A Causal Role for Primary Motor Cortex in Perception of Observed Actions.

It has been proposed that motor system activity during action observation may be modulated by the kinematics of observed actions. One purpose of this activity during action observation may be to predict the visual consequence of another person’s action based on their movement kinematics. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the primary motor cortex (M1) may have a causal role in inferring information that is present in the kinematics of observed actions. Healthy participants completed an action perception task before and after applying continuous theta burst stimulation (cTBS) over left M1. A neurophysiological marker was used to quantify the extent of M1 disruption following cTBS and stratify our sample a priori to provide an internal control. We found that a disruption to M1 caused a reduction in an individual’s sensitivity to interpret the kinematics of observed actions; the magnitude of suppression of motor excitability predicted this change in sensitivity

N released from organic amendments is affected by soil management history

A ryegrass bioassay was conducted to investigate the effect of soil management history on nitrogen mineralisation from composted manure and pelleted poultry manure. Soils were used from 2 field experiments comparing conventional and organic/low input management systems. When composted manure was added, soils which had received high rates of composted FYM under biodynamic management released a greater amount of nitrogen for plant uptake than those with a history of mineral or fresh manure fertilisation, suggesting that biological preconditioning may result in greater efficiency of composted FYM as a nitrogen source for plants. “Native” N mineralisation was found to be related to total soil N content

Evidence for suppressed mid-Holocene northeastern Australian monsoon variability from coral luminescence

Summer monsoon rainfall in northeastern (NE) Australia exhibits substantial interannual variability resulting in highly variable river flows. The occurrence and magnitude of these seasonal river flows are reliably recorded in modern inshore corals as luminescent lines. Here we present reconstructed annual river flows for two ~120 year mid-Holocene windows based on luminescence measurements from five cores obtained from three separate coral colonies. We were able to cross-date the luminescence signatures in four cores from two of the colonies, providing confidence in the derived reconstruction. Present-day NE Australian rainfall and river flow are sensitive to El Niño–Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability, with La Niña (El Niño) events typically associated with wetter (drier) monsoon seasons. Thus, our replicated and annually resolved coral records provide valuable insights into the northern Australian summer monsoon and ENSO variability at a key period (6 ka) when greenhouse gas levels and ice sheet cover were comparable to the preindustrial period but orbital forcing was different. Average modern and mid-Holocene growth characteristics were very similar, suggesting that sea surface temperatures off NE Australia at 6 kyr were also close to present values. The reconstructed river flow record suggests, however, that the mid-Holocene Australian summer monsoon was weaker, less variable from year to year (possibly indicative of reduced ENSO variability), and characterized by more within-season flood pulses than present. In contrast to today, the delivery of moisture appears to have been dominated by eastward propagating convective coupled waves associated with the Madden-Julian Oscillation

Kappa-symmetric deformations of M5-brane dynamics

We calculate the first supersymmetric and kappa-symmetric derivative deformation of the M5-brane worldvolume theory in a flat eleven-dimensional background. By applying cohomological techniques we obtain a deformation of the standard constraint of the superembedding formalism. The first possible deformation of the constraint and hence the equations of motion arises at cubic order in fields and fourth order in a fundamental length scale $l$. The deformation is unique up to this order. In particular this rules out any induced Einstein-Hilbert terms on the worldvolume. We explicitly calculate corrections to the equations of motion for the tensor gauge supermultiplet.Comment: 17 pages. Additional comments in section

Field-Driven Transitions in the Dipolar Pyrochlore Antiferromagnet Gd2_2Ti2_2O7_7

We present a mean-field theory for magnetic field driven transitions in dipolar coupled gadolinium titanate Gd$_2$Ti$_2$O$_7$ pyrochlore system. Low temperature neutron scattering yields a phase that can be regarded as a 8 sublattice antiferromagnet, in which long-ranged ordered moments and fluctuating moments coexist. Our theory gives parameter regions where such a phase is realized, and predicts several other phases, with transitions amongst them driven by magnetic field as well as temperature. We find several instances of {\em local} disorder parameters describing the transitions.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures. v2: longer version with 2 add.fig., to appear in PR

Counting Supertubes

The quantum states of the supertube are counted by directly quantizing the linearized Born-Infeld action near the round tube. The result is an entropy $S = 2\pi \sqrt{2 (Q_{D0}Q_{F1}-J)}$, in accord with conjectures in the literature. As a result, supertubes may be the generic D0-F1 bound state. Our approach also shows directly that supertubes are marginal bound states with a discrete spectrum. We also discuss the relation to recent suggestions of Mathur et al involving three-charge black holes.Comment: 15 pages, v2: reference corrected; v3: few corrections and explicit derivation of a relation are added to appendix

Reference Ontologies to Support the Development of New Product-Service Lifecycle Systems

In competitive and time sensitive market places, organisations are tasked with providing Product Lifecycle Management (PLM) approaches to achieve and maintain competitive advantage, react to change and understand the balance of possible options when making decisions on complex multi-faceted problems, Global Production Networks (GPN) in one such domain in which this applies. When designing and configuring GPN to develop, manufacture and deliver product-service provision, information requirements that affect decision making become more complex. The application of reference ontologies to a domain and its related information requirements can enhance and accelerate the development of new product-service lifecycle systems with a view towards the seamless interchange of information or interoperability between systems and domains. This paper present preliminary results for the capture and modelling of end-user information and an initial higher level reference core ontology for the development of reference ontologies to ameliorate product-service lifecycle management for GPNPalmer, C.; Urwin, E.; Pinazo-Sanchez, J.; Sánchez Cid, F.; Pajkovska-Goceva, S.; Young, R. (2014). Reference Ontologies to Support the Development of New Product-Service Lifecycle Systems. En Advances in Production Management Systems: Innovative and Knowledge-Based. Springer Verlag. 642-649. doi:10.1007/978-3-662-44736-9_78S642649Vandermerwe, S., Rada, J.: Servitization of business: adding value by adding services. European Management Journal 6(4), 314–324 (1988)Coe, N.M., Dicken, P., Hess, M.: Global production networks: realizing the potential. Economic Geography Research Group, Working Paper Series No. 05.07 (2007)Young, R.I.M., Gunendran, A.G., Chungoora, N., Harding, J.A., Case, K.: Enabling interoperable manufacturing knowledge sharing in PLM. In: Proceedings of the Sixth Interna-tional Conference on Product Life Cycle Management PLM 2009, University of Bath, Bath, UK, July 6-8, pp. 130–138. Inderscience Enterprises Ltd., Switzerland (2009)Chungoora, N., Young, R.I.M.: The configuration of design and manufacture know-ledge models from a heavyweight ontological foundation. International Journal of Production Research 49(15), 4701–4725 (2011)Chungoora, N., Cutting-Decelle, A.-F., Young, R.I.M., Gunendran, G., Usman, Z., Harding, J.A., Case, K.: Towards the ontology-based consolidation of production-centric standards. International Journal of Production Research 51(2), 327–345 (2013a)Hastilow, N.: An Ontological Approach to Manufacturing Systems Interoperability in Dynamic Change Environments. PhD Thesis. School of Mechanical and Manufacturing Engineering, Loughborough University, UK (2013)Highfleet Ontology Library Reference. Highfleet Inc., Baltimore (2014)International Standards Society, ISO/IEC 15288:2008 Systems and Software Engineering – System lifecycle processes. ISO, Genève (2008)Banathy, B.H.: A systems view of education: Concepts and principles for effective practice. Educational Technology (1992)OMG, 2012 OMG unified modeling language (OMG UML), superstructure and infrastructure version 2.4.1 (2012), http://www.omg.org/spec/UML/2.4.1/ (accessed May 9, 2014)Mizoguchi, R., Kozaki, K., Kitamura, Y.: Ontological analyses of roles. In: 2012 Federated Conference on Computer Science and Information Systems (FedCSIS), pp. 489–496. IEEE (September 2012)FIPS PUBs: Integration definition for function modelling (IDEF0). Federal information processing standards publication, 183 (1993)POP* Revised framework Work package – A1.8, Athena European integrated project no. 507849 public deliverable (2006

General 2 charge geometries

Two charge BPS horizon free supergravity geometries are important in proposals for understanding black hole microstates. In this paper we construct a new class of geometries in the NS1-P system, corresponding to solitonic strings carrying fermionic as well as bosonic condensates. Such geometries are required to account for the full microscopic entropy of the NS1-P system. We then briefly discuss the properties of the corresponding geometries in the dual D1-D5 system.Comment: 44 page

Dirac field on Moyal-Minkowski spacetime and non-commutative potential scattering

The quantized free Dirac field is considered on Minkowski spacetime (of general dimension). The Dirac field is coupled to an external scalar potential whose support is finite in time and which acts by a Moyal-deformed multiplication with respect to the spatial variables. The Moyal-deformed multiplication corresponds to the product of the algebra of a Moyal plane described in the setting of spectral geometry. It will be explained how this leads to an interpretation of the Dirac field as a quantum field theory on Moyal-deformed Minkowski spacetime (with commutative time) in a setting of Lorentzian spectral geometries of which some basic aspects will be sketched. The scattering transformation will be shown to be unitarily implementable in the canonical vacuum representation of the Dirac field. Furthermore, it will be indicated how the functional derivatives of the ensuing unitary scattering operators with respect to the strength of the non-commutative potential induce, in the spirit of Bogoliubov's formula, quantum field operators (corresponding to observables) depending on the elements of the non-commutative algebra of Moyal-Minkowski spacetime.Comment: 60 pages, 1 figur