The TViews Table Role-Playing Game

The TViews Table Role-Playing Game (TTRPG) is a digital tabletop role-playing game that runs on the TViews table, bridging the separate worlds of traditional role-playing games with the growing area of massively multiplayer online role-playing games. The TViews table is an interactive tabletop media platform that can track the location of multiple tagged objects in real-time as they are moved around its surface, providing a simultaneous and coincident graphical display. In this paper we present the implementation of the first version of TTRPG, with a content set based on the traditional Dungeons & Dragons rule-set. We also discuss the results of a user study that used TTRPG to explore the possible social context of digital tabletop role-playing games.

Estimating Gesture Accuracy in Motion-Based Health Games

This manuscript details a technique for estimating gesture accuracy within the context of motion-based health video games using the MICROSOFT KINECT. We created a physical therapy game that requires players to imitate clinically significant reference gestures. Player performance is represented by the degree of similarity between the performed and reference gestures and is quantified by collecting the Euler angles of the player's gestures, converting them to a three-dimensional vector, and comparing the magnitude between the vectors. Lower difference values represent greater gestural correspondence and therefore greater player performance. A group of thirty-one subjects was tested. Subjects achieved gestural correspondence sufficient to complete the game's objectives while also improving their ability to perform reference gestures accurately.

Mobile Games for Learning

Today, pupils at the age of 15 have spent their entire life surrounded by and interacting with diverse forms of computers. It is a routine part of their day-to-day life and by now computer-literacy is common at very early age. Over the past five years, technology for teens has become predominantly mobile and ubiquitous within every aspect of their lives. To them, being online is an implicitness. In Germany, 88% of youth aged between 12-19 years own a smartphone and about 20% use the Internet via tablets. Meanwhile, more and more young learners bring their devices into the classroom and pupils increasingly demand for innovative and motivating learning scenarios that strongly respond to their habits of using media. With this development, a shift of paradigm is slowly under way with regard to the use of mobile technology in education. By now, a large body of literature exists, that reports concepts, use-cases and practical studies for effectively using technology in education. Within this field, a steadily growing body of research has developed that especially examines the use of digital games as instructional strategy. The core concern of this thesis is the design of mobile games for learning. The conditions and requirements that are vital in order to make mobile games suitable and effective for learning environments are investigated. The base for exploration is the pattern approach as an established form of templates that provide solutions for recurrent problems. Building on this acknowledged form of exchanging and re-using knowledge, patterns for game design are used to classify the many gameplay rules and mechanisms in existence. This research draws upon pattern descriptions to analyze learning game concepts and to abstract possible relationships between gameplay patterns and learning outcomes. The linkages that surface are the starting bases for a series of game design concepts and their implementations are subsequently evaluated with regard to learning outcomes. The findings and resulting knowledge from this research is made accessible by way of implications and recommendations for future design decisions.

Autonomic stress responses elicited by watching a live broadcast soccer game: a pilot study

Aim: Increased rates of hospitalization due to cardiovascular events have been reported during phases of World Soccer Championships (WSC). The purpose of this pilot study was to explore acute psychological and physiological effects of watching a live broadcast soccer game during the WSC 2006. Methods: Seven male supporters (age: M=24; SD=2.7) of the Swiss National Soccer Team watched a game of their team in a controlled laboratory setting. Heart rate (HR), heart rate variability (HRV), salivary cortisol, alpha-amylase (sAA), and testosterone concentrations, as well as several mood ratings were captured repeatedly before, during, and after the game. Results: Subjects reported feeling stressed, and HR and sAA activity showed an increase during the game. In contrast, HRV, cortisol and testosterone were unaffected. Conclusion: Watching a sports competition seems to specifically affect the sympathetic nervous system, which can be measured by sensitive electrocardiographic and salivary markers.

The risk of early mortality of polytrauma patients associated to ISS, NISS, APACHE II values and prothrombin time

BACKGROUND: The early hemodynamic normalization of polytrauma patients may lead to better survival outcomes. The aim of this study was to assess the diagnostic quality of trauma and physiological scores from widely used scoring systems in polytrauma patients. METHODS: In total, 770 patients with ISS > 16 who were admitted to a trauma center within the first 24 hours after injury were included in this retrospective study. The patients were subdivided into three groups: those who died on the day of admission, those who died within the first three days, and those who survived for longer than three days. ISS, NISS, APACHE II score, and prothrombin time were recorded at admission. RESULTS: The descriptive statistics for early death in polytrauma patients who died on the day of admission, 1--3 days after admission, and > 3 days after admission were: ISS of 41.0, 34.0, and 29.0, respectively; NISS of 50.0, 50.0, and 41.0, respectively; APACHE II score of 30.0, 25.0, and 15.0, respectively; and prothrombin time of 37.0%, 56.0%, and 84%, respectively. These data indicate that prothrombin time (AUC: 0.89) and APACHE II (AUC: 0.88) have the greatest prognostic utility for early death. CONCLUSION: The estimated densities of the scores may suggest a direction for resuscitative procedures in polytrauma patients.Trial registration: "Retrospektive Analysen in der Chirurgischen Intensivmedizin" StV01-2008.http://www.kek.zh.ch/internet/gesundheitsdirektion/kek/de/home.html.

Food Fury: Online Casual Game Development for Nutrition Education

Introduction: The United States is currently experiencing increased prevalence of obesity. This is a particular problem amongst children who require dietary and activity behavioral change to mitigate this problem. The use of computer games as channels to motivate health behavior in children is increasing. Casual games are a subset of computer games that are simple in design, easy to access and play, popular with children, and have the potential to be effective for drill and practice learning. [See PDF for complete abstract]

Listening to your heart and feeling yourself: effects of exposure to interoceptive signals during the ultimatum game

The ultimatum game (UG) is commonly used to study the tension between financial self-interest and social equity motives. Here, we investigated whether experimental exposure to interoceptive signals influences participants' behavior in the UG. Participants were presented with various bodily sounds--i.e., their own heart, another person's heart, or the sound of footsteps--while acting both in the role of responder and proposer. We found that listening to one's own heart sound, compared to the other bodily sounds: (1) increased subjective feelings of unfairness, but not rejection behavior, in response to unfair offers and (2) increased the unfair offers while playing in the proposer role. These findings suggest that heightened feedback of one's own visceral processes may increase a self-centered perspective and drive socioeconomic exchanges accordingly. In addition, this study introduces a valuable procedure to manipulate online the access to interoceptive signals and for exploring the interplay between viscero-sensory information and cognition.

Serum IL-6: a candidate biomarker for intracranial pressure elevation following isolated traumatic brain injury.

BACKGROUND: Increased intracranial pressure (ICP) is a serious, life-threatening, secondary event following traumatic brain injury (TBI). In many cases, ICP rises in a delayed fashion, reaching a maximal level 48-96 hours after the initial insult. While pressure catheters can be implanted to monitor ICP, there is no clinically proven method for determining a patient's risk for developing this pathology. METHODS: In the present study, we employed antibody array and Luminex-based screening methods to interrogate the levels of inflammatory cytokines in the serum of healthy volunteers and in severe TBI patients (GCS RESULTS: Consistent with previous reports, we observed sustained increases in IL-6 levels in TBI patients irrespective of their ICP status. However, the group of patients who subsequently experienced ICP >or= 25 mm Hg had significantly higher IL-6 levels within the first 17 hours of injury as compared to the patients whose ICP remained 128 pg/ml correctly identified 85% of isolated TBI patients who subsequently developed elevated ICP, and values between these cut-off values correctly identified 75% of all patients whose ICP remained CONCLUSIONS: Our results suggest that serum IL-6 can be used for the differential diagnosis of elevated ICP in isolated TBI.

Radiation injury is a potentially serious complication to fluoroscopically-guided complex interventions.

Radiation-induced injury to skin is an infrequent but potentially serious complication to complex fluoroscopically-guided interventional procedures. Due to a lack of experience with such injuries, the medical community has found fluoroscopically-induced injuries difficult to diagnose. Injuries have occurred globally in many countries. Serious injuries most frequently occur on the back but have also occurred on the neck, buttocks and anterior of the chest. Severities of injuries range from skin rashes and epilation to necrosis of the skin and its underlying structures. This article reviews the characteristics of these injuries and some actions that can be taken to reduce their likelihood or seriousness.

Behavioral Outcomes of Home-Based Services for Children and Adolescents with Serious Emotional Disorders

The current study evaluates the effectiveness of an intensive home-based treatment program, Families First, on the behaviors of children and adolescents suffering from mental disorders and being at risk for out-ofi home placement. The sample included 85 youngsters and their families from a semi-rural community. The Diagnostic Interview for Children and Adolescents-Revised (DICA-R) was administered to the children, and the Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL) was completed by a parent at pretreatment and posttreatment. The families participated in a 4-6 week, intensive home intervention where crisis intervention, social support services, and needed psychological services were offered. The results indicated that both externalizing and internalizing behavior problems in youngsters with different diagnoses of mental disorders were significantly reduced at posttreatment as indicated by their CBCL scores. Furthermore, youngsters with a diagnosis of Oppositional Defiant Disorder seemed to benefit the most, as evidenced by the improved scores on most subscales of the CBCL. Youngsters with mood disorders and conduct disorders seemed to benefit in their most deficient areas, internalizing behavior problems and delinquent behaviors, respectively. Finally, after participating in Families First, more than half of the youngsters in the sample were able to stay home with their families