Aurelia Butler

The virus wreaking havoc on our lives is an efficient infection machine. Composed of only 29 proteins (compared to our 400,000), with a genome 1/200,000 the size of ours, SARS-CoV-2 is expertly evolved to trick our cells to contribute its machinery to assist in its propagation.
In the last few months, scientists have learned a great deal about the mechanics of this mindless enemy. But what we’ve learned still pales in comparison to what we don’t know.
There are a number of ways scientists uncover the workings of a virus. Only by using these methods in tandem can we find and exploit the coronavirus’s weak spots, says Ahmet Yildiz, associate professor of Physics and Molecular Cell Biology at the University of California, Berkeley.
Yildiz and his collaborator Mert Gur at Istanbul Technical University are combining supercomputer-powered molecular dynamics simulations with single molecule experiments to uncover the secrets of the virus. In particular, they are studying its spike (S) protein, the part of the virus that binds to human cells and begins the process of inserting viral RNA into the cell.
“Many groups are attacking different stages of this process,” Gur said. “Our initial goal is to use molecular dynamics simulations to identify the processes that happen when the virus binds to the host cell.”
There are three critical phases that allow the spike protein to break into the cell and begin replicating, Yildiz says.

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First, the spike protein needs to transform from a closed configuration to an open one. Second, the spike protein binds to its receptor on the outside of our cells. This binding triggers a conformational change within the spike protein and allows another human protein to cleave the spike. Finally, the newly exposed surface of the spike interacts with the host cell membrane and enables the viral RNA to enter and hijack the cell.
In early February, electron microscope images revealed the structure of the spike protein. But the snapshots only showed the main configurations that the protein takes, not the transitional, in-between steps. “We only see snapshots of stable conformations,” Yildiz said. “Because we don’t know the timing of events that allow the protein to go from one stable conformation to the next one, we don’t yet know those intermediary conformations.”
That’s where computer modeling comes in. The microscope images provide a useful starting point to create models of every atom in the protein, and its environment (water, ions, and the receptors of the cell). From there, Yildiz and Gur set the protein in motion and watched to see what happened.
“We showed that the S protein visits an intermediate state before it can dock to the receptor protein on the host cell membrane” Gur said. “This intermediate state can be useful for drug targeting to prevent the S protein to initiate viral infection.”
Whereas many other groups around the world are probing the binding pocket of the virus, hoping to find a drug that can block the virus from latching onto human cells, Yildiz and Gur are taking a more nuanced approach.

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“The spike protein strongly binds to its receptor with a complex interaction network,” Yildiz explained. “We showed that if you just break one of those interactions, you still won’t be able to stop the binding. That’s why some of the basic drug development studies may not produce the desired outcomes.”
But if it’s possible to prevent the spike protein from going from a closed to open state — or a third, in-between state that we’re not even aware of to the open state — that might lend itself to a treatment.
Find, and Break, the Important Bonds
The second use of computer simulations by Yildiz and Gur identified not just new states, but the specific amino acids that stabilize each state.
“If we can determine the important linkages at the single amino acid level — which interactions stabilize and are critical for these confirmations — it may be possible to target those states with small molecules,” Yildiz said.
Simulating this behavior at the level of the atom or individual amino acid is incredibly computationally intensive. Yildiz and Gur were granted time on the Stampede2 supercomputer at the Texas Advanced Computing Center (TACC) — the second fastest supercomputer at a U.S. university and the 19th fastest overall — through the COVID-19 HPC Consortium. Simulating one microsecond of the virus and its interactions with human cells — roughly one million atoms in total — takes weeks on a supercomputer…and would take years without one.
“It’s a computationally demanding process,” Yildiz said. “But the predictive power of this approach is very powerful.”
Yildiz and Gur team, along with approximately 40 other research groups studying COVID-19, have been given priority access to TACC systems. “We’re not limited by the speed at which the simulations happen, so there’s a real-time race between our ability to run simulations and analyze the data.”
With time of the essence, Gur and his collaborators have churned through calculations, re-enacting the atomic peregrinations of the spike protein as it approaches, binds to, and interacts with Angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptors — proteins that line the surface of many cell types.
Their initial findings, which proposed the existence of an intermediate semi-open state of the S protein compatible to RBD-ACE2 binding via all-atom molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, was published in the Journal of Chemical Physics.
Furthermore, by performing all-atom MD simulations, they identified an extended network of salt bridges, hydrophobic and electrostatic interactions, and hydrogen bonding between the receptor-binding domain of the spike protein and ACE2. The results of these findings were released in BioRxiv.
Mutating the residues on the receptor-binding domain was not sufficient to destabilize binding but reduced the average work to unbind the spike protein from ACE2. They propose that blocking this site via neutralizing antibody or nanobody could prove an effective strategy to inhibit spike protein-ACE2 interactions.
In order to confirm that the computer-derived insights are accurate, Yildiz’s team performed lab experiments using single molecule fluorescence resonance energy transfer (or smFRET) — a biophysical technique used to measure distances at the one to 10 nanometer scale in single molecules
“The technique allows us to see the conformational changes of the protein by measuring the energy transfer between two light emitting probes,” Yildiz said.
Though scientists still don’t have a technique to see the atomic details of molecules in motion in real-time, the combination of electron microscopy, single molecule imaging, and computer simulations can provide researchers with a rich picture of the virus’ behavior, Yildiz says.
“We can get atomic resolution snapshots of frozen molecules using electron microscopy. We can get atomic level simulations of the protein in motion using molecular dynamics in a short time scale. And using single-molecule techniques we can derive the dynamics that are missing from electron microscopy and the simulations,” Yildiz concluded. “Combining these methods together give us the full picture and dissect the mechanism of a virus entering to the host cell.” More

Using a new mathematical approach to screen large groups for Covid-19 could be around 20 times cheaper than individual testing, a study suggests.
Applying a recently created algorithm to test multiple samples in one go reduces the total number of tests needed, lowering the cost of screening large populations for Covid-19, researchers say.
This novel approach will make it easier to spot outbreaks early on. Initial research shows it is highly effective at identifying positive cases when most of the population is negative.
A team of researchers, including a theoretical physicist from the University of Edinburgh, developed the method — called the hypercube algorithm — and conducted the first field trials in Africa.
Tiny quantities taken from individual swabs were mixed to create combined samples and then tested. The team showed that a single positive case could still be detected even when mixed with 99 negative swab results.
If this initial test highlighted that the mixed sample contained positive cases, then researchers used the algorithm to design a further series of tests. This enabled them to pinpoint individual positive swab results within the combined sample, making it easy to identify people who are infected.
If the initial test results indicated that there were no positive cases in the mixed sample, then no follow-up action was needed.
The new method is best suited to regular screening of a population — rather than testing individual patients — and may help to significantly lower testing costs, the team says.
So far, the method has been trialled in Rwanda, where it is being used to screen air passengers, and in South Africa, where it is being used to test a leading rugby team regularly.
The study, published in the journal Nature, also involved researchers from the African Institute for Mathematical Sciences (AIMS) and the University of Rwanda.
Professor Neil Turok, who recently joined the University of Edinburgh’s School of Physics and Astronomy as the inaugural Higgs Chair of Theoretical Physics, said: “We hope our method will enable regular, cost-effective screening in multiple contexts. By doing so, it could be a game changer in helping us to overcome the Covid-19 pandemic.”

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Researchers at Tokyo Institute of Technology (Tokyo Tech) and Carnegie Mellon University have together developed a new human motion capture system that consists of a single ultra-wide fisheye camera mounted on the user’s chest. The simplicity of their system could be conducive to a wide range of applications in the sports, medical and entertainment fields.
Computer vision-based technologies are advancing rapidly owing to recent developments in integrating deep learning. In particular, human motion capture is a highly active research area driving advances for example in robotics, computer generated animation and sports science.
Conventional motion capture systems in specially equipped studios typically rely on having several synchronized cameras attached to the ceiling and walls that capture movements by a person wearing a body suit fitted with numerous sensors. Such systems are often very expensive and limited in terms of the space and environment in which the wearer can move.
Now, a team of researchers led by Hideki Koike at Tokyo Tech present a new motion capture system that consists of a single ultra-wide fisheye camera mounted on the user’s chest. Their design not only overcomes the space constraints of existing systems but is also cost-effective.
Named MonoEye, the system can capture the user’s body motion as well as the user’s perspective, or ‘viewport’. “Our ultra-wide fisheye lens has a 280-degree field-of-view and it can capture the user’s limbs, face, and the surrounding environment,” the researchers say.
To achieve robust multimodal motion capture, the system has been designed with three deep neural networks capable of estimating 3D body pose, head pose and camera pose in real-time.
Already, the researchers have trained these neural networks with an extensive synthetic dataset consisting of 680,000 renderings of people with a range of body shapes, clothing, actions, background and lighting conditions, as well as 16,000 frames of photo-realistic images.
Some challenges remain, however, due to the inevitable domain gap between synthetic and real-world datasets. The researchers plan to keep expanding their dataset with more photo-realistic images to help minimize this gap and improve accuracy.
The researchers envision that the chest-mounted camera could go on to be transformed into an everyday accessory such as a tie clip, brooch or sports gear in future.
The team’s work will be presented at the 33rd ACM Symposium on User Interface Software and Technology (UIST), a leading forum for innovations in human-computer interfaces, to be held virtually on 20-23 October 2020.

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Could a stack of 2D materials allow for supercurrents at ground-breakingly warm temperatures, easily achievable in the household kitchen?
An international study published in August opens a new route to high-temperature supercurrents at temperatures as ‘warm’ as inside a kitchen fridge.
The ultimate aim is to achieve superconductivity (ie, electrical current without any energy loss to resistance) at a reasonable temperature.
TOWARDS ROOM-TEMPERATURE SUPERCONDUCTIVITY
Previously, superconductivity has only been possible at impractically low temperatures, less than -170°C below zero — even the Antarctic would be far too warm!
For this reason, the cooling costs of superconductors have been high, requiring expensive and energy-intensive cooling systems.

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Superconductivity at everyday temperatures is the ultimate goal of researchers in the field.
This new semiconductor superlattice device could form the basis of a radically new class of ultra-low energy electronics with vastly lower energy consumption per computation than conventional, silicon-based (CMOS) electronics.
Such electronics, based on new types of conduction in which solid-state transistors switch between zero and one (ie, binary switching) without resistance at room temperature, is the aim of the FLEET Centre of Excellence.
EXCITON SUPERCURRENTS IN ENERGY-EFFICIENT ELECTRONICS
Because oppositely-charged electrons and holes in semiconductors are strongly attracted to each other electrically, they can form tightly-bound pairs. These composite particles are called excitons, and they open up new paths towards conduction without resistance at room temperature.

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Excitons can in principle form a quantum, ‘superfluid’ state, in which they move together without resistance. With such tightly bound excitons, the superfluidity should exist at high temperatures — even as high as room temperature.
But unfortunately, because the electron and hole are so close together, in practice excitons have extremely short lifetimes — just a few nanoseconds, not enough time to form a superfluid.
As a workaround, the electron and hole can be kept completely apart in two, separated atomically-thin conducting layers, creating so-called ‘spatially indirect’ excitons. The electrons and holes move along separate but very close conducting layers. This makes the excitons long-lived, and indeed superfluidity has recently been observed in such systems.
Counterflow in the exciton superfluid, in which the oppositely charged electrons and holes move together in their separate layers, allows so-called ‘supercurrents’ (dissipationless electrical currents) to flow with zero resistance and zero wasted energy. As such, it is clearly an exciting prospect for future, ultra-low-energy electronics.
STACKED LAYERS OVERCOME 2D LIMITATIONS
Sara Conti who is a co-author on the study, notes another problem however: atomically-thin conducting layers are two-dimensional, and in 2D systems there are rigid topological quantum restrictions discovered by David Thouless and Michael Kosterlitz (2016 Nobel prize), that eliminate the superfluidity at very low temperatures, above about -170°C.
The key difference with the new proposed system of stacked atomically-thin layers of transition metal dichalcogenide (TMD) semiconducting materials, is that it is three dimensional.
The topological limitations of 2D are overcome by using this 3D `superlattice’ of thin layers. Alternate layers are doped with excess electrons (n-doped) and excess holes (p-doped) and these form the 3D excitons.
The study predicts exciton supercurrents will flow in this system at temperatures as warm as -3°C.
David Neilson, who has worked for many years on exciton superfluidity and 2D systems, says “The proposed 3D superlattice breaks out from the topological limitations of 2D systems, allowing for supercurrents at -3°C. Because the electrons and holes are so strongly coupled, further design improvements should carry this right up to room temperature.”
“Amazingly, it is becoming routine today to produce stacks of these atomically-thin layers, lining them up atomically, and holding them together with the weak van der Waals atomic attraction,” explains Prof Neilson. “And while our new study is a theoretical proposal, it is carefully designed to be feasible with present technology.” More

Wood is considered an attractive construction material for both aesthetic and environmental purposes. Construction of useful wood objects requires complicated structures and ways to connect components together. Researchers created a novel 3D design application to hugely simplify the design process and also provide milling machine instructions to efficiently produce the designed components. The designs do not require nails or glue, meaning items made with this system can be easily assembled, disassembled, reused, repaired or recycled.
Carpentry is a practice as ancient as humanity itself. Equal parts art and engineering, it has figuratively and literally shaped the world around us. Yet despite its ubiquity, carpentry is a difficult and time-consuming skill, leading to relatively high prices for hand-crafted wooden items like furniture. For this reason, much wooden furniture around us is often, at least to some degree, made by machines. Some machines can be highly automated and programmed with designs created on computers by human designers. This in itself can be a very technical and creative challenge, out of reach to many, until now.
Researchers from the Department of Creative Informatics at the University of Tokyo have created a 3D design application to create structural wooden components quickly, easily and efficiently. They call it Tsugite, the Japanese word for joinery, and through a simple 3D interface, users with little or no prior experience in either woodworking or 3D design can create designs for functional wooden structures in minutes. These designs can then instruct milling machines to carve the structural components, which users can then piece together without the need for additional tools or adhesives, following on-screen instructions.
“Our intention was to make the art of joinery available to people without specific experience. When we tested the interface in a user study, people new to 3D modeling not only designed some complex structures, but also enjoyed doing so,” said researcher Maria Larsson. “Tsugite is simple to use as it guides users through the process one step at a time, starting with a gallery of existing designs that can then be modified for different purposes. But more advanced users can jump straight to a manual editing mode for more freeform creativity.”
Tsugite gives users a detailed view of wooden joints represented by what are known as voxels, essentially 3D pixels, in this case small cubes. These voxels can be moved around at one end of a component to be joined; this automatically adjusts the voxels at the end of the corresponding component such that they are guaranteed to fit together tightly without the need for nails or even glue. Two or more components can be joined and the software algorithm will adjust all accordingly. Different colors inform the user about properties of the joints such as how easily they will slide together, or problems such as potential weaknesses.
Something that makes Tsugite unique is that it will factor the fabrication process directly into the designs. This means that milling machines, which have physical limitations such as their degrees of freedom, tool size and so on, are only given designs they are able to create. Something that has plagued users of 3D printers, which share a common ancestry with milling machines, is that software for 3D printers cannot always be sure how the machine itself will behave which can lead to failed prints.
“There is some great research in the field of computer graphics on how to model a wide variety of joint geometries. But that approach often lacks the practical considerations of manufacturing and material properties,” said Larsson. “Conversely, research in the fields of structural engineering and architecture may be very thorough in this regard, but they might only be concerned with a few kinds of joints. We saw the potential to combine the strengths of these approaches to create Tsugite. It can explore a large variety of joints and yet keeps them within realistic physical limits.”
Another advantage of incorporating fabrication limitations into the design process is that Tsugite’s underlying algorithms have an easier time navigating all the different possibilities they could present to users, as those that are physically impossible are simply not given as options. The researchers hope through further refinements and advancements that Tsugite can be scaled up to design not just furniture and small structures, but also entire buildings.
“According to the U.N., the building and construction industry is responsible for almost 40% of worldwide carbon dioxide emissions. Wood is perhaps the only natural and renewable building material that we have, and efficient joinery can add further sustainability benefits,” said Larsson. “When connecting timbers with joinery, as opposed to metal fixings, for example, it reduces mixing materials. This is good for sorting and recycling. Also, unglued joints can be taken apart without destroying building components. This opens up the possibility for buildings to be disassembled and reassembled elsewhere. Or for defective parts to be replaced. This flexibility of reuse and repair adds sustainability benefits to wood.”
This research is supported by JST ACT-I grant number JPMJPR17UT, JSPS KAKENHI grant number 17H00752, and JST CREST grant number JPMJCR17A1, Japan.

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A peace sign from Martin Luther King, Jr, becomes a rude gesture; President Donald Trump’s inauguration crowd scenes inflated; dolphins in Venice’s Grand Canal; and crocodiles on the streets of flooded Townsville — all manipulated images posted as truth.
Image editing software is so ubiquitous and easy to use, according to researchers from QUT’s Digital Media Research Centre, it has the power to re-imagine history.
And, they say, deadline-driven journalists lack the tools to tell the difference, especially when the images come through from social media.
Their study, Visual mis/disinformation in journalism and public communications, has been published in Journalism Practice. It was driven by the increased prevalence of fake news and how social media platforms and news organisations are struggling to identify and combat visual mis/disinformation presented to their audiences.
“When Donald Trump’s staff posted an image to his official Facebook page in 2019, journalists were able to spot the photoshopped edits to the president’s skin and physique because an unedited version exists on the White House’s official Flickr feed,” said lead author Dr T.J. Thomson.
“But what about when unedited versions aren’t available online and journalists can’t rely on simple reverse-image searches to verify whether an image is real or has been manipulated?

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“When it is possible to alter past and present images, by methods like cloning, splicing, cropping, re-touching or re-sampling, we face the danger of a re-written history — a very Orwellian scenario.”
Examples highlighted in the report include photos shared by news outlets last year of crocodiles on Townsville streets during a flood which were later shown to be images of alligators in Florida from 2014. It also quotes a Reuters employee on their discovery that a harrowing video shared during Cyclone Idai, which devastated parts of Africa in 2019, had been shot in Libya five years earlier.
An image of Dr Martin Luther King Jr’s reaction to the US Senate’s passing of the civil rights bill in 1964, was manipulated to make it appear that he was flipping the bird to the camera. This edited version was shared widely on Twitter, Reddit, and white supremacist website The Daily Stormer.
Dr Thomson, Associate Professor Daniel Angus, Dr Paula Dootson, Dr Edward Hurcombe, and Adam Smith have mapped journalists’ current social media verification techniques and suggest which tools are most effective for which circumstances.
“Detection of false images is made harder by the number of visuals created daily — in excess of 3.2 billion photos and 720,000 hours of video — along with the speed at which they are produced, published, and shared,” said Dr Thomson.

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“Other considerations include the digital and visual literacy of those who see them. Yet being able to detect fraudulent edits masquerading as reality is critically important.
“While journalists who create visual media are not immune to ethical breaches, the practice of incorporating more user-generated and crowd-sourced visual content into news reports is growing. Verification on social media will have to increase commensurately if we wish to improve trust in institutions and strengthen our democracy.”
Dr Thomson said a recent quantitative study performed by the International Centre for Journalists (ICFJ) found a very low usage of social media verification tools in newsrooms.
“The ICFJ surveyed over 2,700 journalists and newsroom managers in more than 130 countries and found only 11% of those surveyed used social media verification tools,” he said.
“The lack of user-friendly forensic tools available and low levels of digital media literacy, combined, are chief barriers to those seeking to stem the tide of visual mis/disinformation online.”
Associate Professor Angus said the study demonstrated an urgent need for better tools, developed with journalists, to provide greater clarity around the provenance and authenticity of images and other media.
“Despite knowing little about the provenance and veracity of the visual content they encounter, journalists have to quickly determine whether to re-publish or amplify this content,” he said.
“The many examples of misattributed, doctored, and faked imagery attest to the importance of accuracy, transparency, and trust in the arena of public discourse. People generally vote and make decisions based on information they receive via friends and family, politicians, organisations, and journalists.”
The researchers cite current manual detection strategies — using a reverse image search, examining image metadata, examining light and shadows; and using image editing software — but say more tools need to be developed, including more advanced machine learning methods, to verify visuals on social media.
Video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S_flHHn1280&feature=emb_logo More

Australian scientists have developed a new type of sensor to measure and correct the distortion of starlight caused by viewing through the Earth’s atmosphere, which should make it easier to study the possibility of life on distant planets.
Using artificial intelligence and machine learning, University of Sydney optical scientists have developed a sensor that can neutralise a star’s ‘twinkle’ caused by heat variations in the Earth’s atmosphere. This will make the discovery and study of planets in distant solar systems easier from optical telescopes on Earth.
“The main way we identify planets orbiting distant stars is by measuring regular dips in starlight caused by planets blocking out bits of their sun,” said lead author Dr Barnaby Norris, who holds a joint position as a Research Fellow in the University of Sydney Astrophotonic Instrumentation Laboratory and in the University of Sydney node of Australian Astronomical Optics in the School of Physics.
“This is really difficult from the ground, so we needed to develop a new way of looking up at the stars. We also wanted to find a way to directly observe these planets from Earth,” he said.
The team’s invention will now be deployed in one of the largest optical telescopes in the world, the 8.2-metre Subaru telescope in Hawaii, operated by the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan.
“It is really hard to separate a star’s ‘twinkle’ from the light dips caused by planets when observing from Earth,” Dr Norris said. “Most observations of exoplanets have come from orbiting telescopes, such as NASA’s Kepler. With our invention, we hope to launch a renaissance in exoplanet observation from the ground.”
The research is published today in Nature Communications.

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NOVEL METHODS
Using the new ‘photonic wavefront sensor’ will help astronomers directly image exoplanets around distant stars from Earth.
Over the past two decades, thousands of planets beyond our solar system have been detected, but only a small handful have been directly imaged from Earth. This severely limits scientific exploration of these exoplanets.
Making an image of the planet gives far more information than indirect detection methods, like measuring starlight dips. Earth-like planets might appear a billion times fainter than their host star. And observing the planet separate from its star is like looking at a 10-cent coin held in Sydney, as viewed from Melbourne.
To solve this problem, the scientific team in the School of Physics developed a ‘photonic wavefront sensor’, a new way to allow the exact distortion caused by the atmosphere to be measured, so it can then be corrected by the telescope’s adaptive optics systems thousands of times a second.

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“This new sensor merges advanced photonic devices with deep learning and neural networks techniques to achieve an unprecedented type of wavefront sensor for large telescopes,’ Dr Norris said.
“Unlike conventional wavefront sensors, it can be placed at the same location in the optical instrument where the image is formed. This means it is sensitive to types of distortions invisible to other wavefront sensors currently used today in large observatories,” he said.
Professor Olivier Guyon from the Subaru Telescope and the University of Arizona is one of the world’s leading experts in adaptive optics. He said: “This is no doubt a very innovative approach and very different to all existing methods. It could potentially resolve several major limitations of the current technology. We are currently working in collaboration with the University of Sydney team towards testing this concept at Subaru in conjunction with SCExAO, which is one of the most advanced adaptive optics systems in the world.”
APPLICATION BEYOND ASTRONOMY
The scientists have achieved this remarkable result by building on a novel method to measure (and correct) the wavefront of light that passes through atmospheric turbulence directly at the focal plane of an imaging instrument. This is done using an advanced light converter, known as a photonic lantern, linked to a neural network inference process.
“This is a radically different approach to existing methods and resolves several major limitations of current approaches,” said co-author Jin (Fiona) Wei, a postgraduate student at the Sydney Astrophotonic Instrumentation Laboratory.
The Director of the Sydney Astrophotonic Instrumentation Laboratory in the School of Physics at the University of Sydney, Associate Professor Sergio Leon-Saval, said: “While we have come to this problem to solve a problem in astronomy, the proposed technique is extremely relevant to a wide range of fields. It could be applied in optical communications, remote sensing, in-vivo imaging and any other field that involves the reception or transmission of accurate wavefronts through a turbulent or turbid medium, such as water, blood or air.” More

Research from the University of Kent, the Research centre on Interactive Media, Smart systems and Emerging technologies — RISE Ltd and the University of Cyprus has revealed that Virtual Reality (VR) technology can have significant impact on the validity of remote health appointments for those with eating disorders, through a process called Virtual Reality Exposure Therapy (VRET).
This paper demonstrates the potential value of Multi-User Virtual Reality (MUVR) remote psychotherapy for those with body shape and weight concerns.
In the study, published in Human-Computer Interaction Journal, participants and therapists were fitted with VR Head-Mounted Displays and introduced to each other within the VR system. Participant would then customize their virtual avatar according to their look (body shape and size, skin tone and hair colour and shape). Participant and therapist were then “teleported” to two Virtual Environment interventions for several discussions, building up to the Mirror Exposure.
Mirror Exposure involves confrontation in a mirror with ones’ shape and body. In the MUVR, the participant faces the virtual avatar they customized to match their own physical body. Here, they were again able to adjust body shapes using virtual sliders, change clothing, skin tone, as well as hair style and colour. Clothing was then gradually reduced until the participant’s avatar was in their virtual underwear.
The participant was then asked to examine each part of their body and perform adjustments while describing their feelings, thoughts and concerns with the therapist, leading to virtual exposure therapy for the patient to their body shape and size through the customised avatar.
The study found that the avatar of the therapist was vital to the participant. The cartoonish avatar facilitated greater openness from participants, whilst therapist avatars in human-form represented the idea of negative judgement. In post-session interviews, participants noted the lack of fear of judgement as enabling them to commit to the session’s aims.
Dr Jim Ang, Senior Lecturer in Multimedia/Digital Systems and Supervisor of the study said: ‘The potential of Virtual Reality being used in addressing health issues with patients, remotely and without the issue of potential judgement, is for VR to be utilised throughout the health sector. Without the issue of judgement, which people can fear in advance of even seeking medical advice, VR can give people the confidence to engage with and embrace medical advice. In terms of the technical capabilities, the potential for VR to aid in remote non-contact medical appointments between patients and practitioners is huge, due particular consideration in times of pandemic.’
Dr Maria Matsangidou, Research Associate at RISE Ltd and Experimental Researcher of the study said: ‘Multi-User Virtual Reality is an innovative medium for psychotherapeutic interventions that allows for the physical separation of therapist and patient, providing thus more ‘comfortable’ openness by the patients. Exposure to patient worries about body shape and size may exhibit anxious reactions, but through the remote exposure therapy this can elicit new learning that helps the patient to shape new experiences.’

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