10 mind-blowing Oculus Rift experiments that reveal VR's practical potential

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The Oculus Rift's official consumer release is still months away, but that hasn't stopped developers from getting excited about the virtual reality headset and forging deeply innovative software that takes full advantage of VR's breathtaking potential.

And it's not just gaming developers whipping up mind-blowing projects, either.

Although it was originally created for games, the Rift headset is already promising to transform more practical fields like tourism, filmmaking, medicine, architecture, space exploration, and the battlefield. Even the basic way we perceive ourselves is up for grabs when the lines between physical and virtual begin to blur.

Here are ten of the coolest Oculus Rift experiments that have nothing whatsoever to do with gaming... and everything to do with changing the world we live in.

The Norwegian Army is experimenting with using the Oculus Rift to drive tanks, as reported byTeknisk Ukeblad, a Norwegian engineering journal. That country's army took four cameras with spherical lenses and placed them strategically on the outside of a tank. Then the driver sat inside wearing the Oculus Rift headset. Special software would convert the spherical images from the camera back to a normal view.

In the video above, the setup gave the driver a 185-degree overview of each side of the vehicle and allowed her to change views just by turning her head.It also has other advantages, such as a heads-up display showing vehicle tilt, speed, and orientation. And if the tank had to close all its hatches the Rift would still make it possible to see outside the vehicle from inside the fully armored enclosure.

The Norwegian Army, obviously, envisions using a system like this in battle conditions where it's not possible for the driver to have their head outside of the hatch.

One of the more fascinating aspects of virtual reality is just how easily the mind can be fooled by your senses. London-based production company Inition displayed that to great effect with a VR balance beam experiment at the 2013 Digital Shoreditch Festival.

Many participants were unable to overcome a sense of vertigo as they tried to walk across a beam hanging between two buildingseven though people knew they were in a room with a proper floor and not actually on a beam many feet up in the air. A fan blowing wind in their face didn't help.

Hoping to encourage visitors to South Africa, the country's tourism agency worked with virtual reality specialists Visualise to create a virtual tour of the country. The program allows people to experience highlights of a trip to South Africa, such as visits to markets and bars, shark diving, kitesurfing, and paragliding.

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10 mind-blowing Oculus Rift experiments that reveal VR's practical potential

Ashley Brisbin is Preparing for A Career in Medicine by Studing Biology at Clarkson University – Video

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Ashley Brisbin is Preparing for A Career in Medicine by Studing Biology at Clarkson University
Ashley Brisbin came to Clarkson University to get the best education possible to prepare her for the medical profession. The biology program at Clarkson offers an extremely flexible curriculum...

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Penn Medicine team develops cognitive test battery for spaceflight

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

26-Nov-2014

Contact: Greg Richter gregory.richter@uphs.upenn.edu 215-614-1937 University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine @PennMedNews

Space is one of the most demanding and unforgiving environments. Human exploration of space requires astronauts to maintain consistently high levels of cognitive performance to ensure mission safety and success, and prevent potential errors and accidents. Despite the importance of cognitive performance for mission success, little is known about how cognition is affected by prolonged spaceflight, and what aspects of cognition are primarily affected.

Now, Penn Medicine researchers are poised to help the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) close this knowledge gap. They have developed a cognitive test battery, known as Cognition, for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) to measure the impact of typical spaceflight stressors (like microgravity, radiation, confinement and isolation, exposure to elevated levels of CO2, and sleep loss) on cognitive performance. This computer-based test has already been tested by astronauts on Earth. It will be performed for the first time in a pilot study on the International Space Station (ISS) on November 28.

The Penn team, led by Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, MSc, assistant professor of sleep and chronobiology in Psychiatry, David F. Dinges, PhD, professor and chief, Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, Department of Psychiatry, and Ruben C. Gur, PhD, professor of Psychology, Director of Neuropsychology, the Brain Behavior Laboratory, and the Center for Neuroimaging in Psychiatry, developed Cognition as a brief and sensitive computerized neurocognitive test battery for spaceflight. With its 10 tests, it is more comprehensive than NASA's current test battery.

"Cognition addresses, among other areas, spatial orientation, emotion recognition, and risk decision making, which we believe are essential for the success of exploration-type space missions," said Basner.

The team chose tests with well-validated testing principles and whose link to cerebral networks has already been established with functional neuroimaging, such as MRI. The tests were then optimized for astronauts.

"We know that astronauts are highly motivated and usually outperform the general population," said Basner. "The difficulty of the tests therefore had to be tailored to astronauts, to avoid both boredom and frustration."

The team generated 15 unique versions of the 10 tests to allow for repeated administration in spaceflight.

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Penn Medicine team develops cognitive test battery for spaceflight

Penn Medicine Team Develops Cognitive Test Battery to Assess the Impact of Long Duration Spaceflights on Astronauts …

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Newswise Space is one of the most demanding and unforgiving environments. Human exploration of space requires astronauts to maintain consistently high levels of cognitive performance to ensure mission safety and success, and prevent potential errors and accidents. Despite the importance of cognitive performance for mission success, little is known about how cognition is affected by prolonged spaceflight, and what aspects of cognition are primarily affected.

Now, Penn Medicine researchers are poised to help the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) close this knowledge gap. They have developed a cognitive test battery, known as Cognition, for the National Space Biomedical Research Institute (NSBRI) to measure the impact of typical spaceflight stressors (like microgravity, radiation, confinement and isolation, exposure to elevated levels of CO2, and sleep loss) on cognitive performance. This computer-based test has already been tested by astronauts on Earth. It will be performed for the first time in a pilot study on the International Space Station (ISS) on November 28.

The Penn team, led by Mathias Basner, MD, PhD, MSc, assistant professor of sleep and chronobiology in Psychiatry, David F. Dinges, PhD, professor and chief, Division of Sleep and Chronobiology, Department of Psychiatry, and Ruben C. Gur, PhD, professor of Psychology, Director of Neuropsychology, the Brain Behavior Laboratory, and the Center for Neuroimaging in Psychiatry, developed Cognition as a brief and sensitive computerized neurocognitive test battery for spaceflight. With its 10 tests, it is more comprehensive than NASA's current test battery.

Cognition addresses, among other areas, spatial orientation, emotion recognition, and risk decision making, which we believe are essential for the success of exploration-type space missions, said Basner.

The team chose tests with well-validated testing principles and whose link to cerebral networks has already been established with functional neuroimaging, such as MRI. The tests were then optimized for astronauts.

We know that astronauts are highly motivated and usually outperform the general population, said Basner. The difficulty of the tests therefore had to be tailored to astronauts, to avoid both boredom and frustration.

The team generated 15 unique versions of the 10 tests to allow for repeated administration in spaceflight.

Cognition is currently administered through a series of tasks via laptops and tablets. Penn researchers were recently tasked to generate a Standardized Behavioral Measures Tool for NASA's Behavioral Health and Performance program that will include Cognition.

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Penn researchers identify protein that predicts post-concussion severity in professional athletes

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PUBLIC RELEASE DATE:

25-Nov-2014

Contact: Lee-Ann Donegan leeann.donegan@uphs.upenn.edu 215-349-5660 University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine @PennMedNews

PHILADELPHIA - New Penn Medicine research has found that elevated levels in the blood of the brain-enriched protein calpain-cleaved II-spectrin N-terminal fragment, known as SNTF, shortly after sports-related concussion can predict the severity of post-concussion symptoms in professional athletes. The complete findings were released today in the Journal of Neurotrauma.

This new study builds on previous research from this group showing that elevated blood levels of SNTF on the day of a mild traumatic brain injury treated in the emergency room predicted those patients who would go on to suffer diffuse axonal injury and long-term cognitive dysfunction.

"We extended this biomarker research to the domain of professional sports to test its merit as an objective and rapid way to determine players' severity of brain injury," says lead author, Robert Siman, PhD, Research Professor of Neurosurgery at Penn. "This blood test may aid neurobiologically-informed decisions on suitability for return to play following a sports-related concussion."

The study, conducted in collaboration with Henrik Zetterberg, MD, PhD and Kai Blennow, MD, PhD, of the Sahgrenska Academy at University of Gothenburg, Sweden, and their colleagues, enrolled 288 players in the top Swedish professional ice hockey league. Each of the 28 players who suffered a concussion during the first half of the 2012-2013 season received serial blood draws and was evaluated daily for symptom resolution using the latest guidelines for treatment of sports concussions. Eight of the concussed players were symptom-free within a few days of their injury, but 20 of the players had persistent post-concussion symptoms requiring they be withheld from play six days or longer. An additional 45 players were evaluated during the preseason, 17 of whom were also tested before and after a concussion-free training game.

Compared to those players who were not concussed, or whose concussion symptoms resolved rapidly, the researchers found an increase in the blood SNTF concentration from one hour up to 144 hours post-concussion in those players experiencing persisting post-concussion symptoms. SNTF is a protein that is present at undetectable levels in healthy human brains, but is produced under conditions where nerve cells are traumatized and begin to die. Concussions that lead to lasting brain dysfunction cause SNTF to accumulate in vulnerable long axon tracts of the brain, and its blood elevation is a measure of this diffuse axonal injury.

"These results show that SNTF has promise as a blood biomarker for sports-related concussion and beyond. High blood levels of SNTF appear to identify acute brain damage that corresponds with persisting symptoms after concussion. These observations lend further support to the growing awareness that concussion is not trivial, since it can induce permanent brain damage in some individuals," agree Siman and senior author, Douglas H. Smith, MD, professor of Neurosurgery and director of the Center for Brain Injury and Repair at Penn.

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Harvard Town Hall Meeting Fosters Enthusiasm About Family Medicine

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This headline question was posted recently on the events page of Harvard Medical School's Center for Primary Care: "What Could the Future of Harvard Medical School Look Like With Family Medicine?"

The event being touted -- a town hall meeting coordinated by medical students Diana Wohler, Mark Wu, Rachael Rosales and Ashley Shaw -- was designed to foster discussion about how to develop robust family medicine education opportunities for both students and faculty. The invitation was open to students, residents, faculty and administrators from Harvard Medical School and, in fact, all of greater Boston.

Fast forward to Nov. 5, when at 6 p.m., the town hall crowd started to arrive. As close to 120 people settled into their seats, the buzz began.

"We started five minutes late because as soon as people came in they started conversing with each other," said Wohler, as she described the evening for AAFP News.

"It was nice to see the community and the connections being formed right in front of us," said Wohler, who admitted she fell in love with family medicine after attending a family medicine interest group meeting shortly after arriving on campus in 2011.

"We had students and admins and faculty raising their hands; my (microphone) runners could hardly keep up with the number of people who were happy to talk about their experiences as learners and teachers," said Wohler.

Attendees were encouraged to share their experiences with primary care education, including successes, barriers and lessons learned, and to talk about what they wish they could experience.

Russell Phillips, M.D., has served as director of Harvard Medical School's Center for Primary Care(primarycare.hms.harvard.edu) since it opened in 2010.

Phillips, a primary care internist, told AAFP News that the center was created out of what was initially a student initiative to highlight and strengthen the role of primary care at the medical school.

"Our mission is to improve the health of our communities through transformation of primary care practice and education. And from the very beginning, there has been strong interest on the part of the medical school and center leadership to strength family medicine at Harvard," he said.

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VUSM Student Develops Guide on Health Needs of LGBT Patients

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Newswise Vanderbilt University Medical School student Kristen Eckstrand, Ph.D., is making a national impact on the way healthcare is delivered to the Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual and Transgender (LGBT) communities.

As chair of the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) Advisory Committee on Sexual Orientation, Gender Identity, and Sex Development, Eckstrand has written a national guide developed to educate the academic medical community about the health needs of patients who are LGBT, gender nonconforming and/or born with differences in sex development (DSD).

The publication, Implementing Curricular and Institutional Climate Changes to Improve Health Care for Individuals Who are LGBT, Gender Nonconforming, or Born with DSD: A Resource for Medical Educators, will be used to assist academic health centers in implementing and modifying existing curricula to be inclusive and responsive to individual patients needs.

This book is the first step, said Eckstrand, who has chaired the committee since 2012. The AAMC is the first and only academic health association to produce a comprehensive evidence-based curriculum and institutional guide.

This book has several goals: to provide education around the health needs of LGBT individuals, highlight the role of academic medical centers in supporting these populations, provide support to medical schools and medical educators in integrating this content into medical education as well as improving institutional culture and climate for LGBT students, faculty, staff and patients.

A standardized set of 30 competencies related to sexuality, gender and sex development for all students and trainees to be competent in is outlined. The publication also describes the importance of institutional climate and faculty continuing education. Eckstrand, an M.D./Ph.D. candidate, has been involved in LGBT initiatives on both the national and local levels. At Vanderbilt she is the founder and co-director of the Vanderbilt program for LGBTI Health, an innovative effort to improve the care of LGBTI patients.

Eckstrand said diversity in medical education has evolved since she first arrived at Vanderbilt in 2008.

Basically, medical education has paralleled the national stage on LGBT issues, Eckstrand said. As more states are eliminating discriminatory policies, passing same-sex marriage laws and moving toward equality for all people, medical education has taken responsibility for its role in educating the next generation of physicians to provide comprehensive care for LGBT patients.

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VUSM Student Develops Guide on Health Needs of LGBT Patients

Editorial Makes Case for Training Medical Students in Health IT

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Medical students need unfettered access to electronic health records (EHRs) during their training so they'll have a good handle on how to use the technology when they begin their residency training.

That was the gist of an editorial(www.annfammed.org) written by key players in the Association of Departments of Family Medicine (ADFM) and published in the November/December Annals of Family Medicine.

The editorial, titled "Electronic Health Records: How Will Students Learn If They Can't Practice?" points out that 78 percent of office-based physicians reported using an EHR in 2013.

"Learning how to elicit medical histories while electronically recording key findings, using EHR-associated decision-making tools and providing management plans requires full EHR access," the authors write.

Furthermore, they note that future physicians also need to learn how to navigate patient registries and use other analytic EHR functions if they are to become skilled in population management. Safety reminders and point-of-care references provided by EHRs also are keys to providing top-notch care.

"Unfortunately, students at many medical schools are not able to adequately access EHRs to receive this necessary training," say the authors. That's largely because of "varying local interpretations of Medicare guidelines on student EHR use."

Notably, the Association of American Medical Colleges (AAMC) released an updated compliance advisory(www.aamc.org) on Sept. 30 that attempts to sort out the difference between medical students' documentation in a medical record and the fact that students do not bill for their time.

However, according to the editorial, academic health centers have interpreted the AAMC's earlier 2012 compliance advisory on health information technology (health IT) in a variety of ways that has led to "markedly disparate policies around the country regarding medical student access to EHRs."

In fact, in some institutions, medical students are forbidden any access to EHRs.

Authors note that the most significant barriers to medical student access to EHRs are concerns about

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Editorial Makes Case for Training Medical Students in Health IT

Grand Theft Auto: Liberty City Stories +11 Trainer – www.cheatpain.com – Video

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