Heavy-duty staple remover operated by hand

To remove staples from thick reports, a rooter, bending hook and post are incorporated into a heavy duty hand tool. This makes possible one-step extraction of long staples

Quantum cryptography with finite resources: unconditional security bound for discrete-variable protocols with one-way post-processing

We derive a bound for the security of QKD with finite resources under one-way post-processing, based on a definition of security that is composable and has an operational meaning. While our proof relies on the assumption of collective attacks, unconditional security follows immediately for standard protocols like Bennett-Brassard 1984 and six-states. For single-qubit implementations of such protocols, we find that the secret key rate becomes positive when at least N\sim 10^5 signals are exchanged and processed. For any other discrete-variable protocol, unconditional security can be obtained using the exponential de Finetti theorem, but the additional overhead leads to very pessimistic estimates

Building a single repository to meet all use cases: a collaboration between institution, researchers and supplier

Repositories have historically focused on a single use case, primarily the capture of traditional (text-based) open access publications, requiring separate solutions for different use cases (e.g. research data). This made capturing the variety of research outputs challenging at the University of Westminster, which engages in practice-based arts research, alongside traditional research. Building on a history of collaboration, Haplo and the University and its research community have built a single, open source repository meeting multiple use cases including text-based and non-text based outputs, portfolios and research data. Made possible through the flexible technical architecture of the Haplo platform, whose underlying technology is based on semantic web principles and meets COAR’s vision for next-generation repositories. Improvements to the repository now enable better capture and display of research outputs across disciplines. Highlights include the development of dynamic portfolios, improved support for non-text based outputs and ongoing engagement with practice-based arts researchers to understand their needs, build workflows, review metadata and build, test and implement a transformed repository

From legacy to next generation: a story of collaboration to push the boundaries of the open source Haplo repository from Cayuse

This article describes the development of the Haplo standards-based, open source repository software, from Cayuse, that meets the findable, accessible, interoperable and reusable (FAIR) principles, and which captures all research, regardless of what it is, with a focus on prioritizing the capture of ‘practice research’ – ‘… an umbrella term that describes all manners of research where practice is the significant method of research conveyed in a research output.’ in the arts and architecture. This research has been neglected by the repository landscape and surrounding discoverability infrastructure, which has traditionally focused on text-based research publications in the STEM disciplines where there is a policy mandate (and funding) for open access. As practice research has not been captured effectively in repositories, it has not been possible for it to be preserved for long-term access via appropriate integrated digital preservation solutions. This story of collaboration between the University of Westminster and Haplo (now Cayuse), puts researchers at the centre of development, using a co-design approach, while ensuring the Research and Scholarly Communications team (then based within the Library and Archives Service) at the University were driving this work in alignment with sector-wide standards. The role of user engagement, advocacy and inclusive policy development is highlighted and illustrates that this underpins, and is crucial to, successful software development. While the successes are documented and celebrated, the challenges are acknowledged and the lessons learned are shared

The Implicit Nature of the Anti-Fat Bias

The stigmatization and discrimination of obese persons is pervasive in almost any domain of living. At the explicit level, obese people are associated with a wide range of negative characteristics. Furthermore, research with the implicit association test revealed the implicit nature of the anti-fat bias. Building upon these findings, the present study used event-related brain potential recordings in order to assess key features of implicit processes. Participants viewed a series of schematic portrayals of anorexic, medium, and obese body shapes and tools. In a passive viewing condition, participants were asked to simply look at the stimuli and, in a distraction condition, participants were asked to detect a specific tool. Viewing obese body images, as compared to medium or anorexic body images, elicited a positive potential shift over fronto-central sites and a relative negative potential over occipito-temporal regions in a time window from ∼190 to 250 ms. This evaluative brain response to obese body images was similarly pronounced while participants performed a distraction task. Thus, the findings suggest that the anti-fat bias may occur spontaneously, unintentionally, and independent of explicit processing goals. A troublesome picture is emerging in Western cultures suggesting that obese-ism may appear to be as inevitable as a reflex

Thermodynamics and tunneling spectroscopy in the pseudogap regime of the boson fermion model

Motivated by the STM experimental data on Bi_2 Sr_2 CaCU_2 O_{8+x} which indicate the tunneling conductance asymmetry sigma(-V) not equal sigma(V), we report that such a behavior can be explained in terms of the boson fermion model. It has been shown in the recent studies, based on various selfconsistent techniques to capture the many-body effects, that the low energy spectrum of the boson fermion model is featured by an appearance of the pseudogap at T^* > T_c. We argue that the pseudogap structure has to exhibit a particle-hole asymmetry. This asymmetry may eventually depend on the boson concentration.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures. submitted to Physica