Effectiveness of Social Virtual Reality

A lot of work in social virtual reality, including our own group's, has focused on effectiveness of specific social behaviours such as eye-gaze, turn taking, gestures and other verbal and non-verbal cues. We have built upon these to look at emergent phenomena such as co-presence, leadership and trust. These give us good information about the usability issues of specific social VR systems, but they don't give us much information about the requirements for such systems going forward. In this short paper we discuss how we are broadening the scope of our work on social systems, to move out of the laboratory to more ecologically valid situations and to study groups using social VR for longer periods of time

Precarity and freedom : insecure lives and unequal freedom in modern times : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Politics at Massey University, Manawatū, New Zealand

The normalisation of insecure work in contemporary western economies has attracted increased academic attention, leading to a plethora of critiques on the conditions of insecure work and the economic and social structures which underlie them. In this thesis, I focus on the paradoxical way freedom both legitimises and contests precarious work. I explore how freedom and precarity act as tools of coercion and governing and conversely how freedom and precarity offer potentialities for resistance and provide opportunities to challenge neoliberal norms. Within the confines of this thesis I investigate Isabel Lorey’s theory of precarisation as a governmental process, based on Foucault’s genealogical problematising of dominant narratives designed to more easily govern populations. However, I also explore aspects of Judith Butler’s account of the wider implications of a precariousness that is inherent in our existential being, reflecting a physical vulnerability that drives individuals together to form protection in order to survive. In a modern context, where our inter-dependability is often made invisible and our survivability is linked to our individual endeavour and measured by our income, precarity in the form of insecure work often has wider societal implications and is driven by an existential precariousness. These implications impact both our individual identity and social fractures which justify exploitation for some, in order to secure a more livable life for others. This rhetoric highlights the often contradictory narrative of freedom. The often resulting atomisation and disparity of precarity, also offers new and diverse opportunities to defy neoliberal subjectivities, reformulating a narrative of freedom outside the market. However, the very diverse and disparate nature of precarity does also provide a challenging context for a cohesive protest movement. Conversely precarious resistance suggests new multiple sites of resistance, again challenging a discourse of freedom that is built on homogeneity and class solidarity

Evaluation of Media-Based Social Interactions in Virtual Environments

The evaluation of users’ experiences in virtual environments is an important task for researchers in the fields of human-computer interaction and extended reality. It can be used to understand and enhance the quality of users’ mediated interactions and communications. In a constantly evolving world, where people are growing with technology, it is important to understand, evaluate and enhance the use of immersive media. In the research agenda of this Ph.D. thesis, the challenge of developing multi-user experiences in virtual environments and setting evaluation metrics for researchers are considered. This Ph.D. thesis showcases an interest in how to enhance trust formation in media-based social environments. The findings of this Ph.D. are expected to help create new open-source tools to facilitate the understanding of individuals and groups in extended reality applications

Daptomycin-Nonsusceptible Vancomycin-Intermediate Staphylococcus aureus Vertebral Osteomyelitis Cases Complicated by Bacteremia Treated with High-Dose Daptomycin and Trimethoprim-Sulfamethoxazole

We report two cases of daptomycin (DAP)-nonsusceptible (DNS) vancomycin-intermediate Staphylococcus aureus (VISA) vertebral osteomyelitis cases complicated by bacteremia treated with high-dose daptomycin and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Both patients responded rapidly and favorably to this combination. The clinical isolates from the two patients were tested post hoc in an in vitro pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic (PK/PD) model to confirm the bactericidal activity and enhancement of daptomycin and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. The combination of high-dose daptomycin and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole should be explored further for the treatment of DNS VISA strains.M.J.R. has received grant support, consulted for, or provided lectures for Astellas, Cubist, Forest, Clinical Therapeutics, Theravance, and Rib- X. L.M.A has served as an advisory board member (Forest) and provided lectures (Astellas) and owns stock (Merck). M.E.S., A.E.W., and M.H. have no potential conflicts of interest

Biotic and Abiotic Associations with Westslope Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi) in the North Fork Flathead River Basin in northwestern Montana, USA and southeastern British Columbia, CAN under current and future climate scenarios.

Westslope Cutthroat Trout (Oncorhynchus clarkii lewisi; WCT) populations are declining across much of their native range due to threats such as habitat degradation, competition with non-native species, and climate change. Understanding how habitat characteristics impact distributions of nonhybridized WCT populations throughout a relatively pristine core conservation area is needed to inform management and conservation efforts. We investigated whether abiotic (e.g., gradient) and biotic (i.e., Bull Trout – Salvelinus confluentus) variables predicted WCT presence and predicted how future stream temperature projections for the area might be expected to alter distributions. We compared logistic regression models of WCT presence throughout tributaries of the North Fork Flathead River in Montana, USA and British Columbia, CAN models using a variety of metrics (e.g., Akaike Information Criterion). WCT were widespread throughout the 293 reaches analyzed (present in 69.3% of reaches). Their presence was predicted by gradient, summer temperature, and an interaction of pool density and Bull Trout. Using this regression model and climate projections under both moderate and extreme emissions scenarios, WCT presence is predicted to increase by 13.0% and 14.1% respectively in 2075 from current distributions based on changes in temperature alone. When changes in Bull Trout distributions and temperatures are considered, WCT distributions are predicted to increase by 13.4% and 17.5% under the moderate and high emissions scenario, respectively. This conservation area is predicted to continue to serve as a WCT stronghold, if other threats can be contained

Ubiq-exp: A toolkit to build and run remote and distributed mixed reality experiments

Developing mixed-reality (MR) experiments is a challenge as there is a wide variety of functionality to support. This challenge is exacerbated if the MR experiment is multi-user or if the experiment needs to be run out of the lab. We present Ubiq-Exp - a set of tools that provide a variety of functionality to facilitate distributed and remote MR experiments. We motivate our design and tools from recent practice in the field and a desire to build experiments that are easier to reproduce. Key features are the ability to support supervised and unsupervised experiments, and a variety of tools for the experimenter to facilitate operation and documentation of the experimental sessions. We illustrate the potential of the tools through three small-scale pilot experiments. Our tools and pilot experiments are released under a permissive open-source license to enable developers to appropriate and develop them further for their own needs

Community pharmacy interventions for health promotion: effects on professional practice and health outcomes (Protocol)

This is the protocol for a review and there is no abstract. The objectives are as follows: Primary objective To assess the effectiveness of health promotion interventions in community pharmacy practice settings on pharmacy workers and pharmacy clients (including diagnosed patients) when compared to i) No treatment controls ii) Usual treatment controls iii) Other active intervention Secondary objectives To assess whether there are differences in effectiveness of health promotion interventions in community pharmacy practice settings on i) Pharmacy worker ii) Client (patient) with regard to: i) Ethnicity of patients ii) Country income level (World Bank Group 2009) iii) Extent of adverse health behaviour (defined according to national guidelines where available) iv) Type of pharmacy worker delivering the intervention (e.g. pharmacist versus pharmacist technician) v) Theoretical constructs/components and behaviour change techniques employed in the intervention vi) Costs of health car

Extending the Open Source Social Virtual Reality Ecosystem to the Browser in Ubiq

Social VR (SVR) systems are VR systems with a common subset of features facilitating unstructured social interaction. In the real world, social situations have many purposes, each with a different set of requirements, and roles its participants take - creator, moderator, performer, visitor, etc. Yet, common SVR systems typically offer only a single client to users. Even if there are versions for different platforms, there is a one-size-fits-all approach to the user experience. Consequently users need to employ workarounds or build their own functionality to support specific roles, where this is possible at all. We argue that platforms need to develop more open frameworks that support different processes and user interactions. One way to do this is through using appropriate web standards and an open messaging system in order to allow distributed clients that can leverage the strongest features of heterogeneous computing platforms. Supporting asymmetrical capabilities greatly increases the scope of supported virtual social interactions and potential use cases of SVR. We take a qualitative experimental approach to exploring cross platform support in this way, from a designers perspective. We use the open-source SDK Ubiq, and create a library that allows building Ubiq Peers using web standards and thus clients that can operate solely in a web browser or certain Javascript environments. We validate our approach by demonstrating six proof of concept demonstrators that would be difficult or impossible to achieve in most other SVR systems, and report on what we encountered for the benefit of other SVR designers