Arachnophobia is among the most common phobias and can have upsetting consequences, from panic attacks to arachnophobes avoiding everyday occasions due to fear of encountering a spider.

A well-established treatment for arachnophobia and similar phobias is exposure therapy, in which patients are guided by a therapist through more and more stimulating or realistic exposures to their fear. For instance, the patient may begin by looking at a cartoon spider and progress to handling a tarantula.

Arachnophobes can be reluctant to partake in exposure therapy, however, due to fear of exposing themselves to real spiders towards the end of treatment. Hoping to reassure arachnophobes, the Basel team developed an AR app, Phobys, based on established principles of exposure therapy: “It’s easier for people with a fear of spiders to face a virtual spider than a real one,” explained Anja Zimmer, who led the study.

The app projects a realistic 3D spider model onto the user’s background as captured through their phone camera. It has nine different levels of exposure, challenging the user to get close to, and eventually interact with, the virtual spider. It makes use of game elements, such as rewarding feedback, animation, and sound effects.

Each level ends with a self-assessment of fear and disgust. Once the user’s fear response has been dampened, they can move on to the next, more intense, level.

Zimmer and her colleagues put Phobys to the test in a clinical trial involving 66 arachnophobic participants. Over two weeks, the participants either completed six half-hour training units with the app or, for the control group, had no intervention.

Before and after treatment, they were asked to approach a real spider in a transparent box as closely as their fear would allow: the group that had used Phobys showed significantly less fear and disgust towards the real spider and was able to move closer than the control group.

The researchers worked with a spin-off from the University of Basel, MindGuide at GeneGuide AG, to refine their app. It is now available as a freemium app in the App Store and Play Store for people with mild fear of spiders to use alone; users with severe arachnophobia are not advised to use Phobys without supervision from a professional.

In 2013, another spider-related app, Phobia Free, based on similar principles – using exposure to spiders to reduce arachnophobia, although not including the AR elements of Phobys – was approved by NHS England to feature in its app library. All apps in the NHS library can be considered clinically safe. University of Kent researchers have incorporated exposure therapy into VR to provide tools to help patients with eating disorders, part of a wider move towards adoption of extended-reality technologies to supplement traditional psychological therapies.

Is it time to fly again? It’s a decision we all need to make for ourselves. But as COVID rates downtrended in some parts of the world, and with at least a chunk of the population vaccinated, this summer felt like the right moment for me. And I took advantage with a long-haul itinerary from […]

The post Quick Thoughts From My Return to Long-Haul Flying appeared first on AirlineReporter.

Ok. Because you guys suck, I’m going to have to spell out everything step by step. You’re bloody welcome… Well to be fair, one of the fans sent in a lot of this information. Some of the fans aren’t too bad, if I have to be honest! Partial credit for...

The post Vergeway Walkthrough Chapter 10 appeared first on Marks Angry Review.

The concept of fake news has always been a staple of culture, but it became part of the popular lexicon during the Trump administration in the United States.  Media giants came under criticism for skewing the narrative to meet a specific agenda. As a result, news agencies and media companies had to invest in fact-checking […]

The post Fake Photo Detection for News Media Websites appeared first on SDK.finance - White-Label Digital Core Banking Software.

Welcome back to The SaaS Playbook, a bi-weekly rundown of the top articles, tactics, and thought leadership in B2B SaaS. Not a subscriber yet? ☁️ VCs look for immediate and extreme growth in their investments, so the profitability of the companies they work with is the least of their concerns. But striving for sky high growth can be costly, and not just in dollars. Dumping loads of capital into marketing makes it nearly impossible to identify your real cost to acquire customers (CAC), and if your CAC remains high over time, you run the risk of never being able to build a sustainable model. There are, however, some

How courseware could work with real product/market fit in mind.

The post Argos: Making Good Course Design Easy and Fun appeared first on e-Literate.

Encom has chosen Challengermode as Tournament Platform for the Esports City LeagueEncom, organizer and license holders of Dreamhack in Spain, recently announced that they...

Under the USA’s Post Registration Audit Program, a declaration of use must be filed between the fifth and sixth year of the validity of the registration of the trademark. So, the Applicant has the burden of proof to show proper usage of the mark for all the goods and services provided under the relevant classes. However, India being a common law country and a first-to-use jurisdiction, one would assume that the use of a trademark would be of prime importance and would consequently, be a requirement that is constantly monitored. However, the use of a trademark is rarely monitored subsequent to its registration. In fact, it is of little to no consideration as there is no system or database to monitor the post registration audit of trademarks in India. Under current practices, the Registry itself does not undertake suo motu cancellations of unused trademarks, so it theoretically possible for a mark to be registered indefinitely without ever having been used in commerce.

From understanding the basics to career advancement, working with a mentor can help you advance in ways you didn't realize!

A copyright lawsuit raises the question of the embodied value of textbooks.

The post Chegg vs. Pearson: Are back-of-chapter answers intellectual property? appeared first on e-Literate.

Dota 2 is one of the most complicated video games out there and you will need every little edge possible to triumph over your opponents – getting a good grasp of the available Dota hotkeys is just one of them. Here’s what you should be on the lookout for in the darkest depths of the settings menu.

The reason that courseware has disappointed as a product category is that we failed to understand the product/market fit of the paper textbook.

The post Argos: Upcycling Course Design appeared first on e-Literate.