Endogenous orientation of visual attention in auditory space

Visuospatial attention is asymmetrically distributed with a leftward bias (i.e. pseudoneglect), while evidence for asymmetries in auditory spatial attention is still controversial. In the present study, we investigated putative asymmetries in the distribution of auditory spatial attention and the influence that visual information might have on its deployment. A modified version of the Posner task (i.e. the visuo-audio spatial task [VAST]) was used to investigate spatial processing of auditory targets when endogenous orientation of spatial attention was mediated by visual cues in healthy adults. A line bisection task (LBT) was also administered to assess the presence of a leftward bias in deployment of visuospatial attention. Overall, participants showed rightward and leftward biases in the VAST and the LBT, respectively. In the VAST, sound localization was enhanced by visual cues. Altogether, these findings support the existence of a facilitation effect for auditory targets originating from the right side of space and provide new evidence for crossmodal links in endogenous spatial attention between vision and audition

Everything is (still) illuminated: dual right cathodal-left anodal tDCS of PPC prevents fatigue on a visual detection task

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Embodied simulation and ambiguous stimuli: The role of the mirror neuron system

According to the "embodied simulation theory," exposure to certain visual stimuli would automatically trigger action simulation in the mind of the observer, thereby originating a "feeling of movement" modulated by the mirror neuron system (MNS). Grounded on this conceptualization, some of us recently suggested that when exposed to the Rorschach inkblots, in order to see a human movement (e.g., "a person running") in those ambiguous stimuli, the observer would need to experience a "feeling of movement" via embodied simulation. The current study used repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) to further test this hypothesis. Specifically, we investigated whether temporarily interfering with the activity of the left inferior frontal gyrus (LIFG; a putative MNS area) using rTMS would decrease the propensity to see human movement (M) in the Rorschach inkblots. Thirty-six participants were exposed to the Rorschach stimuli twice, i.e., during a baseline (without rTMS) and soon after inhibitory rTMS. As for the rTMS condition, half of the sample was stimulated over the LIFG (experimental group) and the other half over the Vertex (control group). In line with our hypothesis, the application of rTMS over LIFG, but not over Vertex, yielded a statistically significant reduction in the attribution of M to the ambiguous stimuli, with large effect size. These findings may be interpreted as being consistent with the hypothesis that there is a link between the MNS and the "feeling of movement" people may experience, when observing ambiguous stimuli such as the Rorschach cards

SWIPE: a bolometric polarimeter for the Large-Scale Polarization Explorer

The balloon-borne LSPE mission is optimized to measure the linear polarization of the Cosmic Microwave Background at large angular scales. The Short Wavelength Instrument for the Polarization Explorer (SWIPE) is composed of 3 arrays of multi-mode bolometers cooled at 0.3K, with optical components and filters cryogenically cooled below 4K to reduce the background on the detectors. Polarimetry is achieved by means of large rotating half-wave plates and wire-grid polarizers in front of the arrays. The polarization modulator is the first component of the optical chain, reducing significantly the effect of instrumental polarization. In SWIPE we trade angular resolution for sensitivity. The diameter of the entrance pupil of the refractive telescope is 45 cm, while the field optics is optimized to collect tens of modes for each detector, thus boosting the absorbed power. This approach results in a FWHM resolution of 1.8, 1.5, 1.2 degrees at 95, 145, 245 GHz respectively. The expected performance of the three channels is limited by photon noise, resulting in a final sensitivity around 0.1-0.2 uK per beam, for a 13 days survey covering 25% of the sky.Comment: In press. Copyright 2012 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. One print or electronic copy may be made for personal use only. Systematic reproduction and distribution, duplication of any material in this paper for a fee or for commercial purposes, or modification of the content of the paper are prohibite

Multifunctional graphene oxide/biopolymer composite aerogels for microcontaminants removal from drinking water

Due to water depletion and increasing level of pollution from standard and emerging contaminants, the development of more efficient purification materials and technology for drinking water treatment is a crucial challenge to be addressed in the near future. Graphene oxide (GO) has been pointed as one of the most promising materials to build structure and devices for new adsorbents and filtration systems. Here, we analyzed two types of GO doped 3D chitosan-gelatin aerogels with GO sheets embedded in the bulk or deposited on the surface. Through combined structural characterization and adsorption tests on selected proxies of drinking water micropollutants, we compared both GO-embedded and GO-coated materials and established the best architecture for achieving enhanced removal efficiency toward con- taminants in water. To evaluate the best configuration, we studied the adsorption capacity of both systems on two organic molecules (i.e., fluoroquinolonic antibiotics ofloxacin and ciprofloxacin) and a heavy metal (lead Pb2\ufe) of great environmental relevance and with already proved high affinity for GO. The Pb monolayer maximum adsorption capacity qmax was 11.1 mg/g for embedded GO aerogels and 1.5 mg/g in coated GO-ones. Only minor differences were found for organic contaminants between coating and embedding approaches with an adsorption capacity of 5e8 mg/g and no adsorption was found for chitosan-gelatin control aerogels without GO. Finally, potential antimicrobial effects were found particularly for the GO-coated aerogels materials, thus corroborating the multifunctionality of the newly developed porous structures

Data-Driven Methodology for Knowledge Graph Generation Within the Tourism Domain

The tourism and hospitality sectors have become increasingly important in the last few years and the companies operating in this field are constantly challenged with providing new innovative services. At the same time, (big-) data has become the “new oil” of this century and Knowledge Graphs are emerging as the most natural way to collect, refine, and structure this heterogeneous information. In this paper, we present a methodology for semi-automatic generating a Tourism Knowledge Graph (TKG), which can be used for supporting a variety of intelligent services in this space, and a new ontology for modelling this domain, the Tourism Analytics Ontology (TAO). Our approach processes and integrates data from Booking.com, Airbnb, DBpedia, and GeoNames. Due to its modular structure, it can be easily extended to include new data sources or to apply new enrichment and refinement functions. We report a comprehensive evaluation of the functional, logical, and structural dimensions of TKG and TAO

Optical modeling and polarization calibration for CMB measurements with ACTPol and Advanced ACTPol

The Atacama Cosmology Telescope Polarimeter (ACTPol) is a polarization sensitive upgrade to the Atacama Cosmology Telescope. Located at an elevation of 5190 m, ACTPol measures the Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) temperature and polarization with arcminute-scale angular resolution. Calibration of the detector angles is a critical step in producing maps of the CMB polarization. Polarization angle offsets in the detector calibration can cause leakage in polarization from E to B modes and induce a spurious signal in the EB and TB cross correlations, which eliminates our ability to measure potential cosmological sources of EB and TB signals, such as cosmic birefringence. We present our optical modeling and measurements associated with calibrating the detector angles in ACTPol.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figures, conference proceedings submitted to Proceedings of SPIE; added reference in section 2 and merged repeated referenc

Enriching Data Lakes with Knowledge Graphs

Data lakes are repositories of data stored in natural/raw format. A data lake may include structured data from relational databases, semi-structured data (i.e., JSON, CSV), unstructured data (i.e., text data), or binary data (i.e., images, audio, video). It is usually built on top of cost-efficient infrastructures such as Hadoop, Amazon S3, MongoDB, ElasticSearch, etc. Several organisations rely on big data lakes for crucial tasks such as reporting, visualisation, advanced analytics, machine learning, and business intelligence. A major limitation of this solution is that without descriptive metadata and a mechanism to maintain it, such data tend to be noisy, making their management and analysis complex and time-consuming. Therefore, there is the need to add a semantic layer based on a formal ontology to describe the data and efficient mechanism to represent them as a knowledge graph. In this paper, we present a methodology to add a semantic layer to a data lake and thus obtain a knowledge graph that can support structured queries and advanced data exploration. We describe a practical implementation of a methodology applied to a data lake consisting of text data describing the online marketplace for lodging and tourism activities. We report statistics about the data lake and the resulting knowledge graph

Personality features and vulnerability to stress: a case study on hyperhidrosis

By using the Rorschach test, self-reports, and psychophysiological measures, we investigated thoroughly the psychological functioning in a hyperhidrotic case. Erica, a young female with hyperhidrosis, was assessed in three times at one-week distance. First, specific tools assessing potential psychological and affective distress, and the Rorschach test were administered. About one week later, Electrodermal Activity was recorded during the exposure to a mild laboratory stress-inducing task. Finally, a magnetic resonance imaging exam was performed in order to exclude medical conditions/neurological alterations for potential physiological anomalies. Erica tends to avoid living in the moment and prefers to experience close relationships in her inner world where she can rehearse the future and imagine different contexts and social situations without risks and embarrassment. She reports high capacities to perform goaldirected behaviors and clarity of emotions only in absence of stressful situations. The study has the merit to be the first to combine Rorschach data with physiological data in order to investigate the psychological functioning in a hyperhidrotic case