Does congenital deafness affect the structural and functional architecture of primary visual cortex?

Deafness results in greater reliance on the remaining senses. It is unknown whether the cortical architecture of the intact senses is optimized to compensate for lost input. Here we performed widefield population receptive field (pRF) mapping of primary visual cortex (V1) with functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) in hearing and congenitally deaf participants, all of whom had learnt sign language after the age of 10 years. We found larger pRFs encoding the peripheral visual field of deaf compared to hearing participants. This was likely driven by larger facilitatory center zones of the pRF profile concentrated in the near and far periphery in the deaf group. pRF density was comparable between groups, indicating pRFs overlapped more in the deaf group. This could suggest that a coarse coding strategy underlies enhanced peripheral visual skills in deaf people. Cortical thickness was also decreased in V1 in the deaf group. These findings suggest deafness causes structural and functional plasticity at the earliest stages of visual cortex

Deep Convective Microphysics Experiment (DCMEX) coordinated aircraft and ground observations: microphysics, aerosol, and dynamics during cumulonimbus development

Cloud feedbacks associated with deep convective anvils remain highly uncertain. In part, this uncertainty arises from a lack of understanding of how microphysical processes influence the cloud radiative effect. In particular, climate models have a poor representation of microphysics processes, thereby encouraging the collection and study of observation data to enable better representation of these processes in models. As such, the Deep Convective Microphysics Experiment (DCMEX) undertook an in situ aircraft and ground-based measurement campaign of New Mexico deep convective clouds during July–August 2022. The campaign coordinated a broad range of instrumentation measuring aerosol, cloud physics, radar, thermodynamics, dynamics, electric fields, and weather. This paper introduces the potential data user to DCMEX observational campaign characteristics, relevant instrument details, and references to more detailed instrument descriptions. Also included is information on the structure and important files in the dataset in order to aid the accessibility of the dataset to new users. Our overview of the campaign cases illustrates the complementary operational observations available and demonstrates the breadth of the campaign cases observed. During the campaign, a wide selection of environmental conditions occurred, ranging from dry, northerly air masses with low wind shear to moist, southerly air masses with high wind shear. This provided a wide range of different convective growth situations. Of 19 flight days, only 2 d lacked the formation of convective cloud. The dataset presented (https://doi.org/10.5285/B1211AD185E24B488D41DD98F957506C; Facility for Airborne Atmospheric Measurements et al., 2024) will help establish a new understanding of processes on the smallest cloud- and aerosol-particle scales and, once combined with operational satellite observations and modelling, can support efforts to reduce the uncertainty of anvil cloud radiative impacts on climate scales

Medium-voltage pulse width modulated current source rectifiers using different semiconductors: loss and size comparison

In this study, a comparison of losses and physical size is presented for three semiconductor devices suitable for medium-voltage high-power applications. The comparison is made for medium-voltage pulse width modulated (PWM) current source rectifiers (CSRs) using a selective harmonic elimination technique. The devices are high-voltage insulated gate bipolar transistors and two types of hard-driven thyristors, namely the symmetrical gate commutated thyristor and the asymmetrical gate commutated thyristor. The study is based on practical devices using data sheets from semiconductor device vendors, taking into account accurate discrimination between turn-off and recovery states. The constant-voltage switching energy data sheet curves for voltage source converters are adapted to suit varying voltage applications like the PWM-CSR, with emphasis on how voltage is shared between series devices during each commutation instant