Differential susceptibility to performance degradation across categories of facial emotion - a model confirmation

Patients with a number of psychiatric and neuropathological conditions demonstrate problems in recognising facial expressions of emotion. Research indicating that patients with schizophrenia perform more poorly in the recognition of negative valence facial stimuli than positive valence stimuli has been interpreted as evidence of a negative emotion specific deficit. An alternate explanation rests in the psychometric properties of the stimulus materials. This model suggests that the pattern of impairment observed in schizophrenia may reflect initial discrepancies in task difficulty between stimulus categories, which are not apparent in healthy subjects because of ceiling effects. This hypothesis is tested, by examining the performance of healthy subjects in a facial emotion categorisation task with three levels of stimulus resolution. Results confirm the predictions of the model, showing that performance degrades differentially across emotion categories, with the greatest deterioration to negative valence stimuli. In the light of these results, a possible methodology for detecting emotion specific deficits in clinical samples is discussed.

影响幼儿层级类概念动态发展因素的研究

Three experiments were conducted in the attempt to understand the development of hierarchical classification. The 3-and 4-year-olds as well as hindergartners were given matching or object sorting tasks with either basic-level or superordinate relations. The results indicated: 1. Even 3-year-olds can consistently sort at the basic level. However, children perform poorly at the superordinate level, and there are developmental differences in the ability to sort at this level. 2. The perceptual similarity of stimulus materials, various competing organizations and the different ways of dealing with superordinate categories, depending on whether the categories are explicitly or implicitly represented for the child, are all factors appear to contribute to children's hierarchical classification.

The use of a single channel, two attenuator hearing aid by severely hearing impaired children

This paper examines the results of testing five severely hearing impaired children using a special binaural system with s single amplification channel and two attenuators, allowing presentation of the stimulus materials monaurally or at different relative levels to the two ears.

Norms on the gender perception of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak

We collected norms on the gender stereotypicality of an extensive list of role nouns in Czech, English, French, German, Italian, Norwegian, and Slovak, to be used as a basis for the selection of stimulus materials in future studies. We present a Web-based tool (available at https://www.unifr.ch/lcg/) that we developed to collect these norms and that we expect to be useful for other researchers, as well. In essence, we provide (a) gender stereotypicality norms across a number of languages and (b) a tool to facilitate cross-language as well as cross-cultural comparisons when researchers are interested in the investigation of the impact of stereotypicality on the processing of role nouns.

The role of death qualification in venirepersons' evaluations of aggravating and mitigating circumstances in capital trials

Death qualification is a part of voir dire that is unique to capital trials. Unlike all other litigation, capital jurors must affirm their willingness to impose both legal standards (either life in prison or the death penalty). Jurors who assert they are able to do so are deemed “death-qualified” and are eligible for capital jury service: jurors who assert that they are unable to do so are deemed “excludable” or “scrupled” and are barred from hearing a death penalty case. During the penalty phase in capital trials, death-qualified jurors weigh the aggravators (i.e., arguments for death) against the mitigators (i.e., arguments for life) in order to determine the sentence. If the aggravating circumstances outweigh the mitigating circumstances, then the jury is to recommend death; if the mitigating circumstances outweigh the aggravating circumstances, then the jury is to recommend life. The jury is free to weigh each aggravating and mitigating circumstance in any matter they see fit. Previous research has found that death qualification impacts jurors' receptiveness to aggravating and mitigating circumstances (e.g., Luginbuhl & Middendorf, 1988). However, these studies utilized the now-defunct Witherspoon rule and did not include a case scenario for participants to reference. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether death qualification affects jurors' endorsements of aggravating and mitigating circumstances when Witt, rather than Witherspoon, is the legal standard for death qualification. Four hundred and fifty venirepersons from the 11 th Judicial Circuit in Miami, Florida completed a booklet of stimulus materials that contained the following: two death qualification questions; a case scenario that included a summary of the guilt and penalty phases of a capital case; a 26-item measure that required participants to endorse aggravators, nonstatutory mitigators, and statutory mitigators on a 6-point Likert scale; and standard demographic questions. Results indicated that death-qualified venirepersons, when compared to excludables, were more likely to endorse aggravating circumstances. Excludable participants, when compared to death-qualified venirepersons, were more likely to endorse nonstatutory mitigators. There was no significant difference between death-qualified and excludable venirepersons with respect to their endorsement of 6 out of 7 statutory mitigators. It would appear that the Furman v. Georgia (1972) decision to declare the death penalty unconstitutional is frustrated by the Lockhart v. McCree (1986) affirmation of death qualification. ^

Evaluating and improving the opposing expert safeguard against junk science

In Daubert, the Supreme Court opined that opposing expert testimony is an effective safeguard against junk science in the courtroom. Although jurors maybe unable to identify flaws in scientific research without some assistance, social psychological research suggests that people can be trained to make more sophisticated judgments about scientific quality. Further, previous research demonstrated that an opposing expert who addresses the methodology of proffered expert testimony may not enable jurors to evaluate scientific validity. In three studies, I tested why this safeguard was ineffective using a variety of stimulus materials. In the first study, I examined the mediating effect of attitudes on juror decisions within the context of a sexual harassment trial. In the second study, I examined the moderating effect of the presentation of expert credentials on participant decisions regarding child suggestibility literature. In the third study, I tested several improvements to the safeguard using improvements designed to correct for the effects of attitudes and credential presentation on juror decisions within the context of a first-degree murder trial. I found that while opposing expert testimony may have potential as a safeguard, in its current form it is ineffective. That is, a traditional opposing expert caused jurors to be skeptical of all expert testimony rather than sensitizing them to the validity of the research presented at trial. Further, while the improvements tested in this study may have potential to assist jurors in making scientifically sound decisions, more research is needed to further test and refine these improvements. ^

Book review: Laurel Kamada, Hybrid Identities and Adolescent Girls: Being Half in Japan. Bristol: Multilingual Matters, 2010

Arguably, the catalyst for the best research studies using social analysis of discourse is personal ‘lived’ experience. This is certainly the case for Kamada, who, as a white American woman with a Japanese spouse, had to deal first hand with the racialization of her son. Like many other mixed-ethnic parents, she experienced the shock and disap-pointment of finding her child being racialized as ‘Chinese’ in America through peer group taunts, and constituted as gaijin (a foreigner) in his own homeland of Japan. As a member of an e-list of the (Japan) Bilingualism Special Interest Group (BSIG), Kamada learnt that other parents from the English-speaking foreign community in Japan had similar disturbing stories to tell of their mixed-ethnic children who, upon entering the Japanese school system, were mocked, bullied and marginalized by their peers. She men-tions a pervasive Japanese proverb which warns of diversity or difference getting squashed: ‘The nail that sticks up gets hammered down’. This imperative to conform to Japanese behavioural and discursive norms prompted Kamada’s quest to investigate the impact of ‘otherization’ on the identities of children of mixed parentage. In this fascinat-ing book, she shows that this pressure to conform is balanced by a corresponding cele-bration of ‘hybrid’ or mixed identities. The children in her study are also able to negotiate their identities positively as they come to terms with contradictory discursive notions of ‘Japaneseness’, ‘whiteness’ and ‘halfness/doubleness’.The discursive construction of identity has become a central concern amongst researchers across a wide range of academic disciplines within the humanities and the social sciences, and most existing work either concentrates on a specific identity cate-gory, such as gender, sexuality or national identity, or else offers a broader discussion of how identity is theorized. Kamada’s book is refreshing because it crosses the usual boundaries and offers divergent insights on identity in a number of ways. First, using the term ‘ethno-gendering’, she examines the ways in which six mixed-ethnic girls living in Japan accomplish and manage the relationship between their gender and ethnic ‘differ-ences’ from age 12 to 15. She analyses in close detail how their actions or displays within certain situated interactions might come into conflict with how they are seen or constituted by others. Second, Kamada’s study builds on contemporary writing on the benefits of hybridity where identities are fluid, flexible and indeterminate, and which contest the usual monolithic distinctions of gender, ethnicity, class, etc. Here, Kamada carves out an original space for her findings. While scholars have often investigated changing identities and language practices of young people who have been geographi-cally displaced and are newcomers to the local language, Kamada’s participants were all born and brought up in Japan, were fluent in Japanese and were relatively proficient in English. Third, the author refuses to conceptualize or theorize identity from a single given viewpoint in preference to others, but in postmodernist spirit draws upon multiple perspectives and frameworks of discourse analysis in order to create different forms of knowledge and understandings of her subject. Drawing on this ‘multi-perspectival’ approach, Kamada examines grammatical, lexical, rhetorical and interactional features from six extensive conversations, to show how her participants position their diverse identities in relation to their friends, to the researcher and to the outside world. Kamada’s study is driven by three clear aims. The first is to find out ‘whether there are any tensions and dilemmas in the ways adolescent girls of Japanese and “white” mixed parentage in Japan identify themselves in terms of ethnicity’. In Chapter 4, she shows how the girls indeed felt that they stood out as different and consequently experienced isolation, marginalization and bullying at school – although they were able to make better sense of this as they grew older, repositioning the bullies as pitiable. The second aim is to ask how, if at all, her participants celebrate their ethnicity, and furthermore, what kind of symbolic, linguistic and social capital they were able to claim for themselves on the basis of their hybrid identities. In Chapter 5, Kamada shows how the girls over time were able to constitute themselves as insiders while constituting ‘the Japanese’ as outsiders, and their network of mixed-ethnic friends was a key means to achieve this. In Chapter 6, the author develops this potential celebration of the girls’ mixed ethnicity by investigating the privileges they perceived it afforded them – for example, having the advantage of pos-sessing English proficiency and intercultural ‘savvy’ in a globalized world. Kamada’s third aim is to ask how her participants positioned themselves and performed their hybrid identities on the basis of their constituted appearance: that is, how the girls saw them-selves based on how they looked to others. In Chapter 7, the author shows that, while there are competing discourses at work, the girls are able to take up empowering positions within a discourse of ‘foreigner attractiveness’ or ‘a white-Western female beauty’ discourse, which provides them with a certain cachet among their Japanese peers. Throughout the book, Kamada adopts a highly self-reflexive perspective of her own position as author. For example, she interrogates the fact that she may have changed the lived reality of her six participants during the course of her research study. As the six girls, who were ‘best friends’, lived in different parts of the Morita region of Japan, she had to be proactive in organizing six separate ‘get-togethers’ through the course of her three-year study. She acknowledges that she did not collect ‘naturally occurring data’ but rather co-constructed opportunities for the girls to meet and talk on a regular basis. At these meetings, she encouraged the girls to discuss matters of identity, prompted by open-ended interview questions, by stimulus materials such as photos, articles and pic-tures, and by individual tasks such as drawing self-portraits. By giving her participants a platform in this way, Kamada not only elicited some very rich spoken data but also ‘helped in some way to shape the attitudes and self-images of the girls positively, in ways that might not have developed had these get-togethers not occurred’ (p. 221). While the data she gathers are indeed rich, it may well be asked whether there is a mismatch between the girls’ frank and engaging accounts of personal experience, and the social constructionist academic register in which these are later re-articulated. When Kamada writes, ‘Rina related how within the more narrow range of discourses that she had to draw on in her past, she was disempowered and marginalized’ (p. 118), we know that Rina’s actual words were very different. Would she really recognize, understand and agree with the reported speech of the researcher? This small omission of self-reflexivity apart – an omission which is true of most lin-guistic ethnography conducted today – Kamada has written a unique, engaging and thought-provoking book which offers a model to future discourse analysts investigating hybrid identities. The idea that speakers can draw upon competing discourses or reper-toires to constitute their identities in contrasting, creative and positive ways provides linguistic researchers with a clear orientation by which to analyse the contradictions of identity construction as they occur across time in different discursive contexts

Self-assembled healable materials through a combination of pi-pi stacking and hydrogen bonding

The discovery of polymers with stimuli responsive physical properties is a rapidly expanding area of research. At the forefront of the field are self-healing polymers, which, when fractured can regain the mechanical properties of the material either autonomically, or in response to a stimulus. It has long been known that it is possible to promote healing in conventional thermoplastics by heating the fracture zone above the Tg of the polymer under pressure. This process requires reptation and subsequent re-entanglement of macromolecules across the fracture void, which serves to bridge, and ‘heal’ the crack. The timescale for this mechanism is highly dependent on the molecular weight of the polymer being studied. This process is in contrast to that required to affect healing in supramolecular polymers such as the plasticised, hydrogen bonded elastomer reported by Leibler et al. The disparity in bond energies between the non-covalent and covalent bonds within supramolecular polymers results in fractures propagating through scission of the comparatively weak supramolecular interactions, rather than through breaking the stronger, covalent bonds. Thus, during the healing process the macromolecules surrounding the fracture site only need sufficient energy to re-engage their supramolecular interactions in order to regenerate the strength of the pristine material. Herein we describe the design, synthesis and optimization of a new class of supramolecular polymer blends that harness the reversible nature of pi-pi stacking and hydrogen bonding interactions to produce self-supporting films with facile healable characteristics.

CHO cell adhesion on modified surfaces of different materials.

Epithelial cells are mainly responsible for the formation of tissues that cover the external and internal surfaces of organs like skin, lining of the lungs and intestines. The cells must adhere to substrates and to each other in compliance with certain stimulus. In this way, adhesion properties can be regulated by the cell which simultaneously senses the chemical and mechanical properties of its environment. Their adhesion and growth on biomaterials depends on substrate properties such as surface wettability, topography and chemistry. The aim of this study is to investigate cell-surface interactions using several materials and different surfaces.

New materials for electrochemiluminescence

The study of electrochemiluminescence (ECL) involves photophysical and electrochemical aspects. Excited states are populated by an electrical stimulus. The most important applications are in the diagnostic field where a number of different biologically-relevant molecules (e.g. proteins and nucleic acids) can be recognized and quantified with a sensitivity and specificity previously not reachable. As a matter of fact the electrochemistry, differently to the classic techniques as fluorescence and chemiluminescence, allows to control the excited state generation spatially and temporally. The two research visits into A. J. Bard electrochemistry laboratories were priceless. Dr. Bard has been one of ECL pioneers, the first to introduce the technique and the one who discovered in 1972 the surprising emission of Ru(bpy)3 2+. I consider necessary to thank by now my supervisors Massimo and Francesco for their help and for giving me the great opportunity to know this unique science man that made me feel enthusiastic. I will never be grateful enough… Considering that the experimental techniques of ECL did not changed significantly in these last years the most convenient research direction has been the developing of materials with new or improved properties. In Chapter I the basics concepts and mechanisms of ECL are introduced so that the successive experiments can be easily understood. In the final paragraph the scopes of the thesis are briefly described. In Chapter II by starting from ECL experimental apparatus of Dr. Bard’s laboratories the design, assembly and preliminary tests of the new Bologna instrument are carefully described. The instrument assembly required to work hard but resulted in the introduction of the new technique in our labs by allowing the continuation of the ECL studies began in Texas. In Chapter III are described the results of electrochemical and ECL studies performed on new synthesized Ru(II) complexes containing tetrazolate based ligands. ECL emission has been investigated in solution and in solid thin films. The effect of the chemical protonation of the tetrazolate ring on ECL emission has been also investigated evidencing the possibility of a catalytic effect (generation of molecular hydrogen) of one of the complexes in organic media. Finally, after a series of preliminary studies on ECL emission in acqueous buffers, the direct interaction with calf thymus DNA of some complexes has been tested by ECL and photoluminescence (PL) titration. In Chapter IV different Ir(III) complexes have been characterized electrochemically and photophysically (ECL and PL). Some complexes were already well-known in literature for their high quantum efficiency whereas the remaining were new synthesized compounds containing tetrazolate based ligands analogous to those investigated in Chapt. III. During the tests on a halogenated complex was unexpectedly evidenced the possibility to follow the kinetics of an electro-induced chemical reaction by using ECL signal. In the last chapter (V) the possibility to use mono-use silicon chips electrodes as ECL analitycal devices is under investigation. The chapter begins by describing the chip structure and materials then a signal reproducibility study and geometry optimization is carried on by using two different complexes. In the following paragraphs is reported in detail the synthesis of an ECL label based on Ru(bpy)3 2+ and the chip functionalization by using a lipoic acid SAM and the same label. After some preliminary characterizations (mass spectroscopy TOF) has been demonstrated that by mean of a simple and fast ECL measurement it’s possible to confirm the presence of the coupling product SAM-label into the chip with a very high sensitivity. No signal was detected from the same system by using photoluminescence.

Focal Epilepsy: MR Imaging of Nonhemodynamic Field Effects by Using a Phase-cycled Stimulus-induced Rotary Saturation Approach with Spin-Lock Preparation.

Purpose To investigate whether nonhemodynamic resonant saturation effects can be detected in patients with focal epilepsy by using a phase-cycled stimulus-induced rotary saturation (PC-SIRS) approach with spin-lock (SL) preparation and whether they colocalize with the seizure onset zone and surface interictal epileptiform discharges (IED). Materials and Methods The study was approved by the local ethics committee, and all subjects gave written informed consent. Eight patients with focal epilepsy undergoing presurgical surface and intracranial electroencephalography (EEG) underwent magnetic resonance (MR) imaging at 3 T with a whole-brain PC-SIRS imaging sequence with alternating SL-on and SL-off and two-dimensional echo-planar readout. The power of the SL radiofrequency pulse was set to 120 Hz to sensitize the sequence to high gamma oscillations present in epileptogenic tissue. Phase cycling was applied to capture distributed current orientations. Voxel-wise subtraction of SL-off from SL-on images enabled the separation of T2* effects from rotary saturation effects. The topography of PC-SIRS effects was compared with the seizure onset zone at intracranial EEG and with surface IED-related potentials. Bayesian statistics were used to test whether prior PC-SIRS information could improve IED source reconstruction. Results Nonhemodynamic resonant saturation effects ipsilateral to the seizure onset zone were detected in six of eight patients (concordance rate, 0.75; 95% confidence interval: 0.40, 0.94) by means of the PC-SIRS technique. They were concordant with IED surface negativity in seven of eight patients (0.88; 95% confidence interval: 0.51, 1.00). Including PC-SIRS as prior information improved the evidence of the standard EEG source models compared with the use of uninformed reconstructions (exceedance probability, 0.77 vs 0.12; Wilcoxon test of model evidence, P < .05). Nonhemodynamic resonant saturation effects resolved in patients with favorable postsurgical outcomes, but persisted in patients with postsurgical seizure recurrence. Conclusion Nonhemodynamic resonant saturation effects are detectable during interictal periods with the PC-SIRS approach in patients with epilepsy. The method may be useful for MR imaging-based detection of neuronal currents in a clinical environment. (©) RSNA, 2016 Online supplemental material is available for this article.

Chemical specificity in REDOX-responsive materials:the diverse effects of different Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) on polysulfide nanoparticles

REDOX responsive (nano)materials typically exhibit chemical changes in response to the presence and concentration of oxidants/reductants. Due to the complexity of biological environments, it is critical to ascertain whether the chemical response may depend on the chemical details of the stimulus, in addition to its REDOX potential, and whether chemically different responses can determine a different overall performance of the material. Here, we have used oxidation-sensitive materials, although these considerations can be extended also to reducible ones. In particular, we have used poly(propylene sulfide) (PPS) nanoparticles coated with a PEGylated emulsifier (Pluronic F127); inter alia, we here present also an improved preparative method. The nanoparticles were exposed to two Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS) typically encountered in inflammatory reactions, hydrogen peroxide (H2O2) and hypochlorite (ClO−); their response was evaluated with a variety of techniques, including diffusion NMR spectroscopy that allowed to separately characterize the chemically different colloidal species produced. The two oxidants triggered a different chemical response: H2O2 converted sulfides to sulfoxides, while ClO− partially oxidized them further to sulfones. The different chemistry correlated to a different material response: H2O2 increased the polarity of the nanoparticles, causing them to swell in water and to release the surface PEGylated emulsifier; the uncoated oxidized particles still exhibited very low toxicity. On the contrary, ClO− rapidly converted the nanoparticles into water-soluble, depolymerized fragments with a significantly higher toxicity. The take-home message is that it is more correct to discuss ‘smart’ materials in terms of an environmentally specific response to (REDOX) stimuli. Far from being a problem, this could open the way to more sophisticated and precisely targeted applications.