This study explores the role of agency and music agency in shaping players' experiences in video games. Using a qualitative approach, the study analyzed the experiences of four participants who played a music-based video game. The results suggest that agency and music agency play a crucial role in shaping players' engagement, immersion, and emotional investment in the game. Participants reported that having control over the music in the game provided them with a sense of control and agency, contributing to a more immersive and enjoyable experience. However, the study also highlights the importance of balancing agency with the level of challenge presented in the game. While providing players with agency can enhance engagement and satisfaction, it may not necessarily increase the level of challenge in the game. The study offers insights into the complex interplay between agency, music agency, and challenges in shaping player experiences in video games. Overall, the study provides valuable contributions to the field of game design research, highlighting the importance of considering player agency and music agency in crafting engaging and satisfying gaming experiences.

A tool allowing the prediction of the risk of bleeding in patients with hemophilia would be relevant for patients, stakeholders, and policymakers. We performed a systematic review of the literature searching for available risk assessment models to predict the risk of bleeding in people living with hemophilia, and to determine the key risk factors that the ideal model should include. We also systematically review the literature to determine the acceptability and accuracy of wrist-wearable devices to measure physical activity in the general population. Finally, we validated the performance of a risk assessment model for the prediction of the risk for bleeding in people living with hemophilia. We identified the following risk factors for bleeding in people living with hemophilia: plasma factor levels, history of bleeds, physical activity, antithrombotic treatment, and obesity. The FitBit Charge and FitBit Charge HR are the most accurate devices for measuring steps, and the Apple Watch is the most accurate for measuring heart rate. No device proved to be accurate in measuring energy expenditure. The predictive accuracy of the risk assessment model that we validated does not endorse its use to drive decision making on treatment strategies based on the predicted number of bleeds. This might in part be explained by the methods used in the derivation phase. The need for an accurate risk assessment model to predict the risk of bleeding in people living with hemophilia is still unmet. This should be done by including the relevant risk factors identified through our work, with data on physical activity possibly collected using an accurate wrist-wearable device, and through the application of rigorous methods in the derivation and validation phases. / Thesis / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD) / People living with hemophilia lack a coagulation factor and tend to experience spontaneous bleeds, with frequency and intensity that vary between individuals. Predicting who will experience more bleeds would allow for changing the treatment strategies and directing the best resources to the persons that can benefit more. Through this project, we identified the variables that should be considered to estimate the risk for bleeding in people living with hemophilia, namely the blood levels of the lacking coagulation factor, the bleeding history, the physical activity levels, the concomitant treatment with blood thinners, and the presence of obesity. We determined that Fitbit Charge and Charge HR are the most accurate devices for measuring steps and Apple Watch for heart rate. Lastly, we found that an existing tool for predicting the risk of bleeding is not accurate enough to be used in this setting, and a new model should be produced.

“Playing pretend” is often regarded as childish, but many people continue to role-play well into adulthood through various forms of games, activities, and experiences that become an established part of societal norm. In this study, I attempt to establish links between marginalized identities, self-discovery, self-acceptance, and role-play. My findings may help in development of serious and applied games, as well as role-play’s use in therapeutic settings. I surveyed players online from a specific Art Role-Playing Game (ARPG) community, Pouflons, to find out how their characters’ personas and identities spillover and bleed into the player’s primary identity. Existing literature has reported instances of bleed between character and player identity, but usually in an autoethnographic report, small study, or only in theory. I intended to confirm the phenomena of identity bleed and emancipatory bleed by using a larger sample size, at 138 complete responses. I found that this community had a large population of people identifying as LGBT and that a clear majority of players report that their identity has been affected by their role-play.

Trauma is a leading cause of death, and in potentially preventable trauma deaths insufficient bleeding control has often been noted. For bleeding-related injuries, providing aid quickly is crucial since people may die from haemorrhage within minutes. One group that has been identified as able to provide quick aid is bystanders and other people present at the scene of injury. In such settings, using bleeding control (b-con) equipment such as tourniquets is effective to help control bleeding. Thus, b-con kits including such equipment has been recommended to be placed in public areas. However, for publicly placed b-con kits to be effective people must be able to find the kits quickly. This leads to the aim of this thesis, which is to explore how b-con kits can be made easier to find for the public by using signage and b-con kit placement. Two studies were conducted to explore this topic. In the first study, signage for marking b-con kits was developed since no standardised or well-recognised signage for b-con kits existed. Three b-con kit signage designs were developed in accordance with existing standards and regulations for safety signage. Then, the three signage designs were evaluated by a survey. One design, depicting an injured arm, was found to be most effective for marking b-con kits. In the second study, the effect of signage use and b-con kit placement on time to find a b-con kit was examined by an experiment carried out in a virtual environment (VE) using virtual reality (VR). The study found that providing directional signage made people find the b-con kit faster. The study also found that placing the b-con kit at a reception (a central location) made people find the b-con kit quicker compared to when the b-con kit was placed between emergency exits (a more peripheral location). The study also examined if people would find the b-con kit faster when b-con signage was used for directional signage compared to when general first aid signage was used, but no significant difference was found. In addition, the VE was validated. The results of the validation showed that the findings in the study would likely transfer to real world settings. In conclusion, using signage and placing b-con kits strategically were found to be effective ways to aid the public in finding publicly placed b-con kits, which may help people provide possibly life-saving aid to haemorrhage victims.

No description available.

The theme of this paper is show-through andbleed-through cancellation of degraded images or manuscripts.Show-through and bleed-through is when the reverse side of amanuscripts shows/bleeds through to the front side. This canseverely impact readability. Four different cancellation algorithmswas chosen for evaluation. The methods considered areThresholding, ICA and two other methods, herewithin referredto as ’Dubojs’ and ’ISJ4’. ICA is a blind source separationmethod. Dubojs is a more sophisticated thresholding method,while ISJ4 uses statistical methods for estimating parameters ofa show-through model. In this paper, the different algorithms areevaluated on different types of common text degradations. Theauthors found that the most useful methods were ISJ4, Dubojsand ICA, with ISJ4 being the most flexible. Thresholding wasfound to be too simple. Dubojs needs improved segmentationto work properly, but was useful in a particular case of strongbleed-through. ICA was easy to use, but required linear mixturesto work properly. / Temat för detta arbete är borttagning av’show-through’ och ’bleed-through’ som påverkat läsbarhetenhos skannade, eller handskrivna dokument negativt. Dessafenomen uppstår på dubbelsidiga dokument och leder till attdelar av baksidan dyker upp på framsidan och vice versa.Fyra olika algoritmer som tar bort de oönskade bidragen harutvärderats. Dessa är Thresholding, ICA och två andra metodersom kommit att kallas ’Dubojs’ och ’ISJ4’. Dubojs är enmer sofistikerad Thresholding-algoritm medan ISJ4 använderstatistiksa metoder för att skatta paremterar i en show-throughmodell.Algoritmerna testades och utvärderades på dokumentsom påverkats av show/bleed-through i olika utsträckning.Författarna fann att de mest användbara metoderna var ISJ4,Dubojs och ICA, där ISJ4 var mest flexibel. Thresholding varför simpel för att vara riktigt användbar. Dubojs skulle behövaförbättrad klassificering, men var användbar i ett speciellt fallav bleed-through. ICA var lätt att använda, men krävde linjärablandningar för att fungera på ett önskvärt sätt. / Kandidatexjobb i elektroteknik 2021, KTH, Stockholm

<p><strong>BACKGROUND</strong></p> <p>Amiodarone is believed to inhibit the hepatic metabolism of warfarin, potentiating its hypoprothrombinemic effect and increasing the risk of hemorrhage. The consequences of this drug interaction on important clinical outcomes are unknown.</p> <p><strong>METHODOLOGY</strong></p> <p>Using linked health administrative databases, we conducted a population-based retrospective cohort study among Ontario residents aged 66 years or older who had been treated with warfarin therapy for at least 6 months. Within this group, we identified subjects who initiated amiodarone while on warfarin. Each of these subjects was matched to a subject not treated with amiodarone on age, sex, year of cohort entry, and a high dimensional propensity score. The primary outcome was a hospitalization due to a hemorrhagic event within 30 days of follow-up. In a secondary analysis, we examined in-hospital mortality following hospitalization for major hemorrhage.</p> <p><strong>RESULTS</strong></p> <p>We identified 60,497 eligible patients between July 1, 1994 and March 31, 2009. Of these, 11,665 (19.3%) received a new prescription for amiodarone while receiving ongoing warfarin therapy and 7,124 (61.1%) of these were matched to a subject who was not exposed to amiodarone while receiving warfarin therapy. The median age at cohort entry of the matched cohort was 76 years, 51.6% in the cohort were male, 14.5% lived in a rural location, 2.8% had a bleed in the past year, and 21.6% had a diagnosis of congestive heart failure in the past year. Fifty-six amiodarone recipients experienced a hemorrhagic event (0.8%) as compared to 23 individuals (0.3%) in the non-exposed group at 30 day follow-up (adjusted hazard ratio (HR) = 2.45; 95% CI, 1.49 to 4.02). Seven patients in the amiodarone group died after hospitalization for a hemorrhage versus four in the non-exposed group (adjusted HR = 1.74; 95% CI, 0.25 to 12.24).</p> <p><strong>CONCLUSION</strong></p> <p>Initiation of amiodarone in patients on chronic warfarin therapy was associated with a two-fold increase in the risk of hospitalization due to a hemorrhagic event. Physicians should closely monitor the response to warfarin following initiation of amiodarone.</p> / Master of Science (MSc)

Road vehicles are still largely a consumer product and as such the styling of a vehicle becomes a significant factor in how commercially successful a vehicle will become. The influence of styling combined with the numerous other factors to consider in a vehicle development programme means that the optimum aerodynamic package is not possible in real world applications. Aerodynamicists are continually looking for more discrete and innovative ways to reduce the drag of a vehicle. The current thesis adds to this work by investigating the influence of active flow control devices on the aerodynamic drag of square back style road vehicles. A number of different types of flow control are reviewed and the performance of synthetic jets and pulsed jets are investigated on a simple 2D cylinder flow case experimentally. A simplified ¼ scale vehicle model is equipped with active flow control actuators and their effects on the body drag investigated. The influence of the global wake size and the smaller scale in-wake structures on vehicle drag is investigated and discussed. Modification of a large vortex structure in the lower half of the wake is found to be a dominant mechanism by which model base pressure can be influenced. The total gains in power available are calculated and the potential for incorporating active flow control devices in current road vehicles is reviewed. Due to practicality limitations the active flow control devices are currently ruled out for implementation on a road vehicle. The knowledge gained about the vehicle model wake flow topology is later used to create drag reductions using a simple and discrete passive device. The passive modifications act to support claims made about the influence of in wake structures on the global base pressures and vehicle drag. The devices are also tested at full scale where modifications to the vehicle body forces were also observed.

My dissertation focuses on (i) the development sputtered films for solid phase microextraction (SPME) and (ii) the comprehensive characterization of materials using a suite of analytical techniques. Chapter 1 reviews the basics of SPME. This chapter also contains (i) a discussion of various sputtering techniques, (ii) a discussion of two techniques I focused on most of my work: spectroscopic ellipsometry (SE) and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). Chapter 2 focuses the major part of my work, which is to prepare new solid phases/adsorbents for SPME via silicon sputtering followed by thermal deposition of a polymer, polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS). PDMS was deposited by a simple gas phase technique which has never before been applied to prepare SPME stationary phases. The coatings were characterized by time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ToF-SIMS), XPS, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), SE, and contact angle goniometry. The extraction efficiencies of ca. 1.8 µm sputtered, PDMS-coated fibers were compared to a commercial fiber (7 µm PDMS) for a series of polycyclic hydrocarbons (PAHs). Large carry-over and phase bleed peaks are observed in case of commercial PDMS-based SPME coatings, which decrease the lifetime and usefulness of these fibers. It is of great significance that our sputtered fibers exhibit very small or negligible carry-over peaks and phase bleed peaks under the same conditions. Chapter 3 focuses on the multi-instrument characterization of copper and tungsten films sputtered by direct current magnetron sputtering (DCMS) and high-power impulse magnetron sputtering (HiPIMS) using a modern sputter source. The resulting films were characterized by energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDX), XPS, SEM, atomic force microscopy (AFM), SE, and X-ray diffraction (XRD). By EDX and XPS, all the sputtered films only showed the expected metal peaks. By XPS, the surfaces sputtered by DCMS were richer in oxygen than those produced by HiPIMS. By AFM, both surfaces were quite smooth. By SEM, the HiPIMS films exhibited smaller grain sizes, which was further confirmed by XRD. The crystallite sizes estimated by XRD are as follows: 18.2 nm (W, HiPIMS), 27.3 nm (W, DCMS), 40.2 nm (Cu, HiPIMS), and 58.9 nm (Cu, DCMS). By SE, the HiPIMS surfaces showed higher refractive indices, which suggested that they were denser and less oxidized than the DCMS surfaces. Chapter 4 reports characterization of liquid PDMS via SE, which required some experimental adaptations. The transmission measurements were obtained via a dual cuvette approach that eliminated the effects of the cuvettes and their interfaces. Only the reflection measurements were modeled with a Sellmeier function which produced decent fits. Chapters 5 consists of contributions to Surface Science Spectra (SSS) of near-ambient XPS spectra of various unconventional materials including cheese, kidney stone, sesame seeds, clamshell, and calcite. This dissertation also contains appendices of tutorial articles I wrote on ellipsometry and vacuum equipment.

In aircraft with jet propulsion engine intakes at supersonic speed, strong pressure waves referred to as shockwaves occur, which may interact with any present boundary layers along the intake surface. The adverse pressure gradients associated with Shock Wave-Boundary Layer Interaction (SWBLI) may cause boundary layer flow separation, which can result in disturbances of the flow that can be harmful to the device or decrease engine performance. A common way in dealing with the adverse effects of SWBLI is through removal of low-momentum flow in the boundary layer, a process referred to as boundary layer bleed. In the process of bleed, the boundary layer is subjected to a pressure difference promoting flow out of the system, through a porous surface, and into a plenum. The porous surfaces used in the mass flow removal process contain orifices in small scales. Thus, in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD), creating a mesh resolving both the orifice scales and the bulk flow is a cumbersome task, and the computational cost becomes substantially increased. To this end, several boundary conditions which effectively model the large-scale effects of bleed have been developed. The aim of this study is to implement the Boundary Condition (BC) developed by John W. Slater into M-EDGE, the in-house compressible CFD-solver of SAAB Aeronautics. The bleed boundary condition model is based on a dimensionless surface sonic flow coefficient, which is derived from empirical wind-tunnel measurements of the bleed mass flow. In previous work, the Slater bleed BC has been shown to correlate well with wind-tunnel data. Furthermore, a simple transpiration law formulated by Reynald Bur was implemented in order get familiarized with the M-EDGE Fortran source code. However, this model is expected to yield unsatisfactory results, as reported in previous work in the field. The implemented Slater BC is tested on two different two-dimensional flow cases; flow over a flat plate without SWBLI, and flow including a shock wave generator creating SWBLI. In the flat plate case, simulations were run at Mach numbers 1.27, 1.58, 1.98 and 2.46 over a 6.85cm plate of 19% porosity. In the SWBLI-case, only flow at Mach 2.46 was considered, with a 9.53cm plate of 21% porosity. The Reynolds number range used throughout was 1.39−1.76·10^7/m. Simulations were run at different bleed rates over a structured grid using steady state RANS with the Spalart-Allmaras one-equation turbulence model. The boundary condition performance was assessed by its ability to recreate the sonic flow coefficients on which it is based. Further, the shape of downstream pitot pressure profiles are compared with experimental data. Results from the studies indicate that the implementation manages to recreate the data for the sonic flow coefficient with small error margins. The implementation can be used to simulate porous plates of different dimensions and porosities, even though the bleed model is based on empirical mass flow measurements of a 6.85cmplate of 19% porosity. The implementation is able to predict global bleed effects in the flow field, as indicated by comparisons of pitot pressure profiles at various downstream reference planes, despite differences in reference boundary layer intake profiles. Further, the overall flow field was compared visually with other simulation-studies, indicating that the global Mach distributions of the geometries were in accordance with the reference data. However, pitot profiles should be further studied with better matched intake boundary layer profiles. The main limitation of the boundary condition is that it relies on the wind-tunnel data of the surface sonic flow coefficients for specific bleed plate configurations. Furthermore, the implementation has only been verified to work within specific Mach number range of the underlying empirical measurements. In future work, the generality of the model could be increased by extending the data to other configurations and Mach numbers by conducting new experiments or using other published empirical data.