Mid-air haptics for shape recognition of virtual objects.

This paper presents an experiment in which participants had to discriminate three mid-air haptic shapes (circle, square, point) by reporting whether the haptic stimulus (e.g. circle on the palm of the hand) was compatible with an image (e.g. a circle) or a word (e.g. 'circle') displayed on a screen. Results indicate that only the 'point' stimulus was appreciably recognised and discriminated in terms of accuracy and time needed for the identification. Accuracy increased with repetition, and response time decreased, suggesting a learning effect. The comparison between visual and textual labels shows that for the haptic point stimulus there is no significant difference but a tendency to have greater accuracy with images than with texts, while the opposite result is found for the circle stimulus. This outcome suggests the need for new experiments focussed of the effect of visual/textual labels to make the recognition/discrimination tasks of haptic stimuli easier. Practitioner Summary: Three haptic shapes were presented with images or texts, matching or not the stimuli. The point was easy to recognise, while the circle and the square were difficult to discriminate against each other. Visual/textual labels bring contradictory results for different shapes. Abbreviations: 1D: one-dimensional; 2D: two-dimensional; 3D: three-dimensional; API: application programming interface; cm: centimeter; GLMM: generalised linear mixed-effect model; HCI: human-computer interaction; Hz: hertz; LMM: linear mixed-effect model; MCC: Matthews' correlation coefficient; mm: millimeter; ms: millisecond; QQ-plot: Quantile-Quantile plot; SD: standard deviation.

Antioxidants, Dietary Fatty Acids, and Sperm: A Virtual Reality Applied Game for Scientific Dissemination.

Fatty acid (FA) profile appears to be critical to infertility, and the effects of dietary FAs on sperm FA content are a current focus of studies in the field of nutrition and reproduction. Starting from a validated "OXISTRESS" model in which modification of FA content results to influence reactive oxygen species, antioxidants, isoprostanes, cytokines, sperm kinetic, and acrosome reaction, we developed a virtual reality game where the player, in order to improve the health of some virtual spermatozoa, is called to take dietary choices and then discover their consequences on the main biological aspects. In the LabVR of the University of Siena, a team of VR environment designer and developer used Unity development engine to make the experience run on Oculus Quest and a wireless 6DOF (six degrees of freedom of movement in 3D space) VR Headset. In the game, the player is immersed in the epididymis and observes closer how dietary n-3 may change the sperm plasma membrane and consequently modify sperm traits. A simulation game in the virtual reality may represent a tool to give greater visibility to scientific data in the relevance of appropriate dietary habits in the human health.