Psychophysiology in games

Psychophysiology is the study of the relationship between psychology and its physiological manifestations. That relationship is of particular importance for both game design and ultimately gameplaying. Players’ psychophysiology offers a gateway towards a better understanding of playing behavior and experience. That knowledge can, in turn, be beneficial for the player as it allows designers to make better games for them; either explicitly by altering the game during play or implicitly during the game design process. This chapter argues for the importance of physiology for the investigation of player affect in games, reviews the current state of the art in sensor technology and outlines the key phases for the application of psychophysiology in games.The work is supported, in part, by the EU-funded FP7 ICT iLearnRWproject (project no: 318803).peer-reviewe

Friedreich ataxia patient tissues exhibit increased 5-hydroxymethylcytosine modification and decreased CTCF binding at the FXN locus

© 2013 Al-Mahdawi et al. This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use,distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.Friedreich ataxia (FRDA) is caused by a homozygous GAA repeat expansion mutation within intron 1 of the FXN gene, which induces epigenetic changes and FXN gene silencing. Bisulfite sequencing studies have identified 5-methylcytosine (5 mC) DNA methylation as one of the epigenetic changes that may be involved in this process. However, analysis of samples by bisulfite sequencing is a time-consuming procedure. In addition, it has recently been shown that 5-hydroxymethylcytosine (5 hmC) is also present in mammalian DNA, and bisulfite sequencing cannot distinguish between 5 hmC and 5 mC.The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007-2013) under grant agreement number 242193/EFACTS (CS), the Wellcome Trust [089757] (SA) and Ataxia UK (RMP) to MAP

Search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum in pp collisions at √ s = 8 TeV with the ATLAS detector

Results of a search for new phenomena in final states with an energetic jet and large missing transverse momentum are reported. The search uses 20.3 fb−1 of √ s = 8 TeV data collected in 2012 with the ATLAS detector at the LHC. Events are required to have at least one jet with pT > 120 GeV and no leptons. Nine signal regions are considered with increasing missing transverse momentum requirements between Emiss T > 150 GeV and Emiss T > 700 GeV. Good agreement is observed between the number of events in data and Standard Model expectations. The results are translated into exclusion limits on models with either large extra spatial dimensions, pair production of weakly interacting dark matter candidates, or production of very light gravitinos in a gauge-mediated supersymmetric model. In addition, limits on the production of an invisibly decaying Higgs-like boson leading to similar topologies in the final state are presente

A frequentist framework of inductive reasoning

Reacting against the limitation of statistics to decision procedures, R. A. Fisher proposed for inductive reasoning the use of the fiducial distribution, a parameter-space distribution of epistemological probability transferred directly from limiting relative frequencies rather than computed according to the Bayes update rule. The proposal is developed as follows using the confidence measure of a scalar parameter of interest. (With the restriction to one-dimensional parameter space, a confidence measure is essentially a fiducial probability distribution free of complications involving ancillary statistics.) A betting game establishes a sense in which confidence measures are the only reliable inferential probability distributions. The equality between the probabilities encoded in a confidence measure and the coverage rates of the corresponding confidence intervals ensures that the measure's rule for assigning confidence levels to hypotheses is uniquely minimax in the game. Although a confidence measure can be computed without any prior distribution, previous knowledge can be incorporated into confidence-based reasoning. To adjust a p-value or confidence interval for prior information, the confidence measure from the observed data can be combined with one or more independent confidence measures representing previous agent opinion. (The former confidence measure may correspond to a posterior distribution with frequentist matching of coverage probabilities.) The representation of subjective knowledge in terms of confidence measures rather than prior probability distributions preserves approximate frequentist validity.Comment: major revisio

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

IRIS study: a phase II study of the steroid sulfatase inhibitor Irosustat when added to an aromatase inhibitor in ER-positive breast cancer patients

Purpose: Irosustat is a first-generation, orally active, irreversible steroid sulfatase inhibitor. We performed a multicentre, open label phase II trial of the addition of Irosustat to a first-line aromatase inhibitor (AI) in patients with advanced BC to evaluate the safety of the combination and to test the hypothesis that the addition of Irosustat to AI may further suppress estradiol levels and result in clinical benefit. Experimental design: Postmenopausal women with ER-positive locally advanced or metastatic breast cancer who had derived clinical benefit from a first-line AI and who subsequently progressed were enrolled. The first-line AI was continued and Irosustat (40 mg orally daily) added. The primary endpoint was clinical benefit rate (CBR). Secondary endpoints included safety, tolerability, and pharmacodynamic end points. Results: Twenty-seven women were recruited, four discontinued treatment without response assessment. Based on local reporting, the CBR was 18.5% (95% CI 6.3–38.1%) on an intent to treat basis, increasing to 21.7% (95% CI 7.4–43.7%) by per-protocol analysis. In those patients that achieved clinical benefit (n = 5), the median (interquartile range) duration was 9.4 months (8.1–11.3) months. The median progression-free survival time was 2.7 months (95% CI 2.5–4.6) in both the ITT and per-protocol analyses. The most frequently reported grade 3/4 toxicities were dry skin (28%), nausea (13%), fatigue (13%), diarrhoea (8%), headache (7%), anorexia (7%) and lethargy (7%). Conclusions: The addition of Irosustat to aromatase inhibitor therapy resulted in clinical benefit with an acceptable safety profile. The study met its pre-defined success criterion by both local and central radiological assessments

The Effect of Tear Supplementation on Ocular Surface Sensations during the Interblink Interval in Patients with Dry Eye.

PURPOSE: To investigate the characteristics of ocular surface sensations and corneal sensitivity during the interblink interval before and after tear supplementation in dry eye patients. METHODS: Twenty subjects (41.88+/-14.37 years) with dry eye symptoms were included in the dry eye group. Fourteen subjects (39.13+/-11.27 years) without any clinical signs and/or symptoms of dry eye were included in the control group. Tear film dynamics was assessed by non-invasive tear film breakup time (NI-BUT) in parallel with continuous recordings of ocular sensations during forced blinking. Corneal sensitivity to selective stimulation of corneal mechano-, cold and chemical receptors was assessed using a gas esthesiometer. All the measurements were made before and 5 min after saline and hydroxypropyl-guar (HP-guar) drops. RESULTS: In dry eye patients the intensity of irritation increased rapidly after the last blink during forced blinking, while in controls there was no alteration in the intensity during the first 10 sec followed by an exponential increase. Irritation scores were significantly higher in dry eye patients throughout the entire interblink interval compared to controls (p0.05). CONCLUSION: Ocular surface irritation responses due to tear film drying are considerably increased in dry eye patients compared to normal subjects. Although tear supplementation improves the protective tear film layer, and thus reduce unpleasant sensory responses, the rapid rise in discomfort is still maintained and might be responsible for the remaining complaints of dry eye patients despite the treatment

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO

Performance of CMS muon reconstruction in pp collision events at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV

The performance of muon reconstruction, identification, and triggering in CMS has been studied using 40 inverse picobarns of data collected in pp collisions at sqrt(s) = 7 TeV at the LHC in 2010. A few benchmark sets of selection criteria covering a wide range of physics analysis needs have been examined. For all considered selections, the efficiency to reconstruct and identify a muon with a transverse momentum pT larger than a few GeV is above 95% over the whole region of pseudorapidity covered by the CMS muon system, abs(eta) < 2.4, while the probability to misidentify a hadron as a muon is well below 1%. The efficiency to trigger on single muons with pT above a few GeV is higher than 90% over the full eta range, and typically substantially better. The overall momentum scale is measured to a precision of 0.2% with muons from Z decays. The transverse momentum resolution varies from 1% to 6% depending on pseudorapidity for muons with pT below 100 GeV and, using cosmic rays, it is shown to be better than 10% in the central region up to pT = 1 TeV. Observed distributions of all quantities are well reproduced by the Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: Replaced with published version. Added journal reference and DO