The steady state visual evoked potential (SSVEP) tracks “sticky” thinking, but not more general mind-wandering

For a large proportion of our daily lives, spontaneously occurring thoughts tend to disengage our minds from goal-directed thinking. Previous studies showed that EEG features such as the P3 and alpha oscillations can predict mind-wandering to some extent, but only with accuracies of around 60%. A potential candidate for improving prediction accuracy is the Steady-State Visual Evoked Potential (SSVEP), which is used frequently in single-trial contexts such as brain-computer interfaces as a marker of the direction of attention. In this study, we modified the sustained attention to response task (SART) that is usually employed to measure spontaneous thought to incorporate the SSVEP elicited by a 12.5-Hz flicker. We then examined whether the SSVEP could track and allow for the prediction of the stickiness and task-relatedness dimensions of spontaneous thought. Our results show that the SSVEP evoked by flickering words was able to distinguish between more and less sticky thinking but not between whether a participant was on- or off-task. This suggests that the SSVEP is able to track spontaneous thinking when it is strongly disengaged from the task (as in the sticky form of off-task thinking) but not off-task thought in general. Future research should determine the exact dimensions of spontaneous thought to which the SSVEP is most sensitive

Academic blogging: writers’ views on interacting with readers

Academic blogs have become increasingly important as a means of disseminating research and attracting wider non-academic audiences or like-minded peers to new areas of scholarly activity. The heterogeneity and unfamiliarity of the audience means that writers need to present information in perhaps unfamiliar ways, creating interest and encouraging readers to engage with the topics. In this paper, we explore academics’ perceptions of this challenge and particularly how they go about establishing a relationship which will hook and then persuade these new readers. Based on semi-structured interviews with 22 UK academics from a variety of disciplines, we explore the perceptions and practices of writers and how these differ from when they are engaged in writing research papers. We also compare their perceptions with academics who routinely read blogs as part of their scholarly work. The results show key ways in which writers go about interacting with readers and how they seek to draw them into the text through a range of rhetorical devices. We also observe that these rhetorical practices exhibit features of both academic and disciplinary conventions, suggesting that academic blogs are very much an academic genre

“Think about how fascinating this is”: Engagement in academic blogs across disciplines

As a relatively new and rapidly growing academic genre, the academic blog offers an open space for scholars to disseminate their work and discuss research issues. In this new rhetorical context, researchers in different fields try to create interpersonal solidarity to engage a relatively unpredictable readership, which is strongly influenced by knowledge-making practices. In this paper, we explore how bloggers across disciplines engage their readers. Based on 132 blog posts from both soft and hard fields, we examine bloggers’ use of engagement resources. The results suggest blogs in soft disciplines have significantly more reader mentions, directives and questions, while hard science blogs rely on resources which claim relatively more author authority and require more shared understanding. The study not only contributes to our understanding of how researchers create more egalitarian and engaging interpersonal relations with readers than in research articles, but reveals clear disciplinary differences

Satellite radar observation feasibility for large infrastructure public works

A very large infrastructural work is being undertaken in Delft. A tunnel is going to be constructed to replace the current rail viaduct. As in any large infrastructural work, the monitoring of the land deformations during the period of the tunnel’s construction is highly essential. In this project, one study was performed to analyse the feasibility of PSInSAR as an independent technique for monitoring of land subsidence. The driving mechanisms for deformation were studied to find out the relations among them. Soil geophysics, hydrology, infrastructures and thermal expansion were studied in relation with deformation. Besides these, the traditional deformation monitoring methods were also studied, since they are the competitors of this technique. LiDAR, photogrammetry, tachymetry, levelling and GPS were considered in this study for the comparison with radar. The major attention has been given in this study to assessment of the geolocalisation quality of PSInSAR observations. We have found that the accuracy and point density of PSInSAR is sufficient for deformation monitoring. While its repeat interval might not be able to detect quick failure mechanisms, other techniques have proven to be excellent complements for this deficiency. Radar measurements are also good for validation in other fields, showing that they correlate well with thermal expansion and soil mechanics theory. Further work should be directed to improving geolocalisation and deformation models

Testing for Software Safety

This research focuses on testing whether or not the hazardous conditions identified by design-level fault tree analysis will occur in the target implementation. Part 1: Integrate fault tree models into functional specifications so as to identify testable interactions between intended behaviors and hazardous conditions. Part 2: Develop a test generator that produces not only functional tests but also safety tests for a target implementation in a cost-effective way. Part 3: Develop a testing environment for executing generated functional and safety tests and evaluating test results against expected behaviors or hazardous conditions. It includes a test harness as well as an environment simulation of external events and conditions

Reworking research: interactions in academic articles and blogs

The blog is an increasingly familiar newcomer to the panoply of academic genres, offering researchers the opportunity to disseminate their work to new and wider audiences of experts and interested lay people. This digital medium, however, also brings challenges to writers in the form of a relatively unpredictable readership and the potential for immediate, public and potentially hostile criticism. To understand how academics in the social sciences respond to this novel rhetorical situation, we explore how they discoursally recontextualise in blogs the scientific information they have recently published in journal articles. Based on two corpora of 30 blog posts and 30 journal articles with the same authors and topics, we examine the ways researchers carefully reconstruct a different writer persona and relationship with their readers using stance and engagement (Hyland, 2005). In addition to supporting the view that the academic blog is a hybrid genre situated between academic and journalistic writing, we show how writers’ rhetorical choices help define different rhetorical contexts

Computational Prediction of O-linked Glycosylation Sites That Preferentially Map on Intrinsically Disordered Regions of Extracellular Proteins

O-glycosylation of mammalian proteins is one of the important posttranslational modifications. We applied a support vector machine (SVM) to predict whether Ser or Thr is glycosylated, in order to elucidate the O-glycosylation mechanism. O-glycosylated sites were often found clustered along the sequence, whereas other sites were located sporadically. Therefore, we developed two types of SVMs for predicting clustered and isolated sites separately. We found that the amino acid composition was effective for predicting the clustered type, whereas the site-specific algorithm was effective for the isolated type. The highest prediction accuracy for the clustered type was 74%, while that for the isolated type was 79%. The existence frequency of amino acids around the O-glycosylation sites was different in the two types: namely, Pro, Val and Ala had high existence probabilities at each specific position relative to a glycosylation site, especially for the isolated type. Independent component analyses for the amino acid sequences around O-glycosylation sites showed the position-specific existences of the identified amino acids as independent components. The O-glycosylation sites were preferentially located within intrinsically disordered regions of extracellular proteins: particularly, more than 90% of the clustered O-GalNAc glycosylation sites were observed in intrinsically disordered regions. This feature could be the key for understanding the non-conservation property of O-glycosylation, and its role in functional diversity and structural stability