Liberal bias mediates emotion recognition deficits in frontal traumatic brain injury

It is well-known that patients having sustained frontal-lobe traumatic brain injury (TBI) are severely impaired on tests of emotion recognition. Indeed, these patients have significant difficulty recognizing facial expressions of emotion, and such deficits are often associated with decreased social functioning and poor quality of life. As of yet, no studies have examined the response patterns which underlie facial emotion recognition impairment in TBI and which may lend clarity to the interpretation of deficits. Therefore, the present study aimed to characterize response patterns in facial emotion recognition in 14 patients with frontal TBI compared to 22 matched control subjects, using a task which required participants to rate the intensity of each emotion (happiness, sadness, anger, disgust, surprise and fear) of a series of photographs of emotional and neutral faces. Results first confirmed the presence of facial emotion recognition impairment in TBI, and further revealed that patients displayed a liberal bias when rating facial expressions, leading them to associate intense ratings of incorrect emotional labels to sad, disgusted, surprised and fearful facial expressions. These findings are generally in line with prior studies which also report important facial affect recognition deficits in TBI patients, particularly for negative emotions.     

High-pressure torsion of metastable austenitic stainless steel at moderate temperatures

We subjected samples of a 304 metastable austenitic stainless steel to high-pressure torsion (HPT) in the temperature range of 303–573 K, (i.e. at different austenite stabilities), to examine their microstructures and mechanical properties. HPT processing at room temperature led to the formation of a lamellar microstructure with austenitic and martensitic phases, of which sizes were characterised by prior austenite grains, whereas HPT processing at moderate temperatures produced nanostructured austenite grains through mechanical twinning. The nanostructured 304 steel with an average grain size of ~70 nm exhibited a fine balance between tensile strength (~1.7 GPa) and reduction of area (~55%).     

Redundant food searches by capuchin monkeys (Cebus apella): a failure of metacognition?

This study investigated capuchin monkeys' understanding of their own visual search behavior as a means to gather information. Five monkeys were presented with three tubes that could be visually searched to determine the location of a bait. The bait's visibility was experimentally manipulated, and the monkeys' spontaneous visual searches before tube selection were analyzed. In Experiment 1, three monkeys selected the baited tube significantly above chance; however, the monkeys also searched transparent tubes. In Experiment 2, a bent tube in which food was never visible was introduced. When the bent tube was baited, the monkeys failed to deduce the bait location and responded randomly. They also continued to look into the bent tube despite not gaining any pertinent information from it. The capuchin monkeys' behavior contrasts with the efficient employment of visual search behavior reported in humans, apes and macaques. This difference is consistent with species-related variations in metacognitive abilities, although other explanations are also possible.     

High-resolution electron microscope studies of irradiation-induced crystalline-to-amorphous transition in boron carbide

Abstract

The crystalline-to-amorphous (C-A) transition in boron carbide induced by 2 MeV electron irradiation was studied by high-resolution electron microscopy. It is revealed that the C-A transition takes place not homogeneously but heterogeneously over the irradiated volume and the volume fraction of the amorphous phase continuously increases with increasing dose of electrons.     

10‐month‐old infants’ inference of invisible agent: Distinction in causality between object motion and human action1

Abstract: Two habituation experiments investigated 10‐month‐old infants’ interpretation of events where a stationary object began to move without any visible causes. During habituation, infants saw that an object partly hidden by an occluder began to move away from the occluder. Then, they were tested with three test events without the occluder: the ?rst event showed a hand pushing the object, the second event showed a hand failing to touch the object, and the last event had no agent. The objects were a ball in Experiment 1, and a person in Experiment 2. The test event that the infants looked at for the shortest duration in Experiment 1 was where the hand pushed the ball, whereas they looked at the three test events almost equal amounts of time in Experiment 2. These results indicate that 10‐month‐old infants responded to the events in terms of causality and could infer the presence of the agent behind the occluder only when they saw the habituation event featuring the ball.     

The Organization of Extrinsic Neurons and Their Implications in the Functional Roles of the Mushroom Bodies in Drosophila melanogaster Meigen

Although the importance of the Drosophila mushroom body in olfactory learning and memory has been stressed, virtually nothing is known about the brain regions to which it is connected. Using Golgi and GAL4–UAS techniques, we performed the first systematic attempt to reveal the anatomy of its extrinsic neurons. A novel presynaptic reporter construct, UAS-neuronal synaptobrevin–green fluorescent protein (n-syb–GFP), was used to reveal the direction of information in the GAL4-labeled neurons. Our results showed that the main target of the output neurons from the mushroom body lobes is the anterior part of the inferior medial, superior medial, and superior lateral protocerebrum. The lobes also receive afferents from these neuropils. The lack of major output projections directly to the deutocerebrum’s premotor pathways discourages the view that the role of the mushroom body may be that of an immediate modifier of behavior. Our data, as well as a critical evaluation of the literature, suggest that the mushroom body may not by itself be a “center” for learning and memory, but that it can equally be considered as a preprocessor of olfactory signals en route to “higher” protocerebral regions.     

The use of paraprofessionals in crisis intervention

Single-session crisis services by paraprofessionals (graduate students and community volunteers) in the emergency room of a community hospital were offered to 293 clients. These clients were followed-up 6 to 12 months after their last contact and asked about: (1) the effectiveness of the service, (2) their use of referrals, (3) the major source of change in their crisis situation, and (4) their rating of improvement for their presenting problem. There were 104 clients who completed the follow-up. The results support the interpretation that timely intervention by paraprofessionals may have long-lasting results in specific problem areas. A model emphasizing the use of service deliverers as researchers is proposed.     

Compositional Z: Confluence Proofs for Permutative Conversion

This paper gives new confluence proofs for several lambda calculi with permutation-like reduction, including lambda calculi corresponding to intuitionistic and classical natural deduction with disjunction and permutative conversions, and a lambda calculus with explicit substitutions. For lambda calculi with permutative conversion, naïve parallel reduction technique does not work, and (if we consider untyped terms, and hence we do not use strong normalization) traditional notion of residuals is required as Ando pointed out. This paper shows that the difficulties can be avoided by extending the technique proposed by Dehornoy and van Oostrom, called the Z theorem: existence of a mapping on terms with the Z property concludes the confluence. Since it is still hard to directly define a mapping with the Z property for the lambda calculi with permutative conversions, this paper extends the Z theorem to compositional functions, called compositional Z, and shows that we can adopt it to the calculi.     

Evaluation of third-party reciprocity by squirrel monkeys (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Saimiri sciureus</Emphasis>) and the question of mechanisms

Social evaluation during third-party interactions emerges early in human ontogeny, and it has been shown in adult capuchin monkeys who witness violations of reciprocity in object exchanges: Monkeys were less inclined to accept food from humans who refused to reciprocate with another human. A recent study reporting similar evidence in marmoset monkeys raised the possibility that such evaluations might be based on species’ inherent cooperativeness. We tested a species not renowned for cooperativeness—squirrel monkeys—using the procedure used with marmosets and found a similar result. This finding rules out any crucial role for cooperative tendencies in monkeys’ responses to unfair exchanges. We then tested squirrel monkeys using procedures more similar to those used in the original study with capuchins. Squirrel monkeys again accepted food less frequently from non-reciprocators, but unlike capuchins, they also strongly preferred reciprocators. We conclude that neither squirrel monkeys nor marmoset monkeys engaged in emotional bookkeeping of the type that probably underlies social evaluation in capuchin monkeys; instead, they employed one or more simple behavioral rules. Further comparative studies are required to clarify the mechanisms underlying social evaluation processes across species.