5. Commission des Analyses de Travaux et de Bibliographie

M. Mascari a adressé, en vue des assemblées de Leyde (1928) et de Cambridge (Mass.) en 1932, un long rapport contenant les abréviations méthodiques (Transactions of the I. U.A . 3, pp. 19-39 et 4, pp. 21-2). M. Mascari a eu le regret de constater que beaucoup trop souvent, les auteurs ne font pas le plus léger effort pour lutter contre leurs habitudes et se soumettre à une discipline étroite.M. Grouiller suggère que l’Union publie une liste des abréviations concernant les publications astronomiques proprement dites; quant à celles qui ne renferment que très occasionnellement de l’astronomie, on pourrait toujours rétablir les abréviations en se servant des listes d’abréviations générales déjà publiées par l’Union transactions of the I.U.A. 3, pp. 34-7). En ce qui concerne la bibliographie mensuelle, dirigée actuellement par M. le Comte de la Baume-Pluvinel, M. Grouiller est d’avis que la Commission adopte une motion d’approbation telle que la suivante: “La Commission a appris avec satisfaction la réunion en un seul organe des publications bibliographiques assurées par la Société astronomique de France et l’Association française d’observateurs d’étoiles variables. Elle recommande la continuation de cette publication contrôlée par une commission spéciale représentant ces deux Sociétés.”</jats:p

22. Commission des Etoiles Filantes

During the past four years the most important events in meteoric astronomy have been the good showers of the Leonids in 1930 and 1931. When these observations are added to the predictions based on computations of the perturbations, there is good reason to hope for an even better shower in 1932, perhaps rivalling that of 1866. As to the study of meteors in general, there has been an increasing revival of interest. Meteor Notes are now regular features of many scientific journals. Never before have so many people been working in this branch of science. A very brief outline of such activities follows.</jats:p

22. Commission des étoiles Filantes

The past few years have witnessed a great increase in the amount of work done on meteors and in the number of observers. At several observatories programmes of work have been undertaken in the hope of solving specific problems. Several countries now have flourishing meteor societies, or sections of larger astronomical societies, devoted to this field. To solve the problems that have arisen the help of other scientists, especially in physics, geology, and meteorology, has been enlisted to the mutual benefit of all. Historical research, particularly in Asia, has added much to our knowledge of meteor showers for the past thousand or more years.</jats:p

5. Commission des Analyses de Travaux et de Bibliographie

At the Paris congress in 1935, Messrs Dittrich, Brasch and Pogo had proposed that Commission 5 should undertake the publication of classical works of astronomy (such as Ptolemy’s Almagest, the works of Copernicus, etc.) which were untranslated or for other reasons difficult of access. The commission decided to form a sub-commission, consisting of Mr Stroobant and the gentlemen named above, to study this question, especially the means for its realization. Mr Stroobant had announced his desire to take this work in hand personally. Prof. Stroobant, however, having deceased in July 1936, and his health having been deficient during several months in advance, the sub-commission has not been able to continue its work. This is a question that ought to be taken up at the Stockholm meeting.</jats:p

22. Commission des étoiles Filantes, de la Lumière Zodiacale et des Problèmes Analogues

The Commission formed a Sub-Commission on Zodiacal Light, presided over by Prof. Issei Yamamoto. The constitution of a sub-commission on the light of the night sky and kindred phenomena was proposed, but left in abeyance, pending the Stockholm Meeting. Dr Jean Dufay kindly consented to write, at the president’s request, a paper on the present state of the problem of the light of the night sky, which is printed with this Report.</jats:p

27. Commission des Étoiles Variables

The Commission again subscribes to a number of the good resolutions it has made in the past, for example, to follow the almost universal practice of counting the observed times, either in decimals of a day or in hours and minutes, from Greenwich mean noon, even though one is convinced that the rest of the world should adopt U.T.; and to prepare a chart, identifying the variable and the comparison stars, to form a part of the discovery announcement of a variable which cannot be easily identified through a Durchmusterung number and which is bright enough to invite further observation.</jats:p

27. Commission des Étoiles Variables

It is well-nigh impossible to give, in a short report, an adequate idea of the enormous activity in Variable-Star Astronomy during the past three years. Without attempting to be complete I shall give a summary of the most important recent occurrences in this field of research.Statistical data for eclipsing binaries were given by Gaposchkin (Veröff. Berlin-Bab. 9, Heft 5), for long-period variable stars by Ludendorff (Sitz.-ber. Ak. d. Wiss. Berlin, 1932), Thomas (Veröff. Berlin-Bab. 9, Heft 4) and Sterne and L. Campbell (Harvard Annals).Some valuable catalogues have been issued: a Finding List for Observers of Eclipsing Variables by Dugan (Princeton Contr. No. 15), a Catalogue of Eclipsing Variables, together with a Program of Investigations, by Martinoff (Engelhardt Obs. Bull. No. 2), a Catalogue and Ephemeris of Short-period Cepheids by Zessewitsch (Len. Un. A. 0. Bull. No. 3).</jats:p

27. Commission des Étoiles Variables

Fourteen members of the committee have failed to respond to correspondence; nearly all of the others have expressed the definite opinion that non-responsive members should be dropped from committee membership when a new list is prepared a few correspondents indicating however, that the policy should be adopted for Commission 27 only if generally adopted for all commissions of the Union.</jats:p

Emotional processing in Parkinson's disease and anxiety: an EEG study of visual affective word processing

A general problem in the design of an EEG-BCI system is the poor quality and low robustness of the extracted features, affecting overall performance. However, BCI systems that are applicable in real-time and outside clinical settings require high performance. Therefore, we have to improve the current methods for feature extraction. In this work, we investigated EEG source reconstruction techniques to enhance the extracted features based on a linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) beamformer. Beamformers allow for easy incorporation of anatomical data and are applicable in real-time. A 32-channel EEG-BCI system was designed for a two-class motor imagery (MI) paradigm. We optimized a synchronous system for two untrained subjects and investigated two aspects. First, we investigated the effect of using beamformers calculated on the basis of three different head models: a template 3-layered boundary element method (BEM) head model, a 3-layered personalized BEM head model and a personalized 5-layered finite difference method (FDM) head model including white and gray matter, CSF, scalp and skull tissue. Second, we investigated the influence of how the regions of interest, areas of expected MI activity, were constructed. On the one hand, they were chosen around electrodes C3 and C4, as hand MI activity theoretically is expected here. On the other hand, they were constructed based on the actual activated regions identified by an fMRI scan. Subsequently, an asynchronous system was derived for one of the subjects and an optimal balance between speed and accuracy was found. Lastly, a real-time application was made. These systems were evaluated by their accuracy, defined as the percentage of correct left and right classifications. From the real-time application, the information transfer rate (ITR) was also determined. An accuracy of 86.60 ± 4.40% was achieved for subject 1 and 78.71 ± 0.73% for subject 2. This gives an average accuracy of 82.66 ± 2.57%. We found that the use of a personalized FDM model improved the accuracy of the system, on average 24.22% with respect to the template BEM model and on average 5.15% with respect to the personalized BEM model. Including fMRI spatial priors did not improve accuracy. Personal fine- tuning largely resolved the robustness problems arising due to the differences in head geometry and neurophysiology between subjects. A real-time average accuracy of 64.26% was reached and the maximum ITR was 6.71 bits/min. We conclude that beamformers calculated with a personalized FDM model have great potential to ameliorate feature extraction and, as a consequence, to improve the performance of real-time BCI systems