Sabbatical Leave Final Report

My sabbatical work was accomplished during the 1999-2000 academic year. The two general goals to be achieved were, first, to upgrade my computer skills and second, to improve the interactivity of our online speech course

Nutrition, Health and Athletic Performance

Optimal nutrition is fundamental for enhancing training, recovery and performance in sport. Therefore, research has aimed to determine the efficacy of appropriate intake of nutrients, fluids, and supplements and their role in exercise performance. The purpose of this Special Issue entitled “Nutrition, Health and Athletic Performance” is to highlight recent research examining aspects of sports nutrition and exercise performance. Manuscript submissions of original research, meta-analyses, or reviews of the scientific literature, which targets nutritional strategies to benefit performance and health, are welcome. Studies performed in humans are preferred given the applied nature of this issue

Are moving punctures equivalent to moving black holes?

When simulating the inspiral and coalescence of a binary black-hole system, special care needs to be taken in handling the singularities. Two main techniques are used in numerical-relativity simulations: A first and more traditional one ``excises'' a spatial neighbourhood of the singularity from the numerical grid on each spacelike hypersurface. A second and more recent one, instead, begins with a ``puncture'' solution and then evolves the full 3-metric, including the singular point. In the continuum limit, excision is justified by the light-cone structure of the Einstein equations and, in practice, can give accurate numerical solutions when suitable discretizations are used. However, because the field variables are non-differentiable at the puncture, there is no proof that the moving-punctures technique is correct, particularly in the discrete case. To investigate this question we use both techniques to evolve a binary system of equal-mass non-spinning black holes. We compare the evolution of two curvature 4-scalars with proper time along the invariantly-defined worldline midway between the two black holes, using Richardson extrapolation to reduce the influence of finite-difference truncation errors. We find that the excision and moving-punctures evolutions produce the same invariants along that worldline, and thus the same spacetimes throughout that worldline's causal past. This provides convincing evidence that moving-punctures are indeed equivalent to moving black holes.Comment: 4 pages, 3 eps color figures; v2 = major revisions to introduction & conclusions based on referee comments, but no change in analysis or result

Some Decomposition Theorems for the Vector Space of Matrix Summability Operators

Consider the set T = {(aij) I aij are real } of matrix summability operators on the set B of bounded sequences of real numbers

A Primer on the Human Readiness Level Scale (ANSI/HFES 400-2021)

The Human Readiness Level (HRL) Scale is a simple 9-level scale for evaluating, tracking, and communicating the readiness of a technology for safe and effective human use. It is modeled after the well-established Technology Readiness Level (TRL) framework that is used throughout the government and industry to communicate the maturity of a technology and to support decision making about technology acquisition. Here we (1) introduce the ANSI/HFES 400-2021 Standard that defines the HRL scale and (2) provide concrete examples of evaluation activities to support the application of HRLs in the development of automated driving systems

Influential Article Review- The Implications of Authoritative Leadership and Mission Outcomes

This paper examines leadership. We present insights from a highly influential paper. Here are the highlights from this paper: This study examines how and when authoritarian leadership affects subordinates’ task performance. Using social exchange theory and power dependence theory, this study proposes that authoritarian leadership negatively influences task performance through leader-member exchange (LMX). This study further proposes that the effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX is stronger when a subordinate has less dependence on a leader. A two-wave survey was conducted in a large electronics and information enterprise group in China. These hypotheses are supported by results based on 219 supervisor-subordinate dyads. The results reveal that authoritarian leadership negatively affects subordinates’ task performance via LMX. Dependence on leaders buffers the negative effect of authoritarian leadership on LMX and mitigates the indirect effect of authoritarian leadership on employee task performance through LMX. Theoretical contributions and practical implications are discussed. For our overseas readers, we then present the insights from this paper in Spanish, French, Portuguese, and German

Purification of Nuclear Poly(A)-binding Protein Nab2 Reveals Association with the Yeast Transcriptome and a Messenger Ribonucleoprotein Core Structure

Nascent mRNAs produced by transcription in the nucleus are subsequently processed and packaged into mRNA ribonucleoprotein particles (messenger ribonucleoproteins (mRNPs)) before export to the cytoplasm. Here, we have used the poly(A)-binding protein Nab2 to isolate mRNPs from yeast under conditions that preserve mRNA integrity. Upon Nab2-tandem affinity purification, several mRNA export factors were co-enriched (Yra1, Mex67, THO-TREX) that were present in mRNPs of different size and mRNA length. High-throughput sequencing of the co-precipitated RNAs indicated that Nab2 is associated with the bulk of yeast transcripts with no specificity for different mRNA classes. Electron microscopy revealed that many of the mRNPs have a characteristic elongated structure. Our data suggest that mRNPs, although associated with different mRNAs, have a unifying core structure

Effects of antiplatelet therapy on stroke risk by brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases: subgroup analyses of the RESTART randomised, open-label trial

Background Findings from the RESTART trial suggest that starting antiplatelet therapy might reduce the risk of recurrent symptomatic intracerebral haemorrhage compared with avoiding antiplatelet therapy. Brain imaging features of intracerebral haemorrhage and cerebral small vessel diseases (such as cerebral microbleeds) are associated with greater risks of recurrent intracerebral haemorrhage. We did subgroup analyses of the RESTART trial to explore whether these brain imaging features modify the effects of antiplatelet therapy

Kepler eclipsing binary stars. VII. the catalogue of eclipsing binaries found in the entire Kepler data set

The primary Kepler Mission provided nearly continuous monitoring of ~200,000 objects with unprecedented photometric precision. We present the final catalog of eclipsing binary systems within the 105 deg2 Kepler field of view. This release incorporates the full extent of the data from the primary mission (Q0-Q17 Data Release). As a result, new systems have been added, additional false positives have been removed, ephemerides and principal parameters have been recomputed, classifications have been revised to rely on analytical models, and eclipse timing variations have been computed for each system. We identify several classes of systems including those that exhibit tertiary eclipse events, systems that show clear evidence of additional bodies, heartbeat systems, systems with changing eclipse depths, and systems exhibiting only one eclipse event over the duration of the mission. We have updated the period and galactic latitude distribution diagrams and included a catalog completeness evaluation. The total number of identified eclipsing and ellipsoidal binary systems in the Kepler field of view has increased to 2878, 1.3% of all observed Kepler targets

Event-related alpha suppression in response to facial motion

This article has been made available through the Brunel Open Access Publishing Fund.While biological motion refers to both face and body movements, little is known about the visual perception of facial motion. We therefore examined alpha wave suppression as a reduction in power is thought to reflect visual activity, in addition to attentional reorienting and memory processes. Nineteen neurologically healthy adults were tested on their ability to discriminate between successive facial motion captures. These animations exhibited both rigid and non-rigid facial motion, as well as speech expressions. The structural and surface appearance of these facial animations did not differ, thus participants decisions were based solely on differences in facial movements. Upright, orientation-inverted and luminance-inverted facial stimuli were compared. At occipital and parieto-occipital regions, upright facial motion evoked a transient increase in alpha which was then followed by a significant reduction. This finding is discussed in terms of neural efficiency, gating mechanisms and neural synchronization. Moreover, there was no difference in the amount of alpha suppression evoked by each facial stimulus at occipital regions, suggesting early visual processing remains unaffected by manipulation paradigms. However, upright facial motion evoked greater suppression at parieto-occipital sites, and did so in the shortest latency. Increased activity within this region may reflect higher attentional reorienting to natural facial motion but also involvement of areas associated with the visual control of body effectors. © 2014 Girges et al