Evaluating Effects of Character Appearance on Ownership and Learning in Virtual Applications

Virtual applications are now a dominant commercial and social platform. Sixty-seven percent of households own a gaming device, and eighty-one percent of the United States population has a social media profile. Now, virtual reality appears to be the next technological frontier that will take over mainstream markets. New, low-cost devices for virtual reality or mixed reality such as the Oculus Rift, Sony\u27s PlayStation VR, or Samsung\u27s Gear VR are already available or have been announced and might even outperform previous high-cost systems. With the prevalence of this technology, it is important to know how it influences us. One common factor that has remained popular in virtual applications throughout its evolution are characters. How does the appearance of characters affect us in virtual applications and virtual reality? Towards understanding these effects, this research presents findings on results when character model appearance is altered in an educational application and in self-representative avatars. Results from our experiments show that allowing character customization in an educational software results in higher learning outcomes for participants. We also find that when controlling self-avatars, some participants can feel that they own any virtual hand model given to them in virtual reality. In addition, we find that participants generally feel the strongest ownership for virtual hands that appear human-like. Finally, we find that participants experience stronger feelings of ownership and realism when they are able to control virtual hands directly rather than with a hand-held device, and that the virtual reality task must first be considered to determine which modality and hand size are the most applicable. These results contribute to knowledge for how to best create characters for users in virtual applications and environments

Evaluating Grasping Visualizations and Control Modes in a VR Game

A primary goal of the Virtual Reality(VR) community is to build fully immersive and presence-inducing environments with seamless and natural interactions. To reach this goal, researchers are investigating how to best directly use our hands to interact with a virtual environment using hand tracking. Most studies in this field require participants to perform repetitive tasks. In this article, we investigate if results of such studies translate into a real application and game-like experience. We designed a virtual escape room in which participants interact with various objects to gather clues and complete puzzles. In a between-subjects study, we examine the effects of two input modalities (controllers vs. hand tracking) and two grasping visualizations (continuously tracked hands vs. virtual hands that disappear when grasping) on ownership, realism, efficiency, enjoyment, and presence. Our results show that ownership, realism, enjoyment, and presence increased when using hand tracking compared to controllers. Visualizing the tracked hands during grasps leads to higher ratings in one of our ownership questions and one of our enjoyment questions compared to having the virtual hands disappear during grasps as is common in many applications. We also confirm some of the main results of two studies that have a repetitive design in a more realistic gaming scenario that might be closer to a typical user experience

Neurogenesis is enhanced by stroke in multiple new stem cell niches along the ventricular system at sites of high BBB permeability

AbstractPrevious studies have established the subventricular (SVZ) and subgranular (SGZ) zones as sites of neurogenesis in the adult forebrain (Doetsch et al., 1999a; Doetsch, 2003a). Work from our laboratory further indicated that midline structures known as circumventricular organs (CVOs) also serve as adult neural stem cell (NSC) niches (Bennett et al., 2009, 2010). In the quiescent rat brain, NSC proliferation remains low in all of these sites. Therefore, we recently examined whether ischemic stroke injury (MCAO) or sustained intraventricular infusion of the mitogen bFGF could trigger an up-regulation in NSC proliferation, inducing neurogenesis and gliogenesis. Our data show that both stroke and bFGF induce a dramatic and long-lasting (14day) rise in the proliferation (BrdU+) of nestin+Sox2+GFAP+ NSCs capable of differentiating into Olig2+ glial progenitors, GFAP+nestin-astrocyte progenitors and Dcx+ neurons in the SVZ and CVOs. Moreover, because of the upsurge in NSC number, it was possible to detect for the first time several novel stem cell niches along the third (3V) and fourth (4V) ventricles. Importantly, a common feature of all brain niches was a rich vasculature with a blood–brain-barrier (BBB) that was highly permeable to systemically injected sodium fluorescein. These data indicate that stem cell niches are more extensive than once believed and exist at multiple sites along the entire ventricular system, consistent with the potential for widespread neurogenesis and gliogenesis in the adult brain, particularly after injury. We further suggest that because of their leaky BBB, stem cell niches are well-positioned to respond to systemic injury-related cues which may be important for stem-cell mediated brain repair

ATT3D: Amortized Text-to-3D Object Synthesis

Text-to-3D modelling has seen exciting progress by combining generative text-to-image models with image-to-3D methods like Neural Radiance Fields. DreamFusion recently achieved high-quality results but requires a lengthy, per-prompt optimization to create 3D objects. To address this, we amortize optimization over text prompts by training on many prompts simultaneously with a unified model, instead of separately. With this, we share computation across a prompt set, training in less time than per-prompt optimization. Our framework - Amortized text-to-3D (ATT3D) - enables knowledge-sharing between prompts to generalize to unseen setups and smooth interpolations between text for novel assets and simple animations.Comment: 22 pages, 20 figure

Revalorisation of rapeseed pomace extracts: an in vitro study into its anti-oxidant and DNA protective properties

Rapeseed pomace (RSP) is a waste product obtained after edible oil production from Brassica napus. Analysis of ubiquitous secondary metabolites in RSP samples (two breeds, harvested in 2012/2014 respectively from North East of Scotland) and their ethanol/water (95:5) Soxhlet extracts were carried out. Soxhlet extraction of the RSP (petroleum ether followed by 95% ethanol) gave a solid extract. LC-MS/MS data of the extracts revealed several secondary metabolites, with Sinapic acid being the most abundant. Strong antioxidant activities of the Soxhlet extracts were confirmed from the results obtained in the FRAP, DPPH and ORAC assays. Furthermore, for the very first time, RSP extracts (13.9µg/ml) provided complete DNA protection, from oxidative stress induced by AAPH (3.5mM). Therefore the strong antioxidant and DNA protecting properties demonstrated by the RSP extracts in this study warrants further investigation for their revalorisation and potential use as reliable source of antioxidants in different food applications.Gary Duncan for the LC-MS/MS analysis and financial support from Tenovus Scotland – Grampian.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Chemical chaperone TUDCA prevents apoptosis and improves survival during polymicrobial sepsis in mice

Sepsis-induced lymphopenia is a major cause of morbidities in intensive care units and in populations with chronic conditions such as renal failure, diabetes, HIV and alcohol abuse. Currently, other than supportive care and antibiotics, there are no treatments for this condition. We developed an in vitro assay to understand the role of the ER-stress-mediated apoptosis process in lymphocyte death during polymicrobial sepsis, which was reproducible in in vivo mouse models. Modulating ER stress using chemical chaperones significantly reduced the induction of the pro-apoptotic protein Bim both in vitro and in mice. Furthermore, in a ‘two-hit’ pneumonia model in mice, we have been able to demonstrate that administration of the chemical chaperone TUDCA helped to maintain lymphocyte homeostasis by significantly reducing lymphocyte apoptosis and this correlated with four-fold improvement in survival. Our results demonstrate a novel therapeutic opportunity for treating sepsis-induced lymphopenia in humans

A phase 1, open-label, dose-escalation trial of oral TSR-011 in patients with advanced solid tumours and lymphomas

Anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK) gene rearrangements are oncogenic drivers in non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). TSR-011 is a dual ALK and tropomyosin-related kinase (TRK) inhibitor, active against ALK inhibitor resistant tumours in preclinical studies. Here, we report the safety, tolerability and recommended phase 2 dose (RP2D) of TSR-011 in patients with relapsed or refractory ALK- and TRK-positive advanced cancers. Methods: In this sequential, open-label, phase 1 trial (NCT02048488), patients received doses of 30 mg, escalated to 480 mg every 24 hours (Q24h), followed by an expansion cohort of patients with ALK-positive cancers. The primary objective was to evaluate safety and tolerability. Secondary objectives included pharmacokinetics. Results: TSR-011 320- and 480-mg Q24h doses exceeded the maximum tolerated dose. At the RP2D of 40 mg every 8 hours (Q8h), the most common grade 3–4 treatment-emergent adverse events occurred in 3.2–6.5% of patients. Of 14 ALK inhibitor-naive patients with ALK-positive NSCLC, 6 experienced partial responses and 8 had stable disease. Conclusions: At the RP2D (40 mg Q8h), TSR-011 demonstrated a favourable safety profile with acceptable QTc changes. Limited clinical activity was observed. Based on the competitive ALK inhibitor landscape and benefit/risk considerations, further TSR-011 development was discontinuedThis clinical trial was funded by TESAR