1,355 research outputs found
Naturalistic viewing conditions can increase task engagement and aesthetic preference but have only minimal impact on EEG quality
Free gaze and moving images are typically avoided in EEG experiments due to the expected generation of artifacts and noise. Yet for a growing number of research questions, loosening these rigorous restrictions would be beneficial. Among these is research on visual aesthetic experiences, which often involve open-ended exploration of highly variable stimuli. Here we systematically compare the effect of conservative vs. more liberal experimental settings on various measures of behavior, brain activity and physiology in an aesthetic rating task. Our primary aim was to assess EEG signal quality. 43 participants either maintained fixation or were allowed to gaze freely, and viewed either static images or dynamic (video) stimuli consisting of dance performances or nature scenes. A passive auditory background task (auditory steady-state response; ASSR) was added as a proxy measure for overall EEG recording quality. We recorded EEG, ECG and eye tracking data, and participants rated their aesthetic preference and state of boredom on each trial. Whereas both behavioral ratings and gaze behavior were affected by task and stimulus manipulations, EEG SNR was barely affected and generally robust across all conditions, despite only minimal preprocessing and no trial rejection. In particular, we show that using video stimuli does not necessarily result in lower EEG quality and can, on the contrary, significantly reduce eye movements while increasing both the participants’ aesthetic response and general task engagement. We see these as encouraging results indicating that — at least in the lab — more liberal experimental conditions can be adopted without significant loss of signal quality
Nuclear Flow Excitation Function
We consider the dependence of collective flow on the nuclear surface
thickness in a Boltzmann--Uehling--Uhlenbeck transport model of heavy ion
collisions. Well defined surfaces are introduced by giving test particles a
Gaussian density profile of constant width. Zeros of the flow excitation
function are as much influenced by the surface thickness as the nuclear
equation of state, and the dependence of this effect is understood in terms of
a simple potential scattering model. Realistic calculations must also take into
account medium effects for the nucleon--nucleon cross section, and impact
parameter averaging. We find that balance energy scales with the mass number as
, where has a numerical value between 0.35 and 0.5, depending on
the assumptions about the in-medium nucleon-nucleon cross section.Comment: 11 pages (LaTeX), 7 figures (not included), MSUCL-884, WSU-NP-93-
Bose-condensation through resonance decay
We show that a system described by an equation of state which contains a high
number of degrees of freedom (resonances) can create a considerable amount of
superfluid (condensed) pions through the decay of short-lived resonances, if
baryon number and entropy are large and the dense matter decouples from
chemical equilibrium earlier than from thermal equilibrium. The system cools
down faster in the presence of a condensate, an effect that may partially
compensate the enhancement of the lifetime expected in the case of
quark-gluon-plasma formation.Comment: 12 pages GSI-93-27 PREPRIN
The complex relationship between pediatric cardiac surgical case volumes and mortality rates in a national clinical database
ObjectiveWe sought to determine the association between pediatric cardiac surgical volume and mortality using sophisticated case-mix adjustment and a national clinical database.MethodsPatients 18 years of age or less who had a cardiac operation between 2002 and 2006 were identified in the Society of Thoracic Surgeons Congenital Heart Surgery Database (32,413 patients from 48 programs). Programs were grouped by yearly pediatric cardiac surgical volume (small, <150; medium, 150–249; large, 250–349; and very large, ≥350 cases per year). Logistic regression was used to adjust mortality rates for volume, surgical case mix (Aristotle Basic Complexity and Risk Adjustment for Congenital Heart Surgery, Version 1 categories), patient risk factors, and year of operation.ResultsWith adjustment for patient-level risk factors and surgical case mix, there was an inverse relationship between overall surgical volume as a continuous variable and mortality (P = .002). When the data were displayed graphically, there appeared to be an inflection point between 200 and 300 cases per year. When volume was analyzed as a categorical variable, the relationship was most apparent for difficult operations (Aristotle technical difficulty component score, >3.0), for which mortality decreased from 14.8% (60/406) at small programs to 8.4% (157/1858) at very large programs (P = .02). The same was true for the subgroup of patients who underwent Norwood procedures (36.5% [23/63] vs 16.9% [81/479], P < .0001). After risk adjustment, all groups performed similarly for low-difficulty operations. Conversely, for difficult procedures, small programs performed significantly worse. For Norwood procedures, very large programs outperformed all other groups.ConclusionThere was an inverse association between pediatric cardiac surgical volume and mortality that became increasingly important as case complexity increased. Although volume was not associated with mortality for low-complexity cases, lower-volume programs underperformed larger programs as case complexity increased
Kinetic Properties of a Bose-Einstein Gas at Finite Temperature
We study, in the framework of the Boltzmann-Nordheim equation (BNE), the
kinetic properties of a boson gas above the Bose-Einstein transition
temperature . The BNE is solved numerically within a new algorithm, that
has been tested with exact analytical results for the collision rate of an
homogeneous system in thermal equilibrium. In the classical regime (), the relaxation time of a quadrupolar deformation in momentum space is
proportional to the mean free collision time .
Approaching the critical temperature (), quantum statistic
effects in BNE become dominant, and the collision rate increases dramatically.
Nevertheless, this does not affect the relaxation properties of the gas that
depend only on the spontaneous collision term in BNE. The relaxation time
is proportional to , exhibiting a critical
slowing down. These phenomena can be experimentally confirmed looking at the
damping properties of collective motions induced on trapped atoms. The
possibility to observe a transition from collisionless (zero-sound) to
hydrodynamic (first-sound) is finally discussed.Comment: RevTeX, 5 figures. Submitted to Phys. Rev.
Momentum--dependent nuclear mean fields and collective flow in heavy ion collisions
We use the Boltzmann-Uehling-Uhlenbeck model to simulate the dynamical
evolution of heavy ion collisions and to compare the effects of two
parametrizations of the momentum--dependent nuclear mean field that have
identical properties in cold nuclear matter. We compare with recent data on
nuclear flow, as characterized by transverse momentum distributions and flow
() variables for symmetric and asymmetric systems. We find that the precise
functional dependence of the nuclear mean field on the particle momentum is
important. With our approach, we also confirm that the difference between
symmetric and asymmetric systems can be used to pin down the density and
momentum dependence of the nuclear self consistent one--body potential,
independently. All the data can be reproduced very well with a
momentum--dependent interaction with compressibility K = 210 MeV.Comment: 15 pages in ReVTeX 3.0; 12 postscript figures uuencoded; McGill/94-1
Maximum Azimuthal Anisotropy of Neutrons from Nb-Nb Collisions at 400 AMeV and the Nuclear Equation of State
We measured the first azimuthal distributions of triple--differential cross
sections of neutrons emitted in heavy-ion collisions, and compared their
maximum azimuthal anisotropy ratios with Boltzmann--Uehling--Uhlenbeck (BUU)
calculations with a momentum-dependent interaction. The BUU calculations agree
with the triple- and double-differential cross sections for positive rapidity
neutrons emitted at polar angles from 7 to 27 degrees; however, the maximum
azimuthal anisotropy ratio for these free neutrons is insensitive to the size
of the nuclear incompressibility modulus K characterizing the nuclear matter
equation of state.Comment: Typeset using ReVTeX, with 3 ps figs., uuencoded and appende
- …