Fibre laser hydrophones for cosmic ray particle detection

The detection of ultra high energetic cosmic neutrinos provides a unique means to search for extragalactic sources that accelerate particles to extreme energies. It allows to study the neutrino component of the GZK cut-off in the cosmic ray energy spectrum and the search for neutrinos beyond this limit. Due to low expected flux and small interaction cross-section of neutrinos with matter large experimental set-ups are needed to conduct this type of research. Acoustic detection of cosmic rays may provide a means for the detection of ultra-high energetic neutrinos. Using relative low absorption of sound in water, large experimental set-ups in the deep sea are possible that are able to detect these most rare events, but it requires highly sensitive hydrophones as the thermo-acoustic pulse originating from a particle shower in water has a typical amplitude as low as a mPa. It has been shown in characterisation measurements that the fibre optic hydrophone technology as designed and realised at TNO provides the required sensitivity. Noise measurements and pulse reconstruction have been conducted that show that the hydrophone is suited as a particle detector.Comment: Submitted to the proceedings of "13th Topical Seminar on Innovative Particle and Radiation Detectors (IPRD13)

Event-related brain potentials index cue-based retrieval interference during sentence comprehension

Successful language use requires access to products of past processing within an evolving discourse. A central issue for any neurocognitive theory of language then concerns the role of memory variables during language processing. Under a cue-based retrieval account of language comprehension, linguistic dependency resolution (e.g., retrieving antecedents) is subject to interference from other information in the sentence, especially information that occurs between the words that form the dependency (e.g., between the antecedent and the retrieval site). Retrieval interference may then shape processing complexity as a function of the match of the information at retrieval with the antecedent versus other recent or similar items in memory. To address these issues, we studied the online processing of ellipsis in Castilian Spanish, a language with morphological gender agreement. We recorded event-related brain potentials while participants read sentences containing noun-phrase ellipsis indicated by the determiner otro/a (‘another’). These determiners had a grammatically correct or incorrect gender with respect to their antecedent nouns that occurred earlier in the sentence. Moreover, between each antecedent and determiner, another noun phrase occurred that was structurally unavailable as an antecedent and that matched or mismatched the gender of the antecedent (i.e., a local agreement attractor). In contrast to extant P600 results on agreement violation processing, and inconsistent with predictions from neurocognitive models of sentence processing, grammatically incorrect determiners evoked a sustained, broadly distributed negativity compared to correct ones between 400 and 1000 ms after word onset, possibly related to sustained negativities as observed for referential processing difficulties. Crucially, this effect was modulated by the attractor: an increased negativity was observed for grammatically correct determiners that did not match the gender of the attractor, suggesting that structurally unavailable noun phrases were at least temporarily considered for grammatically correct ellipsis. These results constitute the first ERP evidence for cue-based retrieval interference during comprehension of grammatical sentences

Can structural priming answer the important questions about language? A commentary on Branigan and Pickering "An experimental approach to linguistic representation"

While structural priming makes a valuable contribution to psycholinguistics, it does not allow direct observation of representation, nor escape “source ambiguity.” Structural priming taps into implicit memory representations and processes that may differ from what is used online. We question whether implicit memory for language can and should be equated with linguistic representation or with language processing

A novel photodefinable polymer containing rare-earth doped nanoparticles for optical amplification

We report on neodymium doped LaF3 nanoparticles dispersed in a photo definable polymer. Standard spin coating is used to deposit uniform thin films on a silicondioxide buffer layer, which can be photocured and developed to produce monomode active optical waveguides. Optical properties of the film are obtained using a prism coupling setup, showing low losses of the photosensitive polymer host material in both the visible and infrared. In addition, the absorption and emission due to the neodymium doped LaF3 nanoparticles have been determined for a range of particle concentrations

Establishing reference in language comprehension: An electrophysiological perspective

The electrophysiology of language comprehension has long been dominated by research on syntactic and semantic integration. However, to understand expressions like "he did it" or "the little girl", combining word meanings in accordance with semantic and syntactic constraints is not enough--readers and listeners also need to work out what or who is being referred to. We review our event-related brain potential research on the processes involved in establishing reference, and present a new experiment in which we examine when and how the implicit causality associated with specific interpersonal verbs affects the interpretation of a referentially ambiguous pronoun. The evidence suggests that upon encountering a singular noun or pronoun, readers and listeners immediately inspect their situation model for a suitable discourse entity, such that they can discriminate between having too many, too few, or exactly the right number of referents within at most half a second. Furthermore, our implicit causality findings indicate that a fragment like "David praised Linda because..." can immediately foreground a particular referent, to the extent that a subsequent "he" is at least initially construed as a syntactic error. In all, our brain potential findings suggest that referential processing is highly incremental, and not necessarily contingent upon the syntax. In addition, they demonstrate that we can use ERPs to relatively selectively keep track of how readers and listeners establish reference

quantitative trait loci associated with the humoral innate immune response in chickens were confirmed in a cross between green legged partridgelike and white leghorn

Natural antibodies (NA) create a crucial barrier at the initial steps of the innate humoral immune response. The main role of NA in the defense system is to bind the pathogens at early stages of infection. Different pathogens are recognized by the presence of highly conserved antigen determinant [e. g., lipopolysaccharide (LPS) in gram-negative bacteria or lipoteichoic acid (LTA) in gram-positive bacteria]. In chickens, a different genetic background of NA binds LPS and LTA antigens, encoded by different QTL. The main objective of this work was to confirm known QTL associated with LPS and LTA NA. For this purpose a chicken reference population was created by crossing 2 breeds: a commercial layer, White Leghorn, and a Polish indigenous chicken, Green-Legged Partridgelike. The chromosomal regions analyzed harbored to GGA3, GGA5, GGA6, GGA8, GGA9, GGA10, GGA14, GGA15, GGA18, and GGAZ. The data collected consisted of the NA titers binding LPS and LTA (determined by ELISA at 12 wk of age) as well as the genotypes (30 short tandem repeat markers; average of 3 markers/chromosome, collected for generations F(0), F(1), and F(2)). The analyses were performed with 3 statistical models (paternal and maternal half-sib, line cross, and linkage analysis and linkage disequilibrium) implemented in GridQTL software (http://www.gridqtl.org.uk/). The QTL study of humoral innate immune response traits resulted in the confirmation of 3 QTL associated with NA titers binding LPS (located on GGA9, GGA18, and GGAZ) and 2 QTL associated with NA titers binding LTA (located on GGA5 and GGA14). A set of candidate genes within the regions of the validated QTL has been proposed

Integrated SCM/PDM/CRM and delivery of software products to 160.000 customers

The release and deployment of enterprise application software is a potentially complex task for software vendors. This complexity can unfortunately result in a significant amount of work and risk. This paper presents a case study of a product software vendor that tries to reduce this complexity by integrating product data management (PDM), software configuration management (SCM), and customer relationship management (CRM) into one system. The case study shows that by combining these management areas in a single intelligent software knowledge base, software release and deployment processes can be automated and improved, thereby enabling a software vendor of enterprise software to serve a large number of customers with different product configuration

CO80 89. Estudio multicéntrico español de la capacidad predictiva de las escalas de riesgo CHADS2 y CHA2DS2vasc en el accidente cerebrovascular tras cirugía coronaria aislada

ObjetivosValidar las escalas de riesgo CHADS2 y CHA2DS-2VASC como modelos predictivos de desarrollo de accidente cerebrovascular (ACV) en cirugía coronaria aislada (CCA).Material y métodosPacientes consecutivos sometidos a CCA en 16 hospitales españoles. Excluidos casos con igual o más de una variable/s incompleta/s. Puntuaciones CHADS2 y CHA2DS2VASC computadas para todos los pacientes, considerándose variable de resultado la aparición de ACV (ataque isquémico transitorio [AIT]/ictus) perioperatorio precoz (primer mes postoperatorio y/o alta hospitalaria). Análisis uni y multivariante. La capacidad discriminativa fue cuantificada por el cálculo del área bajo la curva ROC (AUC).ResultadosVeinte mil novecientos ochenta pacientes incluidos, 282 desarrollaron ACV postoperatorio (1,34%). La incidencia de ACV fue superior en pacientes con insuficiencia cardíaca congestiva (ICC) y/o fracción de eyección inferior al 40% (4,10 vs 0,83%), diabéticos (1,70 vs 1,11%), hipertensos (1,60 vs 0,98%), ACV previo (2,72 vs 1,26%) y a enfermedad arterial periférica (EAP) (3,04 vs 1,04%; p < 0,05). En el análisis multivariante, ICCC (odds ratio [OR]: 4,06), ACV previo (OR: 1,48), EAP (OR: 1,49) constituyeron factores de riesgo independientes para el desarrollo de ACV postoperatorio (p < 0,05). El AUC para CHADS2 fue 0,666, y para CHA2DS2VASc 0,655 (p < 0,0001). La distribución de las tasas de ACV postoperatorio según las puntuaciones de las anteriores escalas se recoge en la figura 1 (p < 0,0001). Figura 1Tasas de ACV postoperatorio en pacientes sometidos a CCA según puntuaciones de las escalas CHADS2 (gris) y CHA2DS2VASC (negro).ConclusionesLas escalas de riesgo CHADS2 y CHA2DS-2VASC pueden resultar útiles en la práctica clínica para estratificar el riesgo de desarrollo de ACV postoperatorio en pacientes sometidos a CCA