Professor Karen Blackmore

The widespread popularity of computer games have led to their expanded use in more serious applications for training and education. In many cases serious games are being advanced as more compelling than traditional face-to-face or interactive online training. A typically reported motivation for developing serious games is to try and increase engagement of participants and thus ultimately the effectiveness of the training experience. In this paper we discuss the relation of affect to engagement. The training reported in this study relates to a psychological counseling program developed to assist patients with comorbidity in depression and alcohol use disorders. A pre-existing online intervention program, called "SHADE", had been found to provide effective treatment when participants completed the program. However, a significant number of participants failed to complete the program, with most exits occurring when Cognitive Based Training (CBT) was integrated into the online program. To try and increase the number of participants completing the program a serious game, called "Shadow" is being developed to cover similar material. This paper reports on a study that uses the startle reflex modulation measure to try and objectively quantify the affective engagement of players in the two treatment approaches, Shadow, the serious game, versus SHADE, the online intervention program. Also reported are the issues associated with using affective processing, as measured by the startle probe technique, as a means of evaluating engagement in serious games.

Sound in video games is often used by developers to enhance the visual experience on screen. Despite its importance in creating presence and improving visual screen elements, sound also plays an important role in providing additional information to a player when completing various game tasks. This preliminary study focuses on the use of informative sound in the popular multiplayer online battle arena game, Dota 2. Our initial results indicate that team performance improves with the use of sound. However, mixed results with individual performances were measured, with some individual performances better with sound and some better without sound.

Algorithms to derive rules from data sets can obtain differing results from the same data set. The J48.PART and the See5 schemes use similar methodologies to derive rules, however, differences appear in the number and constitution of rules produced to predict outcomes for missing persons cases. See5 generates fewer rules to obtain the same level of accuracy as J48.PART. Analysis of the input-output space using a measure of concept variation indicates missing persons profiling is characteristic of a difficult classification problem, resulting in fragmentation problems. This provides explanation for the differences that occur in the number and constitution of rules.

The number of women employed in STEM in Australia is increasing, however, they continue to remain underrepresented in most industries. A significant corpus of literature on female underrepresentation has emerged in the past 20 years, however, many of those studies focus on educational access and retention and not many look at the lived experiences of women after they have left higher education. In this article, we take a different stance and explore the heterogeneous experiences of female STEM professionals in regional Australia. Through the qualitative analysis of 25 interviews, we learn what women have endured, accepted, and valued on their individual STEM journeys. While these journeys are often quite different, our interviewees independently reported having experienced similar societal prejudices and possessing similar personality traits. Our data reveals that resilience and determination proved vital for these women, as did a strong early interest in STEM. Our interviews also unearth issues in which women's opinions are fiercely divided, such as whether positive discrimination has been a barrier or an enabler for their careers. Based on what we have learnt from their accounts, we argue that these women have 'survived' their work environments despite structural barriers, only due to their determination, resilience and fervent interest.

Since the publication of the first academic journal in 1665, the number of academic journal titles has grown steadily. In 2001, Mabe and Amin studied the pattern of growth in the number of academic journals worldwide, identifying three key development periods between 1900 and 1996. These three episodes are from 1900 to 1944, from 1944 to 1978, and from 1978 to 1996. The compound annual growth rates for each episode are 3.30, 4.68 and 3.31¿% respectively. In this research, we seek to validate these findings, and extend on previous work to analyze journal growth patterns from 1986 to 2013. Our results show academic journals grew at an average rate of 4.7¿% from 1986 to 2013, which is very similar to the growth rate during the Big Science period observed in the previous study. Our results also show that academic journals had an estimated 92¿% Active rate, and 8¿% Inactive rate annually. Out of all Active journals, approximately 43¿% have high impact and reach JCR or SJR databases, and 26¿% have relatively higher impact and are thus collected in the JCR database. The comparison results of Active/InactiveSJR and JCR journals suggest that lower impact journals have a higher chance to become Inactive than higher impact journals. With the wide use of the Internet in academic science, our results expectedly show that the number of Print-Only journals is gradually decreasing while the number of Online-Only journals is increasing. The growth of Online-Only journals exceeds the growth of Print-Only journals in 2007, and the number of Online-Only journals exceeded the number of Print and Only journals in 2012. More than 30¿% Newly Created journals provide Open Access. It is suggested that we are experiencing the second journal boom in history and Internet technology has changed the academic publication system.

Evidence from studies of provocative motion indicates that motion sickness is tightly linked to the disturbances of thermoregulation. The major aim of the current study was to determine whether provocative visual stimuli (immersion into the virtual reality simulating rides on a rollercoaster) affect skin temperature that reflects thermoregulatory cutaneous responses, and to test whether such stimuli alter cognitive functions. In 26 healthy young volunteers wearing head-mounted display (Oculus Rift), simulated rides consistently provoked vection and nausea, with a significant difference between the two versions of simulation software (Parrot Coaster and Helix). Basal finger temperature had bimodal distribution, with low-temperature group (n. =. 8) having values of 23-29. °C, and high-temperature group (n. =. 18) having values of 32-36. °C. Effects of cybersickness on finger temperature depended on the basal level of this variable: in subjects from former group it raised by 3-4. °C, while in most subjects from the latter group it either did not change or transiently reduced by 1.5-2. °C. There was no correlation between the magnitude of changes in the finger temperature and nausea score at the end of simulated ride. Provocative visual stimulation caused prolongation of simple reaction time by 20-50. ms; this increase closely correlated with the subjective rating of nausea. Lastly, in subjects who experienced pronounced nausea, heart rate was elevated. We conclude that cybersickness is associated with changes in cutaneous thermoregulatory vascular tone; this further supports the idea of a tight link between motion sickness and thermoregulation. Cybersickness-induced prolongation of reaction time raises obvious concerns regarding the safety of this technology.

This paper presents the results of a systematic review of agent-based modelling and simulation (ABMS) applications in the higher education (HE) domain. Agent-based modelling is a 'bottom-up' modelling paradigm in which system-level behaviour (macro) is modelled through the behaviour of individual local-level agent interactions (micro). This approach of considering the behaviour of systems of interacting 'agents' has been applied to a wide variety of domains. Of particular interest, are the ways that ABMS applications have been used to further understand the dynamics of the HE domain. We conduct a systematic review of literature to analyse publications by year, role of the simulator, development stage of the models, and any associated validation. We also identify areas for future work, which includes an emphasis on validating existing and future models, detailed description of simulations to allow replication and further development, and the use of agent-based models in other contexts within the increasingly complex HE domain.

The headland sand bypassing mechanisms in the Eastern Australian longshore sand transport system are investigated at Cape Byron, in response to wave climate variability. The mechanisms are interpreted from shoreface bathymetric change between surveys in 1883, 2002 and 2011 CE. They involve a split in the sand transport to follow a nearshore path along the inner bar and a cross-embayment path connecting the up-coast and down-coast outer bars. The relative magnitude of the net sand transported via the two pathways is controlled by a rotation in directional wave conditions. Two bypassing mechanisms were interpreted: (i) a predominantly cross embayment transport during unimodal east-southeast wave climate such as those interpreted for the period prior to 1883; and, (ii) a split transport between the inner nearshore and cross-embayment paths during a bimodal dominant south-south-easterly and sub-dominant east-north-easterly wave climate such as in the 2000s. The net sand transport bypassing Cape Byron was dominated by a connected outer bar system prior to 1883 and conversely, a stronger inner bar system during the 1960s to 2000s. This is manifest in the 10° rotation in seabed morphology and shoreline planforms. These changes are in accordance with decadal climate variability described by the Interdecadal Pacific Oscillation (IPO). The switching between headland sand bypassing mechanisms on interannual to decadal timescales determines the geometry of the bypass strand with the downcoast littoral zone and has important implications for understanding the shoreline rotation and the application of the headland-bay beach concept to predicting planform curvature in open compartments. © 2013.

The dynamics of social vulnerability are of key interest to many government agencies and departments. Identifying the geographic distribution of vulnerability within regions, and analysing how localised areas of social need change over time, is a key information requirement for decision-making, and the resultant allocation of resources. Typically, the delineation of areas for the determination of social vulnerability occurs using a combination of political and census boundaries. In many instances, the boundaries of these areas align to natural geographic features such as rivers or lakes. In other cases, a boundary is aligned to a man-made structure such as a road. The boundary may also be arbitrarily positioned based on some measure of distance and not align to any physical feature. In this research, we identify the various boundary types present in a political region. Using two measures of social vulnerability, we assess these boundaries as barriers to the continuity of social vulnerability. From our results, we identify motorways/highways and watercourses as potential barriers. We find no significant effects with lesser road structures suggesting there is no "wrong side of the street". These results have implications for decision-makers and emphasise the need to recognise the "softness" of boundaries, and consider the relationships between areas, when allocating resources. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd.

In this paper we set out to verify the existence of Miles and Snow strategy types in Australian small- and medium-size enterprises (SMEs) through objective classification. Australian SMEs, in particular, are interesting as they are reported to have some unique characteristics, with as many as 70% following a low growth or life-style pathway. While numerous empirical studies have been conducted to validate the existence and characteristics of the Miles and Snow strategy types in different domains for both larger and smaller enterprises, these studies typically rely on a subjective, 'self-typing' approach. In this study we employ a more objective approach by identifying measures from existing survey data that capture the strategic dimensions proposed by Miles and Snow. We use these objective measures in a K-means cluster analysis to identify four different strategic groups. Three of the groups correspond to the three 'viable' Miles and Snow strategy types of Defender, Prospector and Analyser; however, we also identify a 'Static' strategy type that constitutes 42% of SMEs in the sample. © The Author(s) 2012.