This paper reports an expansion of the English as a second language (L2) component of the Multilingual Eye Movement Corpus (MECO L2), an international database of eye movements during text reading. While the previous Wave 1 of the MECO project (Kuperman et al., 2023) contained English as a L2 reading data from readers with 12 different first language (L1) backgrounds, the newly collected dataset adds eye-tracking data on English text reading from 13 distinct L1 backgrounds (N = 660) as well as participants’ scores on component skills of English proficiency and information about their demographics and language background and use. The paper reports reliability estimates, descriptive statistics, and correlational analyses as means to validate the expansion dataset. Consistent with prior literature and the MECO Wave 1, trends in the MECO Wave 2 data include a weak correlation between reading comprehension and oculomotor measures of reading fluency and a greater L1-L2 contrast in reading fluency than reading comprehension. Jointly with Wave 1, the MECO project includes English reading data from more than 1,200 readers representing a diversity of native writing systems (logographic, abjad, abugida, and alphabetic) and 19 distinct L1 backgrounds. We provide multiple pointers to new venues of how L2 reading researchers can mine this rich publicly available dataset.

Low-density polymer foams pre-ionized by a well-controlled nanosecond pulse are excellent plasma targets to trigger direct laser acceleration (DLA) of electrons by sub-picosecond relativistic laser pulses. In this work, the influence of the nanosecond pulse on the DLA process is investigated. The density profile of plasma generated after irradiating foam with a nanosecond pulse was simulated with a two-dimensional hydrodynamic code, which takes into account the high aspect ratio of interaction and the microstructure of polymer foams. The obtained plasma density profile was used as input to the three-dimensional particle-in-cell code to simulate energy, angular distributions and charge carried by the directional fraction of DLA electrons. The modelling shows good agreement with the experiment and in general a weak dependence of the electron spectra on the plasma profiles, which contain a density up-ramp and a region of near-critical electron density. This explains the high DLA stability in pre-ionized foams, which is important for applications.

The Maser Monitoring Organisation is a collection of researchers exploring the use of time-variable maser emission in the investigation of astrophysical phenomena. The forward directed aspects of research primarily involve using maser emission as a tool to investigate star formation. Simultaneously, these activities have deepened knowledge of maser emission itself in addition to uncovering previously unknown maser transitions. Thus a feedback loop is created where both the knowledge of astrophysical phenomena and the utilised tools of investigation themselves are iteratively sharpened. The project goals are open-ended and constantly evolving, however, the reliance on radio observatory maser monitoring campaigns persists as the fundamental enabler of research activities within the group.

Recently, remarkable progress has been made in understanding the formation of high mass stars. Observations provided direct evidence that massive young stellar objects (MYSOs), analogously to low-mass ones, form via disk-mediated accretion accompanied by episodic accretion bursts, possibly caused by disk fragmentation. In the case of MYSOs, the mechanism theoretically provides a means to overcome radiation pressure, but in practice it is poorly studied - only three accretion bursts in MYSOs have been caught in action to date. A significant contribution to the development of the theory has been made with the study of masers, which have proven to be a powerful tool for locating “bursting” MYSOs. This overview focuses on the exceptional role that masers play in the search and study of accretion bursts in massive protostars.

Scroll-like crystals of molybdenite, 2–5 mm in size, were found in phengite rock from the outer contact of the granular quartz vein of the Kyshtym quartz deposit. Platy and partly scrolled molybdenite occur in the same phengite rock from the outer contact of the quartz–feldspar pegmatite of the Slyudyanogorsk mica deposit. Both occurrences are located in the Ufaley metamorphic block in the South Urals. Scroll-like molybdenite crystals can associate with platy and partly twisted crystals in the same samples. The chemical composition of molybdenite was studied by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP-MS) and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA). Polytypes of molybdenite were identified with electron back-scattered diffraction (EBSD) and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Both scroll-like and platy molybdenite crystals are only represented by the 3R polytype, are enriched in Re up to 1 wt.% and contain no other significant impurities. Scroll-like molybdenite is twisted mainly around the crystallographic axis X. Twinning with a rotation of 60 degrees around the Z crystallographic axis is fixed in the plane (ab). The most probable origin of scroll molybdenites is the consequent growth of molybdenite around nucleation centres, which are commonly represented by mica crystals. The formation of the 3R polytype is caused by the difference in dimension of the layers enriched and depleted in rhenium.

Ce travail porte sur l'optimisation des lignesd'usinage pour la grande série. Une telle ligne comporte plusieurspostes de travail, chacun étant équipé avec boîtiers multibroches. Unboîtier multibroche exécute plusieurs opérations en parallèle.Lors de la conception en avant-projet, il est nécessaire d'affecter toutes les opérations à des boîtiers etdes postes de travail de sorte à minimiser le nombre de postes et deboîtiers utilisés. Pour ce nouveau problème d'équilibrage des lignesde production, nous proposons une approche de résolution pardécomposition en utilisant des méthodes exactes et heuristiques. Lesrésultats des tests numériques effectués sur des instances prochesdes problèmes réels sont présentés et analysés.

The effects of high intensity pulsed electric field (HIPEF) treatments at room or moderate temperature on water-soluble (thiamine, riboflavin, ascorbic acid) and fat-soluble vitamins (cholecalciferol and tocopherol) were evaluated and compared with conventional thermal treatments. Vitamin retention was determined in two different substrates, milk and simulated skim milk ultrafiltrate (SMUF). Samples were subjected to HIPEF treatments of up to 400 μs at field strengths from 18·3 to 27·1 kV/cm and to heat treatments of up to 60 min at temperatures from 50 to 90 °C. No changes in vitamin content were observed after HIPEF or thermal treatments except for ascorbic acid. Milk retained more ascorbic acid after a 400 μs-treatment at 22·6 kV/cm (93·4%) than after low (63 °C-30 min; 49·7% retained) or high (75 °C-15 s; 86·7% retained) heat pasteurisation treatments. Retention of ascorbic acid fitted a first-order kinetic model for both HIPEF and thermal processes. First-order constant values varied from 1·8×10−4 to 1·27×10−3 μs−1 for the HIPEF treatments (18·3–27·1 kV/cm) and, for thermal processing ranged from 5×10−3 to 8×10−2 min−1 (50–90 °C). No significant differences were found between the results obtained after applying HIPEF treatments at room or moderate temperature. However, results depended on the treatment media. A beneficial effect of natural skim milk components, mainly proteins, was observed on the preservation of ascorbic acid, since skim milk retained more ascorbic acid than SMUF after HIPEF treatments.

The heat and mass transport model extended to describe silicon cluster formation in the gas phase is employed for a numerical analysis of SiC CVD in a commercial vertical rotating disc reactor. The growth rate is studied as a function of precursor flow rates varied in a wide range of values. It is found that the growth rate is limited by the gas mixture depletion in silicon atoms due to homogeneous nucleation. The secondary phase formation on the growing surface is analyzed. The SiC growth window depending on the precursor flow rates is calculated, and a significant effect of the homogeneous nucleation on the window width is found. The model predicts that the Si/C ratio on the wafer can considerably differ from that at the reactor inlet.