Single-shot carrier-envelope-phase measurement in ambient air

The ability to measure and control the carrier envelope phase (CEP) of few-cycle laser pulses is of paramount importance for both frequency metrology and attosecond science. Here, we present a phase meter relying on the CEP-dependent photocurrents induced by circularly polarized few-cycle pulses focused between electrodes in ambient air. The new device facilitates compact single-shot, CEP measurements under ambient conditions and promises CEP tagging at repetition rates orders of magnitude higher than most conventional CEP detection schemes as well as straightforward implementation at longer wavelengths

Physical and Cultural Activity for Life Skills Development - Comparative Report

Life skills are defined as psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. Life skills can be fostered and are fundamental for a person’s progression in life, both personal and professional. Some of those skills are creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, effective communication and collaboration skills, cultivation of responsibility, development of healthy relationships and decision- making. These skills can be acquired through life experience but can be further developed through constant training and engagement. Life skills are particularly important for adolescents and young people. Adolescents and young people leave behind the dependence and the safety that childhood is associated with and enter adulthood with all its opportunities and freedoms but also with all its insecurities and anxieties. Life skills can help adolescents and young people strengthen their self-confidence, interpersonal skills, learn how to use them in assessing knowledge, use resources for their benefit, and make the proper decisions in order to promote their wellbeing2. This way life skills can help young people anticipate with all the difficulties that might occur in adulthood and be involved in the society. In other words, life skills can equip young people with all the necessary qualities in order to become resilient individuals and active citizens. The University of Gloucestershire (UK), Play Gloucestershire (UK), Rogers Személyközpontú Oktatásért Alapítvány (HU), KENTRO MERIMNAS OIKOGENEIAS KAI PAIDIOU(GR), CESIE (IT) and CLAVIS sprog & competence (DK) are implementing the 2 year Erasmus+ project entitled: PAClife – Physical and Cultural Activity for Life Skills Development (2020-2021). The project aims to support disadvantaged and migrant young people in building resilience through acquiring and developing life skills and key competences by participating in a programme of physical and cultural activity. This report presents the findings of a desk-based comparison of domestic projects that will inform the future development of the PAClife training tool to low-skilled/low qualified migrant and disadvantaged young people

A Library for Declarative Resolution-Independent 2D Graphics

The design of most 2D graphics frameworks has been guided by what the computer can draw efficiently, instead of by how graphics can best be expressed and composed. As a result, such frameworks restrict expressivity by providing a limited set of shape primitives, a limited set of textures and only affine transformations. For example, non-affine transformations can only be added by invasive modification or complex tricks rather than by simple composition. More general frameworks exist, but they make it harder to describe and analyze shapes. We present a new declarative approach to resolution-independent 2D graphics that generalizes and simplifies the functionality of traditional frameworks, while preserving their efficiency. As a real-world example, we show the implementation of a form of focus+context lenses that gives better image quality and better performance than the state-of-the-art solution at a fraction of the code. Our approach can serve as a versatile foundation for the creation of advanced graphics and higher level frameworks

Electrophysiological correlates of high-level perception during spatial navigation

We studied the electrophysiological basis of object recognition by recording scalp\ud electroencephalograms while participants played a virtual-reality taxi driver game.\ud Participants searched for passengers and stores during virtual navigation in simulated\ud towns. We compared oscillatory brain activity in response to store views that were targets or\ud nontargets (during store search) or neutral (during passenger search). Even though store\ud category was solely defined by task context (rather than by sensory cues), frontal ...\ud \u

Recall termination in free recall

Although much is known about the dynamics of memory search in the free recall task, relatively little is known about the factors related to recall termination. Reanalyzing individual trial data from 14 prior studies (1,079 participants in 28,015 trials) and defining termination as occurring when a final response is followed by a long nonresponse interval, we observed that termination probability increased throughout the recall period and that retrieval was more likely to terminate following an error than following a correct response. Among errors, termination probability was higher following prior-list intrusions and repetitions than following extralist intrusions. To verify that this pattern of results can be seen in a single study, we report a new experiment in which 80 participants contributed recall data from a total of 9,122 trials. This experiment replicated the pattern observed in the aggregate analysis of the prior studies

Effects of Working Memory Load on Oscillatory Power in Human Intracranial EEG

Studies of working memory load effects on human EEG power have indicated divergent effects in different frequency bands. Although gamma power typically increases with load, the load dependency of the lower frequency theta and alpha bands is uncertain. We obtained intracranial electroencephalography measurements from 1453 electrode sites in 14 epilepsy patients performing a Sternberg task, in order to characterize the anatomical distribution of load-related changes across the frequency spectrum. Gamma power increases occurred throughout the brain, but were most common in the occipital lobe. In the theta and alpha bands, both increases and decreases were observed, but with different anatomical distributions. Increases in theta and alpha power were most prevalent in frontal midline cortex. Decreases were most commonly observed in occipital cortex, colocalized with increases in the gamma range, but were also detected in lateral frontal and parietal regions. Spatial overlap with group functional magnetic resonance imaging results was minimal except in the precentral gyrus. These findings suggest that power in any given frequency band is not a unitary phenomenon; rather, reactivity in the same frequency band varies in different brain regions, and may relate to the engagement or inhibition of a given area in a cognitive task

Physical and Cultural Activity for Life Skills Development - Comparative Report

Life skills are defined as psychosocial abilities for adaptive and positive behaviour that enable individuals to deal effectively with the demands and challenges of everyday life. Life skills can be fostered and are fundamental for a person’s progression in life, both personal and professional. Some of those skills are creativity, critical thinking, problem-solving, effective communication and collaboration skills, cultivation of responsibility, development of healthy relationships and decision- making. These skills can be acquired through life experience but can be further developed through constant training and engagement. Life skills are particularly important for adolescents and young people. Adolescents and young people leave behind the dependence and the safety that childhood is associated with and enter adulthood with all its opportunities and freedoms but also with all its insecurities and anxieties. Life skills can help adolescents and young people strengthen their self-confidence, interpersonal skills, learn how to use them in assessing knowledge, use resources for their benefit, and make the proper decisions in order to promote their wellbeing2. This way life skills can help young people anticipate with all the difficulties that might occur in adulthood and be involved in the society. In other words, life skills can equip young people with all the necessary qualities in order to become resilient individuals and active citizens. The University of Gloucestershire (UK), Play Gloucestershire (UK), Rogers Személyközpontú Oktatásért Alapítvány (HU), KENTRO MERIMNAS OIKOGENEIAS KAI PAIDIOU(GR), CESIE (IT) and CLAVIS sprog & competence (DK) are implementing the 2 year Erasmus+ project entitled: PAClife – Physical and Cultural Activity for Life Skills Development (2020-2021). The project aims to support disadvantaged and migrant young people in building resilience through acquiring and developing life skills and key competences by participating in a programme of physical and cultural activity. This report presents the findings of a desk-based comparison of domestic projects that will inform the future development of the PAClife training tool to low-skilled/low qualified migrant and disadvantaged young people

Youth, terrorism and education: Britain’s Prevent programme

Since the 7/7 bombings of July 2005, Britain has experienced a domestic terror threat posed by a small minority of young Muslims. In response, Britain has initiated ‘Prevent’, a preventative counter-terrorism programme. Building on previous, general critiques of Prevent, this article outlines and critically discusses the ways in which Prevent has approached young Muslims and their educational institutions. The article argues that, rather than trust in broader and non-stigmatising processes of anti-extremist education, the police-led Prevent has ‘engaged’ with and surveilled young Muslims. Within Prevent there is little evidence of educational processes that explicitly build youth resilience against extremism. Instead, Muslim youth are viewed as both ‘risky and at risk’ (Heath-Kelly, 2013), ‘at risk’ of catching the terrorist disease, with the contested model of ‘radicalisation’ and child protection concepts utilised to portray risks of exploitation by Islamist extremists that necessitate a deepening process of education-based surveillance. The article identifies non-stigmatising alternatives to the approach of Prevent, approaches of anti-extremism education that learn from previously problematic anti-racist educational efforts with white young people. This enables the article to advocate for enhanced human rights-based approaches of citizenship education (admittedly, in themselves contested) with all young people as the most effective way of building individual and collective youth resilience against terrorist ideologies

Spawning Habitat Unsuitability: An Impediment to Cisco Rehabilitation in Lake Michigan?

The cisco Coregonus artedi was one of the most important native prey fishes in Lake Michigan and in the other four Laurentian Great Lakes. Most of the cisco spawning in Lake Michigan was believed to have occurred in Green Bay. The cisco population in Lake Michigan collapsed during the 1950s, and the collapse was attributed in part to habitat degradation within Green Bay. Winter water quality surveys of lower Green Bay during the 1950s and 1960s indicated that the bottom dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration was less than 2 mg/L throughout much of the lower bay, and most cisco eggs would not successfully hatch at such low DO concentrations. To determine present‐day spawning habitat suitability in lower Green Bay, we compared cisco egg survival in lower Green Bay with survival at a reference site (St. Marys River, Michigan–Ontario) during 2009. We also conducted winter water quality surveys in lower Green Bay and the St. Marys River during 2009 and 2010. Cisco egg survival in lower Green Bay averaged 65.3%, which was remarkably similar to and not significantly different from the mean at the St. Marys River site (64.0%). Moreover, the lowest bottom DO concentrations recorded during the winter surveys were 11.2 mg/L in lower Green Bay and 12.7 mg/L in the St. Marys River. These relatively high DO concentrations would not be expected to have any negative effect on cisco egg survival. We conclude that winter water quality conditions in lower Green Bay were suitable for successful hatching of cisco eggs and that water quality during the egg incubation period did not represent an impediment to cisco rehabilitation in Lake Michigan. Our approach to determining spawning habitat suitability for coregonids would be applicable to other aquatic systems.Received May 14, 2011; accepted July 6, 2011Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142025/1/nafm0905.pd

A Library for Declarative Resolution-Independent 2D Graphics

htmlabstractThe design of most 2D graphics frameworks has been guided by what the computer can draw efficiently, instead of by how graphics can best be expressed and composed. As a result, such frameworks restrict expressivity by providing a limited set of shape primitives, a limited set of textures and only affine transformations. For example, non-affine transformations can only be added by invasive modification or complex tricks rather than by simple composition. More general frameworks exist, but they make it harder to describe and analyze shapes. We present a new declarative approach to resolution-independent 2D graphics that generalizes and simplifies the functionality of traditional frameworks, while preserving their efficiency. As a real-world example, we show the implementation of a form of focus+context lenses that gives better image quality and better performance than the state-of-the-art solution at a fraction of the code. Our approach can serve as a versatile foundation for the creation of advanced graphics and higher level frameworks