12,776 research outputs found
The influence of expertise on brain activation of the action observation network during anticipation of tennis and volleyball serves
In many daily activities, and especially in sport, it is necessary to predict the effects of others' actions in order to initiate appropriate responses. Recently, researchers have suggested that the action-observation network (AON) including the cerebellum plays an essential role during such anticipation, particularly in sport expert performers. In the present study, we examined the influence of task-specific expertise on the AON by investigating differences between two expert groups trained in different sports while anticipating action effects. Altogether, 15 tennis and 16 volleyball experts anticipated the direction of observed tennis and volleyball serves while undergoing functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI). The expert group in each sport acted as novice controls in the other sport with which they had only little experience. When contrasting anticipation in both expertise conditions with the corresponding untrained sport, a stronger activation of AON areas (SPL, SMA), and particularly of cerebellar structures, was observed. Furthermore, the neural activation within the cerebellum and the SPL was linearly correlated with participant's anticipation performance, irrespective of the specific expertise. For the SPL, this relationship also holds when an expert performs a domain-specific anticipation task. Notably, the stronger activation of the cerebellum as well as of the SMA and the SPL in the expertise conditions suggests that experts rely on their more fine-tuned perceptual-motor representations that have improved during years of training when anticipating the effects of others' actions in their preferred sport. The association of activation within the SPL and the cerebellum with the task achievement suggests that these areas are the predominant brain sites involved in fast motor predictions. The SPL reflects the processing of domain-specific contextual information and the cerebellum the usage of a predictive internal model to solve the anticipation task. © 2014 Balser, Lorey, Pilgramm, Naumann, Kindermann, Stark, Zentgraf, Williams and Munzert
Anti-aliasing with stratified B-spline filters of arbitrary degree
A simple and elegant method is presented to perform anti-aliasing in raytraced images. The method uses stratified
sampling to reduce the occurrence of artefacts in an image and features a B-spline filter to compute the final
luminous intensity at each pixel. The method is scalable through the specification of the filter degree. A B-spline
filter of degree one amounts to a simple anti-aliasing scheme with box filtering. Increasing the degree of the B-spline generates progressively smoother filters. Computation of the filter values is done in a recursive way, as part of a sequence of Newton-Raphson iterations, to obtain the optimal sample positions in screen space. The proposed method can perform both anti-aliasing in space and in time, the latter being more commonly known as motion blur. We show an application of the method to the ray casting of implicit procedural surfaces
Excitation of the odd-parity quasi-normal modes of compact objects
The gravitational radiation generated by a particle in a close unbounded
orbit around a neutron star is computed as a means to study the importance of
the modes of the neutron star. For simplicity, attention is restricted to
odd parity (``axial'') modes which do not couple to the neutron star's fluid
modes. We find that for realistic neutron star models, particles in unbounded
orbits only weakly excite the modes; we conjecture that this is also the
case for astrophysically interesting sources of neutron star perturbations. We
also find that for cases in which there is significant excitation of quadrupole
modes, there is comparable excitation of higher multipole modes.Comment: 18 pages, 21 figures, submitted to Phys. Rev.
Age and sex-specific rates of leaf regeneration in the Mojave Desert moss Syntrichia caninervis
The extremely skewed female-biased sex ratio in the desert moss Syntrichia caninervis was investigated by assessing the regeneration capacity of detached leaves. Juvenile, green, yellow-green, and brown leaves equating to approximately 0, 2, 6, and 12 yr of age, respectively, were detached from individuals of S. caninervis collected from 10 field populations and grown in a growth chamber for 58 d at a light intensity of 33–128 µmol · m–2 · s–1. Younger leaves (0–2 yr old) tended to have a greater viability, regenerate more quickly, extend their protonemal filaments farther, produce shoots (gametophores) more quickly, produce more shoots, and accumulate a greater biomass than older leaves (6 and 12 yr old). Among younger leaf classes, regenerating female leaves were more likely to produce a shoot than male leaves and produced more shoots than male leaves. The sexes did not differ significantly in time until protonemal emergence, linear extension of protonemata, or rate of biomass accumulation. However, protonemata of male leaves tended to emerge more quickly and produce a greater total biomass, ultimately consisting mostly of protonemata, than did female leaves. The more rapid proliferation of shoots by female leaf regenerants may help to explain the rarity of males in this species
Competing types of quantum oscillations in the 2D organic conductor (BEDT-TTF)8Hg4Cl12(C6H5Cl)2
Interlayer magnetoconductance of the quasi-two dimensional organic metal
(BEDT-TTF)8Hg4Cl12(C6H5Cl)2 has been investigated in pulsed magnetic fields
extending up to 36 T and in the temperature range from 1.6 to 15 K. A complex
oscillatory spectrum, built on linear combinations of three basic frequencies
only is observed. These basic frequencies arise from the compensated closed
hole and electron orbits and from the two orbits located in between. The field
and temperature dependencies of the amplitude of the various oscillation series
are studied within the framework of the coupled orbits model of Falicov and
Stachowiak. This analysis reveals that these series result from the
contribution of either conventional Shubnikov-de Haas effect (SdH) or quantum
interference (QI), both of them being induced by magnetic breakthrough.
Nevertheless, discrepancies between experimental and calculated parameters
indicate that these phenomena alone cannot account for all of the data. Due to
its low effective mass, one of the QI oscillation series - which corresponds to
the whole first Brillouin zone area - is clearly observed up to 13 K.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures. To be published in Phys. Rev.
Inductive power transfer in e-textile applications: Reducing the effects of coil misalignment
Wireless power transfer (WPT) is an attractive approach for recharging wearable technologies and therefore textile implementations are of interest. Such textile WPT systems are inherently flexible and prone to misalignments of the inductively coupled coils which affects performance. This paper investigates two methods to reduce the effect of coil misalignment in inductive WPT in e-textile applications: a single large transmitter coil and a switched transmitter coil array. Transmission efficiency and maximum received power are determined for both methods, and compared against the baseline system that uses a single small transmitter coil. All coils used in this study were fabricated using automated stitching of PTFE insulated flexible wire onto a polyester/cotton textile. This fabrication method allows coils to be sewn directly to existing garments
Large-Scale CO Maps of the Lupus Molecular Cloud Complex
Fully sampled degree-scale maps of the 13CO 2-1 and CO 4-3 transitions toward
three members of the Lupus Molecular Cloud Complex - Lupus I, III, and IV -
trace the column density and temperature of the molecular gas. Comparison with
IR extinction maps from the c2d project requires most of the gas to have a
temperature of 8-10 K. Estimates of the cloud mass from 13CO emission are
roughly consistent with most previous estimates, while the line widths are
higher, around 2 km/s. CO 4-3 emission is found throughout Lupus I, indicating
widespread dense gas, and toward Lupus III and IV. Enhanced line widths at the
NW end and along the edge of the B228 ridge in Lupus I, and a coherent velocity
gradient across the ridge, are consistent with interaction between the
molecular cloud and an expanding HI shell from the Upper-Scorpius subgroup of
the Sco-Cen OB Association. Lupus III is dominated by the effects of two HAe/Be
stars, and shows no sign of external influence. Slightly warmer gas around the
core of Lupus IV and a low line width suggest heating by the
Upper-Centaurus-Lupus subgroup of Sco-Cen, without the effects of an HI shell.Comment: 54 pages, 27 figures, 5 tables. To appear in ApJS. Preprint also
available (with full-size figures) from
http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/nfht/publications.html Datacubes available
from http://www.astro.ex.ac.uk/people/nfht/resources.htm
Rotational Diffusion in a Chain of Particles
We study the coupled rotational diffusion in a two-particle chain on the
basis of a Smoluchowski equation and calculate time-correlation functions that
are measurable in an experiment. This might be used to explore hydrodynamic
interactions in the limit where lubrication theory is valid.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, to be published in J. Phys.: Condens. Matte
Identification of the Mass Donor Star's Spectrum in SS 433
We present spectroscopy of the microquasar SS 433 obtained near primary
eclipse and disk precessional phase Psi = 0.0, when the accretion disk is
expected to be most ``face-on''. The likelihood of observing the spectrum of
the mass donor is maximized at this combination of orbital and precessional
phases since the donor is in the foreground and above the extended disk
believed to be present in the system. The spectra were obtained over four
different runs centered on these special phases. The blue spectra show clear
evidence of absorption features consistent with a classification of A3-7 I. The
behavior of the observed lines indicates an origin in the mass donor. The
observed radial velocity variations are in anti-phase to the disk, the
absorption lines strengthen at mid-eclipse when the donor star is expected to
contribute its maximum percentage of the total flux, and the line widths are
consistent with lines created in an A supergiant photosphere. We discuss and
cast doubt on the possibility that these lines represent a shell spectrum
rather than the mass donor itself. We re-evaluate the mass ratio of the system
and derive masses of 10.9 +/- 3.1 Msun and 2.9 +/- 0.7 Msun for the mass donor
and compact object plus disk, respectively. We suggest that the compact object
is a low mass black hole.
In addition, we review the behavior of the observed emission lines from both
the disk/wind and high velocity jets.Comment: submitted to ApJ, 24 pages, 7 figure
Scattering of particles by neutron stars: Time-evolutions for axial perturbations
The excitation of the axial quasi-normal modes of a relativistic star by
scattered particles is studied by evolving the time dependent perturbation
equations. This work is the first step towards the understanding of more
complicated perturbative processes, like the capture or the scattering of
particles by rotating stars. In addition, it may serve as a test for the
results of the full nonlinear evolution of binary systems.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Phys. Rev. D in pres
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