Examining User Performance in the presence of Latency and Jitter in Distributed Interactive Applications

Latency and jitter inherently limit the maintenance of consistency in Distributed Interactive Applications such as computer games, distributed whiteboards and real-time, collaborative environments. Although there has been much research into methods for maintaining consistency, there is a distinct lack of research exploring the connection between latency, jitter and the end user experience in Distributed Interactive Applications. We have developed an application that allows us to conduct trials under controlled latency and jitter conditions. This provides data, which can be analysed to characterise how people adapt to various degrees of latency and jitter. We present results that highlight how an increase in latency and jitter affect the end-user experience, thus confirming the need for techniques to combat latency and jitter in Distributed Interactive Applications. We alsoe note that the effects of jitter are significantly greater than those of latency

Informing investment to reduce inequalities: a modelling approach

Background: Reducing health inequalities is an important policy objective but there is limited quantitative information about the impact of specific interventions. Objectives: To provide estimates of the impact of a range of interventions on health and health inequalities. Materials and methods: Literature reviews were conducted to identify the best evidence linking interventions to mortality and hospital admissions. We examined interventions across the determinants of health: a ‘living wage’; changes to benefits, taxation and employment; active travel; tobacco taxation; smoking cessation, alcohol brief interventions, and weight management services. A model was developed to estimate mortality and years of life lost (YLL) in intervention and comparison populations over a 20-year time period following interventions delivered only in the first year. We estimated changes in inequalities using the relative index of inequality (RII). Results: Introduction of a ‘living wage’ generated the largest beneficial health impact, with modest reductions in health inequalities. Benefits increases had modest positive impacts on health and health inequalities. Income tax increases had negative impacts on population health but reduced inequalities, while council tax increases worsened both health and health inequalities. Active travel increases had minimally positive effects on population health but widened health inequalities. Increases in employment reduced inequalities only when targeted to the most deprived groups. Tobacco taxation had modestly positive impacts on health but little impact on health inequalities. Alcohol brief interventions had modestly positive impacts on health and health inequalities only when strongly socially targeted, while smoking cessation and weight-reduction programmes had minimal impacts on health and health inequalities even when socially targeted. Conclusions: Interventions have markedly different effects on mortality, hospitalisations and inequalities. The most effective (and likely cost-effective) interventions for reducing inequalities were regulatory and tax options. Interventions focused on individual agency were much less likely to impact on inequalities, even when targeted at the most deprived communities

'It's a film' : medium specificity as textual gesture in Red road and The unloved

British cinema has long been intertwined with television. The buzzwords of the transition to digital media, 'convergence' and 'multi-platform delivery', have particular histories in the British context which can be grasped only through an understanding of the cultural, historical and institutional peculiarities of the British film and television industries. Central to this understanding must be two comparisons: first, the relative stability of television in the duopoly period (at its core, the licence-funded BBC) in contrast to the repeated boom and bust of the many different financial/industrial combinations which have comprised the film industry; and second, the cultural and historical connotations of 'film' and 'television'. All readers of this journal will be familiar – possibly over-familiar – with the notion that 'British cinema is alive and well and living on television'. At the end of the first decade of the twenty-first century, when 'the end of medium specificity' is much trumpeted, it might be useful to return to the historical imbrication of British film and television, to explore both the possibility that medium specificity may be more nationally specific than much contemporary theorisation suggests, and to consider some of the relationships between film and television manifest at a textual level in two recent films, Red Road (2006) and The Unloved (2009)

Is telomere length socially patterned? Evidence from the West of Scotland Twenty-07 study

Lower socioeconomic status (SES) is strongly associated with an increased risk of morbidity and premature mortality, but it is not known if the same is true for telomere length, a marker often used to assess biological ageing. The West of Scotland Twenty-07 Study was used to investigate this and consists of three cohorts aged approximately 35 (N = 775), 55 (N = 866) and 75 years (N = 544) at the time of telomere length measurement. Four sets of measurements of SES were investigated: those collected contemporaneously with telomere length assessment, educational markers, SES in childhood and SES over the preceding twenty years. We found mixed evidence for an association between SES and telomere length. In 35-year-olds, many of the education and childhood SES measures were associated with telomere length, i.e. those in poorer circumstances had shorter telomeres, as was intergenerational social mobility, but not accumulated disadvantage. A crude estimate showed that, at the same chronological age, social renters, for example, were nine years (biologically) older than home owners. No consistent associations were apparent in those aged 55 or 75. There is evidence of an association between SES and telomere length, but only in younger adults and most strongly using education and childhood SES measures. These results may reflect that childhood is a sensitive period for telomere attrition. The cohort differences are possibly the result of survival bias suppressing the SES-telomere association; cohort effects with regard different experiences of SES; or telomere possibly being a less effective marker of biological ageing at older ages