Use of auditory cues for wayfinding assistance in virtual environment: music aids route decision

This paper addresses the crucial problem of wayfinding assistance in the Virtual Environments (VEs). A number of navigation aids such as maps, agents, trails and acoustic landmarks are available to support the user for navigation in VEs, however it is evident that most of the aids are visually dominated. This work-in-progress describes a sound based approach that intends to assist the task of 'route decision' during navigation in a VE using music. Furthermore, with use of musical sounds it aims to reduce the cognitive load associated with other visually as well as physically dominated tasks. To achieve these goals, the approach exploits the benefits provided by music to ease and enhance the task of wayfinding, whilst making the user experience in the VE smooth and enjoyable.

Entertainment education theory and practice in HIV/AIDS communication: a South Africa / United Kingdom comparison

Within development communication, gaps remain in theory and practice: communication innovations are taking place which either do not incorporate theory or fail to challenge the assumptions of development communication and HIV/AIDS theory. This can lead to the implementation of unsuccessful interventions that lack theoretical frameworks or to uninformed practice, making it difficult to replicate. Further, research has demonstrated that Entertainment Education (EE) interventions have a measurable impact on behaviour in areas such as HIV/AIDS prevention. Given the transitions in EE practice and evidence of its impact, EE theory and practice can contribute insight into these challenges. A pilot study investigated these dilemmas within the context of the monitoring and evaluation of development communication. Framing this discussion is the concept of South-North dialogue, using comparative analysis of EE interventions to distil lessons through contrasting experiences in two diverse settings. It holds as a principle that lessons from the experience of EE in the Southern context can inform lessons for the North. Further, comparison of the case studies can generate insights for the broader development communication field. We present four case studies, informed by key informant interviews, of EE interventions in the UK and South Africa. We address how communication is defined in planning, implementation and evaluation, highlighting how it often misses the importance of 'listening'. The case studies show that HIV/AIDS communication, and development communication more broadly, has not internalised ideas of evaluation and listening in communication. Successes in the case studies can be partially attributed to responsiveness and context-specificity rather than following rigid planning templates, such as those found in some development communication literature. This indicates the importance of flexibility and responsiveness to context for both development communication and HIV/AIDS communication.

The biosurfactant viscosin produced by Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 aids spreading motility and plant growth promotion

Food security depends on enhancing production and reducing loss to pests and pathogens. A promising alternative to agrochemicals is the use of plant growth-promoting rhizobacteria (PGPR), which are commonly associated with many, if not all, plant species. However, exploiting the benefits of PGPRs requires knowledge of bacterial function and an in-depth understanding of plant-bacteria associations. Motility is important for colonization efficiency and microbial fitness in the plant environment, but the mechanisms employed by bacteria on and around plants are not well understood. We describe and investigate an atypical mode of motility in Pseudomonas fluorescens SBW25 that was revealed only after flagellum production was eliminated by deletion of the master regulator fleQ. Our results suggest that this ‘spidery spreading’ is a type of surface motility. Transposon mutagenesis of SBW25ΔfleQ (SBW25Q) produced mutants, defective in viscosin production, and surface spreading was also abolished. Genetic analysis indicated growth-dependency, production of viscosin, and several potential regulatory and secretory systems involved in the spidery spreading phenotype. Moreover, viscosin both increases efficiency of surface spreading over the plant root and protects germinating seedlings in soil infected with the plant pathogen Pythium. Thus, viscosin could be a useful target for biotechnological development of plant growth promotion agents.

When semantics aids phonology: a processing advantage for iconic word forms in aphasia

Iconicity is the non-arbitrary relation between properties of a phonological form and semantic content (e.g. “moo”, “splash”). It is a common feature of both spoken and signed languages, and recent evidence shows that iconic forms confer an advantage during word learning. We explored whether iconic forms conferred a processing advantage for 13 individuals with aphasia following left-hemisphere stroke. Iconic and control words were compared in four different tasks: repetition, reading aloud, auditory lexical decision and visual lexical decision. An advantage for iconic words was seen for some individuals in all tasks, with consistent group effects emerging in reading aloud and auditory lexical decision. Both these tasks rely on mapping between semantics and phonology. We conclude that iconicity aids spoken word processing for individuals with aphasia. This advantage may be due to a stronger connection between semantic information and phonological forms.

Mediated action and sexual risk: Searching for 'culture' in discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China

This paper examines the concept of ‘culture’ and its relationship to HIV prevention. Culture is here seen as the interaction between human beings and the various ‘cultural tools’ they appropriate when taking action. Among these tools are ways of speaking which encode certain meanings, ideologies and social practices. When individuals take action with regard to AIDS, what they do is mediated through voices which they borrow strategically from their environ- ment. The textual tools that are available and the ways individuals adapt and combine them work to either limit or amplify their participation in HIV prevention. What are traditionally seen as ‘cultures’ or ‘sub-cultures’, or worse, ‘risk groups’, are, in this perspective, viewed as ‘communities of practice’, groups of individuals who share particular cultural tools and ways of using them. This conceptual framework is applied to recent discourses of homosexuality and AIDS prevention in China. An instance of ‘of� cial’ discourse in the form of an AIDS education pamphlet for ‘gays’ is analysed for the voices it contains and how these voices are strategically marshalled by the authors and mixed with other voices in ways which amplify participation in AIDS prevention for some and limit it for others. This ‘offical’ discourse is then compared to the discourse of homosexually active Chinese men recently interviewed in Beijing and Fuzhou to examine which of these of� cial voices and other voices they appropriate, and how they adapt these voices in responding to HIV.

Two Faces of AIDS in Hong Kong: Culture and the Construction of the `AIDS Celebrity'

Since the first reported case of HIV infection in Hong Kong in 1985, only two HIV-positive individuals in the territory have voluntarily made public their seropositivity: a British dentist named Mike Sinclair, who disclosed his condition to the media in 1992 and died in 1995, and J.J. Chan, a local Chinese disc-jockey, who came forward in 1995 and died just a few months later. When they made their revelations, both became instant media personalities and were invited by the Hong Kong Government to act as spokespeople for AIDS awareness and prevention. Mike Sinclair worked as an education officer for the Hong Kong AIDS Foundation, and J.J. Chan appeared in Government television commercials about AIDS. This article explores how the public identities of these two figures were constructed in the cultural context of Hong Kong where both Eastern and Western values exist side by side and interact. It argues that the construction of `AIDS celebrities' is a kind of `identity project' negotiated among the players involved: the media, the Government, the public, and the person with AIDS (PWA) himself, each bringing to the construction their own `theories' regarding the self and communication. When the players in the construction hold shared assumptions about the nature of the self and the role of communication in enacting it, harmonious discourses arise, but when cultural models among the players differ, contradictory or ambiguous constructions result. The effect of culture on the way `AIDS celebrities' are constructed has implications for the way societies view the issue of AIDS and treat those who have it. It also helps reveal possible sites of difficulty when individuals of different cultures communicate about the issue.

Marketing the Damaged Self: The Construction of Identity in Advertisements Directed Towards People with HIV/AIDS

This paper explores the identities projected in advertisements directed towards HIV positive individuals and people with AIDS. Fifty such advertisements were collected from three popular American magazines for gay men over a period of seven months. Analysis of the ads reveals a paradoxical presentation of people with HIV/AIDS, which offers simultaneous conflicting images of hope and fear, power and weakness, innocence and guilt. An interactive sociolinguistic model through which this contradictory discourse might be understood is presented, drawing on Goffman’s insights on stigma management and the presentation of the self in social interaction. Advertisements directed towards people with HIV/AIDS, it is suggested, present a contradictory discourse in which the advertisers are positioned as ‘the wise’, offering to mediate the conflicting identities of the stigmatized. The identity values enacted in this contradictory discourse are further measured against American conceptions of communication and the self as observed by Carbaugh and others. The possible consequences of these positionings on the roles made available to people with HIV/AIDS in the wider social context are discussed.

Talking AIDS in Hong Kong: Cultural models in public health discourse

This paper explores issues of cultural models in the discourse of public health in a multicultural, multilingual context through a 'frame analysis' of 20 AIDS awareness campaigns aired in both English and Cantonese in Hong Kong from 1987 to 1994. Using a methodology derived from the work of Goffman (1974), and Gee (1990), it examines how the authors of AIDS awareness messages in Hong Kong project cultural models on several different levels of "framing" and how these models both reflect and validate dominant ideologies within the society.

Evaluation of directional microphone drift in digital hearing aids

The occurrence of directional microphone drift following hearing aid use has been infrequently examined. This study uses the front-to-side ratio to evaluate changes in directional microphone output from new behind-the-ear hearing aids and following approximately three months of hearing aid use. Results indicate no overall significant differences in the front-to-side ratio between initial and follow-up measurements.