Telepathy is one of the most commonly reported psi-type experiences and represents the idea that one person can acquire information relating to the thoughts/feelings/intentions of another from a ...distance via a non-usual route. Typically the procedure involves a Sender and a Receiver who are physically separated whilst the former attempts to relay target information to the latter. Refinements to this paradigm have included placing the Receiver in sensory isolation in an effort to enhance the signal to noise ratio of the signal, as seen in the ganzfeld research. Here the aim was to immerse the Sender in a virtual reality (VR) environment in an effort to boost the transmission of the target whilst keeping the Receiver in partial sensory isolation. Using such a paradigm we tested eleven pairs of participants, each acting as Sender and Receiver across five trials. In each trial the Sender was immersed in a VR environment depicting a positive arousing experience (e.g., skiing downhill, driving a racing car). The Receiver’s task was to identify the correct target image from a set of 5 (i.e., 20% chance) matched for mean valence and arousal. Initial analysis of Receiver performance showed hit rates that did not differ significantly from chance. However, a post-hoc analysis comparing participants top two choices to chance showed a mean hit rate of 52% which was significantly greater than chance (at 40%). Examination of possible associations between hit rate and belief in psi as well as the subjectively rated strength of the relationship between Sender-Receiver pairings only showed a correlation with the psi sub-scale of the RPB. Hence, we argue that participant hit rate is more suggestive than conclusive of a telepathic effect. In addition, we outline a number of methodological refinements which we think could help to improve the viability and effectiveness of using VR.
In the article, we establish a sharp double inequality involving the ratio of generalized complete elliptic integrals of the first kind, which is the improvement and generalization of some previously ...known results.
Due to expected benefits such as citizen participation and innovation, the release of Public Sector Information as open data is getting increased attention on various levels of government. However, ...currently data release by governments is still novel and there is little experience and knowledge thus far about its benefits, costs and barriers. This is compounded by a lack of understanding about how internal processes influence data release. Our aim in this paper is to get a better understanding of these processes and how they influence data release, i.e., to find determinants for the release of public sector information. For this purpose, we conducted workshops, interviews, questionnaires, desk research and practice based cases in the education program of our university, involving six local public sector organizations. We find that the way data is stored, the way data is obtained and the way data is used by a department are crucial indicators for open data release. We conclude with the lessons learned based on our research findings. These findings are: we should take a nuanced approach towards data release, avoid releasing data for its own sake, and take small incremental steps to explore data release.
•We examined six public sector organizations aiming to release open data.•Decentralized data storage acts as a barrier to data release.•External data sourcing acts as a barrier to data release.•Not using data in the core process of a public service acts as barrier to data release.
In this work, we fabricated the free-standing porous silicon/MXene-2:1 composite film (pSi/MXene-2:1 film) as anodes for LIBs by facile vacuum filtration method. The pSi/MXene-2:1 film possesses ...excellent mechanical flexibility and the voids in the structure can well accommodate the volume expansion during cycling. Accordingly the film anodes shows steady cycling performance and rate performance.
Display omitted
•Free-standing and binder-free pSi/MXene films were synthesized by vacuum filtration.•The porous structure accommodates volume expansion of pSi.•Thin thickness of pSi flakes provides superior reation kinetics.•The layer-by-layer structure ensures adequate electrical contact of pSi with MXene.•Both of half and full cell exhibit superior electrochemical performance.
Silicon is an ideal anode candidate for next-generation lithium-ion batteries (LIBs) due to its high specific capacity, low working potential and abundant sources. However, its practical application is seriously hindered by its huge volume expansion, which leads to the destruction of the electrode structure and the short cycle life. Herein, we fabricated flexible self-supporting binder-free porous silicon/MXene-2:1 composite film (pSi/MXene-2:1 film) as anode for LIBs by vacuum filtration. The pSi possesses sheet-shape resulting from layered montmorillonite, which is beneficial to shorten ion transport length. Furthermore, the pSi/MXene-2:1 film possesses excellent mechanical flexibility and the voids in the structure can well accommodate the volume expansion during cycling. Benefitting from these advantages, the pSi/MXene-2:1 film anode shows steady cycling performance with 1039.3 mAh/g at 500 mA g−1 after 200 cycles and excellent rate performance with 840.3 mAh/g at 5 A/g. Furthermore, a high reversible capacity of 1201 mAh/g can be obtained at 1 A/g for pSi/MXene-2:1||LiFePO4 full cell. This work provides a strategy to fabricate high-capacity and long-cycle self-supporting silicon-based anodes for flexible LIBs.
This paper presents a method for the analysis of process \(J/\psi \rightarrow \rho\pi \rightarrow \pi^+\pi^-\pi^0\) based on the consideration of the angles of expansion of finite pion pairs. The ...proposed approach makes it possible to effectively carry out selection of events in both neutral and charge-conjugate modes of the decay of \(J/\psi \rightarrow \rho\pi\). Application of the method for the analysis of similar three-body decays in some cases will simplify the analysis and refine current results.
In 2-party Circuit-based Private Set Intersection (Circuit-PSI),
and
hold sets S
and S
respectively and wish to securely compute a function
over the set S
∩ S
(e.g., cardinality, sum over associated ...attributes, or threshold intersection). Following a long line of work, Pinkas
(PSTY, Eurocrypt 2019) showed how to construct a concretely efficient Circuit-PSI protocol with linear communication complexity. However, their protocol requires super-linear computation.
In this work, we construct concretely efficient Circuit-PSI protocols with linear computational and communication cost. Further, our protocols are more performant than the state-of-the-art, PSTY – we are ≈ 2.3
more communication efficient and are up to 2.8
faster. We obtain our improvements through a new primitive called
(RB-OPPRF) that can be seen as a strict generalization of Batch OPPRFs that were used in PSTY. This primitive could be of independent interest.
Private Set Intersection (PSI) protocols can securely compute the intersection of the private sets on the server and the client without revealing additional data. This work introduces the concept of ...Privacy-Preserving Feature Retrieved Private Set Intersection (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {P^{2}FRPSI} </tex-math></inline-formula>). In <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {P^{2}FRPSI} </tex-math></inline-formula> protocols, the client can obtain the intersection that satisfies a given predicate without revealing the predicate and additional data. We formally define the <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {P^{2}FRPSI} </tex-math></inline-formula> protocol, including its inputs, outputs, functionality, and security. To achieve the privacy guarantee in <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {P^{2}FRPSI} </tex-math></inline-formula> protocols, a new two-party protocol is designed, namely Secure Secret Shared Retrieval (<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {S^{3}R} </tex-math></inline-formula>), which can be used to securely determine whether each item on the server satisfies the predicate. We construct an <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {S^{3}R} </tex-math></inline-formula> protocol and prove its security in the semi-honest model. On the basis of this, we design an efficient OT-based <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {P^{2}FRPSI} </tex-math></inline-formula> protocol and an easy-to-implement DH-based <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {P^{2}FRPSI} </tex-math></inline-formula> protocol and prove that they are secure in the semi-honest model. Our implementation shows that the OT-based <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {P^{2}FRPSI} </tex-math></inline-formula> protocol can perform the matching for about 1000K items in 3.8 seconds with a single thread. Moreover, the DH-based <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {P^{2}FRPSI} </tex-math></inline-formula> can perform the matching for about 7000K items in one hour with four threads, with communication totaling 1456 MB, while the OT-based <inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">\mathsf {P^{2}FRPSI} </tex-math></inline-formula> protocol requires 1673 MB.
The study's aim was to explore the associations between meditation, extended human capacities, and synchronistic experiences. 725 participants completed questionnaires and online tasks assessing ...these variables before and after engaging in personal growth workshops. The results showed that 1) meditators scored higher than non-meditators on noetic experiences and beliefs, and pre-workshop synchronistic experiences; 2) meditation frequency was associated with higher noetic experiences and beliefs, and pre-workshop synchronistic experiences; 3) meditation-based workshop participants reported more synchronistic experiences during their workshop than non-meditation-based workshop participants; and 4) noetic experiences mediated the association between meditation frequency and pre-workshop synchronistic experiences.
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