Manipulative Aspects of Music

Every sensory stimulus, be it visual, audio, or some other, generates a brain response in the area of the cortex where such information is received, and processed, and gives full meaning or perception of the experience. The cerebral reaction can be monitored by measuring cortical activity through the synchronized response of a large number of neurons, ie. the formed electric wave. EEG scans show that the waves of the brain response in the alpha and beta bands are synchronized around the carrier rhythm of the music track. The sinusoids of the brain waves move in phases so that the peak of the wave always occurs at a precisely defined interval at the point preceding the next beat in the rhythm of the drum. In this way, the rhythm actually synchronizes the brain waves. For centuries, people have used binaural rhythms at 4.5 beats per second and thus causing various mental states. Although unaware of binaural rhythms, shamans were unmistakably known to cause shamanic trance, playing the drum about 4 to 7 beats per second for 13 to 15 minutes. They knew how to recognize the power and positive effects of binaural stimuli. This paper is an attempt to shed light on some possibilities of the manipulative capacities of the phenomenon called music

Enabling preemptive multiprogramming on GPUs

GPUs are being increasingly adopted as compute accelerators in many domains, spanning environments from mobile systems to cloud computing. These systems are usually running multiple applications, from one or several users. However GPUs do not provide the support for resource sharing traditionally expected in these scenarios. Thus, such systems are unable to provide key multiprogrammed workload requirements, such as responsiveness, fairness or quality of service. In this paper, we propose a set of hardware extensions that allow GPUs to efficiently support multiprogrammed GPU workloads. We argue for preemptive multitasking and design two preemption mechanisms that can be used to implement GPU scheduling policies. We extend the architecture to allow concurrent execution of GPU kernels from different user processes and implement a scheduling policy that dynamically distributes the GPU cores among concurrently running kernels, according to their priorities. We extend the NVIDIA GK110 (Kepler) like GPU architecture with our proposals and evaluate them on a set of multiprogrammed workloads with up to eight concurrent processes. Our proposals improve execution time of high-priority processes by 15.6x, the average application turnaround time between 1.5x to 2x, and system fairness up to 3.4x.We would like to thank the anonymous reviewers, Alexan- der Veidenbaum, Carlos Villavieja, Lluis Vilanova, Lluc Al- varez, and Marc Jorda on their comments and help improving our work and this paper. This work is supported by Euro- pean Commission through TERAFLUX (FP7-249013), Mont- Blanc (FP7-288777), and RoMoL (GA-321253) projects, NVIDIA through the CUDA Center of Excellence program, Spanish Government through Programa Severo Ochoa (SEV-2011-0067) and Spanish Ministry of Science and Technology through TIN2007-60625 and TIN2012-34557 projects.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author’s final draft

Dissociation - En kvalitativ studie om begreppets användning och användbarhet inom allmän vuxenpsykiatri

Dissociation is a term used ambiguously to describe one or several phenomena. Psychologists working in general adult psychiatry in Skåne were interviewed about their understanding and use of the term dissociation in relation to their work with patients. An aim of the study was to describe the use of the term in a clinical context that does not offer specialized trauma treatments. Another aim of the study was pragmatic; to make any tacit knowledge explicit to contribute to discussion between psychologists about dissociation in a clinical context. The material was analyzed thematically. The results show that dissociation is primarily conceptualized as a defense against intolerable stress, taking the form of interpersonal difficulties, lack of integration and alterations in states of consciousness. Dissociation was described as symptoms rather than in terms of the dissociative syndromes. A prominent theme was that dissociation is hard to conceptualize, assess and treat, and that there is a perceived lack of knowledge and a concern about continuous loss of knowledge. A counterbalance to these difficulties is a strong interest in dissociation, and commitment to patients who dissociate. The psychologists described psychodynamic and cognitive behavioural therapy differently regarding treatment possibilities.Dissociation är ett begrepp som används mångtydigt för att beteckna ett eller flera fenomen. Psykologer inom allmän vuxenpsykiatri i Skåne intervjuades om deras förståelse och användning av begreppet i relation till deras arbete med patienter. Studien syftade till att undersöka begreppets användning i en klinisk kontext som inte specialiserat sig på traumabehandling. Ansatsen var uttalat pragmatisk; att lyfta eventuell tyst kunskap för att bidra till diskussion mellan psykologer om dissociation i en klinisk kontext. Materialet bearbetades med tematisk analys. Resultatet visar att begreppet dissociation primärt konceptualiseras som ett försvar mot överbelastning och tar sig uttryck i interpersonella svårigheter, bristande integration och förändring i medvetandetillstånd. Dissociation beskrevs på symtomnivå snarare än i termer av de dissociativa syndromen. Ett framträdande tema var att dissociation är svårt att konceptualisera, bedöma och behandla, samt att det finns en upplevd brist på kunskap och en oro för förestående kunskapsförlust. En motvikt till svårigheterna är ett starkt intresse för dissociation, samt engagemang i dissocierande patienter. Psykodynamisk och kognitiv beteendeterapi beskrevs som olika avseende metodernas möjligheter att behandla dissociation

Performance indicators for roadway bridges

Publicado em "Maintenance, monitoring, safety, risk and resilience of bridges and bridge networks". ISBN 978-1-138-02851-7The performance indicators should, by its definition, allow capturing the life-cycle degradation processes affecting maintenance plans or the remaining lifetime. The qualitative or quantitative performance indicators are obtained through visual inspections, non-destructive tests or monitoring systems. After their quantification and the comparison with the respective performance goals and thresholds, a Quality Control plan should be accomplished. The COST TU1406 Action aims to uniform the European performance indicators, systemize the knowledge on the Quality Control plans for bridges, establish quality specifications and finally to develop the guideline and recommendations for the assessment of performance indicators. This contribution focuses on the current work of the first Working Group, WG1, where the first step is a collection of the key performance indicators at a European level. First those key performance indicators which capture mechanical and technical properties and its degradation behavior are assessed, while the further consideration reflect on the natural aging, quality of the material, service life design methods, and sustainable, environmental, economic and social based indicators.COST (European Cooperation in Science and Technology)Project “LeCIE – Life-cycle assessment for railway construction – strategies and methods

Identification of a Domain which Affects Kinetics and Antagonistic Potency of Clozapine at 5-HT3 Receptors

The widely used atypical antipsychotic clozapine is a potent competitive antagonist at 5-HT3 receptors which may contribute to its unique psychopharmacological profile. Clozapine binds to 5-HT3 receptors of various species. However, the structural requirements of the respective binding site for clozapine remain to be determined. Differences in the primary sequences within the 5-HT3A receptor gene in schizophrenic patients may result in an alteration of the antipsychotic potency and/or the side effect profile of clozapine. To determine these structural requirements we constructed chimeras with different 5-HT3A receptor sequences of murine and human origin and expressed these mutants in human embryonic kidney (HEK) 293 cells. Clozapine antagonises recombinant mouse 5-HT3A receptors with higher potency compared to recombinant human 5-HT3A receptors. 5-HT activation curves and clozapine inhibition curves yielded the parameters EC50 and IC50 for all receptors tested in the range of 0.6–2.7 µM and 1.5–83.3 nM, respectively. The use of the Cheng-Prusoff equation to calculate the dissociation constant Kb values for clozapine revealed that an extracellular sequence (length 86 aa) close to the transmembrane domain M1 strongly determines the binding affinity of clozapine. Kb values of clozapine were significantly lower (0.3–1.1 nM) for receptors containing the murine sequence and higher when compared with receptors containing the respective human sequence (5.8–13.4 nM). Thus, individual differences in the primary sequence of 5-HT3 receptors may be crucial for the antipsychotic potency and/or the side effect profile of clozapine

CUsched: multiprogrammed workload scheduling on GPU architectures

Graphic Processing Units (GPUs) are currently widely used in High Performance Computing (HPC) applications to speed-up the execution of massively-parallel codes. GPUs are well-suited for such HPC environments because applications share a common characteristic with the gaming codes GPUs were designed for: only one application is using the GPU at the same time. Although, minimal support for multi-programmed systems exist, modern GPUs do not allow resource sharing among different processes. This lack of support restricts the usage of GPUs in desktop and mobile environment to a small amount of applications (e.g., games and multimedia players). In this paper we study the multi-programming support available in current GPUs, and show how such support is not sufficient. We propose a set of hardware extensions to the current GPU architectures to efficiently support multi-programmed GPU workloads, allowing concurrent execution of codes from different user processes. We implement several hardware schedulers on top of these extensions and analyze the behaviour of different work scheduling algorithms using system wide and per process metrics.Postprint (published version

The High-Energy Irradiation Ageing of Reinforced Elastomers Based on Rubber Blends

Elastomers are very often used in severe environments, for instance, in nuclear power plants, where they may be degraded by high-energy radiation and heat. The ageing behaviour of materials used in different equipments is very important. Elastomers based on chlorosulfonated polyethylene (CSM) are used for cable jacketing materials and have excellent radiation resistance needed in nuclear power stations. In the current work, the influence of gamma-irradiation dose (100, 200 and 400 kGy) on the ageing of reinforced blends based on CSM, styrene butadiene rubber (SBR) and natural rubber (NR) has been evaluated. The content of silica in CSM/SBR and CSM/NR rubber blends was varied. The curing behavior of compounds was estimated using the oscillating disk reometer. The irradiation of nano composites has been performed in air in the Co 60 radiation sterilization unit with the dose rate of 10 kGy h(-1). The thermal properties were studied by thermogravimetric test. The mechanical properties (hardness, modulus at 100% elongation, tensile strength and elongation at break) were determined before and after irradiation. A decrease in the elastic modulus and in the strain at break has been observed with increasing irradiation. At higher doses, the network chain scissions become the main degradation process, the cross-linked topology becomes irregular, and material contains more and more weak zones, which deteriorate the ultimate properties.4th International Conference on Radiation and Applications in Various Fields of Research (RAD), Proceedings, May 23-27, 2016, Nis, Serbi

Cooperative kernels: GPU multitasking for blocking algorithms

There is growing interest in accelerating irregular data-parallel algorithms on GPUs. These algorithms are typically blocking , so they require fair scheduling. But GPU programming models (e.g. OpenCL) do not mandate fair scheduling, and GPU schedulers are unfair in practice. Current approaches avoid this issue by exploit- ing scheduling quirks of today’s GPUs in a manner that does not allow the GPU to be shared with other workloads (such as graphics rendering tasks). We propose cooperative kernels , an extension to the traditional GPU programming model geared towards writing blocking algorithms. Workgroups of a cooperative kernel are fairly scheduled, and multitasking is supported via a small set of language extensions through which the kernel and scheduler cooperate. We describe a prototype implementation of a cooperative kernel frame- work implemented in OpenCL 2.0 and evaluate our approach by porting a set of blocking GPU applications to cooperative kernels and examining their performance under multitasking

Effectiveness of CFD simulation for the performance prediction of phase change building boards in the thermal environment control of indoor spaces

This is the post-print version of the Article. The official published version can be accessed from the link below - Copyright @ 2013 ElsevierThis paper reports on a validation study of CFD models used to predict the effect of PCM clay boards on the control of indoor environments, in ventilated and non-ventilated situations. Unlike multi-zonal models, CFD is important in situations where localised properties are essential such as in buildings with complex and large geometries. The employed phase change model considers temperature/enthalpy hysteresis and varying enthalpy-temperature characteristics to more accurately simulate the phase change behaviour of the PCM boards compared to the standard default modelling approach in the commercial CFD codes. Successful validation was obtained with a mean error of 1.0 K relative to experimental data, and the results show that in addition to providing satisfactory quantitative results, CFD also provides qualitative results which are useful in the effective design of indoor thermal environment control systems utilising PCM. These results include: i) temperature and air flow distribution within the space resulting from the use of PCM boards and different night ventilation rates; ii) the fraction of PCM experiencing phase change and is effective in the control of the indoor thermal environment, enabling optimisation of the location of the boards; and iii) the energy impact of PCM boards and adequate ventilation configurations for effective night charging.This work was funded through sponsorship from the UK Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council (EPSRC), Grant No: EP/H004181/1

Ricinusovo ulje kao obnovljiva sirovina za dobijanje poliuretanskih materijala

Traditionally, polyurethanes (PU) are manufactured by reacting isocyanates with petroleum-based polyols (polyether or polyester). Because oil resources are diminishing and are becoming expensive to produce, engineers and scientist have discovered new technologies to fabricate plastics from renewable resources. The goal of this work was to determine mechanical properties of polyurethanes synthesized from castor oil and different isocyantes: isophorone diisocyanate IPDI, 1,6-diisocyanatohexane (HDI) and aliphatic polycyclotrimer (HDIt). The samples were prepared by a one-step reactive process with stoichiometric balance of reactive groups. The catalysed synthesis was performed at normal pressure. It was estimated that a mechanical properties of prepared samples were strongly influenced by the isocyanate type.Tradicionalno se poliuretani (PU) dobijaju reagovanjem izocijanata sa poliolima (polietarski i poliestarski) koji se uobičajeno dobijaju iz nafte. Pošto se ti resursi smanjuju i postaju sve skuplji inženjeri i naučnici su razvili nove tehnologije za proizvodnju plastike iz obnovljivih sirovina. Cilj ovog rada je bio da se odrede mehanička svojstva poluretanskih materijala dobijenih jednostepenim reaktivnim procesom od ricinusovog ulja i različitih izocijanata: izoforon diizocijanata (IPDI), 1,6-diisocianatoheksana (HDI) i alifatičnog poliizocijanata ciklotrimera (HDIt) sa stehiometrijskim balansom reaktivnih grupa. Katalitička sinteza se odvijala na normalnom pritisku. Ustanovljeno je da su mehanička svojstva dobijenih materijala bila uslovljena tipom izocijanata