can interact with to log their feelings. We designed three tangible prototypes, based on existing paper-based scales of affect. We report findings from a lab study in which participants used the prototypes to log the emotion from standardised emotional vignettes. We found that the prototypes allowed participants to accurately record identified emotions in a reasonable time. Our participants expressed a perceived need to record emotions, either to share with family/carers or for self-reflection. We conclude that our work demonstrates the potential for in-home tangible devices for recording the emotions of older adults to support wellbeing

The fate of the mosaic embryo: chromosomal constitution and development of Day 4, 5 and 8 human embryos.

These data suggest that both the developmental arrest of a significant proportion of mosaic embryos on Day 4, and the cell death or reduced proliferation of aneuploid cells within an embryo may be responsible for the observed decrease of aneuploid blastomeres from compaction to the peri-implantation stage

Diagnosis of early stage knee osteoarthritis based on early clinical course

Background: Early diagnosis of knee osteoarthritis (OA) is important in managing this disease, but such an early diagnostic tool is still lacking in clinical practice. The purpose of this study was to develop diagnostic models for early stage knee OA based on the first 2-year clinical course after the patient’s initial presentation in primary care and to iden