"They’re Just Tixel Pits, Man": Disputing the 'Reality' of Virtual Reality Pornography through the Story Completion Method

Pornography is a substantial part of humans' everyday interaction with computers, yet to date the topic has been underconsidered by HCI. Here, we examine some of the common cultural ideals non-experts constructed of a 'new' pornographic experience - Virtual Reality (VR) Porn - through use of the 'Story Completion Method'. Forty five participants completed a story stem about a male character who was about to have his "very first virtual reality porn experience". Through our analysis, we demonstrate a narrative of a 'perfect', idealised sexual experience, as well as one which emphasised the imagined 'precarious' and dangerous consequences around this technology use. We indicate how the stories reproduced ideals around heteronormativity and hegemonic masculinity, suggesting an agenda of 'Designing for Eroticism' as a tactic which could avoid such problematic discourses. We also suggest the opportunities and challenges presented through use of the 'Story Completion Method'

Sex Talk: Designing for Sexual Health with Adolescents

In this paper, we describe a user-centred design process, where we engaged with 58 adolescents over an 18-month period to design and evaluate a multiplayer mobile game which prompts peer-led interactions around sex and sexuality. Engagement with our design process, and response to our game, has been enthusiastic, highlighting the rich opportunities for HCI to contribute constructively to how HCI may contribute to sexual health in adolescents. Based on our experiences we discuss three lessons learnt: lightweight digital approaches can be extremely successful at facilitating talk among young people about sex; sharing control of the conversation between all stakeholders is a fair and achievable approach; even problematic interactions can be opportunities to talk about sex

Supporting improvised games for young people in public spaces

PhD ThesisResearchers looking at technologically mediated play and games have explored how games can be taken away from the computer screen and played in outdoor spaces. This has resulted in new pervasive games that benefit from the opportunities for rich social and physical interaction in new mobile contexts. However, we have only just begun to explore these opportunities; game designs should bring young people together in these new contexts in play that is appropriate, meaningful, and can be enjoyed on their own mobile devices. The research in this thesis explores how game designers and interaction designers can design more playful mobile games for young people that can be played together in public spaces. This work draws upon a research through design approach that has been informed by the researcher’s own practice of game design and working co-creatively with custodians of public spaces. The contributions are based on the analysis of empirical data collected from two case studies in a community library and a country house, while additionally drawing upon three further game designs made in collaborations with other partners. This work contributes a game design framework that provides an approach, a step by step method, guidelines and a software library for making mobile games with more open, spontaneous, and improvised styles of play. The mobile games are designed with and based on a simplistic game system that presents digital playing cards to provide the game structure and bound play, while the mobile device is also used to configure the play space and sustain play. The intention is to provide designers with a practical and evidence-based approach to designing digital games for new mobile contexts. This work will appeal to game designers who are motivated by an interest in play and playfulness that will resonate with our childhood memories of play.UK AHRC KE Hub for the Creative Economy (ref: AH/J005150/1 Creative Exchange

Enabling self, intimacy and a sense of home in dementia

Design and digital technologies to support a sense of self and human relationships for people living with dementia are both urgently needed. We present an enquiry into design for dementia facilitated by a public art commission for an adult mental health unit in a hospital in the UK. The interactive art piece was informed by the notion of personhood in dementia that foregrounds the person's social being and interpersonal relationships as sites where self is maintained and constructed. How clients, clients' family members and staff used the piece is reported and insights related to the notions of home, intimacy, possessions and self are presented. The art piece served as window on both dementia and the institution leading to a number of insights and implications for design

Housing afforability dynamics in Australia 2001-06

This paper investigates the dynamics of housing affordability in Australia over the period 2001-06 using waves 1 to 6 of the Household, Income and Labour Dynamics in Australia Survey. We utilise a discrete time hazard model approach to examine whether housing affordability stress has increased over the period 2001-06, and whether spells in housing stress are transient or persistent. The results suggest that while most Australians escape unaffordable housing circumstances, there is a minority for whom unaffordable housing circumstances are a long term experience. Panel models are employed to estimate the impacts of socio-demographic characteristics on the probability of exiting from a spell of (un-) affordable housing given (un-) affordable housing in the previous year. The model findings indicate that those with children and have no employment are more prone to persistent housing affordability stress. However, residential moves during spells of housing affordability stress tend to alleviate housing cost burdens. Survival in affordable housing has become progressively more difficult over the 2001-06 timeframe, particularly for owner purchasers. This finding is unsurprising given a house price boom and rising interest rates over the period of analysis. Residential moves are again influential, but those made by households during a spell living in affordable housing are associated with the onset of housing affordability stress.JEL Classification: R2

High-Content Imaging for Large-Scale Detection of Low-Affinity Extracellular Protein Interactions.

Extracellular protein interactions coordinate cellular responses with their local environment and have important roles in pathogen invasion and disease. Due to technical challenges associated with studying binding events at the cell surface, the systematic and reliable identification of novel ligand-receptor pairs remains difficult. Here, we describe the development of a cell-based assay using large-scale transient transfections and high-content imaging (HCI) to detect extracellular binding events. We optimized the parameters for efficient transfection of human cells with cDNA plasmids encoding full-length cell surface receptors in 384-well plates. Using a range of well-characterized structurally diverse low-affinity cell surface interactions, we show that transfected cells probed with highly avid ligands can be used to successfully identify ligand-receptor pairs using an HCI platform and automated image analysis software. To establish the high-throughput potential of this approach, we also screened a pool of ligands against a collection of 2455 cell surface expression clones and found that known ligand-receptor interactions could be robustly and consistently detected across the library using this technology

Solid oral dosage form manufacturing using injection moulding

The most preferred route of drug administration is via an oral dosage form and currently the most widely used manufacturing method is direct compression of powder blends. However it can be difficult to control the homogeneity of these dosage forms due to inefficient mixing. Dispersing API within a molten polymer can give more control over the spatial arrangement of drug within the dosage forms resulting in higher quality doses. Using polymers also has the added benefit that drug-polymer interactions can increase solubility of drugs reducing the growing concern of the number of aqueous insoluble drugs on the market (1). Injection Moulding (IM) is a novel method to produce dosage forms. It works by melting formulations containing polymer and drug together and injecting it into a cavity. By combining this technology with Hot Melt Extrusion (HME) which introduces highly efficient mixing the drug dose can be controlled. However the main disadvantage to using polymers is that sustained release often occurs due to the slow erosion properties and high pressures used during injection moulding(2). Stability issues can also occur when using high drug loadings as the polymer becomes saturated. Disintegrating agents can be introduced to the formulation in order to increase the time taken to obtain complete drug release. It is important to note that due to the nature or polymer true ‘disintegration’ won’t occur as it does with compressed tablets however they do have the ability to help facilitate the breakdown of polymers(3) . Filaments were produced using HME based on a Design of Experiments approach were analysed using disintegration apparatus and the results suggests the best disintegrating agents to use were small natural molecules. However the main factor influencing the mass remaining was the concentration of API as this was a BCS Class II drug. References 1. Karataş A, Yüksel N, Baykara T. 'Improved solubility and dissolution rate of piroxicam using gelucire 44/14 and labrasol'. Il Farmaco. 2005;60(9):777-82. 2. Claeys B, Vervaeck A, Hillewaere XKD, Possemiers S, Hansen L, De Beer T, et al. 'Thermoplastic polyurethanes for the manufacturing of highly dosed oral sustained release matrices via hot melt extrusion and injection molding'. E. J. Pharm. Biopharm. 2015;90:44-52. 3. Agrawal A, Dudhedia M, Deng W, Shepard K, Zhong L, Povilaitis E, et al. 'Development of tablet formulation of amorphous solid dispersions prepared by hot melt extrusion using quality by design approach'. AAPS PharmSciTech. 2016;17(1):214-32