New forms of open peer review will allow academics to separate scholarly evaluation from academic journals.

Today’s academic publishing system may be problematic, but many argue it is the only one available to provide adequate research evaluation. Pandelis Perakakis introduces an open community platform, LIBRE, which seeks to challenge the assumption that peer review can only be handled by journal editors. By embracing a new culture of open, transparent and independent research evaluation, the academic community can more productively contribute to global knowledge

Dynamical patterns of human postural responses to emotional stimuli

Erotic scenes and images of mutilated bodies are emotional stimuli that have repeatedly shown to evoke specific neurophysiological responses associated with enhanced attention and perceptual processing. Remarkably however, only a handful of studies have investigated human motor reactions to emotional activation as a direct index of physical approximation or withdrawal. Given the inconclusive results of these studies, the approach-avoidance distinction, one of the most salient concepts in human motivational research, remains a broadly exploited hypothesis that has never been empirically demonstrated. Here, we investigate postural responses elicited by discrete emotional stimuli in healthy young adults. We discover that both positive and negative affective pictures induce a significant posterior deviation from postural baseline equilibrium. Further, we find that neutral pictures also evoke posterior deviation, although with a less pronounced amplitude. Exploring the dynamical evolution of postural responses to emotional pictures at high temporal resolution, we uncover a characteristic profile that remains stable for stimuli from all three affective categories. In contrast, the postural response amplitude is modulated by the emotional content of the stimulus. Our observations do not support the interpretation of postural responses to affective picture-viewing as approach-avoidance behavior. Instead, our findings indicate the involvement of a previously unrecognized motor component of the physiological mechanism underlying human orienting responses

Web on TV - Designing web content for enhanced user experience on an internet-connected television device

This thesis was submitted for the award of Doctor of Philosophy and was awarded by Brunel University LondonThe Internet is gradually expanding to many new devices, in addition to its original native environment that was the Personal Computer. This wave started with mobile devices and as we enter the Internet of Things era, connectivity is possible from cars to light switches. One of the first devices, to follow mobiles, is the Television. Connectivity and two-way interaction on the TV device has in fact started even in the first days of the medium, but had failed to make it widely available, due to technological limitations of the past. Now, this has changed, with the Smart TV devices that can utilize the fast internet connections that are available in most developed countries. However, even though the technology and devices are now widely available there are still challenges in order to make the vast Internet and web content available in the Smart TVs. These challenges, have a familiar resemblance to what happened a few years ago, when internet connectivity was introduced on the mobile phone. Although, it was “feasible” to access any webpage from your mobile device, the experience for the user was often very frustrating, due to many factors, that derived from the fact that the web was designed for large screens and mice of the desktop computers, not the small touch screens and limited hardware of the phone. Nonetheless, these obstacles were successfully overcome, by introducing techniques and methodologies (e.g. Responsive Web Design) to make the web more mobile-friendly and also work from the manufacturers to improve their devices to this direction as well. The success of these actions is now evident, since the access to the web from mobile devices has surpassed the PC, and it is now a standard practice for every new website to be mobile-friendly. In this research work, we will attempt to do one very significant step towards this direction for the Smart TV. In other words, to discover what has to be done to make the web more TV-friendly. To do this, we explore many different TV devices from several manufacturers and see their similarities and differences. We explore numerous user studies and surveys to discover what is the problem in the Web experience on the TV, so that we can propose solutions to make web content TV-friendly. Based on these findings, we design prototypes and put them to the test on different devices and userevaluation. Finally, we propose a set of guidelines, that web designers can apply on their websites to make them TV-friendly, in the hope to introduce the first step towards a friendlier internet era for the TV

Cortical monitoring of cardiac activity during rapid eye movement sleep: the heartbeat evoked potential in phasic and tonic rapid-eye-movement microstates

The project was supported by the Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (NKFI FK 128100 and K 128117) of the National Research, Development and Innovation Office, as well as by the Higher Education Institutional Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities in Hungary, within the framework of the Neurology thematic program of the Semmelweis University. This project has also received funding from the European Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska–Curie grant (agreement No. 801505). PP was supported by a project from the Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PGC2018-096655-A-I00). The study was supported by ELTE Thematic Excellence Programme 2020 TKP2020-IKA-05 provided by National Research, Development and Innovation Office.Sleep is a fundamental physiological state that facilitates neural recovery during periods of attenuated sensory processing. On the other hand, mammalian sleep is also characterized by the interplay between periods of increased sleep depth and environmental alertness. Whereas the heterogeneity of microstates during non-rapid-eye-movement (NREM) sleep was extensively studied in the last decades, transient microstates during rapid-eye-movement (REM) sleep received less attention. REM sleep features two distinct microstates: phasic and tonic. Previous studies indicate that sensory processing is largely diminished during phasic REM periods, whereas environmental alertness is partially reinstated when the brain switches into tonic REM sleep. Here, we investigated interoceptive processing as quantified by the heartbeat evoked potential (HEP) during REM microstates. We contrasted the HEPs of phasic and tonic REM periods using two separate databases that included the nighttime polysomnographic recordings of healthy young individuals (N = 20 and N = 19). We find a differential HEP modulation of a late HEP component (after 500 ms post-R-peak) between tonic and phasic REM. Moreover, the late tonic HEP component resembled the HEP found in resting wakefulness. Our results indicate that interoception with respect to cardiac signals is not uniform across REM microstates, and suggest that interoceptive processing is partially reinstated during tonic REM periods. The analyses of the HEP during REM sleep may shed new light on the organization and putative function of REM microstates.Hungarian Scientific Research Fund (NKFI FK 128100 and K 128117)Higher Education Institutional Excellence Program of the Ministry of Human Capacities in HungaryEuropean Union’s Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under the Marie Sklodowska–Curie grant (agreement No. 801505)Spanish Ministry of Science, Innovation and Universities (PGC2018-096655-A-I00)ELTE Thematic Excellence Programme 2020 TKP2020-IKA-05 National Research, Development and Innovation Offic

Impact of Stock Market Structure on Intertrade Time and Price Dynamics

We analyse times between consecutive transactions for a diverse group of stocks registered on the NYSE and NASDAQ markets, and we relate the dynamical properties of the intertrade times with those of the corresponding price fluctuations. We report that market structure strongly impacts the scale-invariant temporal organisation in the transaction timing of stocks, which we have observed to have long-range power-law correlations. Specifically, we find that, compared to NYSE stocks, stocks registered on the NASDAQ exhibit significantly stronger correlations in their transaction timing on scales within a trading day. Further, we find that companies that transfer from the NASDAQ to the NYSE show a reduction in the correlation strength of transaction timing on scales within a trading day, indicating influences of market structure. We also report a persistent decrease in correlation strength of intertrade times with increasing average intertrade time and with corresponding decrease in companies' market capitalization–a trend which is less pronounced for NASDAQ stocks. Surprisingly, we observe that stronger power-law correlations in intertrade times are coupled with stronger power-law correlations in absolute price returns and higher price volatility, suggesting a strong link between the dynamical properties of intertrade times and the corresponding price fluctuations over a broad range of time scales. Comparing the NYSE and NASDAQ markets, we demonstrate that the stronger correlations we find in intertrade times for NASDAQ stocks are associated with stronger correlations in absolute price returns and with higher volatility, suggesting that market structure may affect price behavior through information contained in transaction timing. These findings do not support the hypothesis of universal scaling behavior in stock dynamics that is independent of company characteristics and stock market structure. Further, our results have implications for utilising transaction timing patterns in price prediction and risk management optimization on different stock markets

HTML5 and companion web technologies as a universal platform for interactive Internet TV advertising

In this paper, we propose, design and develop a prototype interactive TV Commercial (iTVC) for the Internet Connected TV using only web technologies instead of propriety APIs or Adobe Flash, which are the most common methods up to date. The main advantage of this method is that developers can use a technology that is, or will be in the near future, compatible with most, if not all, different connected TV platforms, as the adoption of HTML5, CSS3 and JavaScript is constantly gaining ground among Connected TV manufactures. We will show that, using these technologies, all of the features of a typical interactive Ad (Advertisement), such as navigation, video, audio, animation etc can be easily achieved and therefore it is a much better choice for authoring universal interactive Advertisements that will work in most platforms instead of re-developing the same Ad for each platform. © 2012 IEEE

Efficient e-Marketing in Tourism through a Novel Customer Relationship Management Model

This paper proposes an efficient customerrelationship management model based on technologicalconvergence of emerging next generation networks, such asinteractive digital television and network multimedia systems.The proposed research approach is exploited in tourism sectorfor effective destination management, enabling for personalizede-marketing strategies and facilitating marketers to accomplishoptimum marketing data analysis. The proposed researchapproach is evaluated for its applicability and usefulness byinterviewing a sample of Destination Marketing Organizationmanagers. The findings of this research provide useful practicalimplications

Open Peer Review Module for Open Access Repositories

Workshop held on the 27th of Abril at CSIC Royal Botanic Garden in Madrid (RJB-CSIC).This work was funded by OpenAIRE 2020, EU-Horizon2020 Grant ID 643410.N

Understanding the role of open peer review and dynamic academic articles

We welcome the commentary by L. Egghe stimulating discussion on our recent article “Natural selection of academic papers” (NSAP) that focuses on an important modern issue at the heart of the scientific enterprise — the open and continuous evaluation and evolution of research. We are also grateful to the editor of Scientometrics for giving us the opportunity to respond to some of the arguments by L. Egghe that we believe are inaccurate or require further comment

Liver fat as risk factor of hepatic and cardiometabolic diseases

Non-alcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD) is a disorder characterized by excessive accumulation of fat in the liver that can progress to liver inflammation (non-alcoholic steatohepatitis [NASH]), liver fibrosis, and cirrhosis. Although most efforts for drug development are focusing on the treatment of the latest stages of NAFLD, where significant fibrosis and NASH are present, findings from studies suggest that the amount of liver fat may be an important independent risk factor and/or predictor of development and progression of NAFLD and metabolic diseases. In this review, we first describe the current tools available for quantification of liver fat in humans and then present the clinical and pathophysiological evidence that link liver fat with NAFLD progression as well as with cardiometabolic diseases. Finally, we discuss current pharmacological and non-pharmacological approaches to reduce liver fat and present open questions that have to be addressed in future studies