Because of the range of design possibilities they provide, virtual environments have a promising potential to support creative work. This article presents an experiment that explores the effects of contextual cues, provided in a virtual environment, on performance in a creative task. One hundred thirty-five participants completed a classical creativity task in one of three environments: a virtual creativity-conducive environment (CCE), comprising standardized elements identified from a survey as being characteristic of environments that support creativity, a real meeting room (real control environment), and its virtual replication (virtual control environment). Results show that participants produced more original ideas and explored idea categories in greater depth in the CCE than in the control conditions. These results were discussed in terms of research on creativity, priming, virtual environments, and of the design of workplaces.

The mitochondrial genome codes for 13 proteins which are located in the respiratory chain. In postmortem brain of patients with Parkinson's disease, decreased activity of complex I of the respiratory chain could be demonstrated. Because seven subunits of complex I are coded by the mitochondrial genome, we analyzed the mitochondrial DNA of human postmortem substantia nigra, putamen, and frontal cortex by the Southern blot technique. No deletions of the mitochondrial genome could be demonstrated, thus indicating that either subunits which are encoded by the nuclear genome are decreased or enzyme activity is diminished by metabolites, toxins, or increase of Fe3+.

Proteins assume their function in the cell by interacting with other proteins or biomolecular complexes. To study this process, computational methods, called protein docking, is used to predict the position and orientation of a protein ligand when it is bound to a protein receptor or enzyme, taking into account chemical or physical criteria. This process is intensively studied in order to discover new protein biological functions and to better understand how these macromolecules assume these functions at the molecular scale. Pharmaceutical research also employs docking techniques for a variety of purposes, most notably in the virtual screening of large databases of available chemicals in order to select likely drug candidates. The basic hypothesis of our work is that Virtual Reality and multimodal interaction can increase efficiency in reaching and analysing docking solutions, complementarily to fully computational docking approach. To this end, we conducted an ergonomic analysis of the protein-protein current docking task. Using these results, we designed an immersive and multimodal application where Virtual Reality devices, such as 3D mouse and haptic device, are used to interactively manipulate two proteins for exploring possible docking solutions. During this exploration, visual, audio and haptic feedbacks are combined to render and evaluate chemical or physical properties of the current docking configuration.