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Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications are very diffuse nowadays. Moreover, recent technology innovations led to the diffusion of commercial head-mounted displays for immersive VR: users can enjoy entertainment activities that fill their visual fields, experiencing the sensation of physical presence in these virtual immersive environments. Even if AR and VR are mostly used separately, they can be effectively combined to provide a multi-user shared environment (SE), where two or more users perform some specific tasks in a cooperative or competitive way, providing a wider set of interactions and use cases compared to immersive VR alone. However, due to the differences between the two technologies, it is difficult to develop SEs offering a similar experience for both AR and VR users. This paper presents Harmonize, a novel framework to deploy applications based on SEs with a comparable experience for both AR and VR users. Moreover, the framework is hardware-independent, and it has been designed to be as much extendable to novel hardware as possible. An immersive game has been designed to test and to evaluate the validity of the proposed framework. The assessment of the system through the System Usability Scale questionnaire and the Game Experience Questionnaire shows a positive evaluation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental humanities study how human worldviews and culture affect the rest of the nature and our interactions with it. Zoosemiotics provides a unique perspective on human-alloanimal communication and analyzes communication dynamics to address the complexities and competing goals in shared environments, recognizing that human interpretations of alloanimal behavior are often anthropocentric. Understanding alloanimal agency and subjective experiences helps create more respectful and harmonious shared environments. By offering case-studies from zoological gardens and species conservation we hope to guide conservation endeavors, environmental conflict resolution, and more sustainable relationships in the Anthropocene. In examining these shared environments, we also indicate how cultural perceptions and practices influence interspecies interactions, thus emphasizing the interconnectedness of culture and ecology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Theory and research both point at epigenetic processes affecting both parenting behavior and child functioning. However, little is known about the convergence of mother and child’s epigenetic patterns in families. Therefore, the current study investigated epigenetic covariance in mother–child dyads’ methylation levels regarding four stress-regulation related genes (5HTT, NR3C1, FKBP5, and BDNF). Covariance was tested in a general population sample, consisting of early adolescents (Mage = 11.63, SDage = 2.3) and mothers (N = 160 dyads). Results showed that mother and offspring 5HTT and NR3C1 methylation patterns correlated. Furthermore, when averaged across genes, methylation levels strongly correlated. These findings partially supported that child and parent methylation levels covary. It might be important to consider this covariance to understand maladaptive parent–child relationships.

Abstract: This paper brings together agent oriented programming, organisation oriented programming and environment oriented programming, all of which are programming paradigms that emerged out of research in the area of multi-agent systems. In putting together a programming model and concrete platform called JaCaMo which integrates important results and technologies in all those research directions, we show in this paper, with the combined paradigm, that we prefer to call “multi-agent oriented programming”, the full potential of multi-agent systems as a programming paradigm. JaCaMo builds upon three existing platforms: Jason for programming autonomous agents, for programming agent organisations, and CArtAgO for programming shared environments. This paper also includes a simple example that illustrates the approach and discusses some real-world applications that have been or are being developed with JaCaMo. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

There has been a vigorous debate for decades concerning the heritability of intelligence. In recent years, the debate has been focused on whether the components of IQ variability change with age and on separating environmental effects into shared and unshared components. Citing evidence from adoption studies, studies comparing identical and fraternal twins, and studies of identical twins raised apart, some prominent psychologists have concluded that the shared environment has a significant effect on the intelligence of children but little or no effect on the intelligence of adults. In this article, the evidence from such studies is reviewed. The article reaches the conclusion that while there is some evidence from adoption studies supporting the claim that shared environment has little or no effect on adult intelligence, that evidence is inconclusive and is inconsistent with evidence from twin studies and from studies of identical twins reared apart. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The recent uptake and integration of virtual world technologies within arts and humanities research has opened numerous avenues for experimental practice within the field of contemporary art. This article reflects upon artistic and curatorial possibilities that emerge through linking shared virtual environments, like Second Life, to community-oriented spaces and activities in the real world. It outlines the collaborative research initiative Eastside Projects: Virtualised & Visualised (EP:VV) (2009) and two of the author's recent new media art installations, Data Double (2009) and Changing Room (2009-10), as examples of projects that consider the transitory nature of shared, virtual and mixed-reality environments by exploring the mutability and reusability of artefacts, concepts and contexts in the digital age. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Virtual reality (VR) and augmented reality (AR) applications are very diffuse nowadays. Moreover, recent technology innovations led to the diffusion of commercial head-mounted displays for immersive VR: users can enjoy entertainment activities that fill their visual fields, experiencing the sensation of physical presence in these virtual immersive environments. Even if AR and VR are mostly used separately, they can be effectively combined to provide a multi-user shared environment (SE), where two or more users perform some specific tasks in a cooperative or competitive way, providing a wider set of interactions and use cases compared to immersive VR alone. However, due to the differences between the two technologies, it is difficult to develop SEs offering a similar experience for both AR and VR users. This paper presents Harmonize, a novel framework to deploy applications based on SEs with a comparable experience for both AR and VR users. Moreover, the framework is hardware-independent, and it has been designed to be as much extendable to novel hardware as possible. An immersive game has been designed to test and to evaluate the validity of the proposed framework. The assessment of the system through the System Usability Scale questionnaire and the Game Experience Questionnaire shows a positive evaluation., Competing Interests: Conflict of interestThe authors declare that they have no conflict of interest., (© The Author(s) 2021.)

Theory and research both point at epigenetic processes affecting both parenting behavior and child functioning. However, little is known about the convergence of mother and child's epigenetic patterns in families. Therefore, the current study investigated epigenetic covariance in mother–child dyads' methylation levels regarding four stress-regulation related genes (5HTT, NR3C1, FKBP5, and BDNF). Covariance was tested in a general population sample, consisting of early adolescents (Mage = 11.63, SDage = 2.3) and mothers (N = 160 dyads). Results showed that mother and offspring 5HTT and NR3C1 methylation patterns correlated. Furthermore, when averaged across genes, methylation levels strongly correlated. These findings partially supported that child and parent methylation levels covary. It might be important to consider this covariance to understand maladaptive parent–child relationships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]