GHItaly19: Research Perspectives on Game Human Interaction

This is a short introduction to the papers presented at the 3rd Workshop on Games-Human Interaction - GHItaly19, that was held in connection with CHItaly 2019. This series of workshops focuses on the multifaceted issues related to the design and development of human-game interfaces. This entails multidisciplinary competences and skills, and the final quality of the User eXperience depends on how consistently and smartly they are exploited. As a matter of fact, users\u2019 engagement and satisfaction rely on the wise design and skilled evaluation of the produced (multidimensional) artifacts. This gains even more critical importance since the application of video games has long overcome the borders of amusement, to spur new possibilities for, e.g., continuous healthcare and education

A.T.L.A.S.: Automatic Terrain and Labels Assembling Software

The interactivity and the decision making processes typica lof a video game have a strong influence on how the story of the game should be told, but also on how the imaginary world of the game, where the story takes place, should be structured. As a consequence, there is a growing interest in the development of tools able to couple well with the increasing demanding peculiarities of \u201cgame writing\u201d and\u201cworld building\u201d activities, especially when game or level designers are called to do also the work of a writer. In this paper, we present A.T.L.A.S.(Automatic Terrain and Labels Assembling Software), a tool aimed at the automatic creation of complex imaginary worlds for video games, based on Procedural Content Generation techniques, but characterized also by a story-driven approach

Monsters of Darwin: a strategic game based on Artificial Intelligence and Genetic Algorithms

The production of video games is a complex process, which involves several disciplines, spanning from art to computer science. The final goal is to keep entertained the players, by continuously providing them novel and challenging contents. However, the availability of a large variety of pre-produced material is often not possible. A similar problem can be found in many single-player game genres, where the simulated behaviour generated by the Artificial Intelligence algorithms must be coherent, believable, but also adequately variegate to maintain a satisfactory user experience. To this aim, there is a growing interest in the introduction of automatic or semi-automatic techniques to produce and manage the video game contents. In this paper, we present an example of strategic card battle video game based on the applications of Artificial Intelligence and Genetic Algorithms, where the game contents are dynamically adapted and produced during the game sessions

Whole-genome sequencing reveals host factors underlying critical COVID-19

Critical COVID-19 is caused by immune-mediated inflammatory lung injury. Host genetic variation influences the development of illness requiring critical care1 or hospitalization2,3,4 after infection with SARS-CoV-2. The GenOMICC (Genetics of Mortality in Critical Care) study enables the comparison of genomes from individuals who are critically ill with those of population controls to find underlying disease mechanisms. Here we use whole-genome sequencing in 7,491 critically ill individuals compared with 48,400 controls to discover and replicate 23 independent variants that significantly predispose to critical COVID-19. We identify 16 new independent associations, including variants within genes that are involved in interferon signalling (IL10RB and PLSCR1), leucocyte differentiation (BCL11A) and blood-type antigen secretor status (FUT2). Using transcriptome-wide association and colocalization to infer the effect of gene expression on disease severity, we find evidence that implicates multiple genes—including reduced expression of a membrane flippase (ATP11A), and increased expression of a mucin (MUC1)—in critical disease. Mendelian randomization provides evidence in support of causal roles for myeloid cell adhesion molecules (SELE, ICAM5 and CD209) and the coagulation factor F8, all of which are potentially druggable targets. Our results are broadly consistent with a multi-component model of COVID-19 pathophysiology, in which at least two distinct mechanisms can predispose to life-threatening disease: failure to control viral replication; or an enhanced tendency towards pulmonary inflammation and intravascular coagulation. We show that comparison between cases of critical illness and population controls is highly efficient for the detection of therapeutically relevant mechanisms of disease

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