451 research outputs found
Glueballs in the bag models
The influence of the bag shape on the lowest lying gluonium states is investigated. The MIT and the surface tension version of the bag model are considered
The 'Square Root' of the Interacting Dirac Equation
The 'square root' of the interacting Dirac equation is constructed. The
obtained equations lead to the Yang-Mills superfield with the appropriate
equations of motion for the component fields.Comment: 6 page
The perception of affective and discriminative touch in blind individuals
Enhanced tactile acuity in blindness is among the most widely reported results of neuroplasticity following prolonged visual deprivation. However, tactile submodalities other than discriminative touch are profoundly understudied in blind individuals. Here, we examined the influence of blindness on two tactile submodalities, affective and discriminative touch, the former being vital for social functioning and emotional processing. We tested 36 blind individuals and 36 age- and sex-matched sighted volunteers. In Experiment 1, we measured the perception of affective tactile signals by asking participants to rate the pleasantness of touch delivered on the palm (nonhairy skin, sparsely innervated with C tactile [CT] fibers) or the forearm (hairy skin, densely innervated with CT fibers) in a CT-optimal versus a CT-nonoptimal manner using a paradigm grounded in studies on tactile sensory neurophysiology. In Experiment 2, we implemented a classic task assessing discriminative touch abilities, the grating orientation task. We found that blind individuals rated the touch as more pleasant when delivered on the palm than on the forearm, while the opposite pattern was observed for sighted participants, who rated stimulation on the forearm as more pleasant than stimulation on the palm. We also replicated the previous findings showing enhanced discriminative tactile acuity in blind individuals. Altogether, our results suggest that blind individuals might experience affective touch differently than sighted individuals, with relatively greater pleasantness perceived on the palm. These results provide a broader insight into somatosensory perception in blind individuals, for the first time taking into consideration the socioemotional aspect of touch
Seeking for a fingerprint: analysis of point processes in actigraphy recording
Motor activity of humans displays complex temporal fluctuations which can be
characterized by scale-invariant statistics, thus documenting that structure
and fluctuations of such kinetics remain similar over a broad range of time
scales. Former studies on humans regularly deprived of sleep or suffering from
sleep disorders predicted change in the invariant scale parameters with respect
to those representative for healthy subjects. In this study we investigate the
signal patterns from actigraphy recordings by means of characteristic measures
of fractional point processes. We analyse spontaneous locomotor activity of
healthy individuals recorded during a week of regular sleep and a week of
chronic partial sleep deprivation. Behavioural symptoms of lack of sleep can be
evaluated by analysing statistics of duration times during active and resting
states, and alteration of behavioural organization can be assessed by analysis
of power laws detected in the event count distribution, distribution of waiting
times between consecutive movements and detrended fluctuation analysis of
recorded time series. We claim that among different measures characterizing
complexity of the actigraphy recordings and their variations implied by chronic
sleep distress, the exponents characterizing slopes of survival functions in
resting states are the most effective biomarkers distinguishing between healthy
and sleep-deprived groups.Comment: Communicated at UPON2015, 14-17 July 2015, Barcelona. 21 pages, 11
figures; updated: figures 4-7, text revised, expanded Sec. 1,3,
Blind individualsâ enhanced ability to sense their own heartbeat is related to the thickness of their occipital cortex
Blindness is associated with heightened sensory abilities, such as improved hearing and tactile acuity. Moreover, recent evidence suggests that blind individuals are better than sighted individuals at perceiving their own heartbeat, suggesting enhanced interoceptive accuracy. Structural changes in the occipital cortex have been hypothesized as the basis of these behavioral enhancements. Indeed, several studies have shown that congenitally blind individuals have increased cortical thickness within occipital areas compared to sighted individuals, but how these structural differences relate to behavioral enhancements is unclear. This study investigated the relationship between cardiac interoceptive accuracy and cortical thickness in 23 congenitally blind individuals and 23 matched sighted controls. Our results show a significant positive correlation between performance in a heartbeat counting task and cortical thickness only in the blind group, indicating a connection between structural changes in occipital areas and blind individualsâ better ability to perceive heartbeats
Is flood defense changing in nature? Shifts in the flood defense strategy in six European countries
In many countries, flood defense has historically formed the core of flood risk management but this strategy is now evolving with the changing approach to risk management. This paper focuses on the neglected analysis of institutional changes within the flood defense strategies formulated and implemented in six European countries (Belgium, England, France, the Netherlands, Poland, and Sweden). The evolutions within the defense strategy over the last 30 years have been analyzed with the help of three mainstream institutional theories: a policy dynamics-oriented framework, a structure-oriented institutional theory on path dependency, and a policy actors-oriented analysis called the advocacy coalitions framework. We characterize the stability and evolution of the trends that affect the defense strategy in the six countries through four dimensions of a policy arrangement approach: actors, rules, resources, and discourses. We ask whether the strategy itself is changing radically, i.e., toward a discontinuous situation, and whether the processes of change are more incremental or radical. Our findings indicate that in the European countries studied, the position of defense strategy is continuous, as the classical role of flood defense remains dominant. With changing approaches to risk, integrated risk management, climate change, urban growth, participation in governance, and socioeconomic challenges, the flood defense strategy is increasingly under pressure to change. However, these changes can be defined as part of an adaptation of the defense strategy rather than as a real change in the nature of flood risk management
Controlling Working Memory Operations by Selective Gating: The Roles of Oscillations and Synchrony
Working memory (WM) is a primary cognitive function that corresponds to the ability to update, stably maintain, and manipulate short-term memory (STM) rapidly to perform ongoing cognitive tasks. A prevalent neural substrate of WM coding is persistent neural activity, the property of neurons to remain active after having been activated by a transient sensory stimulus. This persistent activity allows for online maintenance of memory as well as its active manipulation necessary for task performance. WM is tightly capacity limited. Therefore, selective gating of sensory and internally generated information is crucial for WM function. While the exact neural substrate of selective gating remains unclear, increasing evidence suggests that it might be controlled by modulating ongoing oscillatory brain activity. Here, we review experiments and models that linked selective gating, persistent activity, and brain oscillations, putting them in the more general mechanistic context of WM. We do so by defining several operations necessary for successful WM function and then discussing how such operations may be carried out by mechanisms suggested by computational models. We specifically show how oscillatory mechanisms may provide a rapid and flexible active gating mechanism for WM operations
Climate change and its effect on agriculture, water resources and human health sectors in Poland
Multi-model ensemble climate projections in the ENSEMBLES Project of the EU allowed the authors to quantify selected extreme-weather indices for Poland, of importance to climate impacts on systems and sectors. Among indices were: number of days in a year with high value of the heat index; with high maximum and minimum temperatures; length of vegetation period; and number of consecutive dry days. Agricultural, hydrological, and human health indices were applied to evaluate the changing risk of weather extremes in Poland in three sectors. To achieve this, model-based simulations were compared for two time horizons, a century apart, i.e., 1961â1990 and 2061â2090. Climate changes, and in particular increases in temperature and changes in rainfall, have strong impacts on agriculture via weather extremes â droughts and heat waves. The crop yield depends particularly on water availability in the plant development phase. To estimate the changes in present and future yield of two crops important for Polish agriculture i.e., potatoes and wheat, some simple empirical models were used. For these crops, decrease of yield is projected for most of the country, with national means of yield change being: â2.175 t/ha for potatoes and â0.539 t/ha for wheat. Already now, in most of Poland, evapotranspiration exceeds precipitation during summer, hence the water storage (in surface water bodies, soil and ground) decreases. Summer precipitation deficit is projected to increase considerably in the future. The additional water supplies (above precipitation) needed to use the agro-potential of the environment would increase by half. Analysis of water balance components (now and in the projected future) can corroborate such conclusions. As regards climate and health, a composite index, proposed in this paper, is a product of the number of senior discomfort days and the number of seniors (aged 65+). The value of this index is projected to increase over 8-fold during 100 years. This is an effect of both increase in the number of seniors (over twofold) and the number of senior-discomfort days (nearly fourfold)
- âŠ