256869 research outputs found
Sort by
Sight-over-sound judgments of music performances are replicable effects with limited interpretability
No full textVirtuosi impress audiences with their musical expressivity and with their theatrical flair. How do listeners use this auditory and visual information to judge performance quality? Both musicians and laypeople report a belief that sound should trump sight in the judgment of music performance, but surprisingly, their actual judgments reflect the opposite pattern. In a recent study, when presented with 6-second videos of music competition performers, listeners accurately guessed the winners only when the videos were muted. Here, we successfully replicate this finding in a highly-powered sample but then demonstrate that the sight-over-sound effect holds only under limited conditions. When using different videos from comparable performances, in a forced-choice task, listeners' judgments were at or below chance. And when differences in performance quality were made clearer, listeners' judgments were most accurate when they could hear the music — without audio, performance was at chance. Sight therefore does not necessarily trump sound in the judgment of music performance
Perceptual Information Supports Transfer of Learning in Coordinated Rhythmic Movement
No full textIn this paper, we trained people to produce 90° mean relative phase using task-appropriate feedback and investigated whether and how that learning transfers to other coordinations. Past work has failed to find transfer of learning to other relative phases, only to symmetry partners (identical coordinations with reversed lead-lag relationships) and to other effector combinations. However, that research has all trained people using transformed visual feedback (visual metronomes, Lissajous feedback) which removes the relative motion information typically used to produce various coordinations (relative direction, relative position; Wilson & Bingham, 2008) . Coordination feedback (Wilson, Snapp-Childs, Coats, & Bingham, 2010) preserves that information and we have recently shown that relative position supports transfer of learning between unimanual and bimanual performance of 90° (Snapp-Childs, Wilson, & Bingham, 2015). Here we ask whether that information can support the production of other relative phases. We found large, asymmetric transfer of learning bimanual 90° to bimanual 60° and 120°, supported by perceptual learning of relative position information at 90°. For learning to transfer, the two tasks must overlap in some critical way; this is additional evidence that this overlap must be informational. We discuss the results in the context of an ecological, task dynamical approach to understanding the nature of perception-action tasks
Modulating the Foreground Bias: How Scene Knowledge and Depth Structure Guide Visual Search
No full textWhen viewing real-world scenes, visual information extends across depth, yet attention is not allocated evenly across this space. The current study examined whether the prioritization of near-space information, known as the Foreground Bias, reflects a fixed attentional tendency or a flexible process that can be modulated by scene knowledge. Across two experiments, participants searched for target objects that appeared in either the foreground or background of scenes that were either semantically coherent (Normal) or composed of mismatched foreground and background regions (Chimera scenes; Castelhano et al., 2019). In Experiment 1, participants located targets in the foreground more quickly and with fewer fixations than those in the background, suggesting a robust Foreground Bias that was not explained by target size. In Experiment 2, a brief scene preview was introduced to allow participants to encode scene structure before search. Although the Foreground Bias persisted across scene types, the preview selectively reduced the magnitude of this bias in Chimera scenes, suggesting participants could strategically direct search toward the semantically relevant region when sufficient context information was available. Together, these findings suggest that the Foreground Bias reflects a strong, default weighting toward near space that can be flexibly adjusted based on prior scene knowledge
A standardized approach to characterize hysteresis in 2D-materials-based transistors for stability benchmarking and performance projection
No full textThe hysteresis observed in the transfer characteristics of emerging transistors based on 2D-materials is widely accepted as an important metric related to the device quality. However, the specifics of hysteresis characterization measurements are rarely given, and its mechanistic understanding remains fragmentary. Here, we provide a comprehensive theoretical analysis of the dominant mechanisms contributing to hysteresis: charge trapping by defects from the channel or the gate, the drift of mobile charges, and eventually ferroelectricity. We suggest methods to experimentally distinguish between these phenomena and propose a standardized hysteresis measurement scheme to establish the hysteresis as a comparable metric for the assessment of device stability. Our standardized scheme ensures that hysteresis data can be effectively compared across different technologies and, most importantly, provides a means to extrapolate data obtained on thicker prototypes to subnanometer equivalent oxide thicknesses. This facilitates the systematic benchmarking of insulator/channel combinations in terms of stability, which thereby enables the screening of material systems for more stable and reliable 2D-material-based metal-oxide-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MOSFETs)
Development of a molecular dispersion spectroscopy instrument for livestock farming
No full textThere is currently a clear demand for high-capacity gas measurement equipment across various fields. One sector that particularly stands out, primarily due to the necessity of reducing environmental impact, is livestock farming. However, there is currently no instrumentation available that can reliably undertake this challenging task. This article reports on a molecular dispersion spectroscopy instrument specifically engineered for livestock facilities to simultaneously measure methane (CH₄), ammonia (NH₃) and carbon dioxide (CO₂). In addition to its high temporal resolution, it is important to note that the use of optical spectroscopy allows the system to measure the average gas concentration along the optical path within the stables. This is highly advantageous over conventional point measurements typically used in this particular application. Furthermore, the implementation of dispersion spectroscopy confers the capacity for uninterrupted operation in environments characterized by elevated concentrations of suspended particulate matter. The method also ensures a high performance and linear response in the measurement of gas concentration, allowing for rapid adaptability to different measurement scenarios. Some quantitative indicators of performance found are linearity errors in the determination of concentration of < 0.1 % for CH₄ and CO₂ and 0.32 % for NH₃ (in a range that significantly exceeds the concentrations found experimentally) and detection limits < 35 ppb·m/Hz1/2 for all gases. Finally, the manuscript delineates the early stages of field testing conducted on a livestock farm, illustrating the achievement of suitable operational configurations and the promising initial results obtained with the instrument
Blink: An Optimal Proof of Proof-of-Work
No full textDesigning light clients to securely and efficiently read Proof of-Work blockchains has been a foundational problem since the inception
of blockchains. Nakamoto themselves, in the original Bitcoin paper, pre sented the first client protocol, i.e., the Simplified Payment Verification,
which consumes an amount of bandwidth, computational, and storage
resources that grows linearly in the system’s lifetime C.
Today, the blockchain ecosystem is more mature and presents a variety
of applications and protocols deployed on-chain and, often, cross-chain.
In this landscape, light clients have become the cornerstone of decen tralized bridges, playing a pivotal role in the security and efficiency of
cross-chain operations. These new use cases, combined with the growth
of blockchains over time, raise the need for more minimalist clients, which
further reduce the resource requirements and, when applicable, on-chain
costs. Over the years, the light client resource consumption has been
reduced from O(C) to O(polylog(C)), and then down to O(1) with zero knowledge techniques at the cost of often assuming a trusted setup.
In this paper, we present Blink, the first interactive provably secure
O(1) PoW light client without trusted setup. Blink can be used for a vari ety of applications ranging from payment verification and bootstrapping,
to bridges. We prove Blink secure in the Bitcoin Backbone model, and
we evaluate its proof size demonstrating that, at the moment of writing,
Blink obtains a commitment to the current state of Bitcoin by download ing only 1.6KB, instead of 67.3 MB and 197 KB for SPV and zk-based
clients, respectively
Maximum Shoulder Torque and Muscle Activation During Standing Arm Flexion: Reference Data for Biomechanical and Ergonomic Applications
Get PDFObjectives: Shoulder joint strength and muscle activation during overhead reaching are critical for ergonomic task design, rehabilitation, and exoskeleton support. The objective of this study was to characterize maximum shoulder torque and flexor muscle activation profiles across functional elevation angles in healthy adult males. Methods: A total of 14 healthy male participants performed maximum voluntary isometric contractions at eight arm elevation angles (90–160°, sagittal plane, and standing). Shoulder torque was measured using a calibrated force sensor and normalized to each participant’s overall maximum. Electromyography (EMG) was recorded from the anterior deltoid, medial deltoid, biceps brachii, and clavicular pectoralis major; EMG for the medial deltoid, biceps brachii, and pectoralis major was normalized to muscle-specific isometric MVCs, whereas the anterior deltoid was normalized to the peak value at 90° during the main task. All EMG signals were smoothed using a 0.5 s RMS-based moving average window. Linear regression was used to analyze the torque–angle relationship, and linear mixed-effects models were used to test EMG differences across angles. Summary statistics included mean ± SD, coefficient of variation, R², p-values (significance threshold: p < 0.05), Cohen’s d, and 95% confidence intervals where appropriate. Results: Maximum torque declined with elevation angle (y = −0.6317x + 157.21; R2 = 0.99), from 77.2 Nm at 90° to 43.2 Nm at 160°, with normalized values from 99.6% to 55.3%. Medial deltoid activation increased significantly with elevation (p < 0.001, from 87.5 ± 19.9% at 90° to 109.4 ± 25.6% at 150°), while pectoralis major declined sharply (p < 0.001, from 68.9 ± 24.2% at 90° to 19.8 ± 5.6% at 160°). Anterior deltoid and biceps brachii activations were high and showed no systematic change with angle (p = 0.37 and 0.81, respectively), remaining within approximately 95–102% and 70–85% of their reference levels across 90–160°. Normalization reduced inter-participant variability, clarifying muscle-specific trends. Conclusions: This study provides preliminary biomechanical reference values for shoulder torque and muscle activation across elevation angles in healthy males under isometric standing conditions, confirming an inverse torque–angle relationship and distinct muscle activation strategies at higher positions. These findings may inform ergonomic assessment and exoskeleton design, while recognizing that generalization to dynamic tasks and other populations requires caution
Inhibition of Hypersialylation in Human Intervertebral Disc Degeneration Modulates Inflammation and Metabolism
No full textIntervertebral disc (IVD) degeneration is a major cause of low back pain (LBP), a significant global health burden. While glycosylation plays a key role in cellular signaling and inflammation, its role in IVD degeneration remains poorly understood. This study characterizes glycan alterations in human healthy and degenerated IVDs using glycomic (UPLC-MS, MALDI-IMS) and proteomic (LC-MS) analyses, combined with functional studies. These results identify hypersialylation, especially α-2,6-linked sialic acid, as a prominent feature of degenerated IVDs. In vitro inhibition of sialylation (3Fax-peracetyl Neu5Ac) in nucleus pulposus cells demonstrates reduced oxidative stress and inflammatory signaling, indicating a functional role for hypersialylation in IVD pathology. Targeting glycosylation pathways, notably sialylation, emerges as a promising therapeutic strategy for IVD degeneration
A General Theoretical Framework for Learning Smallest Interpretable Models
No full textWe develop a general algorithmic framework that allows us to obtain fixed-parameter tractability for computing smallest symbolic models that represent given data. Our framework applies to all ML model types that admit a certain extension property. By establishing this extension property for decision trees, decision sets, decision lists, and binary decision diagrams, we obtain that minimizing these fundamental model types is fixed-parameter tractable. Our framework even applies to ensembles, which combine individual models by majority decision