Human Digital Twins (HDTs), building upon the concept of Digital Twins (DTs), offer transformative potential for seamless human interaction across physical and virtual worlds. This review aims to establish the groundwork for utilising HDTs in Long-Distance Relationships (LDRs) to enrich the quality of human connections over geographical separations. Searching from four academic databases, this paper examines current DT research in Human-Computer Interaction (HCI) and synthesises existing LDR solutions across commercial and research realms, including communication technologies, social media platforms, wearable and tangible interfaces, Extended Reality (XR) and immersive telepresence, and Artificial Intelligence (AI)-based companions. The findings reveal significant gaps in the research of broad DTs in HCI communities and highlight the limitations of current LDR solutions. To address these challenges, this study envisions HDTs encompassing both microscopic (individual) and macroscopic (dyadic) dimensions, offering a novel approach to enhancing emotional and experiential closeness despite geographical separation. Several potential scenarios for HDT integration in LDRs are presented, demonstrating its capability to enhance LDR interactions.

Video games can be a space of healing, entertainment, and socialisation for Lesbian-Gay-Bisexual-Trans-Queer-Intersex-Two-Spirit (LGBTQI2S+), women, Black-Indigenous-People of Colour (BIPOC), and accessible needs gaming players. Unfortunately, the overrepresentation of majority groups within video gaming spaces can overshadow this and even contribute to prejudice against minority groups within these spaces. It is therefore important to discuss the varying theories as to why this type of discrimination occurs within the video gaming space. Video game developers also play a large role in shaping their video games and communities and can contribute to reducing the manner of prejudice these groups face. Similarly, members of minority groups can also contribute to changing the culture of video gaming spaces for the better. This paper aims to highlight the current methods by which minority groups benefit from video games, it then discusses the methods that video game developers are aiming to take in reducing it and it then ends with what video game developers and the community at large could be doing better.

Spiking Neural Networks are increasingly drawing interest due to their potential for large efficiency gains when used with neuromorphic computers. However, when attempting to replicate the successes of Artificial Neural Networks, challenges are faced due to their vastly different architectures and therefore differing methods for training and optimisation. There has been minimal analysis of the differences between encoding and decoding methods and the effect of state space exposure periods on the performance of these networks. The core contribution of this paper is the detailed analysis of decoding methods, state exposure periods, and a learned input encoding method of an evolved Spiking Neural Network within the Reinforcement Learning context. This is demonstrated using the Cart Pole and Lunar Lander Reinforcement Learning problems. The paper discovers a negative correlation between the generation to reach the goal and the state space exposure period over all decoding methods tested. The state exposure period is also found to influence the number of random actions taken due to the decoding methods being unable to select an action. This paper explores the differences in temporal and rate-based decoding as well as identifying benefits in resetting networks to their default states between episode steps. Additionally, the novel input encoder, is effective at pre-processing state information using the same evolutionary algorithm as the rest of the network.

Room-scale 3D position tracking enables users to explore a virtual environment by physically walking, which improves comfort and the level of immersion. However, when users walk with their eyesight blocked by a head-mounted display, they may unexpectedly lose their balance and fall if they bump into real-world obstacles or unintentionally shift their center of mass outside the margin of stability. This paper evaluates balance recovery methods and intervention timing during the use of VR with the assumption that the onset of a fall is given. Our experiment followed the tether-release protocol during clinical research and induced a fall while a subject was engaged in a secondary 3D object selection task. The experiment employed a two-by-two design that evaluated two assistive techniques, i.e., video-see-through and auditory warning at two different timings, i.e., at fall onset and 500ms prior to fall onset. The data from 17 subjects showed that video-see-through triggered 500 ms before the onset of fall can effectively help users recover from falls. Surprisingly, video-see-through at fall onset has a significant negative impact on balance recovery and produces similar results to those of the baseline condition (no intervention).

Research on the use of digital games for cancer patients suggests positive impact in the form of the reduction of depressive symptoms, anxiety, and the feeling of nausea after chemotherapy treatment. This can take the childs focus off their condition and their treatment process and direct it toward other aspects of their childhood. In this article, a comprehensive review of the current literature was conducted to assess how serious games could positively impact paediatric cancer patients. Inclusion criteria were used during data extraction to find the most relevant literature, including the need for a game prototype to have been developed and for the game to specifically target children with cancer as a target audience. Data were extracted including age ranges, treatment and procedure plan, time context, users, purpose, and technology. The resulting serious games were grouped based on their purpose and were classified in three main categories; motivation, education, and distraction. This review demonstrates the positive use of serious games as an intervention for paediatric cancer patients that undergo treatment in hospital. The results suggest that the design of these serious games should consider the purpose of the game within the treatment plan of target audience; the accessibility and suitability of the technology used for the game; and social connection during play.

We present an approach to procedurally generate the narrative of a simple murder mystery. As a basis for the simulation, we use a rule evaluation system inspired by Ceptre, which employs linear logic to resolve valid actions during each step of the simulation. We extend Ceptre's system with a concept of believable agents to make consecutive actions appear to have a causal connection so that players can comprehend the flow of events. The parts of the generated narratives are then presented to a player whose task it is to figure out who the murderer in this story could have been. Rather than aiming to replace highly authored narratives, this project generates puzzles, which may contain emerging arcs of a story as perceived by the player. While we found that even a simple rule set can create stories that are interesting to reason about, we expect that this type of system is flexible enough to create considerably more engaging stories if enough time is invested in authoring more complex rule sets.