SIRIS-Lab/unlabelled-sti-corpus huggingface dataset:
The spatiotemporal dynamics of binocular rivalry: evidence for increased top-down flow prior to a perceptual switch

According to most theories, perceptual switching during binocular rivalry is caused by competition between the neural representations of the two input images. It remains unclear whether competition is resolved already at the early stages of visual processing and that information about the dominant percept is then fed forward to more high-level areas or whether competition is first resolved in high-level areas and then fed back to lower levels. This study aimed to dissociate between these theories by investigating the direction of information flow prior to a perceptual switch, using Granger causality on classifier output originating from occipital, temporal, parietal and frontal regions of interest. The results point toward increased top-down information flow between temporal and occipital areas before a switch in dominance. These findings do not support a low-level account of binocular rivalry but are in line with high-level and hybrid explanations.
FAA systemwide analysis capability: Comparisons with historical operations

• How well is SWAC matching operations? ✦ Scheduling: Agreement in schedule and itineraries ✦ Gate: Turnaround times too high and spread of pushback delays too low ✦ Surface: Agreement in surface delays and transit times ✦ Takeoff and Landing: Agreement in departure and arrival throughputs ✦ Climb and Descent: Agreement in departure and arrival fix assignments ✦ Enroute: Agreement in sector loadings and airborne flight time ✦ Delays: Agreement overall, but SWAC tends to underestimate arrival delay ✦ Fuel burn: Agreement with AEDT estimates, actual fuel burn unavailable • Next steps: ✦ Enhance SWAC to better match operations in identified phases ✦ Additional capabilities: e.g. Ramp, APREQ
Rubber & elastomer development for martian environment applications

While imagining future Martian exploration and colonization one mustn’t forget about new materials assuring required performance and resistance to the harsh Martian conditions. One of the most unique materials used in engineering is rubber, providing both elastic and damping properties. Currently, the rubber used on Earth exhibit too low resistance against Martian environment. This project aims to overcome this issue by designing rubber withstanding harsh Martian conditions (presence of radiation and low operating temperature). This tailor-made rubber will have a low glass transition temperature (elasticity at low temperatures), contain functional and self-healing groups (radiation resistance) and reinforcing fillers for good mechanical properties (operational performance). For a sustainable approach, the use of local materials will be investigated by synthesizing reinforcing silica from Martian regolith, and the recyclability will be optimized to extend the utilization time of the materials. My background in designing versatile rubber materials for special applications and being familiar with extra-terrestrial conditions in the Solar system allows me to carry out successfully this MSCA IG Global Fellowship, under the supervision of Prof. Dr. Anke Blume and Dr. Wilma Dierkes hosted at University of Twente (UT), in one of the leading rubber groups in the world: Elastomer Technology and Engineering (ETE). The outgoing phase will be done at the University of Akron (UA) for 24 months under supervision of Dr. Li Jia. UA has a long experience in rubber education (since 1909) and is cooperating with the Glenn Research Center of NASA. Short scientific visits are also planned to perform radiation resistance measurements and prototype rubber testing.
The development of scientific identification theory to conduct operation research in education management

Operations research is a general method used in the study and optimization of a system through modeling of the system. In the field of education, especially in education management, operations research has not been widely used. This paper gives an exposition of ideas about how operations research can be used to conduct research and optimization in the field of education management by developing SITOREM (Scientific Identification Theory for Operation Research in Education Management). To clarify the intent of the idea, an example of applying SITOREM to enhance the professional commitment of lecturers associated with achieving the vision of university will be described.
Metal nanoclusters for electrocatalytic co2 conversion

Combatting the menace of global warming requires solutions to recycle carbon dioxide (CO2). Electrochemical (EC) CO2 reduction reactions (CO2RR) could potentially solve this problem by the storage of energy from renewable sources in the form of chemical energy in fuels or value-added chemicals in a sustainable manner. However, CO2 is a highly stable molecule and catalysts are needed to overcome its kinetically sluggish reduction. Despite the considerable progress in the design of metallic nanoparticle (NP) catalysts, the polydispersity of conventional NPs limits the fundamental understanding of structure-activity relationships, which remains the bottleneck for further catalyst development. To overcome this problem, I propose the utilization of a novel class of catalysts that lie in the transition regime between small molecules and NPs: Atomically precise ligand-protected metal nanoclusters (MNCs). Contrary to NPs, MNCs are monodisperse particles with a defined composition that can be structurally characterized at the atomic level. The aim of this project is to develop the full potential of MNCs for catalytic EC CO2RR i) by studying MNC structure-activity relationships, including size, protecting ligands and metal composition; ii) by tuning their catalytic performance, modifying MNCs with molecular metal-oxides to enhance CO2 adsorption; and iii) by their immobilization into nanocarbon materials, improving catalyst stability and performance due to the synergy between the support substrate and supported catalyst. The goal of the MENACE-CO2 project is to shed light into the precise correlation of structure with catalytic properties, enabling the rational optimization of this novel type of catalysts. Moreover, this project will open new perspectives by engineering nanocomposites, recognizing the roles of each component and how they synergize to achieve their properties to, ultimately, open new directions in CO2 conversion.
Mould-integrated heating technology for efficient and appropriate processing of fibre-reinforced thermoplastics

Abstract Automated large-scale production of hybrid structures is a key requirement to bring lightweight design into high volume industrial applications. Promising material combinations for hybrid structures consist of short and continuous fibre reinforced plastics and metals. The aim of this study is to develop economic strategies for automated final-shape manufacturing processes for these structures. This paper addresses the development of a mould-integrated heating technology for efficient and appropriate processing of continuous fibre-reinforced thermoplastics. Due to challenges in ensuring required processing parameters during manufacturing, inefficient process chains dominate the composite industry. The most critical parameter is the temperature of the composite during forming and over moulding. To enable such complex process chains, the material must conventionally be heated high above its melting point to balance temperature losses during subsequent process steps. In this study, conventional processes and heating strategies are investigated to evaluate their potential of a mould-integrated heating technology. As reference, external infrared radiation heating is used. The mould-integrated heating makes use of transparent areas within the cavity to enable in-mould infra-red radiation. The main benefit of this technology is the increase of energy efficiency due to isothermal moulding processes.
Scientific Perspectives on Psalm 148 in Medieval Jewish Exegesis

Psalm 148 is a hymn inviting all beings in the celestial world and the earthly world to praise God. Even though the Psalm seems simple and easy to understand, two questions have been raised in the history of the exegesis of this Psalm: why are these specific creatures and no others mentioned in the Psalm?, and why are they placed in this particular order? In Ancient Judaism no much attention was given to the explanation of this Psalm from a scientific perspective; however, in the thirteenth century, in the context of the reception of Aristotelianism in southern France, important exegetes such as David Qimhi and Menahem ha-Meiri interpreted this Psalm to the light of Aristotelian cosmology, and more especifically in consonance with scientific ideas exposed in Aristole’s Meteorology. Abraham ibn Ezra was the first Jewish exegete who wrote a systematic commentary on Psalm 148 to demonstrate that the biblical text describes the structure, composition and laws of the Universe according to Aristotelian principles. Ibn Ezra’s scientific comments on this Psalm were the starting point for the future scientific analysis of later exegetes in southern France, such as David Qimhi and Menahem ha-Meiri. It is the purpose of this article to analyze how Psalm 148 has been interpreted by these three Jewish exegetes from a scientific perspective and to prove how later exegetes explained, developed or even refuted the scientific interpretations of their predecessors. It also examines the sources that Ibn Ezra may have used to know Aristotle’s ideas.
Euro-Bioimaging preparatory phase ii - project

Euro-BioImaging (EuBI) is the pan-European research infrastructure project for imaging technologies in biological and medical sciences and has been on the ESFRI Roadmap since 2008. In close match with the scope and objectives of the INFRADEV2 call, Preparatory Phase II (PPII) funding will enable EuBI:
• to finalize the submission and approval procedure of its ERIC statutes with the EC and bring them to signature by the EuBI Member States and EMBL to launch the EuBI-ERIC; 
• obtain commitments for the sustainable funding for the EuBI-ERIC by its Member States;
• implement the operational EuBI Hub and recruit its staff to provide user access and services;
• define and sign the service level agreements between EuBI-ERIC and the 1st generation of EuBI Nodes;
• establish a procedure to increase EuBI-ERIC membership, so that new countries can continuously join the EuBI-ERIC with clear national benefits and contributions. 
From Dec 2010 until May 2014, EuBI successfully completed its EU FP7-funded Preparatory Phase I, which addressed key technical and strategic questions and provided a blueprint for infrastructure implementation. 14 European countries (BE, BG, CZ, FI, FR, IL, IT, NO, PL, PT, SK, ES, NL, UK), and the PPI coordinator EMBL have signed the EuBI Memorandum of Understanding to jointly undertake the remaining steps required to draft and submit the EuBI ERIC application to the EC. The MoU signatories constitute the EuBI Interim Board (IB), which now governs the Interim Phase. To maintain the successful momentum of Member State engagement, the EuBI PPII project consortium comprises and is fully supported by all IB Members. We have jointly defined clear and measurable objectives that will bring EuBI to full maturity in order to start operation and provide its services to European researchers immediately upon launch of the EuBI-ERIC. The award of PPII funding would leapfrog the start of EuBI-ERIC user access and service provision by at least 1,5 year’s time or more.
Flexible early childhood care services

This project aims at training unemployed people in the field of early childhood care services, with special emphasis on alternative or innovative services promoted by recent Italian legislation in the cross-border area (home care, company and family creches, etc.) and the promotion of new entrepreneurship. This project represents the first step towards the development of a permanent cross-border network in early childhood care services, also thanks to its connection with a project sponsored by the Kindergarten of Nova Gorica, on the creation of a bilingual kindergarten. The educational objective is the transfer to the participants of the knowledge and skills necessary to work as educators in family contexts (home educators), traditional extra-familiar contexts (creches and primary schools) or innovative ones (home and workplace child care, etc.), in order to establish relations that are pedagogically correct and psychologically enriching with the children and for the children. The project is structured into three distinct phases: following the promotion of the training programme, a selection procedure is carried out; accepted applicants then follow a number of classroom activities, associated to an internship period. Lastly the participants are tested to assess their progress.
A new thermal model for bone drilling with applications to orthopaedic surgery

This paper presents a new thermal model for bone drilling with applications to orthopaedic surgery. The new model combines a unique heat-balance equation for the system of the drill bit and the chip stream, an ordinary heat diffusion equation for the bone, and heat generation at the drill tip, arising from the cutting process and friction. Modeling of the drill bit-chip stream system assumes an axial temperature distribution and a lumped heat capacity effect in the transverse cross-section. The new model is solved numerically using a tailor-made finite-difference scheme for the drill bit-chip stream system, coupled with a classic finite-difference method for the bone. The theoretical investigation addresses the significance of heat transfer between the drill bit and the bone, heat convection from the drill bit to the surroundings, and the effect of the initial temperature of the drill bit on the developing thermal field. Using the new model, a parametric study on the effects of machining conditions and drill-bit geometries on the resulting temperature field in the bone and the drill bit is presented. Results of this study indicate that: (1) the maximum temperature in the bone decreases with increased chip flow; (2) the transient temperature distribution is strongly influenced by the initial temperature; (3) the continued cooling (irrigation) of the drill bit reduces the maximum temperature even when the tip is distant from the cooled portion of the drill bit; and (4) the maximum temperature increases with increasing spindle speed, increasing feed rate, decreasing drill-bit diameter, increasing point angle, and decreasing helix angle. The model is expected to be useful in determination of optimum drilling conditions and drill-bit geometries.
Who gives life? understanding, explaining and predicting donor behaviour

Background: Why do individuals repeatedly help strangers even when this incurs personal costs? Current evidence on prosocial behaviour is contradictory, scattered across disciplines, restricted to one-country studies, not taking into account contextual influences, and fails to capture its dynamic nature. An integrated model is needed to increase understanding of prosociality as a societal core value.

Aim: To break with monodisciplinary approaches, and grasp the dynamic and contextual nature of prosocial behaviour, I propose a life course model to link individual determinants, social network characteristics and societal contexts. I will test the model in the case of blood donation, as example of real world prosociality where a stranger is helped at a donor’s personal costs.

Approach: DONORS comprises three interlinked work packages. 1) Dynamic interplay among individual and network determinants of donor behaviour over the life course. 2) Genetic determinants of prosociality. 3) Contextual variation in donor behaviour. To validate my model, I use six unique, complementary datasets, including prospective, retrospective, country-comparative survey, genetic and registry data.

Innovation: 1) A multidisciplinary view —including demography, sociology, psychology— within a dynamic life course approach to enhance theory building. 2) A multi-method design, linking sociological survey with objective health-registry data and combining psychosocial with genetic data. 3) Using country-comparisons to account for the societal contexts in which donor behaviour occurs.

Impact: DONORS will inspire a new era of multidisciplinary research on prosocial behaviour. With backgrounds in Medicine, Social Sciences and Psychology, years of experience in science and practice and high-level, award-winning international publications, I am uniquely suited to combine insights from social and health sciences to set the stage for a comprehensive, innovative scientific view on donor behaviour.
Bivalves as Bio-Indicators for Heavy Metals Detection in Kuala Kemaman, Terengganu, Malaysia

Background/Objectives: The objective of this work is to collect representative sample of bivalves, soil and water from Kuala Kemaman. It performs analysis of heavy metal existence and estimate the heavy metals concentration from the collected samples. Method: First sampling allocation for bivalves, water and soil after sampling pre–treatment was applied to remove any impurities from bivalve samples. Digestion by acid was done after drying. Then, analysis was carried out by using atomic absorption spectrophotometer (AAS). Estimation was done in triplicate and results were expressed in ppm on average basis with support of standard reference materials that were always with high confidence interval of the certified values. Findings: High concentration exceeds the Malaysian Food Regulation (MFR 1985) permissible limits for cadmium (Cd) and lead (Pb) were found in bivalve tissues of Polymesoda Expansa and Anadara granosa. However, copper (Cu) and zinc (Zn) levels were below the allowable limit. Heavy metals concentrations in both bivalves (μg/g dry wt) were ranged between 2.3–5.9, 12.8–15.9, 6.8–10.2, 22.9–56.5 and 7–3 for Cd, Cu, Pb, Zn and Fe respectively. Polymesoda Expansa showed a higher tendency to accumulate high concentration of Cu, Zn and Fe. At the same time, Anadara granosa showed a higher tendency to accumulate higher concentration of Cd and Pb, even though samples were collected from the same area. For iron, there is no permissible level according to MFR 1985. However, Fe was slightly higher than WHO 1993 (set value; 5 ppm). Analysis of soil and water for the samples collected from the same area showed that heavy metals concentrations were under permissible level set by Malaysian Food Regulation (MFR), World Health Organization (WHO) and USEPA (1993) regulations. Applications/Improvements: Results show that Anadara granosa have a tendency to accumulate higher concentration of Cd and Pb compared to Polymesoda Expansa where it has a higher tendency to accumulate Cu, Zn and Fe. The concentration of heavy metals in soil and seawater were below the permissible level. In this work, only one time sampling was carried out. Therefore, it is recommended to perform regular monitoring in seasonal basis in order to obtain a clearer picture about the environmental situation in Kuala Kemaman and nearby areas.
Study of Retinal Biometrics with Respect to Peripheral Degeneration with Clinically Significant Features

Retinal biometrics has been very handy in most parts of the world with respect to diabetic retinopathy. In diabetic retinopathy, the most complicated part comes when patients loose their eye sight. This is called as Macular Degeneration. Macular Degeneration comes in two stages. The first stage is when clinically significant features are present on the retina, the second stage is when non clinically significant features are present on the retina. Clinically significant features are present near the macula which is the center of retina. Non clinical features which are also called artifacts which are distortions on the retina are present on the periphery. In this paper the main focus has been on the clinically significant features. The clinically significant features are micro-aneurysms, hemorrhages and exudates. In this paper the main concentration has been on the degeneration of macula. The macula is the region of illumination on the retina. The extraction of micro-aneurysms has been based on the red component of the retinal image. Similarly the extraction of hemorrhages and exudates has been based on the other color components. The extraction of macula has been based on the texture of retinal images. The goal of this paper is to device a method which constricts the region of the macula depending on high or low intensity regions. Based on this goal , the two main objectives which were defined are fixing the regions of macula and then deciding on which stage of diabetes , the person is in. Lots of research has been done in the area of extracting the basic diabetic features which are based on filters like the gabor filter. The scope in the area of extracting the macula has been very limited because the intensities of the vessels and macula is same in the gray scale image. Therefore in this paper an attempt has been made to extract the macula using textures. The most serious stage of diabetes is blindness where macular degeneration is seen. Keeping in mind the real life threats from macular degeneration, efforts have been made in this paper to correlate biometrics and macular degeneration with respect to retinal images. With respect to classification of retinal images, macular degeneration gives lot of insight into the reasons for blindness of a person.
An inoculation experiment of Japanese Bursaphelenchus nematodes on Japanese black and red pine, Pinus thunbergii and P. densiflora

The pinewood nematode (PWN) Bursaphelenchus xylophilus is an invasive pathogen that was introduced from North America to Asian countries and Portugal and is devastating native pine forests. Some native European and Asian Bursaphelenchus nematodes also have weak to moderate pathogenicity to native pine species. To evaluate the potential risk of native Bursaphelenchus species, we inoculated ten Japanese Bursaphelenchus species into native pine species (the dominant forest species) in Japan, and evaluated their pathogenicity using mortality and tracheal tissue damage as indices. Inoculation was conducted on August 3, 2007, and the symptoms were observed every 2 weeks until February 1, 2008. None of the inoculated trees, excluding the pathogenic PWN inoculated control, showed external disease symptoms; however, four species [a less pathogenic PWN isolate, B. luxuriosae, Bursaphelenchus sp. NK215 (undescribed), and NK224 (undescribed)] caused tracheal tissue damage in inoculated seedlings and showed weak pathogenicity. Therefore, we conclude that there are some potentially pathogenic native species of nematodes distributed in Japan. Interestingly, two of these weakly pathogenic species, B. luxuriosae and NK215, are not associated with Pinaceae trees, suggesting that nematode pathogenicity may be a pre-adaptive character. More experimental studies under different conditions are necessary to accurately evaluate the potential risk of these pathogens.
Hybrid multiple-input multiple-output scheme combining precoded and non-precoded transmission

A hybrid multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) scheme capable of switching between non-precoded transmission and covariance-based precoded transmission is proposed. Such a hybrid scheme is desired as the covariance-based precoding gain is insignificant when transmission takes place in lowly correlated channels. Such a minor performance gain is not sufficient to justify the high-complexity precoding employed at the transmitter. The proposed scheme does not require a feedback channel or pilot symbols as knowledge of the downlink channel covariance and correlation is made available to the downlink transmitter through direct estimation from the uplink received signal energy. Performance studies carried out in both time division duplex and frequency division duplex systems reveal that the performance of the proposed scheme is on par with that of an existing MIMO precoding scheme with the added advantage of lower complexity and improved system efficiency.