TOBE: Tangible Out-of-Body Experience

We propose a toolkit for creating Tangible Out-of-Body Experiences: exposing the inner states of users using physiological signals such as heart rate or brain activity. Tobe can take the form of a tangible avatar displaying live physiological readings to reflect on ourselves and others. Such a toolkit could be used by researchers and designers to create a multitude of potential tangible applications, including (but not limited to) educational tools about Science Technologies Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and cognitive science, medical applications or entertainment and social experiences with one or several users or Tobes involved. Through a co-design approach, we investigated how everyday people picture their physiology and we validated the acceptability of Tobe in a scientific museum. We also give a practical example where two users relax together, with insights on how Tobe helped them to synchronize their signals and share a moment

Searching Saturation in eA Processes

The high density effects should be manifest at small x and/or large nuclei. In this letter we consider the behavior of nuclear structure function $F_2^A$ slope in the kinematic region which could be explored in the future eA colliders as a search of these effects. We verify that the high density implies that the maximum value of the slope occurs at large values of the photon virtuality, i.e. in a perturbative regime, and is dependent of the number of nucleons A and energy. Our conclusion is that the measurement of this observable will allow to explicit the saturation.Comment: 13 pages, 2 figures, 1 tabl

Competitiveness in the Food Industry: a CGE Modelling Approach to assess Foreign Direct Investment in Transition Countries

For transition countries, the food industry sector is a key industry in terms of output and employment shares. As a competitive sector that receives substantial foreign direct investments (FDI), it plays an important role as an element in the process of integration in the European and world market. The GLOBE Computable General Equilibrium model is applied to analyse scenarios of alternative development pathways of the food industry sector, taking into account the impact of FDI in the European food industry. The scenario analyses of this study identify that with an enhanced attraction of FDI in the food processing industries in the New Member States (NMS) the integration of the agri-food sectors in the NMS into the Single European Market will become even stronger.Food industry, foreign direct investment, CGE, transition countries, Agribusiness, International Relations/Trade,

Seeking the Shadowing in eA Processes

We consider the behavior of the slope of the nuclear structure function $F_2^A$ in the kinematic region which will be explored in the eA HERA collider. We demonstrate that, similarly to the nucleon case, a `turn over' is predicted in this observable. Moreover, we predict that the presence of the shadowing corrections implies that the maximum value of the slope is dependent of the number of nucleons A, differently from the DGLAP predictions. Our conclusion is that the measurement of this observable will allow to evidentiate the presence of the shadowing corrections.Comment: 10 pages, 1 figur

Small Scale AES Toolbox: Algebraic and Propositional Formulas, Circuit-Implementations and Fault Equations

Cryptography is one of the key technologies ensuring security in the digital domain. As such, its primitives and implementations have been extensively analyzed both from a theoretical, cryptoanalytical perspective, as well as regarding their capabilities to remain secure in the face of various attacks. One of the most common ciphers, the Advanced Encryption Standard (AES) (thus far) appears to be secure in the absence of an active attacker. To allow for the testing and development of new attacks or countermeasures a small scale version of the AES with a variable number of rounds, number of rows, number of columns and data word size, and a complexity ranging from trivial up to the original AES was developed. In this paper we present a collection of various implementations of the relevant small scale AES versions based on hardware (VHDL and gate-level), algebraic representations (Sage and CoCoA) and their translations into propositional formulas (in CNF). Additionally, we present fault attack equations for each version. Having all these resources available in a single and well structured package allows researchers to combine these different sources of information which might reveal new patterns or solving strategies. Additionally, the fine granularity of difficulty between the different small scale AES versions allows for the assessment of new attacks or the comparison of different attacks

Unitarity Corrections to the Proton Structure Functions through the Dipole Picture

We study the dipole picture for the description of the deep inelastic scattering, focusing on the structure functions which are driven directly by the gluon distribution. One performs estimates using the effective dipole cross section given by the Glauber-Mueller approach in QCD, which encodes the corrections due to the unitarity effects associated with the saturation phenomenon. We also address issues about frame invariance of the calculations when analysing the observables.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figures. Version to be published in Phys. Rev.

Constraining the free parameter of the high parton density effects

The high density parton effects are strongly dependent of the spatial gluon distribution within the proton, with radius $R$, which cannot be derived from perturbative QCD. In this paper we assume that the unitarity corrections are present in the HERA kinematical region and constrain the value of $R$ using the data for the proton structure function and its slope. We obtain that the gluons are not distributed uniformly in the whole proton disc, but behave as concentrated in smaller regions.Comment: 16 pages, 5 figure

Old English and Old Norse: An Inquiry into Intelligibility and Categorization Methodology

To say that the Old English and Old Norse languages have an interesting history with one another is a declaration of utter understatement. So intertwined were these languages and their people that we, some 1,000 years later, are still attempting to discern the extent of their relationship with one another. As new evidence and the reevaluation of old evidence emerges, research in the historical Germanic languages continues to paint a clearer picture. However, the study of possible Old English and Old Norse mutual intelligibility is a subject that is comparatively new within the field, and as such is still exploring a state of uncertainty in the research. Over the past century, certain aspects within the Germanic language tree have undergone drastic shifts. Specifically, there has been a recent alteration of the arrangement of individual languages within the accepted historical timeline in light of a new understanding of linguistic evidence. This shift sent the comparative views of Old English and Old Norse into disarray, pushing research to reevaluate the possibility of mutual intelligibility between these two languages. Since then, it has become the general consensus that post-migration Old English and Old Norse had enjoyed a relatively long period in which they could understand one another, and linguistic evidence continues to strengthen this view. Though the body of evidence in favor of this theory continues to grow, there is yet another aspect of historical evidence that is, by and large, untapped and could provide an even greater understanding of mutual intelligibility in this respect. The use of literary evidence in the linguistic argument of mutual intelligibility is one that has been meet with some skepticism, and understandably so. However, more and more researchers have begun introducing specific literary pieces as supplementary evidence for intelligibility studies. This work seeks to outline the history of Germanic language categorization, catalog the linguistic attributes in both Old English and Old Norse that have become the cornerstone of the mutual intelligibility argument, as well inquire into the set of evidence that has not received as much attention in the research

The evolution of harm: effect of sexual conflicts and population size

Conflicts of interest between mates can lead to the evolution of male traits reducing female fitness and to coevolution between the sexes. The rate of adaptation and counter-adaptation is constrained by the intensity of selection and its efficiency, which depends on drift and genetic variability. This leads to the largely untested prediction that coevolutionary adaptations such as those driven by sexual conflict should evolve faster in large populations where the response to selection is stronger and sexual selection is more intense. We test this using the bruchid beetle Callosobruchus maculatus, a species with well documented male harm. Whilst most experimental evolution studies remove sexual conflicts, we reintroduce sexual conflict in populations where it has been experimentally removed. Both population size and standing genetic variability were manipulated in a factorial experimental design. After 90 generations of relaxed conflict (monogamy), the reintroduction of sexual conflicts for 30 generations favoured males that harmed females and females more resistant to the genital damage inflicted by males. Large population size rather than high initial genetic variation allowed males to evolve faster and become more harmful. Sexual selection thus creates conditions where males benefit from harming females and this selection is more effective in larger populations