Eye tracking constitutes a valuable tool for the examination of human visual behavior since it provides objective measurements related to the performed visual strategies during the observation of any type of visual stimuli. Over the last decade, eye movement analysis contributed substantially to the better understanding of how visual attention processes work in different types of maps. Considering the clear need for the examination of map user reaction during the observation of realistic cartographic products (i.e. static maps, animated maps, interactive and multimedia maps), a critical amount of experimental studies were performed in order to study different aspects related to map reading process by the cartographic community. The foundation of these studies is based on theories and models that have been developed in similar research domains (i.e. psychology, neuroscience etc.), while the research outcomes that produced over these years can be used directly for the design of more effective and efficient maps. The aim of the present article is to summarize and present the current panorama of the existing eye tracking studies in cartographic research appeared over the last decade. Additionally, methodological contributions (including analysis tools) of cartographic society in the field of eye movement analysis are reported, while existing challenges and future perspectives are also discussed.

Eye tracker makes it possible to see where and how the person is looking. During the analysis of previously collected eye-tracking data my attention was drawn to two school students whose English language communicative skills were on different levels and that is why I assumed they should work with the English textbook material in a different way. The aim of the article is to show not noticed at the first sight differences in their way of working with the English textbook material.

The aim of the study was to compare the effects of corneal healing in case of application of stem cells in various forms, in relation to the antibiotic-assisted procedures. Rabbits were divided into 4 groups in the first stage of the experiment. Group 0 (negative control group) was not subjected to any actions, which would cause damage to the cornea. The remaining three groups had their cornea damaged. Group 1 (positive control group) – no drugs were administered during the experiment. Rabbits in group 2 were administered with ointment containing stem cells to the lesion, while group 3 – with ofloxacinum. The stem cells were administered during the first five days, twice a day, onto the corneal surface. The further course of the experiment consisted of observing the rate of healing of the injured cornea and assessment of its transparency, size of lesion, hyperaemia, eyelid spasm and outflow from the conjunctival sac after 5, 10 and 20 days.

In the second stage the animals were euthanised after clinical examination on the twentieth day of the experiment, in order to analyse the corneal reparative processes on the same day. The studies revealed that the application of antlerogenic stem cells had a positive effect on the healing process of corneal defects. The application thereof not only shortened the healing time, but also weakened or arrested the development of side effects. The results have demonstrated that the epithelial proliferation in each group was different. The longest was maintained in the group with stem cells, the shortest – in the group with chemotherapeutics. The use of antlerogenic stem cells had a positive effect on the healing process of corneal lesions. The use of stem cells helped to maintain high transparency of the cornea.

Nonlinearities in optical fibers deteriorate system performances and become a major performancelimiting issue. This article aims to investigate the compensation of nonlinear distortions in optical communication systems based on different wavelength propagations over few-mode fiber (FMF). The study adopted Space Division Multiplexing (SDM) based on decision feedback equalizer (DFE). Various transmission wavelength of the FMF system is applied to mitigate the attenuation effect on the system. In this paper, different wavelengths (780, 850 and 1550 nm) are used in SDM. Extensive simulation is performed to assess the attenuation and Bit Error Rate (BER) in each case. The results show that the wavelength of 1550 nm produces higher power and less attenuation in the transmission. Furthermore, this wavelength produces the best distance with less BER compared to 780 nm and 850 nm wavelengths. Moreover, the validations show improvement in BER and eye diagram.

Calibration is necessary for dual manipulator to complete operational tasks. This paper proposes an effective robot-robot and hand-eye calibration method based on virtual constraints. Firstly, a rotational error model and a translational error model are established based on the relationships between the transformation matrices of the dual manipulator calibration system. Then a poses-alignment method is designed to make the poses of the two robots satisfy the constructed virtual constraints. At the aligned positions, the joint angles of the two robots are saved and used to calculate the values of the variables in the error models. Finally, the robot-robot and hand-eye rotational errors are estimated by an iterative algorithm. These errors are then used to calculate translational errors based on the SVD (singular value decomposition) method. To show the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed method, experiments of robot-robot and hand-eye calibration for dual manipulators are performed. The experiment results demonstrate that the accuracy of the dual manipulator system is improved greatly.

Virtual reality (VR) technology now provides players with immersive and realistic experiences as never before. Spatial presence plays a crucial role in the introduction of immersive experience in a VR environment. Spatial presence is a special feeling of personal and physical presence in the displayed environment. In this study, we found that the first-person perspective (1PP) was more effective in raising the sense of spatial presence that induces immersive experience compared to the third-person perspective (3PP) in a VR shooting game. Moreover, eye blink rate was significantly higher in the 1PP compared with the 3PP. The 1PP game setting was more realistic than the 3PP setting, and may have raised participants’ sense of immersion and facilitated eye blink. These results indicate that eye blink rate is increased by the sense of spatial presence, and can be a good measure of subjective immersive experience in a VR environment. Neuroscientific evidences suggest that dopaminergic system is involved in such emotional experiences and physiological responses.

The objective of this article is to present the funerary eye and mouth plates use as a funeral custom from the 10th century in the Carpathian Basin. Presented artefacts, which were interpreted as funerary eye and mouth plates, were sewn onto the shroud used to cover the skull or were placed on the eye cavity and on the mouth of the deceased person. The collected artefacts were divided into four parts, based on the formal aspect. Their characteristics were examined. These artefacts show strong connections with specimens known from eastern Europe, especially with the ones known from the Ural. The ancient Hungarians brought this funeral custom to the Carpathian Basin in the course of their conquest. Ethnic studies are needed to understand the discussed custom, and the subject requires further research.

This article talks about a famous novel by Leopold Tyrmand entitled Zły (The Bad) which was translated into English by David Welsh as The Man with White Eyes (New York: Knopf, 1959). The author claims that the novel which describes a life in destroyed Warsaw of the 1950s gradually became an epic. The author refers to a conception by Polish literary scholar and critic Kazimierz Wyka who claimed that epics are not written, but – under some circumstances, sometimes even against the will of the writers – some texts become epics. According to the author, in Zły (both in the style and in the plot) can be found the elements of brilliant epic stylization. The novel which at first was read as a thriller gradually became an epic because it described with epic accuracy a world that had disappeared, a world where a new life was born in the ruins.

Simultaneous perception of audio and visual stimuli often causes concealment or misrepresentation of information actually contained in these stimuli. Such effects are called the "image proximity effect" or the "ventriloquism effect" in the literature. Until recently, most research carried out to understand their nature was based on subjective assessments. The authors of this paper propose a methodology based on both subjective and objectively retrieved data. In this methodology, objective data reflect the screen areas that attract most attention. The data were collected and processed by an eye-gaze tracking system. To support the proposed methodology, two series of experiments were conducted - one with a commercial eye-gaze tracking system Tobii T60, and another with the Cyber-Eye system developed at the Multimedia Systems Department of the Gdańsk University of Technology. In most cases, the visual-auditory stimuli were presented using a 3D video. It was found that the eye-gaze tracking system did objectivize the results of experiments. Moreover, the tests revealed a strong correlation between the localization of a visual stimulus on which a participant's gaze focused and the value of the "image proximity effect". It was also proved that gaze tracking may be useful in experiments which aim at evaluation of the proximity effect when presented visual stimuli are stereoscopic.

Optical sampling based on ultrafast optical nonlinearities is a useful technique to monitor the waveforms of ultrashort optical pulses. In this paper, we present a new implementation of optical waveform sampling systems by employing our newly constructed free-running mode-locked fibre laser with a tunable repetition rate and a low timing jitter, an all-optical waveform sampler with a highly nonlinear fibre (HNLF), and our developed computer algorithm for optical waveform display and measurement, respectively. Using a femtosecond fibre laser to generate the highly stable optical sampling pulses and exploiting the four-wave mixing effect in a 100 m-long HNLF, we successfully demonstrate the all-optical waveform sampling of a 10 GHz optical clock pulse sequence with a pulse width of 1.8 ps and a 80 Gbit/s optical data signal, respectively. The experimental results show that waveforms of the tested optical pulse signals are accurately reproduced with a pulse width of 2.0 ps. This corresponds to a temporal resolution of 0.87 ps for optical waveform measurement. Moreover, the optical eye diagram of a 10Gbit/s optical data signal with a 1.8 ps pulse width is also accurately measured by employing our developed optical sampling system.