The Oneiric Reality of Electronic Scents

This paper investigates the ‘oneiric’ dimension of scent, by suggesting a new design process that can be worn as a fashion accessory or integrated in textile technologies, to subtly alter reality and go beyond our senses. It fuses wearable ‘electronic scent’ delivery systems with pioneering biotechnologies as a ground-breaking ‘science fashion’ enabler. The purpose is to enhance wellbeing by reaching a day‐dream state of being through the sense of smell. The sense of smell (or olfaction) is a chemical sense and part of the limbic system which regulates emotion and memory within the brain. The power of scent makes content extremely compelling by offering a heightened sense of reality which is intensified by emotions such as joy, anger and fear. Scent helps us appreciate all the senses as we embark on a sensory journey unlike any other; it enhances mood, keeps us in the moment, diverts us from distractions, reduces boredom and encourages creativity. This paper highlights the importance of smell, the forgotten sense, and also identifies how we as humans have grown to underuse our senses. It endeavours to show how the reinvention of our sensory faculties is possible through advances in biotechnology. It introduces the new ‘data senses’ as a wearable sensory platform that triggers and fine tunes the senses with fragrances. It puts forward a new design process that is currently being developed in clothing elements, jewellery and textile technologies, offering a new method to deliver scent electronically and intelligently in fashion and everyday consumer products. It creates a personal ‘scent wave’, around the wearer, to allow the mind to wander, to give a deeper sense of life or ‘lived reality’ (verses fantasy), a new found satisfaction and confidence, and to reach new heights of creativity. By combining biology with wearable technologies, we propose a biotechnological solution that can be translated into sensory fashion elements. This is a new trend in 21st century ‘data sensing’, based on holographic biosensors that sense the human condition, aromachology (the science of the effect of fragrance and behaviour), colour-therapy, and smart polymer science. The use of biosensors in the world of fashion and textiles, enables us to act on visual cues or detect scent signals and rising stress levels, allowing immediate information to hand. An ‘oneiric’ mood is triggered by a spectrum of scents which is encased in a micro-computerised ‘scent‐cell’ and integrated into clothing elements or jewellery. When we inhale an unexpected scent, it takes us by surprise; the power of fragrance fills us with pleasurable ripples of multi‐sensations and dream‐like qualities. The aromas create a near trance‐like experience that induces a daydream state of (immediate) satisfaction, or a ‘revived reality’ in our personal scent bubble of reality. The products and jewellery items were copyrighted and designed by Slim Barrett and the technology input was from EG Technology and Epigem

Top Yukawa coupling measurement with indefinite CP Higgs in e+e−→ttˉΦe^+e^-\to t\bar{t}\Phi

We consider the issue of the top quark Yukawa coupling measurement in a model in dependent and general case with the inclusion of CP-violation in the coupling. Arguably the best process to study this coupling is the associa ted production of Higgs boson along with a $t\bar t$ pair in a machine like the International Linear Collider (ILC). While detailed analyses of the sensitivity of the measurement assuming a Standard Model (SM) - like coupling are available in the context of ILC, conclude that th e coupling could be pinned down at about 10\% level with modest luminosity, our investigations show that the scenario could be different in case of a more general coupling. The modified Lorentz structure resulting in a changed functional dependence of the cross section on the couplin g, along with the difference in the cross section itself leads to considerable deviation in the sensitivity. Our studies with an ILC of center of mass energies of 500 GeV, 800 GeV and 1000 GeV show that moderate CP-mixing in the Higgs sector could change the sensitivity to about 20\ %, while it could be worsened to 75\% in cases which could accommodate more dramatic changes in the coupling. While detailed considerations of the decay distributions point to a need for a relook at the analysis strategy followed for the case of SM such as for a model independent analysis of the top quark Yukawa coupling measurement. This study strongly suggests that, a joint analysis of the CP properties and the Yukawa coupling measurement would be the way forward at the ILC and that caution must be excercised in the measurem ent of the Yukawa couplings and the conclusions drawn from it.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figures, uses revte

Is Hanja represented in the Korean mental lexicon?: Encoding cross-script semantic cohorts in the representation of Sino-Korean

Korean can be transcribed in two different scripts, one alphabetic (Hangul) and one logographic (Hanja). How does the mental lexicon represent the contributions of multiple scripts? Hangul’s highly transparent one-to-one relationship between spellings and sounds creates homophones in spoken Korean that are also homographs in Hangul, which can only be disambiguated through Hanja. We thus tested whether native speakers encoded the semantic contributions of the different Hanja characters sharing the same homographic form in Hangul in their mental representation of Sino-Korean. Is processing modulated by the number of available meanings, that is, the size of the semantic cohort? In two cross-modal lexical decision tasks with semantic priming,participants were presented with auditory primes that were either syllables (Experiment 1) or full Sino-Korean words (Experiment 2), followed by visual Sino-Korean full word targets. In Experiment 1, reaction times were not significantly modulated by the size of the semantic cohort. However, in Experiment 2, we observed significantly faster reaction times for targets preceded by primes with larger semantic cohorts. We discuss these findings in relation to the structure of the mental lexicon for bi-scriptal languages and the representation of semantic cohorts across different scripts.1. Introduction 2. Hanja and Hangul during processing 3. Experiment 1: Cross-modal fragment priming 3.1. Method 3.1.1. Participants 3.1.2. Materials and design 3.1.3. Procedure 3.2. Results 3.3. Discussion 4. Experiment 2: Cross-modal full word priming 4.1. Method 4.1.1. Participants 4.1.2. Materials and design 4.1.3. Procedure 4.2. Results 4.3. Discussion 5. General discussion 6. Conclusion

Symplectic Embedding of a Massive Vector-Tensor Theory with Topological Coupling

In the symplectic Lagrangian framework we newly embed an irreducible massive vector-tensor theory into a gauge invariant system, which has become reducible, by extending the configuration space to include an additional pair of scalar and vector fields, which give the desired Wess-Zumino action. A comparision with the BFT Hamiltonian embedding approach is also done.Comment: LaTeX file, 23 page

Smell the colour of the rainbow

'Smell The Colour of The Rainbow' explores a multi-sensory step over the rainbow with a twist of wonder. Building on Dr Tillotson's heritage in 19th century printing, soap and lifestyle, a new 21st century body media will be introduced as a "scentsory" platform, using computerized scent-output systems worn on the body for fashion, wellbeing and health applications. The seven colours of the rainbow partner with therapeutic aromas to bring the body into a state of wellbeing and balance. Technology and responsive fashion merge with natural fragrances using the therapeutic power of essential oils, supported by the latest research in 'Aromachology', to reflect the colours of the rainbow, enhancing mood and improving lifestyle. The rainbow offers a fully personalized, controllable ‘scent bubble’ that is activated by the user alone from high-tech jewellery and clothing. These can be programmed to deliver a palette of fragrances, depending on emotion, mood, occasion and time of day, whilst complementing the audio/visual senses. If combined with biometric sensors that measure stress indicators, soothing scents could be released whenever the stress levels exceed a certain threshold. Similarly, refreshing and revitalising scents can be used to fight fatigue and boost self-esteem. Using colour in conjunction with therapeutic fragrances, gives the wearer a visual aid to alleviating their physiological and emotional state. Emerging technologies, 21st century design features and the healing powers of nature combine to produce a fundamentally simple concept of creating a positive personal space on this highly charged 21st century planet we all share. About the conference: An International conference which explored colour within Applied Arts, Health & Well-being, in association with the Journal of Applied Arts & Health (Intellect Ltd) and The University of Northampton. Over two days artists, health professionals, designers and academics from around the world gathered at The University of Northampton to explore developments in the way colour is used for health and well-being. COLOUR my well-being was a conference focused on the interactive relationships of Arts and Health and was of particular interest to researchers and practitioners, allied health professionals, creative, alternative and complimentary therapists, mental health community, people working in health and social care, creative media, design, fashion, education, theatre, environmental specialists and architects, sound and light installations, Seasonal affective disorder (SAD) treatments, occupational therapy applications, synaesthesia, dyslexia, colour vision deficiency, spiritual & paranormal – mandalas and the sub-conscious, aura photography/video - to name but a few. Glass heart pendent designed and copyrighted by Slim Barret

Particles Sliding on a Fluctuating Surface: Phase Separation and Power Laws

We study a system of hard-core particles sliding downwards on a fluctuating one-dimensional surface which is characterized by a dynamical exponent $z$. In numerical simulations, an initially random particle density is found to coarsen and obey scaling with a growing length scale $\sim t^{1/z}$. The structure factor deviates from the Porod law in some cases. The steady state is unusual in that the density-segregation order parameter shows strong fluctuations. The two-point correlation function has a scaling form with a cusp at small argument which we relate to a power law distribution of particle cluster sizes. Exact results on a related model of surface depths provides insight into the origin of this behaviour.Comment: 5 pages, 5 Postscript figure

A Context-Aware Computational Approach for Measuring Vocal Entrainment in Dyadic Conversations

Vocal entrainment is a social adaptation mechanism in human interaction, knowledge of which can offer useful insights to an individual's cognitive-behavioral characteristics. We propose a context-aware approach for measuring vocal entrainment in dyadic conversations. We use conformers(a combination of convolutional network and transformer) for capturing both short-term and long-term conversational context to model entrainment patterns in interactions across different domains. Specifically we use cross-subject attention layers to learn intra- as well as inter-personal signals from dyadic conversations. We first validate the proposed method based on classification experiments to distinguish between real(consistent) and fake(inconsistent/shuffled) conversations. Experimental results on interactions involving individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder also show evidence of a statistically-significant association between the introduced entrainment measure and clinical scores relevant to symptoms, including across gender and age groups

Ultra-high field enhancing in Split Ring Resonators by azimuthally polarized excitation

We study the field enhancement and resonance frequencies in split-ring resonators (SRR) illuminated by azimuthally polarized light. We find that compared to linearly polarized illumination, the azimuthally polarized illumination increase the intensity enhancement by more than an order of magnitude. We attribute the increase in the intensity enhancement to the improved overlap between the SRR geometry and the direction of the electric field vector in each point. In addition, we present and explore a method to tune the resonance frequency of the SRR (for azimuthal polarization) by introducing more gaps to the structure. This approach allows for simple and straightforward tuning of the resonance frequency with small impact on the intensity enhancement. The impact of the design parameters on the intensity enhancement under azimuthally polarized illumination is also studied in details, exhibiting clear differences to the case of linear polarized illumination.Comment: To be published in Optics Expres

Multiple Transitions to Chaos in a Damped Parametrically Forced Pendulum

We study bifurcations associated with stability of the lowest stationary point (SP) of a damped parametrically forced pendulum by varying $\omega_0$ (the natural frequency of the pendulum) and $A$ (the amplitude of the external driving force). As $A$ is increased, the SP will restabilize after its instability, destabilize again, and so {\it ad infinitum} for any given $\omega_0$. Its destabilizations (restabilizations) occur via alternating supercritical (subcritical) period-doubling bifurcations (PDB's) and pitchfork bifurcations, except the first destabilization at which a supercritical or subcritical bifurcation takes place depending on the value of $\omega_0$. For each case of the supercritical destabilizations, an infinite sequence of PDB's follows and leads to chaos. Consequently, an infinite series of period-doubling transitions to chaos appears with increasing $A$. The critical behaviors at the transition points are also discussed.Comment: 20 pages + 7 figures (available upon request), RevTex 3.