Attentional shifts towards an expected visual target alter the level of alpha-band oscillatory activity in the human calcarine cortex

Neuronal operations associated with the top-down control process of shifting attention from one locus to another involve a network of cortical regions, and their influence is deemed fundamental to visual perception. However, the extent and nature of these operations within primary visual areas are unknown. In this paper, we used magnetoencephalography (MEG) in combination with magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) to determine whether, prior to the onset of a visual stimulus, neuronal activity within early visual cortex is affected by covert attentional shifts. Time/frequency analyses were used to identify the nature of this activity. Our results show that shifting attention towards an expected visual target results in a late-onset (600 ms postcue onset) depression of alpha activity which persists until the appearance of the target. Independent component analysis (ICA) and dipolar source modeling confirmed that the neuronal changes we observed originated from within the calcarine cortex. Our results further show that the amplitude changes in alpha activity were induced not evoked (i.e., not phase-locked to the cued attentional task). We argue that the decrease in alpha prior to the onset of the target may serve to prime the early visual cortex for incoming sensory information. We conclude that attentional shifts affect activity within the human calcarine cortex by altering the amplitude of spontaneous alpha rhythms and that subsequent modulation of visual input with attentional engagement follows as a consequence of these localized changes in oscillatory activity. © 2005 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Contextualising accounts of illness:Notions of responsibility and blame in white and South Asian respondents' accounts of diabetes causation

We undertook a secondary analysis of in-depth interviews with white (n = 32) and Pakistani and Indian (n = 32) respondents who had type 2 diabetes, which explored their perceptions and understandings of disease causation. We observed subtle, but important, differences in the ways in which these respondent groups attributed responsibility and blame for developing the disease. Whereas Pakistani and Indian respondents tended to externalise responsibility, highlighting their life circumstances in general and/or their experiences of migrating to Britain in accounting for their diabetes (or the behaviours they saw as giving rise to it), white respondents, by contrast, tended to emphasise the role of their own lifestyle 'choices' and 'personal failings'. In seeking to understand these differences, we argue for a conceptual and analytical approach which embraces both micro- (i.e. everyday) and macro- (i.e. cultural) contextual factors and experiences. In so doing, we provide a critique of social scientific studies of lay accounts/understandings of health and illness. We suggest that greater attention needs to be paid to the research encounter (that is, to who is looking at whom and in what circumstances) to understand the different kinds of contexts researchers have highlighted in presenting and interpreting their data. © 2007 Foundation for the Sociology of Health & Illness/Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Anger and perceived legitimacy of aggression in male Hong Kong Chinese athletes: Effects of type of sport and level of competition

Problem: The vast majority of research examining the interplay between aggressive emotions, beliefs, behaviors, cognitions, and situational contingencies in competitive athletes has focused on Western populations and only select sports (e.g., ice hockey). Research involving Eastern, particularly Chinese, athletes is surprisingly sparse given the sheer size of these populations. Thus, this study examines the aggressive emotions, beliefs, behaviors, and cognitions, of competitive Chinese athletes. Method: Several measures related to aggression were distributed to a large sample (N ¼ 471) of male athletes, representing four sports (basketball, rugby union, association football/soccer, and squash). Results: Higher levels of anger and aggression tended to be associated with higher levels of play for rugby and low levels of play for contact (e.g., football, basketball) and individual sports (e.g., squash). Conclusions: The results suggest that the experience of angry emotions and aggressive behaviors of Chinese athletes are similar to Western populations, but that sport psychology practitioners should be aware of some potentially important differences, such as the general tendency of Chinese athletes to disapprove of aggressive behavior.

Institutions, finance and the level of development:the impact on entrepreneurship in transition

We investigate the impact of institutions on entrepreneurial entry, based on a large cross-country sample, combining working age population data generated by the GEM project with macro level indicators. Our four key findings indicate that: (a) institutional obstacles to entrepreneurship have different impact in rich countries compared to poor countries; (b) institutional obstacles have a stronger impact on 'opportunity entrepreneurship' than on 'necessity entrepreneurship'; (c) two institutional indicators - property right protection and access to finance - appear to have a dominant impact on entrepreneurship; (d) institutions have a long term impact. More than ten years after the Soviet system imploded in Central and Eastern Europe, these countries still experience significantly lower levels of entrepreneurship than economies coming from different legal traditions.

The impact of stressors and regulatory focus on creativity:a dual level of analysis

Presentation

The relationship between the level of domestic demand in Britain an dthe exports of the British motor car industry

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Low level of cross-resistance between triclosan and antibiotics in Escherichia coli K-12 and E. coli O55 compared to E-coli O157

Misuse of biocides has encouraged the emergence of resistance and cross-resistance in certain strains. This study investigated resistance of triclosan-adapted Escherichia coli K-12 and E. coli O55 to antimicrobial agents and compared these to E. coli O157:H7. Cross-resistance in E. coli K-12 and E. coli O55 was observed however to a lesser extent than in E. coli O157:H7. Triclosan-adapted E. coli K-12 demonstrated cross-resistance to chloramphenicol, whereas triclosan-adapted E. coli O55 exhibited resistance to trimethoprim. In comparison, E. coli O157:H7 was resistant to chloramphenicol, tetracycline, amoxicillin, amoxicillin/clavulanic acid, trimethoprim, benzalkonium chloride and chlorohexidine suggesting strain specific rather than general resistance mechanisms. © 2004 Federation of European Microbiological Societies. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Handling high level of censoring for endovascular aortic repair risk prediction

Feature selection is important in medical field for many reasons. However, selecting important variables is a difficult task with the presence of censoring that is a unique feature in survival data analysis. This paper proposed an approach to deal with the censoring problem in endovascular aortic repair survival data through Bayesian networks. It was merged and embedded with a hybrid feature selection process that combines cox's univariate analysis with machine learning approaches such as ensemble artificial neural networks to select the most relevant predictive variables. The proposed algorithm was compared with common survival variable selection approaches such as; least absolute shrinkage and selection operator LASSO, and Akaike information criterion AIC methods. The results showed that it was capable of dealing with high censoring in the datasets. Moreover, ensemble classifiers increased the area under the roc curves of the two datasets collected from two centers located in United Kingdom separately. Furthermore, ensembles constructed with center 1 enhanced the concordance index of center 2 prediction compared to the model built with a single network. Although the size of the final reduced model using the neural networks and its ensembles is greater than other methods, the model outperformed the others in both concordance index and sensitivity for center 2 prediction. This indicates the reduced model is more powerful for cross center prediction.

Corporate responsibility reporting of biodiversity in the supply chain

Industrial development, accompanying human population growth, has had a major role in creating the situation where bio-diverse materials and services essential for sustaining business are under threat. A major contributory factor to biodiversity decline comes from the cumulative impacts of extended supply chain business operations. However, within Corporate Responsibility (CR) reporting impacts on biodiversity due to supply chain operations have not traditionally been given equal weighting with other environmental issues. This paper investigates the extent of CR reporting in managing and publicising company biodiversity supply chain issues by reviewing a cross-sector sample of publicly available CR reports. The report contents were examined for suggestions of industrial sectorial trends in the level of biodiversity consideration. The reporting of environmental management system use within company supply chain management is assessed in the samples and is considered as a mechanism for responsible supplier partnership working.

The relationship between parental perceptions of diabetes and glycaemic control

Aim: To measure the relationship between perceived child competence, parental self-efficacy, and children's glycaemic control. Methods: Cross-sectional outpatient based questionnaire survey of 78 parents of children aged 6-12 years with insulin dependent diabetes mellitus, diagnosed for at least one year. Parental perceptions of their child's competence were assessed, together with parental perceptions of their own self-efficacy in managing their child's diabetes. Glycaemic control was assessed by the average annual HbA 1C level. Results: The response rate was 64.5% (51 parents); 82% were mothers and the socioeconomic class and ethnicity spread was representative of the general population. The mean age of the children was 10 years and duration of diabetes 4.4 years. Poorer glycaemic control was associated with higher perceived child competence, together with lower perceived age of responsibility, lower perceived seriousness, and less frequent blood tests. Higher parental self-efficacy and higher perceived child competence predicted a higher level of normalisation, as did lower perceived seriousness, a lower perceived parental responsibility for management, and a less protective style of parenting. Conclusion: Parents' perceptions of their children's diabetes are significantly related to glycaemic control; however, those who appear more competent at managing diabetes may overestimate their child's capabilities, leading to poorer glycaemic control.

A magnetoencephalographic study of low-level auditory processing in developmental dyslexia

The possibility that developmental dyslexia results from low-level sensory processing deficits has received renewed interest in recent years. Opponents of such sensory-based explanations argue that dyslexia arises primarily from phonological impairments. However, many behavioural correlates of dyslexia cannot be explained sufficiently by cognitive-level accounts and there is anatomical, psychometric and physiological evidence of sensory deficits in the dyslexic population. This thesis aims to determine whether the low-level (pre-attentive) processing of simple auditory stimuli is disrupted in compensated adult dyslexics. Using psychometric and neurophysiological measures, the nature of auditory processing abnormalities is investigated. Group comparisons are supported by analysis of individual data in order to address the issue of heterogeneity in dyslexia. The participant pool consisted of seven compensated dyslexic adults and seven age and IQ matched controls. The dyslexic group were impaired, relative to the control group, on measures of literacy, phonological awareness, working memory and processing speed. Magnetoencephalographic recordings were conducted during processing of simple, non-speech, auditory stimuli. Results confirm that low-level auditory processing deficits are present in compensated dyslexic adults. The amplitude of N1m responses to tone pair stimuli were reduced in the dyslexic group. However, there was no evidence that manipulating either the silent interval or the frequency separation between the tones had a greater detrimental effect on dyslexic participants specifically. Abnormal MMNm responses were recorded in response to frequency deviant stimuli in the dyslexic group. In addition, complete stimulus omissions, which evoked MMNm responses in all control participants, failed to elicit significant MMNm responses in all but one of the dyslexic individuals. The data indicate both a deficit of frequency resolution at a local level of auditory processing and a higher-level deficit relating to the grouping of auditory stimuli, relevant for auditory scene analysis. Implications and directions for future research are outlined.