Effects of salience are short-lived

A salient event in the visual field tends to attract attention and the eyes. To account for the effects of salience on visual selection, models generally assume that the human visual system continuously holds information concerning the relative salience of objects in the visual field. Here we show that salience in fact drives vision only during the short time interval immediately following the onset of a visual scene. In a saccadic target-selection task, human performance in making an eye movement to the most salient element in a display was accurate when response latencies were short, but was at chance when response latencies were long. In a manual discrimination task, performance in making a judgment of salience was more accurate with brief than with long display durations. These results suggest that salience is represented in the visual system only briefly after a visual image enters the brain. Copyright © 2008 Association for Psychological Science

Efficient room temperature cw Yb:glass laser pumped by a 946nm Nd:YAG laser

By pumping with a cw diode-pumped Nd:YAG laser operating at 946nm laser operation of a new Yb-doped phosphate glass with 440mW cw output power and a slope efficiency of 48% with respect to the absorbed pump power was achieved at room temperature

Antecedents influencing rugby migration in South Africa

This study set out to determine the most important antecedents influencing the decision of players at the top five South African rugby unions to play overseas. A literature review was conducted in order to establish the theory base for the study. A survey, utilizing a self-administered questionnaire, of players at the top five South African rugby unions was conducted to determine the antecedents influencing the migration decision. The study noted financial reasons as the main antecedent in the decision to migrate. Based on players’ opinions, any strategy devised by the rugby unions to address the problem of player migration would have to focus on a number of facets rather than on one single area of concern.http://www.cluteinstitute.com/am201

Evaluation of non-chemical seed treatment methods for the control of Alternaria dauci and A. radicina on carrot seeds

The current study was initiated to evaluate the efficacy of physical methods (hot water, aerated steam, electron treatment) and agents of natural origin (resistance inducers, plant derived products, micro-organisms) as seed treatments of carrots for control of Alternaria dauci and A. radicina. Control of both Alternaria species by seed treatment with the resistance inducers was generally poor. Results were also not satisfactory with most of the formulated commercial micro-organism preparations. Based on the average of five field trials, one of these, BA 2552 (Pseudomonas chlororaphis), provided a low but significant increase in plant stand. Among the experimental micro-organisms, the best results were obtained with Pseudomonas sp. strain MF 416 and Clonostachys rosea strain IK726. A similar level of efficacy was provided by seed treatment with an emulsion (1%) of thyme oil in water. Good and consistent control was generally achieved with the physical methods aerated steam, hot water and electron treatment. Aerated steam treatment was, apart from the thiram-containing chemical standard, the best single treatment, and its performance may at least partially be due to extensive pre-testing, resulting in dosages optimally adapted to the respective seed lot. In some of the experiments the effect of the hot water treatment, which was tested at a fixed, not specifically adapted dosage, was significantly improved when combined with a Pseudomonas sp. MF 416 or C. rosea IK726 treatment. The results are discussed in relation to the outcome of experiments in which the same seed treatment methods and agents were tested in other seed-borne vegetable pathosystems

Exact Path-Integral Representations for the TT-Matrix in Nonrelativistic Potential Scattering

Several path integral representations for the $T$-matrix in nonrelativistic potential scattering are given which produce the complete Born series when expanded to all orders and the eikonal approximation if the quantum fluctuations are suppressed. They are obtained with the help of "phantom" degrees of freedom which take away explicit phases that diverge for asymptotic times. Energy conservation is enforced by imposing a Faddeev-Popov-like constraint in the velocity path integral. An attempt is made to evaluate stochastically the real-time path integral for potential scattering and generalizations to relativistic scattering are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures. Contribution to the workshop "Relativistic Description of Two- and Three-Body Systems in Nuclear Physics", ETC*, October 19-23, 2009. v2: typo corrected, matches published version + additional reference

Second order gradient ascent pulse engineering

We report some improvements to the gradient ascent pulse engineering (GRAPE) algorithm for optimal control of quantum systems. These include more accurate gradients, convergence acceleration using the BFGS quasi-Newton algorithm as well as faster control derivative calculation algorithms. In all test systems, the wall clock time and the convergence rates show a considerable improvement over the approximate gradient ascent.Comment: Submitted for publicatio

STOVE: Seed treatments for organic vegetable production

The aim of the EU-financed research project „STOVE“ (Seed Treatments for Organic Vegetable Production) is to evaluate different methods potentially suited for seed treatment of vegetables in organic farming regarding their efficacy, to optimise these methods, and where feasible to combine them with each other. Scientists from seven European research institutions and a producer of organic vegetable seeds carry out the project

Fluctuating Fuzzy Funnels

It is well known that a D-string ending on a D3, D5 or D7 brane is described in terms of a non-commutative fuzzy funnel geometry. In this article, we give a numerical study of the fluctuations about this leading geometry. This allows us to investigate issues related to the stability and moduli space of these solutions. We comment on the comparison to the linearized fluctuations in supergravity.Comment: 24 pages, 3 figures; v2 references added and correcte

Using Lightweight Activity Diagrams for Modeling and Generation of Web Information Systems

The development process of web information systems nowadays improved a lot regarding effectiveness and tool support, but still contains many redundant steps for similar tasks. In order to overcome this, we use a model-driven approach to specify a web information system in an agile way and generate a full- edged and runnable application from a set of models. The covered aspects of the system comprise data structure, page structure including view on data, page- and workflow within the system as well as overall application structure and user rights management. Appropriate tooling allows transforming these models to complete systems and thus gives us opportunity for a lightweight development process based on models. In this paper, we describe how we approach the page- and workflow aspect by using activity diagrams as part of the agile modeling approach MontiWIS. We give an overview of the defined syntax, describe the supported forms of action contents and finally explain how the behavior is realized in the generated application.Comment: 12 pages, 6 figure

Density Functional Theory for a Confined Fermi System with Short-Range Interaction

Effective field theory (EFT) methods are applied to density functional theory (DFT) as part of a program to systematically go beyond mean-field approaches to medium and heavy nuclei. A system of fermions with short-range, natural interactions and an external confining potential (e.g., fermionic atoms in an optical trap) serves as a laboratory for studying DFT/EFT. An effective action formalism leads to a Kohn-Sham DFT by applying an inversion method order-by-order in the EFT expansion parameter. Representative results showing the convergence of Kohn-Sham calculations at zero temperature in the local density approximation (LDA) are compared to Thomas-Fermi calculations and to power-counting estimates.Comment: 36 pages, 20 figures, RevTeX