The Dead Space
Ashlie Hagenson
Primarily set in a 26th century science fiction universe featuring environments, weapons, and characters typical of the genre, the Dead Space franchise centers on a series of video games beginning with the release of the first Dead Space, which centers on starship engineer Isaac Clarke and mutated undead horrors that surround him. A central theme in the games is the fictional cult religion "Unitology" and its fanatical adherents, who believe that information about an alien artifact called the "Marker" is being suppressed by "EarthGov", the central political administration of Earth. Their primary goal is to use the Marker as a means to bring about the "Convergence", or complete destruction of humanity, with the Marker and its malevolent influence being the source of the undead monsters encountered by the series' protagonists.
Systems engineer Isaac Clarke joins a search and rescue team for the USG Ishimura, which had gone radio-silent, after receiving a message from his girlfriend Nicole. Their ship suffers damage when attempting to dock with the Ishimura; while the rest of the crew assess the situation and search for a means to leave the Ishimura, Isaac explores the ship to look for Nicole. The ship is overrun by Necromorphs, forcing Isaac to defend himself by weaponizing his mining tools and "Resource Integration Gear" (RIG) spacesuit capabilities. Due to the Red Marker's influence, Isaac experiences recurring visions of Nicole, who guides him to return the Marker to the planet. Towards the end of the game, it is revealed that one of the rescue team members, Kendra Daniels, is a double agent. She betrays Isaac, but is killed by a large Necromorph creature before she can escape, while Isaac commandeers her ship and escapes Aegis VII after defeating the creature and allowing the Marker to be destroyed by a sabotage attempt he had initiated earlier. The sole survivor of the entire ordeal, Isaac soon hears something behind him and looks back to see a horrific hallucination of Nicole.
Dead Space 2 reveals that Isaac has become mentally disturbed and unstable after he destroyed the Red Marker on Aegis VII, and that he was captured by EarthGov and taken to the Sprawl, a massive space-station built into the remains of Titan, Saturn's largest moon. Once there, EarthGov scientists extract information from his mind to build another Marker, and he is later confined to a hospital on the Sprawl due to a dementia-like mental illness caused by the first Marker. A Necromorph outbreak in the Sprawl instigated by the Marker copy soon occurs, thrusting Isaac into a struggle to survive the Necromorph epidemic. Haunted by hallucinations of the deceased Nicole Brennan, Isaac manages to destroy the Marker copy and undo its influence on his mind. Isaac succeeds in escaping with another survivor, Ellie Langford, before the explosive destruction of the station, and goes into hiding from EarthGov authorities as his mind still retains information about the Markers.
The Dead Space franchise is set in the future, where humanity has been able to colonize other planets.[11] By the 23rd century, humanity has used up most of Earth's natural resources, and the world governing body, EarthGov, has fleets of "planet crackers", giant mining spaceships that harvest resources by breaking apart other planets, to gather materials for humanity to sustain itself.[11] During the 23rd century, EarthGov researchers find an alien artifact in the Chicxulub crater, which they call the Marker. The Marker emits a persistent electromagnetic field from seemingly no source, which researchers believe could be used to provide limitless energy and solve Earth's ecological crisis. Work begins to reverse engineer the Marker on various research stations across the colonies, but they are forced to use bismuth instead of an unidentified alien material, resulting in these duplicates being colored red instead of black as the original.
The EarthGov researchers also discover that the electromagnetic fields sent by the Marker and its duplicates cause living people to suffer paranoia and hallucinations, while also causing the dead to reanimate, becoming "Necromorphs", biological monstrosities which rise to attack the living. EarthGov immediately terminates the Marker project and abandons all research stations where the work had been done, covering up their locations, knowing as they do that the followers of Unitology would desperately want to seek these Markers out in order to advance their beliefs and bring about Convergence.
The Dead Space games franchise follow the survival horror genre, with the player character visible at all times. All menu interfaces are diegetic, produced by the character's "Resource Integration Gear" spacesuit for ease of communication with other characters. For instance, the character's hit point meter, built into the spine of his suit, is intended to allow co-workers to monitor his health, and when the character moves into depressurized areas, a readout on his back displays his remaining seconds of oxygen. All sound is removed from gameplay during these segments, save those which would be transferred to the character's ears by the vibrations of his RIG, such as rounds fired from his weapon. Since the menus are diegetic, opening them does not pause gameplay.
Electronic Arts (EA) Redwood Shores had developed a number of movie and tie-in games, though they desired to make their own intellectual property. Around 2005, the studio presented the idea of making a second sequel to System Shock to EA executives but had not gotten much support until the release of Resident Evil 4 in 2005, which quickly became a top-selling title. That success led them to revise their System Shock concept, making it more a horror-driven game set in space, and which EA was more open to as to try to capture a similar type of success. The aim was to create, in Glen Schofield's words, "the most terrifying game we could acquire". The subsequent game became Dead Space, released in 2008.[13] Dead Space did well, leading EA to rebrand Redwood Shores as Visceral Games in 2009 and operate as a "genre" studio.[14]
Visceral had planned out ideas for a fourth Dead Space game, but at that point, EA transitioned the studio to work on other existing projects, shelving the series after the developer's closure in October 2017.[25] According to former creative director Ben Wanat, their idea of Dead Space 4 was based on concepts from the flotilla section in Dead Space 3, where the player would need to go between the remnants of dead starships to collect parts needed to allow their own craft to survive and gain faster-than-light travel abilities in order to get to a new system. The game would have been a hybrid between non-linear and linear storytelling: while the order of star systems the player visited would have been set by the game, how they proceeded within each system would have been more open. They had considered switching from Isaac to Ellie Langford as the protagonist for the proposed sequel.[27]
Recent studies showed that nasal high flow (NHF) with or without supplemental oxygen can assist ventilation of patients with chronic respiratory and sleep disorders. The hypothesis of this study was to test whether NHF can clear dead space in two different models of the upper nasal airways. The first was a simple tube model consisting of a nozzle to simulate the nasal valve area, connected to a cylindrical tube to simulate the nasal cavity. The second was a more complex anatomically representative upper airway model, constructed from segmented CT-scan images of a healthy volunteer. After filling the models with tracer gases, NHF was delivered at rates of 15, 30, and 45 l/min. The tracer gas clearance was determined using dynamic infrared CO2 spectroscopy and 81mKr-gas radioactive gamma camera imaging. There was a similar tracer-gas clearance characteristic in the tube model and the upper airway model: clearance half-times were below 1.0 s and decreased with increasing NHF rates. For both models, the anterior compartments demonstrated faster clearance levels (half-times < 0.5 s) and the posterior sections showed slower clearance (half-times < 1.0 s). Both imaging methods showed similar flow-dependent tracer-gas clearance in the models. For the anatomically based model, there was complete tracer-gas removal from the nasal cavities within 1.0 s. The level of clearance in the nasal cavities increased by 1.8 ml/s for every 1.0 l/min increase in the rate of NHF. The study has demonstrated the fast-occurring clearance of nasal cavities by NHF therapy, which is capable of reducing of dead space rebreathing.
Background: No single pulmonary-specific variable, including the severity of hypoxemia, has been found to predict the risk of death independently when measured early in the course of the acute respiratory distress syndrome. Because an increase in the pulmonary dead-space fraction has been described in observational studies of the syndrome, we systematically measured the dead-space fraction early in the course of the illness and evaluated its potential association with the risk of death.
Methods: The dead-space fraction was prospectively measured in 179 intubated patients, a mean (+/-SD) of 10.9+/-7.4 hours after the acute respiratory distress syndrome had developed. Additional clinical and physiological variables were analyzed with the use of multiple logistic regression. The study outcome was mortality before hospital discharge.
Results: The mean dead-space fraction was markedly elevated (0.58+/-0.09) early in the course of the acute respiratory distress syndrome and was higher among patients who died than among those who survived (0.63+/-0.10 vs. 0.54+/-0.09, P
Recent studies show that nasal high flow (NHF) therapy can support ventilation in patients with acute or chronic respiratory disorders. Clearance of dead space has been suggested as being the key mechanism of respiratory support with NHF therapy. The hypothesis of this study was that NHF in a dose-dependent manner can clear dead space of the upper airways from expired air and decrease rebreathing. The randomized crossover study involved 10 volunteers using scintigraphy with 81mKrypton (81mKr) gas during a breath-holding maneuver with closed mouth and in 3 nasally breathing tracheotomized patients by volumetric capnography and oximetry through sampling CO2 and O2 in the trachea and measuring the inspired volume with inductance plethysmography following NHF rates of 15, 30, and 45 l/min. The scintigraphy revealed a decrease in 81mKr gas clearance half-time with an increase of NHF in the nasal cavities [Pearson's correlation coefficient cc = -0.55, P < 0.01], the pharynx (cc = -0.41, P < 0.01), and the trachea (cc = -0.51, P < 0.01). Clearance rates in nasal cavities derived from time constants and MRI-measured volumes were 40.6 12.3 (SD), 52.5 17.7, and 72.9 21.3 ml/s during NHF (15, 30, and 45 l/min, respectively). Measurement of inspired gases in the trachea showed an NHF-dependent decrease of inspired CO2 that correlated with an increase of inspired O2 (cc = -0.77, P < 0.05). NHF clears the upper airways of expired air, which reduces dead space by a decrease of rebreathing making ventilation more efficient. The dead space clearance is flow and time dependent, and it may extend below the soft palate.
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