Abstract

Abstract
In an increasingly aged society, with unmeasurable cultural richness kept by its elder elements for their vast life experience, it is urgent to preserve this cultural knowledge before it disappears. The capacity of the computational space to accommodate a virtualization of reality is evident, alongside with the possibility to preserve perspectives of reality with spontaneous and very easy to sort creations thanks to the web tools that now support content production by any common user. Despite all the relevant problematics brought by this context where the common user is simultaneously consumer and producer of information, the opportunities for the present and future of cultural identity maintenance are numerous. This paper approaches the idea of supporting the participatory maintenance of cultural identity through intergenerational storytelling and the dynamization of digital affinity spaces. Our contribution aims to grow the understanding of the role that interactive narratives can have in the real world and in the specific context of cultural identity maintenance, by developing new usage strategies to enhance cultural mediation with the tools we have available and with the help of social, ubiquitous and mobile storytelling strategies.

Abstract
The possibility to preserve perspectives of reality with spontaneous creations allowed by the web tools that now empower common users with content production skills highlights the numerous opportunities for the present and future of cultural identity maintenance. Our research approaches digital storytelling during intergenerational dynamics as a stage for a participatory contribution to the maintenance of cultural identity. With an ethnographic approach and with partnerships with existing senior movements, we seek to (a) understand the storytelling processes during intergenerational dynamics, (b) develop a framework for the participative creation of narratives in the context of intergenerational cultural identity maintenance, (c) support the participatory maintenance of cultural identity through a set of workshops for intergenerational storytelling, (d) understand the challenges and opportunities promoted by digital affinity spaces for the maintenance of cultural identity. Our contribution proposes to develop the understanding of the role that interactive narratives can have in the context of cultural identity maintenance, by developing new usage strategies to enhance cultural mediation through social and ubiquitous storytelling strategies.

Abstract

Abstract
Reading room conditions such as illumination, ambient light, human factors and display luminance, play an important role on how radiologists analyze and interpret images. Indeed, serious diagnostic errors can appear when observing images through everyday monitors. Typically, these occur whenever professionals are ill-positioned with respect to the display or visualize images under improper light and luminance conditions. In this work, we show that virtual reality can assist radiodiagnostics by considerably diminishing or cancel out the effects of unsuitable ambient conditions. Our approach combines immersive head-mounted displays with interactive surfaces to support professional radiologists in analyzing medical images and formulating diagnostics. We evaluated our prototype with two senior medical doctors and four seasoned radiology fellows. Results indicate that our approach constitutes a viable, flexible, portable and cost-efficient option to traditional radiology reading rooms.

Abstract
In Virtual Reality (VR), the action of selecting virtual objects outside arms-reach still poses significant challenges. In this work, after classifying, with a new taxonomy, and analyzing existing solutions, we propose a novel technique to perform out-of-reach selections in VR. It uses natural pointing gestures, a modifiable cone as selection volume, and an iterative progressive refinement strategy. This can be considered a VR implementation of a discrete zoom approach, although we modify users' position instead of the field-of-view. When the cone intersects several objects, users can either activate the refinement process, or trigger a multiple object selection. We compared our technique against two techniques from literature. Our results show that, although not being the fastest, it is a versatile approach due to the lack of errors and uniform completion times. © 2017 Copyright held by the owner/author(s).