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The assessment of unilateral spatial neglect (USN) primarily relies on paper-and-pencil tests, which do not fully represent daily life difficulties. To address this limitation, ecological tests, like the Baking Tray Test (BTT), have been developed. However, the original BTT identifies the presence of USN without providing information on its severity. In this aim, a new severity measure, the Centre of Mass (CoM), has been proposed, but its calculation in real environments poses challenges. Immersive virtual reality (VR) offers a promising solution for implementing a BTT in which measures are automatically calculated. This study aimed to assess the feasibility and relevance of an immersive VR BTT. Nineteen right brain-damaged patients with and without USN and 25 healthy participants were included. Group analyses showed an equivalence between the two BTT versions. Individual analyses revealed that all USN patients, except one, had pathological results in both versions. They also underlined pathological scores in patients without USN signs on paper-and-pencil tests. Finally, the CoM strongly correlated with paper-and-pencil tests and appeared to be a good indicator of USN severity. These findings support the relevance of implementing the BTT in an immersive VR version, suggesting its potential to enhance USN assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Monetary theory that has become dominant from the 1970 onwards is based on two main proposals: Inflation is the consequence of the excess money supply issued by a central bank obliged to follow the will of impecunious governments, and the amount of money in circulation is determined exogenously via the money multiplier. In the early 1960s, a French economist, Jacques Le Bourva, held a radically opposed approach in two articles published in Revue Économique. For him, inflation is a cumulative phenomenon that results from an excess of credit to firms, which is at the origin of imbalances on the goods markets; a budget deficit does not necessarily create inflationary pressures; credits make deposits and not the other way around; in other words, the creation of money is endogeneous. This approach is surprisingly modern when we are trying to understand the dead ends of the still dominant economic theory and policy. It helps explaining deflation as well as inflation. It is also a successful attempt to understand the articulation between monetary and fiscal policy, on the one hand, and firms’ behaviour, on the other hand.

Unilateral spatial neglect (USN) is a highly prevalent neuropsychological syndrome. However, its assessment in clinical practice, mainly based on paper‐and‐pencil tests, encounters limits as only near space, called peripersonal, is assessed. However, USN is a multicomponent syndrome that can also affect far space, called extrapersonal. This space is not assessed in current clinical assessment although it can be more impacted than peripersonal space. Immersive virtual reality (VR) allows developing tasks in far space to assess this heterogeneity. This study aimed to test the feasibility and the relevance of an immersive VR task to assess far space. A cancellation task, the Bells test, was used in its original paper‐and‐pencil version and was also adapted into a far immersive VR version. Ten patients with left USN and sixteen age‐matched healthy participants were included. A single‐case method was performed to investigate the performance of each patient. Although five patients showed very similar results between both versions, the five others exhibited a dissociation with a more severe impairment in the VR version. Three of these five patients significantly differed from the healthy participants only on the VR version. As USN in far space is not brought to light by paper‐and‐pencil tests, immersive VR appears as a promising tool to detect USN affecting this space. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For a one-month period in summer 2020, a prototype Vaisala broadband differential absorption lidar (BB-DIAL) was deployed at a Met Office research site. It was compared with in-situ observations of humidity (93 radiosonde ascents and 27 of uncrewed aerial vehicle flights) and the Met Office 1.5 km resolution numerical weather prediction (NWP) model: UK Variable resolution model (UKV). The BB-DIAL was able to collect data up to the cloud base, in all-weather situations including rain, when it was possible to reach 3 km. The average maximum height was 1300 m, with 75% of the data reaching 1000 m and 35% extending to 1500 m. Compared with radiosondes, the standard deviation for the water vapour is between 5% and 10%. The comparison with the UKV is very encouraging, with a correlation of 0.90. The error against the radiosonde is smaller than against the UKV, which is encouraging for assimilation the BB-DIAL data in UKV. Some data quality issues, such as an increase in error and variable bias in the region of overlap between the far field and close field, spurious oscillations and an unrealistic dry layer above fog are identified. Despite these issues, the overall results from this assessment are promising in terms of potential benefit, instrument reliability and capturing significant humidity changes in the boundary layer.