782 research outputs found
Immersive Composition for Sensory Rehabilitation: 3D Visualisation, Surround Sound, and Synthesised Music to Provoke Catharsis and Healing
There is a wide range of sensory therapies using sound, music and visual stimuli. Some focus on soothing or distracting stimuli such as natural sounds or classical music as analgesic, while other approaches emphasize the
active performance of producing music as therapy. This paper proposes an immersive
multi-sensory Exposure Therapy for people suffering from anxiety disorders, based on a rich, detailed surround-soundscape. This soundscape is composed to include the users’ own idiosyncratic anxiety triggers as a form of
habituation, and to provoke psychological catharsis, as a non-verbal, visceral and enveloping exposure. To accurately pinpoint the most effective sounds and to optimally compose the soundscape we will monitor the participants’ physiological responses such as electroencephalography, respiration, electromyography, and heart rate during exposure. We hypothesize that such physiologically optimized sensory landscapes will aid the development of future immersive therapies for various psychological conditions, Sound is a major trigger of anxiety, and auditory hypersensitivity is an extremely problematic symptom. Exposure to stress-inducing sounds can free anxiety sufferers from entrenched avoidance behaviors, teaching physiological coping strategies and encouraging resolution of the psychological issues agitated by the sound
Drawing Arrangement Graphs In Small Grids, Or How To Play Planarity
We describe a linear-time algorithm that finds a planar drawing of every
graph of a simple line or pseudoline arrangement within a grid of area
O(n^{7/6}). No known input causes our algorithm to use area
\Omega(n^{1+\epsilon}) for any \epsilon>0; finding such an input would
represent significant progress on the famous k-set problem from discrete
geometry. Drawing line arrangement graphs is the main task in the Planarity
puzzle.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures. To appear at 21st Int. Symp. Graph Drawing,
Bordeaux, 201
Marine mammal genomes: Important resources for unravelling adaptation and evolution in the marine environment
Measurements of Scintillation Efficiency and Pulse-Shape for Low Energy Recoils in Liquid Xenon
Results of observations of low energy nuclear and electron recoil events in
liquid xenon scintillator detectors are given. The relative scintillation
efficiency for nuclear recoils is 0.22 +/- 0.01 in the recoil energy range 40
keV - 70 keV. Under the assumption of a single dominant decay component to the
scintillation pulse-shape the log-normal mean parameter T0 of the maximum
likelihood estimator of the decay time constant for 6 keV < Eee < 30 keV
nuclear recoil events is equal to 21.0 ns +/- 0.5 ns. It is observed that for
electron recoils T0 rises slowly with energy, having a value ~ 30 ns at Eee ~
15 keV. Electron and nuclear recoil pulse-shapes are found to be well fitted by
single exponential functions although some evidence is found for a double
exponential form for the nuclear recoil pulse-shape.Comment: 11 pages, including 5 encapsulated postscript figure
Turbulence induced additional deceleration in relativistic shock wave propagation: implications for gamma-ray burst
The late afterglow of gamma-ray burst is believed to be due to progressive
deceleration of the forward shock wave driven by the gamma-ray burst ejecta
propagating in the interstellar medium. We study the dynamic effect of
interstellar turbulence on shock wave propagation. It is shown that the shock
wave decelerates more quickly than previously assumed without the turbulence.
As an observational consequence, an earlier jet break will appear in the light
curve of the forward shock wave. The scatter of the jet-corrected energy
release for gamma-ray burst, inferred from the jet-break, may be partly due to
the physical uncertainties in the turbulence/shock wave interaction. This
uncertainties also exist in two shell collisions in the well-known internal
shock model proposed for gamma-ray burst prompt emission. The large scatters of
known luminosity relations of gamma-ray burst may be intrinsic and thus
gamma-ray burst is not a good standard candle. We also discuss the other
implications.Comment: accepted for publication in Astrophysics and Space Scienc
Methane emissions among individual dairy cows during milking quantified by eructation peaks or ratio with carbon dioxide
The aims of this study were to compare methods for examining measurements of CH4 and CO2 emissions of dairy cows during milking and to assess repeatability and variation of CH4 emissions among individual dairy cows. Measurements of CH4 and CO2 emissions from 36 cows were collected in 3 consecutive feeding periods. In the first period, cows were fed a commercial partial mixed ration (PMR) containing 69% forage. In the second and third periods, the same 36 cows were fed a high-forage PMR ration containing 75% forage, with either a high grass silage or high maize silage content. Emissions of CH4 during each milking were examined using 2 methods. First, peaks in CH4 concentration due to eructations during milking were quantified. Second, ratios of CH4 and CO2 average concentrations during milking were calculated. A linear mixed model was used to assess differences between PMR. Variation in CH4 emissions was observed among cows after adjusting for effects of lactation number, week of lactation, diet, individual cow, and feeding period, with coefficients of variation estimated from variance components ranging from 11 to 14% across diets and methods of quantifying emissions. No significant difference was detected between the 3 PMR in CH4 emissions estimated by either method. Emissions of CH4 calculated from eructation peaks or as CH4 to CO2 ratio were positively associated with forage dry matter intake. Ranking of cows according to CH4 emissions on different diets was correlated for both methods, although rank correlations and repeatability were greater for CH4 concentration from eructation peaks than for CH4-to-CO2 ratio. We conclude that quantifying enteric CH4 emissions either using eructation peaks in concentration or as CH4-to-CO2 ratio can provide highly repeatable phenotypes for ranking cows on CH4 output
Variation in enteric methane emissions among cows on commercial dairy farms
Methane (CH4) emissions by dairy cows vary with feed intake and diet composition. Even when fed on the same diet at the same intake, however, variation between cows in CH4 emissions can be substantial. The extent of variation in CH4 emissions among dairy cows on commercial farms is unknown, but developments in methodology now permit quantification of CH4 emissions by individual cows under commercial conditions. The aim of this research was to assess variation among cows in emissions of eructed CH4 during milking on commercial dairy farms. Enteric CH4 emissions from 1,964 individual cows across 21 farms were measured for at least 7 days per cow using CH4 analysers at robotic milking stations. Cows were predominantly of Holstein Friesian breed and remained on the same feeding systems during sampling. Effects of explanatory variables on average CH4 emissions per individual cow were assessed by fitting a linear mixed model. Significant effects were found for week of lactation, daily milk yield and farm. The effect of milk yield on CH4 emissions varied among farms. Considerable variation in CH4 emissions was observed among cows after adjusting for fixed and random effects, with the coefficient of variation ranging from 22 to 67% within farms. This study confirms that enteric CH4 emissions vary among cows on commercial farms, suggesting that there is considerable scope for selecting individual cows and management systems with reduced emissions
Superdeformed rotational bands in the Mercury region; A Cranked Skyrme-Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov study
A study of rotational properties of the ground superdeformed bands in \Hg{0},
\Hg{2}, \Hg{4}, and \Pb{4} is presented. We use the cranked
Hartree-Fock-Bogoliubov method with the {\skm} parametrization of the Skyrme
force in the particle-hole channel and a seniority interaction in the pairing
channel. An approximate particle number projection is performed by means of the
Lipkin-Nogami prescription. We analyze the proton and neutron quasiparticle
routhians in connection with the present information on about thirty presently
observed superdeformed bands in nuclei close neighbours of \Hg{2}.Comment: 26 LaTeX pages, 14 uuencoded postscript figures included, Preprint
IPN-TH 93-6
Interaction of N solitons in the massive Thirring model and optical gap system: the Complex Toda Chain Model
Using the Karpman-Solov''ev quasiparticle approach for soliton-soliton
interaction I show that the train propagation of N well separated solitons of
the massive Thirring model is described by the complex Toda chain with N nodes.
For the optical gap system a generalised (non-integrable) complex Toda chain is
derived for description of the train propagation of well separated gap
solitons. These results are in favor of the recently proposed conjecture of
universality of the complex Toda chain.Comment: RevTex, 23 pages, no figures. Submitted to Physical Review
Recent progress on univariate and multivariate polynomial and spline quasi-interpolants
Polynomial and spline quasi-interpolants (QIs) are practical and effective approximation operators. Among their remarkable properties, let us cite for example: good shape properties, easy computation and evaluation (no linear system to solve), uniform boundedness independently of the degree (polynomials) or of the partition (splines), good approximation order. We shall emphasize new results on various types of univariate and multivariate polynomial or spline QIs, depending on the nature of coefficient functionals, which can be differential, discrete or integral. We shall also present some applications of QIs to numerical methods
- …