Facilitating immersion, engagement and flow in multi-user virtual environments

Virtual worlds are providing myriad opportunities for the development of innovative curricula for tertiary educators. They provide a virtual meeting space for those students and lecturers who are geographically remote from one another, rendering distance irrelevant and facilitating the formation of community. This paper will look at those factors - physical, social, virtual and those related to pedagogy - which facilitate immersion in virtual worlds; that suspension of disbelief which generates the feeling of presence or 'being there', crucial to promoting student engagement and ultimately, flow

Virtual knights and synthetic worlds: Jediism in second life

Almost every manifestation of religion finds expression in the virtual world of Second Life. Established religions have a presence; for example, Epiphany Cathedral is home to Anglicans in the virtual world (Hutchings, 2011). Geographically dispersed adherents gather for communion, Bible study and regular services. Those manifestations of the numinous bordering on religion, depending on the definition employed, can be found in every corner. Freemasonic temples abound and all the paraphernalia that go with those mysterious rituals can be bought from the Second Life Marketplace (Farley, 2010). There are some religions that only find expression in this virtual space. There are all manner of temples, churches, sacred grottoes, simulated stone circles and the opportunity for religious pilgrimage. Some of these expressions can be seen as virtual missionary activity, taking religion to a new frontier. Some religion in virtual worlds is just for fun: people trying a new religion on for a while and trying on the trappings for size

PROPHETIC: Prospective Identification of Pneumonia in Hospitalized Patients in the Intensive Care Unit

BACKGROUND: Pneumonia is the leading infection-related cause of death. Using simple clinical criteria and contemporary epidemiology to identify patients at high risk of nosocomial pneumonia should enhance prevention efforts and facilitate development of new treatments in clinical trials. RESEARCH QUESTION: What are the clinical criteria and contemporary epidemiology trends helpful in identifying patients at high risk of nosocomial pneumonia? STUDY DESIGN AND METHODS: Within the intensive care units of 28 United States hospitals, we conducted a prospective cohort study among adults hospitalized more than 48 hours and considered high risk for pneumonia (defined as treatment with invasive or noninvasive ventilatory support or high levels of supplemental oxygen). We estimated the proportion of high-risk patients developing nosocomial pneumonia. Using multivariable logistic regression, we identified patient characteristics and treatment exposures associated with increased risk of pneumonia development during the intensive care unit admission. RESULTS: Between February 6, 2016 and October 7, 2016, 4613 high-risk patients were enrolled. Among 1464/4613 (32%) high-risk patients treated for possible nosocomial pneumonia, 537/1464 (37%) met the study pneumonia definition. Among high-risk patients, a multivariable logistic model was developed to identify key patient characteristics and treatment exposures associated with increased risk of nosocomial pneumonia development (c-statistic 0.709, 95% confidence interval 0.686 to 0.731). Key factors associated with increased odds of nosocomial pneumonia included an admission diagnosis of trauma or cerebrovascular accident, receipt of enteral nutrition, documented aspiration risk, and receipt of systemic antibacterials within the preceding 90 days. INTERPRETATION: Treatment for nosocomial pneumonia is common among intensive care unit patients receiving high levels of respiratory support, yet more than half of patients treated do not fulfill standard diagnostic criteria for pneumonia. Application of simple clinical criteria may improve the feasibility of clinical trials of pneumonia prevention and treatment by facilitating prospective identification of patients at highest risk

The earliest thymic T cell progenitors sustain B cell and myeloid lineage potential

The stepwise commitment from hematopoietic stem cells in the bone marrow to T lymphocyte-restricted progenitors in the thymus represents a paradigm for understanding the requirement for distinct extrinsic cues during different stages of lineage restriction from multipotent to lineage-restricted progenitors. However, the commitment stage at which progenitors migrate from the bone marrow to the thymus remains unclear. Here we provide functional and molecular evidence at the single-cell level that the earliest progenitors in the neonatal thymus had combined granulocyte-monocyte, T lymphocyte and B lymphocyte lineage potential but not megakaryocyte-erythroid lineage potential. These potentials were identical to those of candidate thymus-seeding progenitors in the bone marrow, which were closely related at the molecular level. Our findings establish the distinct lineage-restriction stage at which the T cell lineage-commitment process transits from the bone marrow to the remote thymus. © 2012 Nature America, Inc. All rights reserved

Self-harm and Falun Gong: Karmic release, martyrdom or suicide

The teachings of Falun Gong explicitly forbid suicide, yet in 2001, five protesters set themselves ablaze in Tiananmen Square resulting in the death of two. Allegedly, their stated aim was to bring the world's focus onto the repression of the movement by the Chinese government. Falun Gong spokespeople were quick to speak out in defence of founder Li Hongzhi, saying that the movement strictly forbids suicide in line with the traditional Chinese belief that says that suicide is an affront to the ancestors. They further claimed that the Chinese government had staged the suicides in order to stir up public opinion against the movement and indeed the tide of public opinion did turn against Falun Gong and its founder (Bell and Boas 2003, 285). Even given Falun Gong's stated opposition to suicide, the movement does encourage its adherents to refuse to take medicine or accept medical treatment and some consider this refusal of treatment could be considered to be suicidal. Chinese state media seized upon Li's writing in which he expressed that illnesses are caused by karma, and claimed that in excess of 1000 deaths were the direct result of adherents following Li's teachings. Authorities also maintain that several hundred practitioners had cut their stomachs open looking for the Dharma Wheel that turns in response to the practice of the five meditative exercises characteristic of the movement. Indeed, many of their fellow followers had been arrested in Tianjin, following condemnation of their movement by physicist He Zouxiu of the Chinese Academy of the Sciences. He had claimed that Falun Gong had been responsible for several deaths (Bejsky 2004, 190). This paper will examine the complex relationship between Falun Gong and the Chinese government, exploring the reality behind the claims and counterclaims in relation to the former's stated opposition to suicide. This will be contrasted with other Falun Gong writings which encourage adherents to refuse medical treatment and medication in order to rid themselves of karma

Як пайду я краем лугам

Як пайду я краем луга

Back to the Future: "The New Nature Writing," Ecological Boredom, and the Recall of the Wild

The “new nature writing” has been seen as a response, especially in the United Kingdom, to the growing sense that earlier paradigms of nature and nature writing are no longer applicable to current geographical and environmental conditions. At the same time, some writers who have been associated with the “new nature writing” dislike the term, criticizing it for its residual parochialism, its continuing class and gender biases, and its paradoxical adherence to the very categories – particularly wildness – it wishes to confront. This article does not set out to dismiss the “new nature writing” or to assess which writers might be the best fit with it; instead, it looks at its indebtedness to the earlier literary and cultural traditions it claims to interrogate and deconstruct. This debt is often expressed in terms of belatedness, whether acknowledged or not, in relation to earlier notions of wilderness and wildness – inherently slippery categories that multiply and ramify in the “new nature writing,” which has neither managed to dissociate itself from wildness nor to redefine it for our ecologically troubled times