Atom probe tomography (APT) has been utilized to investigate the microstructure of two model borosilicate glasses designed to understand the solubility limits of phosphorous pentoxide (P2O5). This component is found in certain high-level radioactive defence wastes destined for vitrification, where phase separation can potentially lead to a number of issues relating to the processing of the glass and its long-term chemical and structural stability. The development of suitable focused ion beam (FIB)-preparation routes and APT analysis conditions were initially determined for the model glasses, before examining their detailed microstructures. In a 3.0 mol% P2O5-doped glass, both visual inspection and sensitive statistical analysis of the APT data show homogeneous microstructures, while raising the content to 4.0 mol% initiates the formation of phosphorus-enriched nanoscale precipitates. This study confirms the expected inhomogeneities and phase separation of these glasses and offers routes to characterizing these at near-atomic scale resolution using APT.

Developmental dyscalculia (DD) is a specific learning disability which prevents children from acquiring adequate numerical and arithmetical competences. We investigated whether difficulties in children with DD spread beyond the numerical domain and impact also their ability to perceive time. A group of 37 children/adolescent with and without DD were tested with an auditory categorization task measuring time perception thresholds in the sub-second (0.25-1 s) and supra-second (0.75-3 s) ranges. Results showed that auditory time perception was strongly impaired in children with DD at both time scales. The impairment remained even when age, non-verbal reasoning, and gender were regressed out. Overall, our results show that the difficulties of DD can affect magnitudes other than numerical and contribute to the increasing evidence that frames dyscalculia as a disorder affecting multiple neurocognitive and perceptual systems.

Groupitizing is a well-established strategy in numerosity perception that enhances speed and sensory precision. Building on the ATOM theory, Anobile proposed the sensorimotor numerosity system, which posits a strong link between number and action. Previous studies using motor adaptation technology have shown that high-frequency motor adaptation leads to underestimation of numerosity perception, while low-frequency adaptation leads to overestimation. However, the impact of motor adaptation on groupitizing, and whether visual motion adaptation produces similar effects, remain unclear. In this study, we investigate the persistence of the advantage of groupitizing after motor adaptation and explore the effects of visual motion adaptation. Surprisingly, our findings reveal that proprioceptive motor adaptation weakens the advantage of groupitizing, indicating a robust effect of motor adaptation even when groupitizing is employed. Moreover, we observe a bidirectional relationship, as groupitizing also weakens the adaptation effect. These results highlight the complex interplay between motor adaptation and groupitizing in numerosity perception. Furthermore, our study provides evidence that visual motion adaptation also has an adaptation effect, but does not fully replicate the effects of proprioceptive motor adaptation on groupitizing. In conclusion, our research underscores the importance of groupitizing as a valuable strategy in numerosity perception, and sheds light on the influence of motion adaptation on this strategy.

When participants decide whether a presented tone is loud or soft they react faster to loud tones with a top-sided response key in comparison to a bottom-sided response key and vice versa for soft tones. This effect is comparable to the well-established horizontal Spatial-Numerical Association of Response Codes (SNARC) effect and is often referred to as Spatial-Musical Association of Response Codes (SMARC) effect for loudness. The SMARC effect for loudness is typically explained by the assumption of a spatial representation or by the polarity correspondence principle. Crucially, both theories differ in the prediction of the SMARC effect when loudness is task-irrelevant. Therefore, we investigated whether the SMARC effect still occurs in a timbre discrimination task: Participants (N = 36) heard a single tone and classified its timbre with vertically arranged response keys. Additionally, the tone\'s loudness level varied in six levels. In case of a spatial representation, the SMARC effect should still occur while in case of polarity corresponding principle, the effect should be absent. Results showed that the SMARC effect was still present and that the differences between top-sided and bottom-sided responses were a linear function of loudness level indicating a continuous spatial representation of loudness.

Psychology suffers from the absence of mathematically-formalized primitives. As a result, conceptual and quantitative studies lack an ontological basis that would situate them in the company of natural sciences. The article addresses this problem by describing a minimal psychic structure, expressed in the algebra of quantum theory. The structure is demarcated into categories of emotion and color, renowned as elementary psychological phenomena. This is achieved by means of quantum-theoretic qubit state space, isomorphic to emotion and color experiences both in meaning and math. In particular, colors are mapped to the qubit states through geometric affinity between the HSL-RGB color solids and the Bloch sphere, widely used in physics. The resulting correspondence aligns with the recent model of subjective experience, producing a unified spherical map of emotions and colors. This structure is identified as a semantic atom of natural thinking-a unit of affectively-colored personal meaning, involved in elementary acts of a binary decision. The model contributes to finding a unified ontology of both inert and living Nature, bridging previously disconnected fields of research. In particular, it enables theory-based coordination of emotion, decision, and cybernetic sciences, needed to achieve new levels of practical impact.

A theory of magnitude (ATOM) suggests that a generalized magnitude system in the brain processes magnitudes such as space, time, and numbers. Numerous behavioral and neurocognitive studies have provided support to ATOM theory. However, the evidence for common magnitude processing primarily comes from the studies in which numerical and temporal information are presented visually. Our current understanding of such cross-dimensional magnitude interactions is limited to visual modality only. However, it is still unclear whether the ATOM-framework accounts for the integration of cross-modal magnitude information. To examine the cross-modal influence of numerical magnitude on temporal processing of the tone, we conducted three experiments using a temporal bisection task. We presented the numerical magnitude information in the visual domain and the temporal information in the auditory either simultaneously with duration judgment task (Experiment-1), before duration judgment task (Experiment-2), and before duration judgment task but with numerical magnitude also being task-relevant (Experiment-3). The results suggest that the numerical information presented in the visual domain affects temporal processing of the tone only when the numerical magnitudes were task-relevant and available while making a temporal judgment (Experiments-1 and 3). However, numerical information did not interfere with temporal information when presented temporally separated from the duration information (Experiments-2). The findings indicate that the influence of visual numbers on temporal processing in cross-modal settings may not arise from the common magnitude system but instead from general cognitive mechanisms like attention and memory.

There is increasing evidence that action and perception interact in the processing of magnitudes such as duration and numerosity. Sustained physical exercise (such as running or cycling) increases the apparent duration of visual stimuli presented during the activity. However, the effect of exercise on numerosity perception has not yet been investigated. Here, we asked participants to make either a temporal or a numerical judgment by comparing the duration or numerosity of standard stimuli displayed at rest with those presented while running. The results support previous reports in showing that physical activity significantly expands perceived duration; however, it had no effect on perceived numerosity. Furthermore, the distortions of the perceived durations vanished soon after the running session, making it unlikely that physiological factors such as heart rate underlie the temporal distortion. Taken together, these results suggest a domain-selective influence of the motor system on the perception of time, rather than a general effect on magnitude.

Ozone is the third most important anthropogenic greenhouse gas after carbon dioxide and methane but has a larger uncertainty in its radiative forcing, in part because of uncertainty in the source characteristics of ozone precursors, nitrogen oxides, and volatile organic carbon that directly affect ozone formation chemistry. Tropospheric ozone also negatively affects human and ecosystem health. Biomass burning (BB) and urban emissions are significant but uncertain sources of ozone precursors. Here, we report global-scale, in situ airborne measurements of ozone and precursor source tracers from the NASA Atmospheric Tomography mission. Measurements from the remote troposphere showed that tropospheric ozone is regularly enhanced above background in polluted air masses in all regions of the globe. Ozone enhancements in air with high BB and urban emission tracers (2.1 to 23.8 ppbv [parts per billion by volume]) were generally similar to those in BB-influenced air (2.2 to 21.0 ppbv) but larger than those in urban-influenced air (-7.7 to 6.9 ppbv). Ozone attributed to BB was 2 to 10 times higher than that from urban sources in the Southern Hemisphere and the tropical Atlantic and roughly equal to that from urban sources in the Northern Hemisphere and the tropical Pacific. Three independent global chemical transport models systematically underpredict the observed influence of BB on tropospheric ozone. Potential reasons include uncertainties in modeled BB injection heights and emission inventories, export efficiency of BB emissions to the free troposphere, and chemical mechanisms of ozone production in smoke. Accurately accounting for intermittent but large and widespread BB emissions is required to understand the global tropospheric ozone burden.

In atomic and many-particle physics, Green functions often occur as propagators to formally represent the (integration over the) complete spectrum of the underlying Hamiltonian. However, while these functions are very crucial to describing many second- and higher-order perturbation processes, they have hardly been considered and classified for complex atoms. Here, we show how relativistic (many-electron) Green functions can be approximated and systematically improved for few- and many-electron atoms and ions. The representation of these functions is based on classes of virtual excitations, or so-called excitation schemes, with regard to given bound-state reference configurations, and by applying a multi-configuration Dirac-Hartree-Fock expansion of all atomic states involved. A first implementation of these approximate Green functions has been realized in the framework of Jac, the Jena Atomic Calculator, and will facilitate the study of various multi-photon and/or multiple electron (emission) processes.

Multicomponent reactions (MCRs) have inherent advantages in pot, atom, and step economy (PASE). This important green synthetic approach has gained increasing attention due to high efficiency, minimal waste, saving resources, and straightforward procedures. Presented in this review article are the recent development on 5-compoment reactions (5CRs) of the following six types: (I) five different molecules A + B + C + D + E; pseudo-5CRs including (II) 2A + B + C + D, (III) 2A + 2B + C, (IV) 3A + B + C, (V) 3A + 2B, and (VI) 4A + B. 5CRs with more than five-reaction centers are also included.