Minor structural abnormalities in the infant face disrupt neural processing: a unique window into early caregiving responses

Infant faces elicit early, specific activity in the orbitofrontal cortex (OFC), a key cortical region for reward and affective processing. A test of the causal relationship between infant facial configuration and OFC activity is provided by naturally occurring disruptions to the face structure. One such disruption is cleft lip, a small change to one facial feature, shown to disrupt parenting. Using magnetoencephalography, we investigated neural responses to infant faces with cleft lip compared with typical infant and adult faces. We found activity in the right OFC at 140 ms in response to typical infant faces but diminished activity to infant faces with cleft lip or adult faces. Activity in the right fusiform face area was of similar magnitude for typical adult and infant faces but was significantly lower for infant faces with cleft lip. This is the first evidence that a minor change to the infant face can disrupt neural activity potentially implicated in caregiving.

The annual-cycle modulation of meridional asymmetry in ENSO’s atmospheric response and its dependence on ENSO zonal structure

Previous studies documented that a distinct southward shift of central-Pacific low-level wind anomalies occurring during the ENSO decaying phase, is caused by an interaction between the Western Pacific annual cycle and El Niño-Southern Oscillation (ENSO) variability. The present study finds that the meridional movement of the central-Pacific wind anomalies appears only during traditional Eastern-Pacific (or EP) El Niño events rather than in Central-Pacific (CP) El Niño events in which sea surface temperature (SST) anomalies are confined to the central Pacific. The zonal structure of ENSO-related SST anomalies therefore has an important effect on meridional asymmetry in the associated atmospheric response and its modulation by the annual cycle. In contrast to EP El Niño events, the SST anomalies of CP El Niño events extend further west towards to the warm pool region with its climatological warm SSTs. In the warm pool region, relatively small SST anomalies thus are able to excite convection anomalies on both sides of the equator, even with a meridionally asymmetric SST background state. Therefore, almost meridionally symmetric precipitation and wind anomalies are observed over the central Pacific during the decaying phase of CP El Niño events. The SST anomaly pattern of La Niña events is similar to CP El Niño events with a reversed sign. Accordingly, no distinct southward displacement of the atmospheric response occurs over the central Pacific during the La Niña decaying phase. These results have important implications for ENSO climate impacts over East Asia, since the anomalous low-level anticyclone over the western North Pacific is an integral part of the annual cycle-modulated ENSO response.

Visual search for basic emotional expressions in autism; impaired processing of anger, fear and sadness, but a typical happy face advantage

Facial expression recognition was investigated in 20 males with high functioning autism (HFA) or Asperger syndrome (AS), compared to typically developing individuals matched for chronological age (TD CA group) and verbal and non-verbal ability (TD V/NV group). This was the first study to employ a visual search, “face in the crowd” paradigm with a HFA/AS group, which explored responses to numerous facial expressions using real-face stimuli. Results showed slower response times for processing fear, anger and sad expressions in the HFA/AS group, relative to the TD CA group, but not the TD V/NV group. Reponses to happy, disgust and surprise expressions showed no group differences. Results are discussed with reference to the amygdala theory of autism.

Revisiting asymmetry for the decaying phases of El Niño and La Niña

This study investigated the relationship between the asymmetry in the duration of El Ni?o and La Ni?a and the length of their decaying phases. The results suggested that the duration asymmetry comes from the long decaying ENSO cases rather than the short decaying ones. The evolutions of short decaying El Ni?o and La Ni?a are approximately a mirror image with a rapid decline in the following summer for the warm and cold events. However, a robust asymmetry was found in long decaying cases, with a prolonged and re-intensified La Ni?a in the following winter. The asymmetry for long decaying cases starts from the westward extension of the zonal wind anomalies in a mature winter, and is further contributed to by the air-sea interaction over the tropical Pacific in the following seasons.

Dawn-dusk asymmetry in particles of solar wind origin within the magnetosphere

Solar wind/magnetosheath plasma in the magnetosphere can be identified using a component that has a higher charge state, lower density and, at least soon after their entry into the magnetosphere, lower energy than plasma from a terrestrial source. We survey here observations taken over 3 years of He2+ ions made by the Magnetospheric Ion Composition Sensor (MICS) of the Charge and Mass Mgnetospheric Ion Composition Experiment (CAMMICE) instrument aboard POLAR. The occurrence probability of these solar wind ions is then plotted as a function of Magnetic Local Time (MLT) and invariant latitude (3) for various energy ranges. For all energies observed by MICS (1.8–21.4 keV) and all solar wind conditions, the occurrence probabilities peaked around the cusp region and along the dawn flank. The solar wind conditions were filtered to see if this dawnward asymmetry is controlled by the Svalgaard-Mansurov effect (and so depends on the BY component of the interplanetary magnetic field, IMF) or by Fermi acceleration of He2+ at the bow shock (and so depends on the IMF ratio BX/BY ). It is shown that the asymmetry remained persistently on the dawn flank, suggesting it was not due to effects associated with direct entry into the magnetosphere. This asymmetry, with enhanced fluxes on the dawn flank, persisted for lower energy ions (below a “cross-over” energy of about 23 keV) but reversed sense to give higher fluxes on the dusk flank at higher energies. This can be explained by the competing effects of gradient/curvature drifts and the convection electric field on ions that are convecting sunward on re-closed field lines. The lower-energy He2+ ions E × B drift dawnwards as they move earthward, whereas the higher energy ions curvature/gradient drift towards dusk. The convection electric field in the tail is weaker for northward IMF. Ions then need less energy to drift to the dusk flank, so that the cross-over energy, at which the asymmetry changes sense, is reduced.

High-level face adaptation without awareness

When a visual stimulus is suppressed from awareness, processing of the suppressed image is necessarily reduced. Although adaptation to simple image properties such as orientation still occurs, adaptation to high-level properties such as face identity is eliminated. Here we show that emotional facial expression continues to be processed even under complete suppression, as indexed by substantial facial expression aftereffects.

Stated willingness-to-pay for organic fruit and pesticide ban: an evaluation using both web-based and face-to-face interviewing

Income growth in highly industrialised countries has resulted in consumer choice of foodstuffs no longer being primarily influenced by basic factors such as price and organoleptic features. From this perspective, the present study sets out to evaluate how and to what extent consumer choice is influenced by the possible negative effects on health and environment caused by the consumption of fruit containing deposits of pesticides and chemical products. The study describes the results of a survey which explores and estimates consumer willingness to pay in two forms: a yearly contribution for the abolition of the use of pesticides on fruit, and a premium price for organically grown apples guaranteed by a certified label. The same questionnaire was administered to two samples. The first was a conventional face-to-face survey of customers of large retail outlets located around Bologna (Italy); the second was an Internet sample. The discrete choice data were analysed by means of probit and tobit models to estimate the utility consumers attribute to organically grown fruit and to a pesticide ban. The research also addresses questions of validity and representativeness as a fundamental problem in web-based surveys.

Reduced face preference in infancy: a developmental precursor to callous-unemotional traits?

Background Children with callous-unemotional (CU) traits, a proposed precursor to adult psychopathy, are characterized by impaired emotion recognition, reduced responsiveness to others’ distress, and a lack of guilt or empathy. Reduced attention to faces, and more specifically to the eye region, has been proposed to underlie these difficulties, although this has never been tested longitudinally from infancy. Attention to faces occurs within the context of dyadic caregiver interactions, and early environment including parenting characteristics has been associated with CU traits. The present study tested whether infants’ preferential tracking of a face with direct gaze and levels of maternal sensitivity predict later CU traits. Methods Data were analyzed from a stratified random sample of 213 participants drawn from a population-based sample of 1233 first-time mothers. Infants’ preferential face tracking at 5 weeks and maternal sensitivity at 29 weeks were entered into a weighted linear regression as predictors of CU traits at 2.5 years. Results Controlling for a range of confounders (e.g., deprivation), lower preferential face tracking predicted higher CU traits (p = .001). Higher maternal sensitivity predicted lower CU traits in girls (p = .009), but not boys. No significant interaction between face tracking and maternal sensitivity was found. Conclusions This is the first study to show that attention to social features during infancy as well as early sensitive parenting predict the subsequent development of CU traits. Identifying such early atypicalities offers the potential for developing parent-mediated interventions in children at risk for developing CU traits.

Intuitions in the Face of Diversity

In recent decades, intuitions' role in philosophy has been hotly debated. Many claim intuitions play an important role. Others, some armed with data, challenge the use of intuitions. This thesis reflects on this debate and advances the debate in two main ways. Having a clear understanding of the challenge which intuition-use in philosophy faces is important. Part I focuses on this. Chapters 1-2 introduce the topic of intuitions, motivate the methodological study of intuitions, and present the historical background to recent empirical challenges to intuition-use. Chapters 3-5 concern the contemporary challenge. I present the empirical evidence the challenge uses, present what I argue to be the strongest version of the challenge, and defend that challenge against some objections. How one characterises intuitions is incredibly important in philosophical methodology. If we are to properly evaluate philosophical methods vis-a-vis their use of something called intuitions { if we are to assess the empirical challenge { it is important to be clear exactly what we mean by `intuitions'. Part II focuses on this. Chapter 6 argues there is little consensus among philosophers as to what intuitions are and their role in philosophy. Chapter 7 questions whether philosophers have developed an idiolect in which `intuition' has distinctive meaning | as frequently supposed. Chapter 8 points out a common misunderstanding about intuitions in philosophy; using quantitative tools to challenge the idea that an increased use of `intuition' in philosophy is the result of an increased use of intuition. So, the developing picture is one of confusion, without a clear idea of what sense of `intuition' is important. Fortunately, Chapter 9 sets us back on the right track. It sets out a positive programme for evaluative methodology: methodologists should adopt a permissive conception of intuitions and make fine distinctions between different intuitions, so long as we can track those distinctions while philosophising.

Observational constraints on atmospheric and oceanic cross-equatorial heat transports: revisiting the precipitation asymmetry problem in climate models

Satellite based top-of-atmosphere (TOA) and surface radiation budget observations are combined with mass corrected vertically integrated atmospheric energy divergence and tendency from reanalysis to infer the regional distribution of the TOA, atmospheric and surface energy budget terms over the globe. Hemispheric contrasts in the energy budget terms are used to determine the radiative and combined sensible and latent heat contributions to the cross-equatorial heat transports in the atmosphere (AHT_EQ) and ocean (OHT_EQ). The contrast in net atmospheric radiation implies an AHT_EQ from the northern hemisphere (NH) to the southern hemisphere (SH) (0.75 PW), while the hemispheric difference in sensible and latent heat implies an AHT_EQ in the opposite direction (0.51 PW), resulting in a net NH to SH AHT_EQ (0.24 PW). At the surface, the hemispheric contrast in the radiative component (0.95 PW) dominates, implying a 0.44 PW SH to NH OHT_EQ. Coupled model intercomparison project phase 5 (CMIP5) models with excessive net downward surface radiation and surface-to-atmosphere sensible and latent heat transport in the SH relative to the NH exhibit anomalous northward AHT_EQ and overestimate SH tropical precipitation. The hemispheric bias in net surface radiative flux is due to too much longwave surface radiative cooling in the NH tropics in both clear and all-sky conditions and excessive shortwave surface radiation in the SH subtropics and extratropics due to an underestimation in reflection by clouds.

Atypically rightward cerebral asymmetry in male adults with autism stratifies individuals with and without language delay

In humans, both language and fine motor skills are associated with left-hemisphere specialization, whereas visuospatial skills are associated with right-hemisphere specialization. Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) show a profile of deficits and strengths that involves these lateralized cognitive functions. Here we test the hypothesis that regions implicated in these functions are atypically rightward lateralized in individuals with ASC and, that such atypicality is associated with functional performance. Participants included 67 male, right-handed adults with ASC and 69 age- and IQ-matched neurotypical males. We assessed group differences in structural asymmetries in cortical regions of interest with voxel-based analysis of grey matter volumes, followed by correlational analyses with measures of language, motor and visuospatial skills. We found stronger rightward lateralization within the inferior parietal lobule and reduced leftward lateralization extending along the auditory cortex comprising the planum temporale, Heschl's gyrus, posterior supramarginal gyrus, and parietal operculum, which was more pronounced in ASC individuals with delayed language onset compared to those without. Planned correlational analyses showed that for individuals with ASC, reduced leftward asymmetry in the auditory region was associated with more childhood social reciprocity difficulties. We conclude that atypical cerebral structural asymmetry is a potential candidate neurophenotype of ASC

Robust multimodal face and fingerprint fusion in the presence of spoofing attacks

Anti-spoofing is attracting growing interest in biometrics, considering the variety of fake materials and new means to attack biometric recognition systems. New unseen materials continuously challenge state-of-the-art spoofing detectors, suggesting for additional systematic approaches to target anti-spoofing. By incorporating liveness scores into the biometric fusion process, recognition accuracy can be enhanced, but traditional sum-rule based fusion algorithms are known to be highly sensitive to single spoofed instances. This paper investigates 1-median filtering as a spoofing-resistant generalised alternative to the sum-rule targeting the problem of partial multibiometric spoofing where m out of n biometric sources to be combined are attacked. Augmenting previous work, this paper investigates the dynamic detection and rejection of livenessrecognition pair outliers for spoofed samples in true multi-modal configuration with its inherent challenge of normalisation. As a further contribution, bootstrap aggregating (bagging) classifiers for fingerprint spoof-detection algorithm is presented. Experiments on the latest face video databases (Idiap Replay- Attack Database and CASIA Face Anti-Spoofing Database), and fingerprint spoofing database (Fingerprint Liveness Detection Competition 2013) illustrate the efficiency of proposed techniques.

Monitoring scan asymmetry of microwave humidity sounding channels using simultaneous all angle collocations (SAACs)

Simultaneous all angle collocations (SAACs) of microwave humidity sounders (AMSU-B and MHS) on-board polar orbiting satellites are used to estimate scan-dependent biases. This method has distinct advantages over previous methods, such as that the estimated scan-dependent biases are not influenced by diurnal differences between the edges of the scan and the biases can be estimated for both sides of the scan. We find the results are robust in the sense that biases estimated for one satellite pair can be reproduced by double differencing biases of these satellites with a third satellite. Channel 1 of these instruments shows the least bias for all satellites. Channel 2 has biases greater than 5 K, thus needs to be corrected. Channel 3 has biases of about 2 K and more and they are time varying for some of the satellites. Channel 4 has the largest bias which is about 15 K when the data are averaged for 5 years, but biases of individual months can be as large as 30 K. Channel 5 also has large and time varying biases for two of the AMSU-Bs. NOAA-15 (N15) channels are found to be affected the most, mainly due to radio frequency interference (RFI) from onboard data transmitters. Channel 4 of N15 shows the largest and time varying biases, so data of this channel should only be used with caution for climate applications. The two MHS instruments show the best agreement for all channels. Our estimates may be used to correct for scan-dependent biases of these instruments, or at least used as a guideline for excluding channels with large scan asymmetries from scientific analyses.