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Humans differ strongly in their willingness to try novel foods. Hesitance to try new foods is referred to as food neophobia. Understanding food neophobia is important, as it can be a significant barrier to adopt a healthy, balanced or plant-based diet. We here use electroencephalogram (EEG) recordings to obtain insight in the early attentional processes towards food stimuli as a function of food neophobia. 43 Dutch participants completed the food neophobia scale after which they were presented with pictures of familiar and unfamiliar foods and a 15-minute movie about the origin and production of an unfamiliar food. We extracted two EEG-based metrics of attention: the late positive potential (LPP) amplitude in response to the food pictures, and inter-subject correlations (ISC-EEG) during the movie. The latter is a novel metric, based on similarities in EEG over time between individuals who are presented with the same stimulus, and suitable for examining attention towards continuous stimuli such as movies. Additionally, participants were asked to taste familiar and unfamiliar soups, and they were asked to rate the pictures and soups for valence and arousal. ISC-EEG and the LPP amplitude increased and sip size decreased with food neophobia, not only for unfamiliar food pictures, but also for familiar food pictures. Self-reported emotional experience was affected by food neophobia for unfamiliar food pictures or soups, but not for familiar ones. We conclude that food neophobia is associated with increased attentional processing and immediate implicit behavior, for all food stimuli and not only for unfamiliar food stimuli. This indicates that all food-related stimuli are of high importance to food neophobic individuals and that self-reported emotion does not capture the entire experience of food. The results also indicates that, unlike the name suggest, food neophobia does not only affect processing of novel foods, but of any food regardless of familiarity.

Many studies address the effect of the COVID-19 restrictions on food consumption and health, focusing on one or two measurements. Whether or not any effects are permanent or change over a longer period of restrictions has not been assessed in such studies. This study presented a survey containing questions on food consumption, exercise and self-assessed physical and mental health, repeatedly for six times over a 20-week period (July to November 2020) to a representative sample of 258 Dutch consumers. The majority of consumers reported no change in food consumption compared to before the COVID-19 restrictions, two smaller groups report a change to a more, or a less, healthy choice. This trend appears stable over the course of the measurements. The ‘healthy changers’ seem to couple a healthy and more diverse diet to healthy exercise habits, in contrast to the ‘unhealthy changers’. No change was observed in self-assessed physical health over the measurements. Overall a decline in time spent exercising showed, as well as a decline in self-assessed mental health. Clearly a lockdown situation affects food choice, exercise habits and (self-assessed) mental health. The fact that habits are able to suddenly change, for better or for worse, and that a decrease in mental health was reported, suggests that such insights need to be further explored to help individual consumers retain a healthy diet and lifestyle, and governments devise effective public health recommendations.

How we perceive the world is not solely determined by our experiences at a given moment in time, but also by what we have experienced in our immediate past. Here, we investigated whether such sequential effects influence the affective appraisal of food images. Participants from 16 different countries (N = 1278) watched a randomly presented sequence of 60 different food images and reported their affective appraisal of each image in terms of valence and arousal. For both measures, we conducted an inter-trial analysis, based on whether the rating on the preceding trial(s) was low or high. The analyses showed that valence and arousal ratings for a given food image are both assimilated towards the ratings on the previous trial (i.e., a positive serial dependence). For a given trial, the arousal rating depends on the arousal ratings up to three trials back. For valence, we observed a positive dependence for the immediately preceding trial only, while a negative (repulsive) dependence was present up to four trials back. These inter-trial effects were larger for males than for females, but independent of the participants’ BMI, age, and cultural background. The results of this exploratory study may be relevant for the design of websites of food delivery services and restaurant menus.

Food experiences can be summarized along two main dimensions: valence and arousal, which can be measured explicitly with subjective ratings or implicitly with physiological and behavioural measures. Food experiences are not only driven by the food’s intrinsic properties, such as its taste, texture, and aroma, but also by extrinsic properties such as brand information and the consumers’ previous experiences with the foods. In this study, valence and arousal to intrinsic and extrinsic properties of soy sauce were measured in consumers that varied in their previous experience with soy sauce, using a combination of explicit (scores and emojis), implicit (heart rate frequency and skin conductance), and behavioural measures (facial expressions). Forty participants, high- and low-frequency users, were presented with samples of rice and three commercial soy sauces without and with brand information that either matched or non-matched the taste of the soy sauce. In general, skin conductance and facial expressions showed relatively low arousal during exposure to the brand name, increased arousal in anticipation of the taste, and again lowest arousal during tasting. Heart rate frequency was lowest during exposure to the brand name, increased during anticipation, and increased further during tasting (probably resulting from the motor activity during chewing). Furthermore, the results showed that explicit liking and arousal scores were primarily affected by the taste of the specific soy sauce and by the participants’ previous experience with soy sauces. These scores were not affected by branding information. In contrast, facial expressions, physiological skin conductance (level and response), and heart rate frequency were primarily affected by 1) the participants’ level of experience with soy sauce, 2) whether or not branding information was provided, and 3) whether or not the branding information matched with the taste. In conclusion, this study suggests that liking scores may be most sensitive to the food’s intrinsic taste properties, whereas implicit measures may be most sensitive to extrinsic properties such as brand information. Both explicit and implicit measures were affected by the consumers’ previous food experiences.

We report the case of a 79-year-old man with acute myocardial infarction caused by left main trunk lesion, who experienced cardiogenic shock during percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI). To reverse the cardiogenic shock, we initiated veno-arterial extra corporeal membrane oxygenation (VA-ECMO) without an intra-aortic balloon pump (IABP) due to the severe tortuosity of the left external iliac artery. Although PCI was successful, arterial pressure monitoring revealed that the pulse pressure was too low to recover from the cardiogenic shock of decreased cardiac contraction function (the left ventricular ejection fraction was 30%). Thus, we decided to use IABP from the brachial artery to improve the hemodynamics. Immediately after the deployment of a 6-Fr IABP system (Takumi) from the left brachial artery, the pulse pressure was restored and finally VA-ECMO was withdrawn from the patient without complications. Although using IABP in combination with VA-ECMO is a reasonable strategy for cardiogenic shock, the effectiveness of this combination remains controversial. In this case, IABP added to VA-ECMO clearly achieved an improvement of pulse pressure and vital signs. Based on this result, monitoring of the pulse waveform is an effective tool to determine whether the concomitant use of IABP with VA-ECMO is indicated. Moreover, when it is difficult to insert IABP from the femoral arteries, the use of a 6-Fr IABP system (Takumi) approaching from the brachial artery should be considered.

Viewing images of food triggers the desire to eat and this effect increases when images represent food in a more vivid way. Cinemagraphs are a new medium that is intermediate between photographs and videos: most of the frame is static, while some details are animated in a seamless loop, resulting in a vivid viewing experience. On social media cinemagraphs are increasingly used for food-related communication. Given their vivid appearance we hypothesized that food cinemagraphs may evoke stronger appetitive responses than their static counterparts (stills). This would make them a promising medium for food advertisements on the Internet or on digital menu boards. In this study we measured the ‘wanting’ (appetitive) and ‘liking’ (affective) responses to both cinemagraph and stills representing a wide range of different food products. Our results show that food cinemagraphs slightly increase ‘wanting’ scores while not affecting ‘liking’ scores, compared to similar stills. Although we found no overall main effect of image dynamics on ‘liking’, we did observe a significant effect for some individual food items. The effects of image dynamics on ‘wanting’ and ‘liking’ appear to be product specific: while dynamic images were scored higher on ‘wanting’ or ‘liking’ for some products, static images were scored higher on these factors for other products. Observer responses to a free association task indicate that image dynamics can affect the appeal of a food product in two ways: by emphasizing its hedonic qualities (lusciousness, freshness) and by enhancing the observers’ awareness of their own core affect (‘liking’) for the product. We conclude that the effective use of cinemagraphs in food advertisements therefore requires a careful consideration of the characteristics (hedonic aspects) of the food product that are to be highlighted through image motion and the inherent preferences (core liking) of the target group.

Takotsubo syndrome (TTS) patients show transient ventricular dysfunction without coronary artery stenosis. We report a pregnant woman with TTS occurring concomitantly with severe pre-eclampsia (PE). A primiparous woman complained of dyspnea at 35 weeks of gestation. She showed severe PE, and cardiac ultrasound identified akinesis of the anterior lower wall. On the same day, emergent cesarean section was performed due to a nonreassuring fetus status, yielding a male infant with an umbilical artery pH of 6.851. Unfortunately, the neonate died of multiple organ failure. Following the delivery, her cardiac function markedly improved, and coronary angiography showed no coronary artery stenosis. Considering the clinical findings, we diagnosed the patient with TTS. Regarding antenatally occurring TTS, only six patients have been reported including the present one. Of the six patients, three had severe PE. Although previous reports on pregnancy-associated TTS described good maternal outcomes, antenatally occurring TTS complicated by severe PE may become critical for fetuses.

Implicit (‘unconscious’) approach–avoidance tendencies towards stimuli can be measured using the Approach Avoidance Task (AAT). We recently expanded a toolbox for analyzing the raw data of a novel, mobile version of the AAT (mAAT), that asks participants to move their phone towards their face (pull) or away (push) in response to images presented on the phone. We here tested the mAAT reaction time and the mAAT distance in a study with 71 Dutch participants that were recruited online and performed an experiment without coming to the laboratory. The participants used both the mAAT and (explicit) rating scales to respond to photographic images of food. As hypothesized, the rated wanting, rated valence and mAAT reaction time indicated a preference for palatable over unpalatable food, and for Dutch over Asian food. Additionally, as expected, arousal was rated higher for unpalatable than for palatable food, and higher for Dutch than for Asian food. The mAAT distance indicated that the unpalatable food images were moved across larger distances, regardless of the movement direction (pull or push), compared to the palatable food images; and the Dutch food images were moved across larger distances than the Asian food images. We conclude that the mAAT can be used to implicitly probe approach–avoidance motivation for complex images in the food domain. The new measure of mAAT distance may be used as an implicit measure of arousal. The ratings and the mAAT measures do not reflect the exact same information and may complement each other. Implicit measures, such as mAAT variables, are particularly valuable when response biases that can occur when using explicit ratings are expected.

The present study investigated the potential of implicit physiological measures to provide objective measures of affective food experience in contrast to explicit self-report ratings in a cross-cultural context. Dutch and Thai participants viewed 120 food images portraying universal food image categories (regular and molded food) and cultural food image categories (typically Dutch and Thai food). The universal food images were taken as ground truth high and low valence stimuli, where we assumed no genuine difference in affective experience between nationalities. In contrast, for the cultural food images, we did expect a genuine difference between nationalities. Participants were asked to rate valence, arousal and liking of each food image. In addition, heart rate (HR) and phasic electrodermal activity (EDA) responses to the images were recorded. Typically Asian and Western response biases were found for explicit ratings of regular and molded food with an extreme response style for Dutch, and a middle response style for Thai participants. However, such bias was not observed in HR. For cultural food image categories, HR showed the hypothesized interaction between participant nationality and food image category, reflecting the expected genuine difference between nationalities in affective food experience. Besides presenting participants with images, we also asked participants to taste typically Thai and Dutch drinks. Similar to images, a significant interaction between participant nationality and cultural food category was found for HR. An interaction was also found for sip size, while this was not seen in explicit measures. We attribute this to differences in the moment that these measures were taken. In this study, phasic EDA did not appear to be a sensitive measure of affective food experience, possibly since stimuli mostly differed in valence rather than arousal. To conclude, our study constitutes an example where cultural bias negatively affected the accuracy of self-reports, and only the implicit physiological measures followed the prior expectations of genuine food experience, indicating the potential of these measures to study cross-cultural food experience.

With the increasing globalization, new unfamiliar flavors gradually find their way into local Western cuisines. The mechanisms behind the successful integration of novel flavors into local cuisines are largely unknown. This study investigates the effects of frequency of soy sauce use, levels of food neophobia, and brand specificity on liking of a relatively unknown flavor in the Netherlands, soy sauce. A total of eighty-nine (26 men and 63 women; mean age 47.5 ± 17.7 years) high- and low-frequency users of soy sauce rated liking of five soy sauces separately presented with and without branding information. Liking of four soy sauces with the typical salty and savory flavor increased with increasing frequency of use, and with decreasing levels of food neophobia. Another soy sauce with additives resulting in a distinctive taste was liked irrespective of the frequency of use. Soy sauces, which were recognized correctly or incorrectly as the participants’ own familiar brand, received 50% higher or lower liking ratings than other soy sauces, respectively. Furthermore, users of one of the brands preferred the taste of their own brand over that of other brands, whereas users of the other brands did not show such specificity, indicating clear differences in specificity of liking soy sauce among the various user groups. This study provides insights into consumer liking and preference of semi-familiar foods, revealing the contribution of consumer traits and brand familiarity that may influence the spread of unfamiliar foods.

Prior research using immersive technology has shown that consumption contexts can be successfully recreated to elicit effects on hedonic food evaluations, but the food-specificity of these effects is as of yet unclear. The current study investigates how repeated exposure to foods in congruent and incongruent immersive contexts affects hedonic perception over time. Two groups of participants (N = 23, N = 18) were exposed to three food products (sushi, popsicle and iced tea) in either an immersive beach context or an immersive sushi restaurant context for seven days. On the eighth day, participants were exposed to the same foods once more, but switched to the other context. Hedonic evaluations were collected prior to and during tasting at initial exposure (day 1), after repeated exposure to the same context (day 7) and in the switched context (day 8); consumption behavior was monitored on exposure days (days 2–6). Results showed that prior to tasting, expected liking and desire to eat were higher for congruent food-context combinations (popsicle at the beach, sushi in the sushi restaurant) than for incongruent combinations (popsicle in the sushi restaurant, sushi at the beach). Upon tasting, no differences were found in average food liking, but individual liking ratings for congruent (vs. incongruent) food-context combinations were more consistent over time. Immersive contexts also elicited general effects, such that a typical consumption environment (sushi restaurant) increased food consumption and yielded more consistent product liking ratings over time. Findings underline the importance of taking a holistic view on consumer testing, and showcase the potential of immersive technology.

The Simons Array upgrades the POLARBEAR experiment, which measures the cosmic microwave background from the Atacama Desert in Chile, with three newly developed receivers. Each receiver has 7,588 transition-edge sensor bolometers with a raw data rate of approximately 20 MB/s. This significantly increased data rate required us to develop a new data-acquisition (DAQ) and data-management system. As the network bandwidth from our observatory to our data-storage sites outside Chile is not high enough to send all the raw data, we compress the raw data on-site. The expected yearly compressed data rate is approximately 60 TB from each receiver. We have also developed a new housekeeping DAQ system. The new housekeeping DAQ system is a distributed system to handle the various newly added monitoring systems and to better understand our instruments and environments. Those data can also be fetched by another module for real-time monitoring of our instrument from all over the world with latencies on the order of minutes. We deployed the first receiver in late 2018 and started the commissioning of the DAQ system. The DAQ system has been working without significant problems and already accumulates a considerable amount of the new receiver data from the commissioning observations. In this presentation, we summarize and report the status of the new systems.

Implicit approach-avoidance tendencies can be measured by the approach-avoidance task (AAT). The emergence of mobile variants of the AAT enable its use for both in-the-lab and in-the-field experiments. Within the food domain, use of the AAT is concentrated in research on eating disorders or healthy eating and is seldom used as an implicit measure of food experience. Given the prevalence of explicit measures in this field, the AAT may provide additional valuable insights into food experience. To facilitate the use of the AAT as an implicit measure, a processing tool and accompanying graphical user interface (GUI) have been developed for a mobile smartphone variant of the AAT. This tool improves upon the existing processing framework of this mobile AAT by applying more robust filtering and introduces additional sensor correction algorithms to improve the quality of sensor data. Along with refined estimates of reaction time (RT) and reaction force (RF), these processing improvements introduce a new metric: the response distance (RD). The capabilities of the tool, along with the potential added value of calculating RF and RD, are explained in this paper through the processing of pilot data on molded and unmolded food. In particular, the RF and RD may be indicative of participants' arousal. The tool developed in this paper is open source and compatible with other experiments making use of the mobile AAT within, and beyond, the domain of food experience.

The temporal resolution of X-ray tomography, using a synchrotron radiation X-ray source, has been improved to millisecond order in recent years. However, the sample must be rotated at a speed of more than a few thousand revolutions per minute, which makes it difficult to control the environment around the sample. In this study, a high-speed rotation device has been developed, comprising two synchronized coaxial motors movable along the direction of the axis, which can stretch or compress the rotating sample. Using this device, tomograms of breaking rubber were successfully obtained at a temporal resolution of 10 ms.

We trained a model to distinguish an extreme high arousal, unpleasant drink from regular drinks based on a range of implicit behavioral and physiological responses to naturalistic tasting. The trained model predicted arousal ratings of regular drinks, highlighting the possibility to estimate affective experience without having to rely on subjective ratings.

Initial research indicates that the use of immersive technologies may improve the predictive validity and reliability of liking scores in consumer testing. However, how immersive technologies impact Just-About-Right ratings is hardly known. Forty-five participants took part in three tasting sessions, each in a different context: 1) laboratory, 2) immersive context simulating a café using audiovisual cues, and 3) real café. Each session, participants tasted four tomato soups varying in salt content preceded by a warm-up sample. Liking, optimal levels of sensory attributes (JAR) and engagement were measured. Results showed that there were no differences in liking or JAR ratings on sensory attributes of the soups across the three contexts. Nevertheless, participants felt more engaged in the real café and simulated café than in the laboratory. These results contribute to a better understanding of how sensory differences as assessed in a laboratory or immersive context relate to sensory differences that consumers would notice when they use the products in real-life.

We report a measurement of the E-mode polarization power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using 150 GHz data taken from July 2014 to December 2016 with the POLARBEAR experiment. We reach an effective polarization map noise level of $32\,\mu\mathrm{K}$-$\mathrm{arcmin}$ across an observation area of 670 square degrees. We measure the EE power spectrum over the angular multipole range $500 \leq \ell, Comment: 15 pages, 5 figures, submitted to ApJ

We present a measurement of the $B$-mode polarization power spectrum of the cosmic microwave background (CMB) using taken from July 2014 to December 2016 with the POLARBEAR experiment. The CMB power spectra are measured using observations at 150 GHz with an instantaneous array sensitivity of $\mathrm{NET}_\mathrm{array}=23\, \mu \mathrm{K} \sqrt{\mathrm{s}}$ on a 670 square degree patch of sky centered at (RA, Dec)=($+0^\mathrm{h}12^\mathrm{m}0^\mathrm{s},-59^\circ18^\prime$). A continuously rotating half-wave plate is used to modulate polarization and to suppress low-frequency noise. We achieve $32\,\mu\mathrm{K}$-$\mathrm{arcmin}$ effective polarization map noise with a knee in sensitivity of $\ell = 90$, where the inflationary gravitational wave signal is expected to peak. The measured $B$-mode power spectrum is consistent with a $\Lambda$CDM lensing and single dust component foreground model over a range of multipoles $50 \leq \ell \leq 600$. The data disfavor zero $C_\ell^{BB}$ at $2.2\sigma$ using this $\ell$ range of POLARBEAR data alone. We cross-correlate our data with Planck high frequency maps and find the low-$\ell$ $B$-mode power in the combined dataset to be consistent with thermal dust emission. We place an upper limit on the tensor-to-scalar ratio $r < 0.90$ at 95% confidence level after marginalizing over foregrounds.

Probing food experience or liking through verbal ratings has its shortcomings. We compare explicit ratings to a range of (neuro)physiological and behavioral measures with respect to their performance in distinguishing drinks associated with different emotional experience. Seventy participants tasted and rated the valence and arousal of eight regular drinks and a &ldquo, ground truth&rdquo, high-arousal, low-valence vinegar solution. The discriminative power for distinguishing between the vinegar solution and the regular drinks was highest for sip size, followed by valence ratings, arousal ratings, heart rate, skin conductance level, facial expression of &ldquo, disgust,&rdquo, pupil diameter, and Electroencephalogram (EEG) frontal alpha asymmetry. Within the regular drinks, a positive correlation was found between rated arousal and heart rate, and a negative correlation between rated arousal and Heart Rate Variability (HRV). Most physiological measures showed consistent temporal patterns over time following the announcement of the drink and taking a sip. This was consistent over all nine drinks, but the peaks were substantially higher for the vinegar solution than for the regular drinks, likely caused by emotion. Our results indicate that implicit variables have the potential to differentiate between drinks associated with different emotional experiences. In addition, this study gives us insight into the physiological temporal response patterns associated with taking a sip.

International audience; Polarbear-2A is the first of three receivers in the Simons array, a cosmic microwave background experiment located on the Atacama Plateau in Chile. Polarbear-2A was deployed and achieved the first light in January 2019 by mapping the microwave emission from planet observations. Commissioning work is underway to prepare the receiver for science observations.

Because of the globalization of world food markets there is a growing need for valid and language independent self-assessment tools to measure food-related emotions. We recently introduced the EmojiGrid as a language-independent, graphical affective self-report tool. The EmojiGrid is a Cartesian grid that is labeled with facial icons (emoji) expressing different degrees of valence and arousal. Users can report their subjective ratings of valence and arousal by marking the location on the area of the grid that corresponds to the emoji that best represent their affective state when perceiving a given food or beverage. In a previous study we found that the EmojiGrid is robust, self-explaining and intuitive: valence and arousal ratings were independent of framing and verbal instructions. This suggests that the EmojiGrid may be a valuable tool for cross-cultural studies. To test this hypothesis, we performed an online experiment in which respondents from Germany (GE), Japan (JP), the Netherlands (NL) and the United Kingdom (UK) rated valence and arousal for 60 different food images (covering a large part of the affective space) using the EmojiGrid. The results show that the nomothetic relation between valence and arousal has the well-known U-shape for all groups. The European groups (GE, NL and UK) closely agree in their overall rating behavior. Compared to the European groups, the Japanese group systematically gave lower mean arousal ratings to low valenced images and lower mean valence ratings to high valenced images. These results agree with known cultural response characteristics. We conclude that the EmojiGrid is potentially a valid and language-independent affective self-report tool for cross-cultural research on food-related emotions. It reliably reproduces the familiar nomothetic U-shaped relation between valence and arousal across cultures, with shape variations reflecting established cultural characteristics.

International audience; Background: Real-life human eating behaviour does not take place in a vacuum, rather it happens in context. The context in which consumers eat their foods influences the acceptance of the consumed foods. Consequently, consumers' hedonic and sensory ratings elicited in a natural consumption context will differ from those elicited under controlled sensory laboratory conditions. Moreover, foods are rarely consumed on one single occasion but are typically consumed repeatedly and ratings may change over repeated consumptions as well. Often, consumer acceptance is tested explicitly, for example with liking ratings, especially when the testing is done outside the laboratory. Implicit tests such as facial expressions and physiological measurements of the autonomic nervous system can provide additional information on consumer acceptance. As a result of technological advantages, such tests are no longer limited to the laboratory but can also be used in natural consumption contexts. Method: Eighteen healthy Dutch consumers (18–65 years of age) tested four test foods plus a warm-up sample ten times on consecutive weekdays and on similar hours using their own laptop and webcam. Test locations alternated between the sensory laboratory and the participant's own home. Explicit measures included liking scores and scores on ten sensory taste/flavour/texture attributes, and implicit measures included facial expressions, heart rate and consumption duration using Face ReaderTM. This study was the first to validate the Face ReaderTM for usage at home. Results: The liking scores and sensory profiles varied between test foods (p < 0.05), but not between test locations and only some specific sensory attributes showed systematic variation over repeated consumption. In contrast, implicit measures showed systematic effects of test foods, test locations, and repeated consumptions (p < 0.05). Compared to consumption in the laboratory, consumption at home was faster, triggered higher heart rates, and triggered more intense facial expressions of happiness, contempt, disgust and boredom. Conclusions: Implicit tests were more sensitive to effects of test location and repeated consumption than explicit tests. Additional research is required to investigate the relevance of these measures to long term consumer acceptance of food products.

We developed a prototype radar for sea-tide level measurement. The radar was evaluated in a laboratory room. It was confirmed that the radar could detect the change in the position of a target with a resolution of

Dynamic Nuclear Polarization (DNP) which is often employed for polarized solid targets, needs free electron doping to transfer high electron polarization to target nuclei. A newly proposed “mechanical-doping” method was applied in preparation of a polarized target material. A solid material having been crushed into small particles with a diameter of about 20 nm, is mixed with a free radical. This allows target nuclei to have more chance to interact with the free electrons or polarized nuclei surrounding the small particles. A first DNP test at a magnetic field of 2.5 T and a temperature of 0.9 K was performed with a sample of LaF_{3} processed in the mechanical-doping method to introduce a free radical TEMPO dispersed in ethanol. ^{19}F polarizations of 3.3 % and -2.7 % were achieved. The obtained polarization enhancement for ^{19}F demonstrated effectiveness of the new method.

International audience; POLARBEAR is a cosmic microwave background (CMB) polarization experiment located in the Atacama desert in Chile. The science goals of the POLARBEAR project are to do a deep search for CMB B-mode polarization created by inflationary gravitational waves, as well as characterize the CMB B-mode signal from gravitational lensing. POLARBEAR-1 started observations in 2012, and the POLARBEAR team has published a series of results from its first two seasons of observations, including the first measurement of a non-zero B-mode polarization angular power spectrum, measured at sub-degree scales where the dominant signal is gravitational lensing of the CMB. The Simons Array expands POLARBEAR to include an additional two telescopes with next-generation POLARBEAR-2 multi-chroic receivers, observing at 95, 150, 220, and 270 GHz.The POLARBEAR-2A focal plane has 7,588 transition-edge sensor bolometers, read out with frequency-division multiplexing, with 40 frequency channels within the readout bandwidth of 1.5 to 4.5 MHz. The frequency channels are defined by a low-loss lithographed aluminum spiral inductor and interdigitated capacitor in series with each bolometer, creating a resonant frequency for each channel's unique voltage bias and current readout. Characterization of the readout includes measuring resonant peak locations and heights and fitting to a circuit model both above and below the bolometer superconducting transition temperature. This information is used determine the optimal detector bias frequencies and characterize stray impedances which may affect bolometer operation and stability. The detector electrical characterization includes measurements of the transition properties by sweeping in temperature and in voltage bias, measurements of the bolometer saturation power, as well as measuring and removing any biases introduced by the readout circuit. We present results from the characterization, tuning, and operation of the fully integrated focal plane and readout for the first POLARBEAR-2 receiver, POLARBEAR-2A, during its pre-deployment integration run.

International audience; POLARBEAR-2 is a new receiver system, which will be deployed on the Simons Array telescope platform, for the measurement of Cosmic Microwave Background (CMB) polarization. The science goals with POLARBEAR-2 are to characterize the B-mode signal both at degree and sub-degree angular-scales. The degree-scale polarization data can be used for quantitative studies on inflation, such as the reconstruction of the energy scale of inflation. The sub-degree polarization data is an excellent tracer of large-scale structure in the universe, and will lead to precise constraints on the sum of the neutrino masses. In order to achieve these goals, POLARBEAR-2 employs 7588 polarization-sensitive antenna-coupled transition-edge sensor (TES) bolometers on the focal plane cooled to 0.27K with a three-stage Helium sorption refrigerator, which is ~6 times larger array over the current receiver system. The large TES bolometer array is read-out by an upgraded digital frequency-domain multiplexing system capable of multiplexing 40 bolometers through a single superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID). The first POLARBEAR-2 receiver, POLARBEAR-2A is constructed and the end-to-end testing to evaluate the integrated performance of detector, readout, and optics system is being conducted in the laboratory with various types of test equipments. The POLARBEAR-2A is scheduled to be deployed in 2018 at the Atacama desert in Chile. To further increase measurement sensitivity, two more POLARBEAR-2 type receivers will be deployed soon after the deployment (Simons Array project). The Simons Array will cover four frequency bands at 95GHz, 150GHz, 220GH and 270GHz for better control of the foreground signal. The projected constraints on a tensor-to-scalar ratio (amplitude of inflationary B-mode signal) is σ(r=0.1) = $6.0 \times 10^{-3}$ after foreground removal ($4.0 \times 10^{-3}$ (stat.)), and the sensitivity to the sum of the neutrino masses when combined with DESI spectroscopic galaxy survey data is 40 meV at 1-sigma after foreground removal (19 meV(stat.)). We will present an overview of the design, assembly and status of the laboratory testing of the POLARBEAR-2A receiver system as well as the Simons Array project overview.

A large-area Multi-Pixel Photon Counter (MPPC) sensitive to vacuum ultra violet (VUV) light has been developed for the liquid xenon (LXe) scintillation detector of the MEG II experiment. The LXe detector is designed to detect the 52.8\,MeV photon from the lepton flavour violating decay $\mu^+ \to \mathrm{e}^+ \gamma$ and is based on $900\,\ell$ LXe with a highly granular scintillation readout by 4092 VUV-MPPCs with an active area of $139\,\mathrm{mm}^2$ each, totalling $0.57\,\mathrm{m}^2$. The VUV-MPPC shows an excellent performance in LXe, which includes a high photon detection efficiency (PDE) up to 21\% for the LXe scintillation light in the VUV range, a high gain, a low probability of the optical cross-talk and the after-pulsing, a low dark count rate and a good single photoelectron resolution. The large active area of the VUV-MPPC is formed by connecting four independent small VUV-MPPC chips in series to avoid the increase of the sensor capacitance and thus, to have a short pulse-decay-time, which is crucial for high rate experiments. Performance tests of 4180 VUV-MPPCs produced for the LXe detector were also carried out at room temperature prior to the installation to the detector and all of them with only a few exceptions were found to work properly. The design and performance of the VUV-MPPC are described in detail as well as the results from the performance tests at room temperature., Comment: Revised version accepted for publication in Nucl. Instr. and Meth. A, 10 pages, 19 figures

The nursing processing study is generally difficult, because it is important for nursing college students to understand knowledge and utilize it. We have developed an integrated system to understand, utilize, and share knowledge. We added a problem-posing function to this system, and expected that students would deeply understand the nursing processing study through the new system. This system consisted of four steps: create a problem, create an answer input section, create a hint, and verification. Nursing students created problems related to nursing processing by this system. When we gave a lecture on the nursing processing for second year students of A university, we tried to use the creating problem function of this system. We evaluated the effect by the number of problems and the contents of the created problem, that is, whether the contents consisted of a lecture stage or not. We also evaluated the correlation between those and regular examination and report scores. We derived the following: 1. weak correlation between the number of created problems and report score (r=0.27), 2. significant differences between regular examination and report scores of students who created problems corresponding to the learning stage, and those of students who created problems not corresponding to it (P

The liquid xenon (LXe) γ-ray detector for the MEG II experiment is based on a highly granular scintillation readout with Multi-Pixel Photon Counters (MPPCs). Here we report on the development of a large-area MPPC sensitive to LXe scintillation light in deep-UV range for the MEG II LXe detector. A prototype model of the deep-UV MPPC with an active area of 12 × 12 mm 2 was successfully tested in LXe, showing an excellent performance such as a high photon detection efficiency for the LXe scintillation light (about 20% at Δ V = 2.5 V ), a high internal gain (about 10 6 at Δ V = 2.5 V ) and an excellent single photoelectron resolution. The sensor chip of the MPPC is segmented into four sectors, which are then connected in series in order to reduce the overall sensor capacitance. The signal fall time of about 135 ns for the non-segmented sensor was significantly reduced down to 25 ns with the series-connected sensor segments. The preliminary results on the performance of the deep-UV MPPC are presented.