A Comparison of a Brain-Computer Interface and an Eye Tracker: Is There a More Appropriate Technology for Controlling a Virtual Keyboard in an ALS Patient?

The ability of people affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS), muscular dystrophy or spinal cord injuries to physically interact with the environment, is usually reduced. In some cases, these patients suffer from a syndrome known as locked-in syndrome (LIS), defined by the patient’s inability to make any move-ment but blinks and eye movements. Tech communication systems available for people in LIS are very limited, being those based on eye-tracking and brain-computer interface (BCI) the most useful for these patients. A comparative study between both technologies in an ALS patient is carried out: an eye tracker and a visual P300-based BCI. The purpose of the study presented in this paper is to show that the choice of the technology could depend on user´s preference. The evaluation of performance, workload and other subjective measures will allow us to determine the usability of the systems. The obtained results suggest that, even if for this patient the BCI technology is more appropriate, the technology should be always tested and adapted for each user.Universidad de Málaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional Andalucía Tech

Displaced Voices: A Journal of Migration, Archives and Cultural Heritage, Volume 3 Issue 1 (Spring 2023)

Twentieth Century Histories of Civic Society’s Responses to Crises of Displacement: A Special Issue to mark the 70th Anniversary of Refugee Council Displaced Voices is a biannual digital magazine produced twice a year by the Living Refugee Archive team at the University of East London. Displaced Voices aims to provide a digital platform for activists, archivists, researchers, practitioners and academics to contribute to issues pertaining to refugee and migration history; refugee and migrant rights; social justice; cultural heritage and archives. We welcome a range of contributions to the magazine including articles of between 1000-2000 words; reports on fieldwork in archival collections; book recommendations and reviews; and more creative pieces including (but not limited too) cartoons; photography; and poetry. We would also welcome news on activities; publication of reports, projects; letters and news from your own networks. We welcome submissions from all writers whether you are a student, practitioner, activist or established academic. The Displaced Voices online magazine is born out of the collaborative and intersectional work that we have been undertaking through our work with the refugee and migration archives housed at the University of East London. Our work to date has explored the intersections of refugee and migration studies with narrative and life history research linked to oral history methods and archival approaches to the preservation, documentation and accessibility of archival resources recording the refugee experience. This magazine is a collaborative project between the Living Refugee Archive at the University of East London; the Oral History Society Migration Special Interest Group and the International Association for the Study of Forced Migration Working Group on the History of Forced Migration and Refugees. Thematically we are looking to engage with articles that explore the intersection of refugee and forced migration studies; history and cultural heritage studies; narrative research; oral history and archival science

DNA metabarcoding reveals the dietary profiles of a benthic marine crustacean,Nephrops norvegicus

Norwegian lobster, Nephrops norvegicus, are a generalist scavenger and predator capable of short foraging excursions but can also suspension feed. Existing knowledge about their diet relies on a combination of methods including morphology-based stomach content analysis and stable isotopes, which often lack the resolution to distinguish prey items to species level particularly in species that thoroughly masticate their prey. DNA metabarcoding overcomes many of the challenges associated with traditional methods and it is an attractive approach to study the dietary profiles of animals. Here, we present the diet of the commercially valuable Nephrops norvegicus using DNA metabarcoding of gut contents. Despite difficulties associated with host amplification, our cytochrome oxidase I (COI) molecular assay successfully achieves higher resolution information than traditional approaches. We detected taxa that were likely consumed during different feeding strategies. Dinoflagellata, Chlorophyta and Bacillariophyta accounted for almost 50% of the prey items consumed, and are associated with suspension feeding, while fish with high fisheries discard rates were detected which are linked to active foraging. In addition, we were able to characterise biodiversity patterns by considering Nephrops as natural samplers, as well as detecting parasitic dinoflagellates (e.g., Hematodinium sp.), which are known to influence burrow related behaviour in infected individuals in over 50% of the samples. The metabarcoding data presented here greatly enhances a better understanding of a species’ ecological role and could be applied as a routine procedure in future studies for proper consideration in the management and decision-making of fisheries

Summary of the 2004 CFD Validation Workshop on Synthetic Jets and Turbulent Separation Control

A computational fluid dynamics (CFD) validation workshop for synthetic jets and turbulent separation control (CFDVAL2004) was held in Williamsburg, Virginia in March 2004. Three cases were investigated: synthetic jet into quiescent air, synthetic jet into a turbulent boundary layer crossflow, and flow over a hump model with no-flow-control, steady suction, and oscillatory control. This paper is a summary of the CFD results from the workshop. Although some detailed results are shown, mostly a broad viewpoint is taken, and the CFD state-of-the-art for predicting these types of flows is evaluated from a general point of view. Overall, for synthetic jets, CFD can only qualitatively predict the flow physics, but there is some uncertainty regarding how to best model the unsteady boundary conditions from the experiment consistently. As a result, there is wide variation among CFD results. For the hump flow, CFD as a whole is capable of predicting many of the particulars of this flow provided that tunnel blockage is accounted for, but the length of the separated region compared to experimental results is consistently overpredicted

Finishing Beef Cattle on Grass with Self-Fed By-Products

There has been increasing interest by consumers in beef from cattle that are finished or fattened “on grass” rather than in a conventional feedlot. Also recently, Iowa has had a proliferation of plants that produce ethanol from corn. The byproduct of this process is distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS). The objective of this study was to feed beef cattle to market weight by grazing cool-season grass supplemented with self-fed by-product pellets

Performance and Carcass Traits of Market Beef Cattle Supplemented Self-Fed Byproducts on Pasture: Final Report

Over a two year period (2007 and 2008), 162 head of beef steers were finished with self-fed byproducts on cool season grass pastures. Yearling steers were continuously grazed at the Neely-Kinyon Farm in southwest Iowa on cool season grasses that were predominantly fescue at a stocking density of 2.25 head/acre. Half of the cattle were implanted (with Synovex®-S) or half were not. Cattle received a diet of either soyhulls-dried distillers grain with solubles (DDGS) or ground corn-dried distillers grains with solubles that was offered through self-feeders. The rations were mixed at a 1:1 ratio with a mineral balancer added which included Rumensin®. Live cattle performance and carcass traits were not affected by diet. Implanted cattle outgained non-implanted over the entire finishing period (3.52 lbs/d vs. 3.17 lbs/d). This led to implanted cattle coming off test heavier (1324 lbs vs. 1277 lbs) and railing with heavier carcasses (826 lbs vs. 800 lbs). Ribeye areas were greater (13.1 in2 vs. 12.7 in2) for implanted cattle; which was probably due to the heavier carcass weights. Non-implanted cattle had superior quality grades (55% vs. 40%) of low choice or better. Fatty acid profiles from the first year were analyzed and showed that raw beef samples from cattle on the soyhulls diet had significantly higher C18:2 In conclusion, pasture rearing cattle, when given access to self-fed by-products, provides for excellent performance on both live performance and carcass traits. Some considerations should be made by the feeder in regards to time of year when marketing cattle and the cattle’s genetics. This system is an alternative to high-grain conventional beef finishing production in feedlots

Robust Magnetic Polarons in Type-II (Zn,Mn)Te Quantum Dots

We present evidence of magnetic ordering in type-II (Zn, Mn) Te quantum dots. This ordering is attributed to the formation of bound magnetic polarons caused by the exchange interaction between the strongly localized holes and Mn within the dots. In our photoluminescence studies, the magnetic polarons are detected at temperatures up to ~ 200 K, with a binding energy of ~ 40 meV. In addition, these dots display an unusually small Zeeman shift with applied field (2 meV at 10 T). This behavior is explained by a small and weakly temperature-dependent magnetic susceptibility due to anti-ferromagnetic coupling of the Mn spins

Finishing Beef Cattle on Grass with Self-Fed By-Products 2006 Results

There has been increasing interest by consumers in beef from cattle that are finished or fattened “on grass” rather than in a conventional feedlot. Also recently, Iowa has had a proliferation of plants that produce ethanol from corn. One by-product of this process is distillers dried grains with solubles (DDGS). The objective of this study was to feed beef cattle to market weight by grazing cool-season grass supplemented with self-fed by-product pellets