The syntax of depictives : subjects, modes of judgement and I-L/S-L properties

In this work, I provide an analysis of adjectival depictive constructions which accounts for most of their fundamental properties. First, I focus on the restrictions having to do with the integration of the depictive and the verbal predicate: they are based on aspectual compatibility between the two predicates, which, in turn, will depend on the ability, on the part of the depictive, to make reference to some (sub)event in the event structure of the verbal predicate. Facts not captured by previous approaches in the literature will be straightforwardly accounted for, among them the possibility to have I-L depictive constructions, and the impossibility to combine a depictive with some non-stative verbal predicates. Second, it will be shown that the informational import of the depictive in the sentence can be equivalent to that of the verbal predicate: both can be the primary lexical basis of predication. This is reflected in the sentence in various ways, having to do with aspectual modifiers, and in the properties of the sentential subject. In this connection, we will reconsider the notion of subject, arguing that no subject-predicate relation takes place in the lexical domain of sentences, and hence that the argument the depictive is oriented to, the common argument, cannot be a subject of the depictive. Finally, a minimalist analysis is proposed for the syntax of the construction, in terms of direct syntactic merge of predicative constituents and sidewards (q-to-q) movement for the common argument, from the lexical domain of the depictive to the lexical domain of the verb. As to morphosyntactic properties, a syntactic Double Agree relation is assumed to hold between T/v, as probes, on the one hand, and the common argument and depictive, as simultaneous goals, on the other, which would allow for the deletion of Case features on both goals. The assumed presence of Structural Case on the adjectival depictive will be responsible for the well-known restriction on the orientation of depictives to the sentential subject or object

Use of sound recordings and analysis for physics lab practices

[EN] The study of oscillations, waves, and sound is included in most first-year courses on Physics, however, analyzing audio recordings to understand and test physics experiments in laboratory practices is not a common practice, compared for example with the use of visual techniques. In this paper, we fill in this gap showing the usefulness of the application of sound recording and its analysis in Physics Laboratory practices of first-year Engineering University studies. Sound recording is very simple and implemented in commonly available technology tools, such as smartphones. The analysis can be done with ease in free open-source applications, such as Audacity. This means that this experimental procedure can be easily implemented and extensively used, even in distance learning, which is particularly convenient in a pandemic context. In fact, we illustrate in this work how this approach let us to successfully transform two in-person lab practices into sessions that can be run remotely: the study of free fall and measurement of the coefficient of restitution of a ball bouncing when released from a certain height, and the measurement of the speed of vehicles by analyzing the Doppler effect of the sound that the motor vehicles produce. With this, we conclude that this is a powerful technique that should be considered, alone or in combination with other techniques, for instance video analysis, when planning the lab practices of Physics courses.S.A. was supported by the CIDEGENT Program from the Generalitat Valenciana CIDEGENT/2019/043.Ardid-Ramírez, JS.; Marquez, S.; Ardid Ramírez, M. (2021). Use of sound recordings and analysis for physics lab practices. IATED. 7687-7693. https://doi.org/10.21125/inted.2021.1547S7687769

Nefertiti: nuevas interpretaciones

¿Fue realmente Nefertiti faraón de Egipto? Parece que sí. Investigaciones recientes indican que Nefertiti fue asociada al trono en calidad de corregente y coronada faraón tras la muerte de su esposo. Si Nefertiti asumió realmente las riendas del país, ¿quién fue Smenkhare? Y ¿por qué muchos especialistas siguen afirmando que la reina cayó en desgracia antes de la muerte de su marido, Amenofis IV-Akhenatón?Was Nefertiti really an Egiptian pharaon? It seems so. Recent research have shown that Nefertiti was associated to the throne as co-regent and was lately crowned the pharaon after her husband death. If Nefertiti run the country, who was Smenkhare? Why several specialists maintain narratives in which Nefertiti is portrayed as being removed from the throne before her husband death, Amenofis IV-Akhenaton

Development of an acoustic transceiver for the KM3NeT positioning system

[EN] In this paper we describe an acoustic transceiver developed for the KM3NeT positioning system. The acoustic transceiver is composed of a commercial free flooded transducer, which works mainly in the 20-40 kHz frequency range and withstands high pressures (up to 500 bars). A sound emission board was developed that is adapted to the characteristics of the transducer and meets all requirements: low power consumption, high intensity of emission, low intrinsic noise, arbitrary signals for emission and the capacity of acquiring the receiving signals with very good timing precision. The results of the different tests made with the transceiver in the laboratory and shallow sea water are described, as well as, the activities for its integration in the Instrumentation Line of the ANTARES neutrino telescope and in a NEMO tower for the in situ tests. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work has been supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (Spanish Government), Project references FPA2009-13983-C02-02, ACI2009-1067, AIC10-D-00583, and Consolider-Ingenio Multidark (CSD2009-00064). It has also been funded by Generalitat Valenciana, Prometeo/2009/26, and the European 7th Framework Programme, Grant no. 212525.Larosa, G.; Ardid Ramírez, M.; Llorens Alvarez, CD.; Bou Cabo, M.; Martínez Mora, JA.; Adrián Martínez, S.; KM3NeT Consortium (2013). Development of an acoustic transceiver for the KM3NeT positioning system. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 725:215-218. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2012.11.167S21521872

A compact array calibrator to study the feasibility of acoustic neutrino detection

[EN] Underwater acoustic detection of ultra-high-energy neutrinos was proposed already in 1950s: when a neutrino interacts with a nucleus in water, the resulting particle cascade produces a pressure pulse that has a bipolar temporal structure and propagates within a flat disk-like volume. A telescope that consists of thousands of acoustic sensors deployed in the deep sea can monitor hundreds of cubic kilometres of water looking for these signals and discriminating them from acoustic noise. To study the feasibility of the technique it is critical to have a calibrator able to mimic the neutrino signature that can be operated from a vessel. Due to the axial-symmetry of the signal, their very directive short bipolar shape and the constraints of operating at sea, the development of such a calibrator is very challenging. Once the possibility of using the acoustic parametric technique for this aim was validated with the first compact array calibrator prototype, in this paper we describe the new design for such a calibrator composed of an array of piezo ceramic tube transducers emitting in axial direction.We acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad, Grants FPA2012-37528-C02-02, and Consolider MultiDark CSD2009-00064, of the Generalitat Valenciana, Grants ACOMP/2015/175 PrometeoII/2014/079 and of the European FEDER funds.Ardid Ramírez, M.; Camarena Femenia, F.; Felis-Enguix, I.; Herrero Debón, A.; Llorens Alvarez, CD.; Martínez Mora, JA.; Saldaña-Coscollar, M. (2016). A compact array calibrator to study the feasibility of acoustic neutrino detection. EPJ Web of Conferences. 116(03001):1-4. https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/201611603001S141160300

Constraining Secluded Dark Matter models with the ANTARES neutrino telescope

[EN] In this work we describe the search for Secluded Dark Matter (SDM) annihilation in the Sun with ANTARES. SDM is a special scenario where DM, which would gravitationally accumulate in astrophysical objects like the Sun, is annihilated into a pair of non-Standard Model mediators, which subsequently decay into SM particles. It was suggested to explain some experimental observations, such as the positron-electron ratio observed by satellite detectors. Three different cases are studied: a) direct detection of di-muons from the mediator decay, or neutrino detection from: b) the mediator that decays into di-muons and, in turn, into neutrinos, and c) the mediator that directly decays into neutrinos. The ANTARES results obtained for SDM models ¿the first experimental limits established directly in neutrino telescopes¿ are presented. The limits imposed to these models are much more restrictive than those derived in direct detection searches for the case of spin-dependent interaction for a wide range of lifetimes of the metastable mediator.We acknowledge the financial support of the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad (MINECO) and Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (MICINN), Grants FPA2012-37528-C02-02, and Consolider MultiDark CSD2009-00064, and of the Generalitat Valenciana, Grant PrometeoII/2014/079.Ardid Ramírez, M.; Tönnis, C. (2015). Constraining Secluded Dark Matter models with the ANTARES neutrino telescope. PoS. Proceedings of Science. 1212:1-8. http://hdl.handle.net/10251/140891S18121

A tweaking principle for executive control: neuronal circuit mechanism for rule-based task switching and conflict resolution

[EN] A hallmark of executive control is the brain's agility to shift between different tasks depending on the behavioral rule currently in play. In this work, we propose a "tweaking hypothesis" for task switching: a weak rule signal provides a small bias that is dramatically amplified by reverberating attractor dynamics in neural circuits for stimulus categorization and action selection, leading to an all-or-none reconfiguration of sensory-motor mapping. Based on this principle, we developed a biologically realistic model with multiple modules for task switching. We found that the model quantitatively accounts for complex task switching behavior: switch cost, congruency effect, and task-response interaction; as well as monkey's single-neuron activity associated with task switching. The model yields several testable predictions, in particular, that category-selective neurons play a key role in resolving sensory-motor conflict. This work represents a neural circuit model for task switching and sheds insights in the brain mechanism of a fundamental cognitive capability.This work was supported by the Office of Naval Research Grant N00014-13-1-0297, The Swartz Foundation Fellowship (S.A.), and John Simon Guggenheim Foundation Fellowship (X.-J.W.). We thank T.A. Engel for fruitful discussions, and A. Compte, J.B. Morton, W. Wei, and T. Womelsdorf for comments on a previous version of the paper. We also thank the reviewers for their thoughtful comments and suggestions.Ardid-Ramírez, JS.; Wang, X. (2013). A tweaking principle for executive control: neuronal circuit mechanism for rule-based task switching and conflict resolution. Journal of Neuroscience. 33(50):19504-19517. https://doi.org/10.1523/JNEUROSCI.1356-13.2013S1950419517335

A compact acoustic calibrator for ultra-high energy neutrino detection

With the aim to optimize and test the method of acoustic detection of ultra-high energy neutrinos in underwater telescopes a compact acoustic transmitter array has been developed. The acoustic parametric effect is used to reproduce the acoustic signature of an ultra-high-energy neutrino interaction. Different R&D studies are presented in order to show the viability of the parametric sources technique to deal with the difficulties of the acoustic signal generation: a very directive transient bipolar signal with 'pancake' directivity. The design, construction and characterization of the prototype are described, including simulation of the propagation of an experimental signal, measured in a pool, over a distance of 1 km. Following these studies, next steps will be testing the device in situ, in underwater neutrino telescope, or from a vessel in a sea campaign. (c) 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.This work has been supported by the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovacion (Spanish Government), project references FPA2009-13983-C02-02, ACI2009-1067, Consolider-Ingenio Multidark (CSD2009-00064). It has also been funded by Generalitat Valenciana, Prometeo/2009/26.Adrián Martínez, S.; Ardid Ramírez, M.; Bou Cabo, M.; Larosa, G.; Llorens Alvarez, CD.; Martínez Mora, JA. (2013). A compact acoustic calibrator for ultra-high energy neutrino detection. Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section A: Accelerators, Spectrometers, Detectors and Associated Equipment. 725:219-222. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nima.2012.11.142S21922272