We explore how and in what ways the surrounding environment can be an important factor in human perception during interactions with virtual humans. We also seek to leverage any such knowledge to increase the sense of Social/Co-Presence with virtual humans. We conducted a user study to explore the influence of environmental events on social interaction between real and virtual humans in a Mixed ...

The Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin community is challenged in achieving a basin that thrives ecologically, economically and socially. Although natural science, social science, policy, and law literatures offer insight into understanding and developing policies for the Great Lakes-St. Lawrence River basin, these literatures are constructed in disciplinary silos. Scenario analysis supports ...

Within the literature on the evaluation of health (policy) interventions, complexity is a much-debated issue. In particular, many claim that so-called 'complex interventions' pose different challenges to evaluation studies than apparently 'simple interventions' do. Distinct ways of doing evaluation entail particular ontologies and epistemologies of complexity. They differ in terms of whether th...

The debate over whether same-sex couples should be allowed to enter into civil marriages continues in the United States. Forty-nine adolescents and emerging adults (ages 14 – 29) with lesbian, gay, and bisexual parents were interviewed for the current exploratory study, which examined how individuals perceived themselves and their families as being affected by marriage (in)equality, as well as ...

This study examined older lesbians’ and gays’ experiences and expectations of Australian health and aged care service delivery. It was exploratory and comprised in-depth interviews with 14 older lesbian and gay people in the Blue Mountains, west of Sydney. Interview data were analyzed according to the principles and techniques of narrative research. This included an analysis of the socio-lingui...

Using data from a nation-wide cross-sectional survey in 1990 a study examining the risk for occurrence of LBP in various specific occupations was made among 5,185 Danish employees aged 19-59 years old. After adjusting for the confounding effects of age and gender we found significantly increased risks of LBP in three out of nine major occupational categories. They were 'health care and social w...

The Northern Swedish Cohort was started by Anne Hammarström [principal investigator (PI)] in collaboration with Urban Janlert and other researchers within the field of social medicine (Ragnar Berfenstam, Finn Diderichsen, Töres Theorell, Lars H Gustafsson, Claes Sundelin, Gustav Jonsson). At that time, the PI was a newly qualified registered medical doctor and was searching for a PhD project. A...

Online content and products are presented as product networks, where nodes are product pages linked by hyperlinks. These links are typically algorithmically-induced recommendations based on aggregated data. Recently, websites have begun to offer social networks and user-generated links alongside the product network, creating a dual-network structure. We investigate the role of this dual-network...

There is considerable controversy among mental health professionals and the public about the proper role of psychotropic medications in the treatment of youths. Within social work, too, there have been sharp differences of opinion. There have been few studies, however, about the views of practicing clinical social workers on the use of psychiatric drugs in the treatment of youths. This study, a...