Review of Issues Facing Congress. News from Capitol Hill.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Heinz, Ann Simeo

2001-01-01

Discusses various topics that have faced the 107th U.S. Congress, such as tax cuts, judicial appointments, domestic issues, patients' bill of rights, stem cell research, election law, and campaign finance reform. Includes information on U.S. Senate and federal judicial appointments. Provides ideas for student learning activities. (CMK)

Rural roads and bridges : management issues facing local highway officials

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1996-09-01

The report documents management practices used by, and issues facing, local transportation administrators. Data are drawn from a national survey of county and town highway officials, in Fall 1994 and Spring 1995, which provided usable information fro...

Policy issues facing the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty and prospects for the future

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Sweeney, J.

1999-04-01

This report is divided into the following 5 sections: (1) Background; (2) Major Issues Facing Ratification of CTBT; (3) Current Status on CTBT Ratification; (4) Status of CTBT Signatories and Ratifiers; and (5) CTBT Activities Not Prohibited. The major issues facing ratification of CTBT discussed here are: impact on CTBT of START II and ABM ratification; impact of India and Pakistan nuclear tests; CTBT entry into force; and establishment of the Comprehensive Nuclear Test-Ban Treaty Organization.

Qualitatively similar processing for own- and other-race faces: Evidence from efficiency and equivalent input noise.

PubMed

Shafai, Fakhri; Oruc, Ipek

2018-02-01

The other-race effect is the finding of diminished performance in recognition of other-race faces compared to those of own-race. It has been suggested that the other-race effect stems from specialized expert processes being tuned exclusively to own-race faces. In the present study, we measured recognition contrast thresholds for own- and other-race faces as well as houses for Caucasian observers. We have factored face recognition performance into two invariant aspects of visual function: efficiency, which is related to neural computations and processing demanded by the task, and equivalent input noise, related to signal degradation within the visual system. We hypothesized that if expert processes are available only to own-race faces, this should translate into substantially greater recognition efficiencies for own-race compared to other-race faces. Instead, we found similar recognition efficiencies for both own- and other-race faces. The other-race effect manifested as increased equivalent input noise. These results argue against qualitatively distinct perceptual processes. Instead they suggest that for Caucasian observers, similar neural computations underlie recognition of own- and other-race faces. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Mnemonic discrimination of similar face stimuli and a potential mechanism for the “other race” effect

PubMed Central

Chang, Allen; Murray, Elizabeth; Yassa, Michael A.

2016-01-01

Face recognition is an important component of successful social interactions in humans. A large literature in social psychology has focused on the phenomenon termed “the other race” (ORE) effect, the tendency to be more proficient with face recognition within one’s own ethnic group, as compared to other ethnic groups. Several potential hypotheses have been proposed for this effect including perceptual expertise, social grouping, and holistic face processing. Recent work on mnemonic discrimination (i.e. the ability to resolve mnemonic interference among similar experiences) may provide a mechanistic account for the ORE. In the current study, we examined how discrimination and generalization in the presence of mnemonic interference may contribute to the ORE. We developed a database of computerized faces divided evenly among ethnic origins (Black, Caucasian, East Asian, South Asian), as well as morphed face stimuli that varied in the amount of similarity to the original stimuli (30%, 40%, 50%, and 60% morphs). Participants first examined the original unmorphed stimuli during study, then during test were asked to judge the prior occurrence of repetitions (targets), morphed stimuli (lures), and new stimuli (foils). We examined participants’ ability to correctly reject similar morphed lures and found that it increased linearly as a function of face dissimilarity. We additionally found that Caucasian participants’ mnemonic discrimination/generalization functions were sharply tuned for Caucasian faces but considerably less tuned for East Asian and Black faces. These results suggest that expertise plays an important role in resolving mnemonic interference, which may offer a mechanistic account for the ORE. PMID:26413724

Startling similarity: Effects of facial self-resemblance and familiarity on the processing of emotional faces

PubMed Central

Larra, Mauro F.; Merz, Martina U.; Schächinger, Hartmut

2017-01-01

Facial self-resemblance has been associated with positive emotional evaluations, but this effect may be biased by self-face familiarity. Here we report two experiments utilizing startle modulation to investigate how the processing of facial expressions of emotion is affected by subtle resemblance to the self as well as to familiar faces. Participants of the first experiment (I) (N = 39) were presented with morphed faces showing happy, neutral, and fearful expressions which were manipulated to resemble either their own or unknown faces. At SOAs of either 300 ms or 3500–4500 ms after picture onset, startle responses were elicited by binaural bursts of white noise (50 ms, 105 dB), and recorded at the orbicularis oculi via EMG. Manual reaction time was measured in a simple emotion discrimination paradigm. Pictures preceding noise bursts by short SOA inhibited startle (prepulse inhibition, PPI). Both affective modulation and PPI of startle in response to emotional faces was altered by physical similarity to the self. As indexed both by relative facilitation of startle and faster manual responses, self-resemblance apparently induced deeper processing of facial affect, particularly in happy faces. Experiment II (N = 54) produced similar findings using morphs of famous faces, yet showed no impact of mere familiarity on PPI effects (or response time, either). The results are discussed with respect to differential (presumably pre-attentive) effects of self-specific vs. familiar information in face processing. PMID:29216226

Issues Facing Pharmacy Leaders in 2015: Suggestions for Pharmacy Strategic Planning

PubMed Central

Weber, Robert J.

2015-01-01

Issues facing pharmacy leaders in 2015 include practice model growth and the role of pharmacy students, clinical privileging of health-system pharmacists and provider status, medication error prevention, and specialty pharmacy services. The goal of this article is to provide practical approaches to 4 issues facing pharmacy leaders in 2015 to help them focus their department’s goals. This article will address (1) advances in the pharmacy practice model initiative and the role of pharmacy students, (2) the current thinking of pharmacists being granted clinical privileges in health systems, (3) updates on preventing harmful medication errors, and (4) the growth of specialty pharmacy services. The sample template of a strategic plan may be used by a pharmacy department in 2015 in an effort to continue developing patient-centered pharmacy services. PMID:25717212

Implicit Race Bias Decreases the Similarity of Neural Representations of Black and White Faces

PubMed Central

Brosch, Tobias; Bar-David, Eyal; Phelps, Elizabeth A.

2013-01-01

Implicit race bias has been shown to affect decisions and behaviors. It may also change perceptual experience by increasing perceived differences between social groups. We investigated how this phenomenon may be expressed at the neural level by testing whether the distributed blood-oxygenation-level-dependent (BOLD) patterns representing Black and White faces are more dissimilar in participants with higher implicit race bias. We used multivoxel pattern analysis to predict the race of faces participants were viewing. We successfully predicted the race of the faces on the basis of BOLD activation patterns in early occipital visual cortex, occipital face area, and fusiform face area (FFA). Whereas BOLD activation patterns in early visual regions, likely reflecting different perceptual features, allowed successful prediction for all participants, successful prediction on the basis of BOLD activation patterns in FFA, a high-level face-processing region, was restricted to participants with high pro-White bias. These findings suggest that stronger implicit pro-White bias decreases the similarity of neural representations of Black and White faces. PMID:23300228

Aesthetic strategies for the aging Asian face.

PubMed

Lam, Samuel M

2007-08-01

Aging that manifests in the Asian face is remarkably different, yet in many ways similar, to that of the white face. These dissimilarities and similarities are highlighted in this article along with overall strategies to approach the aging Asian face. This article focuses almost exclusively on the judgment and thinking that are required when approaching the Asian patient. More specifically, one issue that is covered is the cultural aspect that pertains to patient motivation and perspectives on cosmetic enhancement. The other equally important aspect that is addressed is elaboration of a new paradigm on what constitutes a youthful face, especially as that model relates to the Asian face.

Older and younger adults' first impressions from faces: similar in agreement but different in positivity.

PubMed

Zebrowitz, Leslie A; Franklin, Robert G; Hillman, Suzanne; Boc, Henry

2013-03-01

People readily form first impressions from faces, with consensual judgments that have significant social consequences. Similar impressions are shown by children, young adults (YA), and people from diverse cultures. However, this is the first study to systematically investigate older adults' (OA) impressions. OA and YA showed similar levels of within-age agreement in their impressions of competence, health, hostility, and trustworthiness. Both groups also showed stronger within- than between-age agreement. Consistent with other evidence for age-related increases in positivity, OA showed more positive impressions of the health, hostility, and trustworthiness of faces. These effects tended to be strongest for the most negatively valenced faces, suggesting that they derive from OA lesser processing of negative cues rather than greater processing of positive cues. An own-age bias in impressions was limited to greater OA positivity in impressions of the hostility of older faces, but not younger ones. Although OA and YA differed in vision and executive function, only OA slower processing speed contributed to age differences in impression positivity. Positivity effects in OA have not been previously linked to processing speed, and research investigating possible explanations for this effect would be worthwhile.

Older and Younger Adults’ First Impressions From Faces: Similar in Agreement but Different in Positivity

PubMed Central

Zebrowitz, Leslie A.; Franklin, Robert G.; Hillman, Suzanne; Boc, Henry

2014-01-01

People readily form first impressions from faces, with consensual judgments that have significant social consequences. Similar impressions are shown by children, young adults (YA), and people from diverse cultures. However, this is the first study to systematically investigate older adults’ (OA) impressions. OA and YA showed similar levels of within-age agreement in their impressions of competence, health, hostility, and trustworthiness. Both groups also showed stronger within- than between age agreement. Consistent with other evidence for age-related increases in positivity, OA showed more positive impressions of the health, hostility, and trustworthiness of faces. These effects tended to be strongest for the most negatively valenced faces, suggesting that they derive from OA lesser processing of negative cues rather than greater processing of positive cues. An own-age bias in impressions was limited to greater OA positivity in impressions of the hostility of older faces, but not younger ones. Although OA and YA differed in vision and executive function, only OA slower processing speed contributed to age differences in impression positivity. Positivity effects in OA have not been previously linked to processing speed, and research investigating possible explanations for this effect would be worthwhile. PMID:23276216

Face Values: The Use of Sensitive Error Correction to Address Adolescents' "Face" Issues in the Modern Languages Classroom

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Crichton, Hazel; Templeton, Brian; Valdera, Francisco

2017-01-01

Anxiety about "performing" in a foreign language in front of classmates may inhibit learners' contributions in the modern languages class through fear of embarrassment over possible error production. The issue of "face", perceived social standing in the eyes of others, presents a sensitive matter for young adolescents…

Issues and Impediments Faced by Canadian Teachers While Integrating ICT in Pedagogical Practice

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saxena, Anoop

2017-01-01

Teachers in many schools struggle to integrate Information and Communications Technology (ICT) as part of their teaching practice. Among the issues faced by teachers when attempting to integrate ICT into their classrooms are gaps in ICT knowledge and skills, lack of training and inadequate support and scaffolding. Other issues include inability to…

High heat flux issues for plasma-facing components in fusion reactors

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Watson, Robert D.

1993-02-01

Plasma facing components in tokamak fusion reactors are faced with a number of difficult high heat flux issues. These components include: first wall armor tiles, pumped limiters, diverter plates, rf antennae structure, and diagnostic probes. Peak heat fluxes are 15 - 30 MW/m2 for diverter plates, which will operate for 100 - 1000 seconds in future tokamaks. Disruption heat fluxes can approach 100,000 MW/m2 for 0.1 ms. Diverter plates are water-cooled heat sinks with armor tiles brazed on to the plasma facing side. Heat sink materials include OFHC, GlidcopTM, TZM, Mo-41Re, and niobium alloys. Armor tile materials include: carbon fiber composites, beryllium, silicon carbide, tungsten, and molybdenum. Tile thickness range from 2 - 10 mm, and heat sinks are 1 - 3 mm. A twisted tape insert is used to enhance heat transfer and increase the burnout safety margin from critical heat flux limits to 50 - 60 MW/m2 with water at 10 m/s and 4 MPa. Tests using rastered electron beams have shown thermal fatigue failures from cracks at the brazed interface between tiles and the heat sink after only 1000 cycles at 10 - 15 MW/m2. These fatigue lifetimes need to be increased an order of magnitude to meet future requirements. Other critical issues for plasma facing components include: surface erosion from sputtering and disruption erosion, eddy current forces and runaway electron impact from disruptions, neutron damage, tritium retention and release, remote maintenance of radioactive components, corrosion-erosion, and loss-of-coolant accidents.

Major Issues Facing the Conservation Movement in the Coming Decade and Beyond.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Strong, Maurice

1984-01-01

The key issues facing the conservation movement may be grouped into three areas: (1) threats to human health; (2) threats to food and fuel supplies; and (3) long-term threats to the biosphere. Each of these areas is discussed. (JN)

Older LGBT adult training panels: an opportunity to educate about issues faced by the older LGBT community.

PubMed

Rogers, Anissa; Rebbe, Rebecca; Gardella, Chanel; Worlein, Mary; Chamberlin, Mya

2013-01-01

Older lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) adults face unique issues that can impede their well-being. Although many advances have helped address these issues, there is a need for education efforts that raise awareness of service providers about these issues. This study explores evaluation data of training panels provided by older LGBT adults and the views of training participants on issues faced by the older LGBT community after attending the panels. Participants were 605 students and professionals from over 34 education and communication settings. Implications for trainings on participants and older LGBT trainers are discussed.

Children (but not adults) judge similarity in own- and other-race faces by the color of their skin

PubMed Central

Balas, Benjamin; Peissig, Jessie; Moulson, Margaret

2014-01-01

Face shape and pigmentation are both diagnostic cues for face identification and categorization. In particular, both shape and pigmentation contribute to observers’ categorization of faces by race. Though many theoretical accounts of the behavioral other-race effect either explicitly or implicitly depend on differential use of visual information as a function of category expertise, there is little evidence that observers do in fact differentially rely upon distinct visual cues for own- and other-race faces. Presently, we examined how Asian and Caucasian children (4–6 years old) and adults use 3D shape and 2D pigmentation to make similarity judgments of White, Black, and Asian faces. Children in this age range are both capable of making category judgments about race, but are also sufficiently plastic with regard to the behavioral other-race effect that it seems as though their representations of facial appearance across different categories are still emerging. Using a simple match-to-sample similarity task, we found that children tend to use pigmentation to judge facial similarity more than adults, and also that own- vs. other-group category membership appears to influence how quickly children learn to use shape information more readily. We therefore suggest that children continue to adjust how different visual information is weighted during early and middle childhood and that experience with faces affects the speed at which adult-like weightings are established. PMID:25462031

Workforce Issues Facing HRD. [Concurrent Symposium Session at AHRD Annual Conference, 1997.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

1997

This document contains three papers from a symposium on work force issues facing human resource development (HRD). "Diversity Management in Nonprofit Women's Health Care Settings: A Qualitative Study of Race, Class, and Gender Influences" (Camille A. Cordak) demonstrates which organizational activities support diversity and how an…

DOT's budget : management and performance issues facing the department in fiscal year 1999

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1998-02-12

This testimony discusses key resource management issues and performance challenges facing the Department of Transportation in 1999 and beyond. 1. There is a need for increased management attention to highway, transit, and rail programs - which accoun...

DOT's Budget: Safety, Management, and Other Issues Facing the Department in Fiscal Year 1998 and Beyond

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

1997-03-06

This testimony discusses key resource management issues and performance challenges facing the Department of Transportation in 1998 and beyond. 1. Increased safety and security concerns prompted by accidents and maintenance issues. 2. Important manage...

Challenges Faced by Teachers Implementing Socio-Scientific Issues as Core Elements in Their Classroom Practices

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bossér, Ulrika; Lundin, Mattias; Lindahl, Mats; Linder, Cedric

2015-01-01

Teachers may face considerable challenges when implementing socio-scientific issues (SSI) in their classroom practices, such as incorporating student-centred teaching practices and exploring knowledge and values in the context of socioscientific issues. This year-long study explores teachers' reflections on the process of developing their…

How 'blended' is blended learning?: students' perceptions of issues around the integration of online and face-to-face learning in a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) health care context.

PubMed

Glogowska, Margaret; Young, Pat; Lockyer, Lesley; Moule, Pam

2011-11-01

This paper explores students' perceptions of blended learning modules delivered in a Continuing Professional Development (CPD) health care context in the UK. 'Blended learning' is the term used to describe a hybrid model of learning where traditional face-to-face teaching approaches and newer electronic learning activities and resources are utilised together. A new model of CPD for health care practitioners based on a blended learning approach was developed at a university in the south west of England. As part of the evaluation of the new modules, a qualitative study was conducted, in which 17 students who had experienced the modules were interviewed by telephone. Three main themes emerged from the interviews relating to the 'blended' nature of the blended learning modules. These were i) issues around the opportunities for discussion of online materials face-to-face; ii) issues of what material should be online versus face-to-face and iii) balancing online and face-to-face components. Teaching staff engaged in the development of blended learning courses need to pay particular attention to the ways in which they develop and integrate online and face-to-face materials. More attention needs to be paid to allowing opportunity for students to come together to create a 'community of inquiry'. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Endocrinology Telehealth Consultation Improved Glycemic Control Similar to Face-to-Face Visits in Veterans

PubMed Central

Liu, Winnie; Saxon, David R.; McNair, Bryan; Sanagorski, Rebecca; Rasouli, Neda

2016-01-01

Background: Rates of diabetes for veterans who receive health care through the Veterans Health Administration are higher than rates in the general population. Furthermore, many veterans live in rural locations, far from Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, thus limiting their ability to readily seek face-to-face endocrinology care for diabetes. Telehealth (TH) technologies present an opportunity to improve access to specialty diabetes care for such patients; however, there is a lack of evidence regarding the ability of TH to improve glycemic control in comparison to traditional face-to-face consultations. Methods: This was a retrospective cohort study of all new endocrinology diabetes consultations at the Denver VA Medical Center over a 1-year period. Results: A total of 189 patients were included in the analysis. In all, 85 patients had received face-to-face (FTF) endocrinology consultation for diabetes and 104 patients had received TH consultation. Subjects were mostly males (94.7%) and the mean age was 62.8 ± 10.1 years old. HbA1c improved from 9.76% (9.40% to 10.11%) to 8.55% (8.20% to 8.91%) (P < .0001) for the TH group and from 9.56% (9.16% to 9.95%) to 8.62% (8.22% to 9.01%) (P < .0001) for the FTF group after 1 visit. This change in HbA1c was not significantly different in the TH and FTF groups (P = .24). TH visits were associated with a hypothetical savings in median distance traveled of 231.2 miles per trip (which equates to $94.79 saved per trip). Conclusions: Endocrinology TH consultations improved short-term glycemic control as effectively as traditional FTF visits in a veteran population with diabetes. PMID:27170633

Endocrinology Telehealth Consultation Improved Glycemic Control Similar to Face-to-Face Visits in Veterans.

PubMed

Liu, Winnie; Saxon, David R; McNair, Bryan; Sanagorski, Rebecca; Rasouli, Neda

2016-09-01

Rates of diabetes for veterans who receive health care through the Veterans Health Administration are higher than rates in the general population. Furthermore, many veterans live in rural locations, far from Veterans Affairs (VA) hospitals, thus limiting their ability to readily seek face-to-face endocrinology care for diabetes. Telehealth (TH) technologies present an opportunity to improve access to specialty diabetes care for such patients; however, there is a lack of evidence regarding the ability of TH to improve glycemic control in comparison to traditional face-to-face consultations. This was a retrospective cohort study of all new endocrinology diabetes consultations at the Denver VA Medical Center over a 1-year period. A total of 189 patients were included in the analysis. In all, 85 patients had received face-to-face (FTF) endocrinology consultation for diabetes and 104 patients had received TH consultation. Subjects were mostly males (94.7%) and the mean age was 62.8 ± 10.1 years old. HbA1c improved from 9.76% (9.40% to 10.11%) to 8.55% (8.20% to 8.91%) (P < .0001) for the TH group and from 9.56% (9.16% to 9.95%) to 8.62% (8.22% to 9.01%) (P < .0001) for the FTF group after 1 visit. This change in HbA1c was not significantly different in the TH and FTF groups (P = .24). TH visits were associated with a hypothetical savings in median distance traveled of 231.2 miles per trip (which equates to $94.79 saved per trip). Endocrinology TH consultations improved short-term glycemic control as effectively as traditional FTF visits in a veteran population with diabetes. © 2016 Diabetes Technology Society.

Current Warm-Up Practices and Contemporary Issues Faced by Elite Swimming Coaches.

PubMed

McGowan, Courtney J; Pyne, David B; Raglin, John S; Thompson, Kevin G; Rattray, Ben

2016-12-01

McGowan, CJ, Pyne, DB, Raglin, JS, Thompson, KG, and Rattray, B. Current warm-up practices and contemporary issues faced by elite swimming coaches. J Strength Cond Res 30(12): 3471-3480, 2016-A better understanding of current swimming warm-up strategies is needed to improve their effectiveness. The purpose of this study was to describe current precompetition warm-up practices and identify contemporary issues faced by elite swimming coaches during competition. Forty-six state-international level swimming coaches provided information through a questionnaire on their prescription of volume, intensity, and recovery within their pool and dryland-based competition warm-ups, and challenges faced during the final stages of event preparation. Coaches identified four key objectives of the precompetition warm-up: physiological (elevate body temperature and increase muscle activation), kinesthetic (tactile preparation, increase "feel" of the water), tactical (race-pace rehearsal), and mental (improve focus, reduce anxiety). Pool warm-up volume ranged from ∼1300 to 2100 m, beginning with 400-1000 m of continuous, low-intensity (∼50-70% of perceived maximal exertion) swimming, followed by 200-600 m of stroke drills and 1-2 sets (100-400 m in length) of increasing intensity (∼60-90%) swimming, concluding with 3-4 race or near race-pace efforts (25-100 m; ∼90-100%) and 100-400 m easy swimming. Dryland-based warm-up exercises, involving stretch cords and skipping, were also commonly prescribed. Coaches preferred swimmers complete their warm-up 20-30 minutes before race start. Lengthy marshalling periods (15-20+ minutes) and the time required to don racing suits (>10 minutes) were identified as complicating issues. Coaches believed that the pool warm-up affords athletes the opportunity to gain a tactile feel for the water and surrounding pool environment. The combination of dryland-based activation exercises followed by pool-based warm-up routines seems to be the preferred

Is Isolation a Problem? Issues Faced by Rural Libraries and Rural Library Staff in South Australia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Haines, Rebecca; Calvert, Philip J.

2009-01-01

The aim of this research was to investigate current issues faced by public library staff in rural South Australia and to examine some of the reasons why people choose to work in rural libraries. The study took a mixed methods approach, combining interviews and questionnaires to gain a fuller understanding of the issues and experiences of rural…

How have hospitals faced the pricing issues of the 1990's?

PubMed

Kleimenhagen, A; Naidu, G M; Pillari, G D

1994-01-01

National health care expenditures are rising rapidly, bringing on a health care financing crisis. For this reason, it is useful to see how hospitals are facing the price issues of the 1990's. This study examines the price strategies hospitals follow and analyzes their observations on price sensitivity and payer mix. The results clearly show that hospitals have not given much attention to the pricing variable. The study suggests that marketing and finance will have to work closely together in developing future pricing strategies.

The many faces of research on face perception.

PubMed

Little, Anthony C; Jones, Benedict C; DeBruine, Lisa M

2011-06-12

Face perception is fundamental to human social interaction. Many different types of important information are visible in faces and the processes and mechanisms involved in extracting this information are complex and can be highly specialized. The importance of faces has long been recognized by a wide range of scientists. Importantly, the range of perspectives and techniques that this breadth has brought to face perception research has, in recent years, led to many important advances in our understanding of face processing. The articles in this issue on face perception each review a particular arena of interest in face perception, variously focusing on (i) the social aspects of face perception (attraction, recognition and emotion), (ii) the neural mechanisms underlying face perception (using brain scanning, patient data, direct stimulation of the brain, visual adaptation and single-cell recording), and (iii) comparative aspects of face perception (comparing adult human abilities with those of chimpanzees and children). Here, we introduce the central themes of the issue and present an overview of the articles.

As the World Turns: The Shifting Developmental Issues Facing Today's College Man, Part II.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Franklin, E. Bernard

1997-01-01

Discusses issues facing black male college students, and ways colleges and universities can support their growth more effectively. Identifies and explores students' unmet needs: to feel loved, feel accepted, feel competent, have power, resolve pain and anger from lack of appropriate male guidance, find meaning and purpose in life's struggles, and…

Similarities in human visual and declared measures of preference for opposite-sex faces.

PubMed

Griffey, Jack A F; Little, Anthony C

2014-01-01

Facial appearance in humans is associated with attraction and mate choice. Numerous studies have identified that adults display directional preferences for certain facial traits including symmetry, averageness, and sexually dimorphic traits. Typically, studies measuring human preference for these traits examine declared (e.g., choice or ratings of attractiveness) or visual preferences (e.g., looking time) of participants. However, the extent to which visual and declared preferences correspond remains relatively untested. In order to evaluate the relationship between these measures we examined visual and declared preferences displayed by men and women for opposite-sex faces manipulated across three dimensions (symmetry, averageness, and masculinity) and compared preferences from each method. Results indicated that participants displayed significant visual and declared preferences for symmetrical, average, and appropriately sexually dimorphic faces. We also found that declared and visual preferences correlated weakly but significantly. These data indicate that visual and declared preferences for manipulated facial stimuli produce similar directional preferences across participants and are also correlated with one another within participants. Both methods therefore may be considered appropriate to measure human preferences. However, while both methods appear likely to generate similar patterns of preference at the sample level, the weak nature of the correlation between visual and declared preferences in our data suggests some caution in assuming visual preferences are the same as declared preferences at the individual level. Because there are positive and negative factors in both methods for measuring preference, we suggest that a combined approach is most useful in outlining population level preferences for traits.

Critical Issues Facing America's Community Colleges: A Summary of the Community College Futures Assembly 2008

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Basham, Matthew J.; Campbell, Dale F.; Mendoza, Pilar

2008-01-01

Three focus groups consisting of board of trustee members, community college presidents, senior administrators, administrators, and faculty members developed critical issues facing community colleges with respect to instructional planning and services; planning, governance, and finance; and workforce development. Thereafter, the delegation of more…

Critical Issues Facing America's Community Colleges: A Summary of the Community Colleges Futures Assembly 2006

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Campbell, Dale F.; Basham, Matthew J.

2007-01-01

Three focus groups consisting of 42 board of trustee members, community college presidents, senior administrators, and faculty members developed critical issues facing community colleges with respect to instructional planning and services; planning, governance, finance; and workforce development. Thereafter, the delegation of more than 200 voted…

Examining the Role, Values, and Legal Policy Issues Facing Public Library Resources in Supporting Students to Achieve Academic Success

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Achinewhu-Nworgu, Elizabeth; Azaiki, Steve; Nworgu, Queen Chioma

2016-01-01

This paper aims to present the role, values, and legal policy issues facing public Library resources in supporting students to achieve academic success. Research indicates that majority of people that own or work in the Library tend to ignore some of the vital roles, values and legal policy issues paramount to libraries. Some of these issues are…

Sexual and Intimacy Issues for Aging Gay Men

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pope, Mark; Wierzalis, Edward A.; Barret, Bob; Rankins, Michael

2007-01-01

The authors focus on the special issues involved in providing counseling to aging gay men regarding sex and intimacy. Although the stresses of aging experienced by gay men are similar to those of heterosexual men, older gay men face issues of a stigmatized sexual orientation, invisibility, negative stereotypes, and discrimination regarding aging.

New Methodology for Measuring Semantic Functional Similarity Based on Bidirectional Integration

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jeong, Jong Cheol

2013-01-01

1.2 billion users in Facebook, 17 million articles in Wikipedia, and 190 million tweets per day have demanded significant increase of information processing through Internet in recent years. Similarly life sciences and bioinformatics also have faced issues of processing Big data due to the explosion of publicly available genomic information…

Future Critical Issues and Problems Facing Technology and Engineering Education in the Commonwealth of Virginia

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Katsioloudis, Petros; Moye, Johnny J.

2012-01-01

The purpose of this research was to determine the future critical issues and problems facing the K-12 technology and engineering education profession in the Commonwealth of Virginia. This study was based on the Wicklein nationwide studies (1993a, 2005). Even though this study did not exactly replicate the Wicklein studies--since it was limited to…

The Janus-Faced Role of Gambling Flow in Addiction Issues.

PubMed

Trivedi, Rohit H; Teichert, Thorsten

2017-03-01

Flow experience has been widely investigated in experiential activities such as sports, the performing arts, gaming, and Internet usage. Most studies focus on the positive aspects of flow experience and its effect on performance. In stark contrast, gambling research focusing on the negative side of addiction lacks an in-depth investigation of gamblers' (positive) flow encounters. This separation of research lines seems out of place given that recent research indicates connections between flow and addiction. Joining both constructs in a causal-effects model helps one gain a better understanding of their relationship and its contingencies. This article empirically investigates whether and how it is possible to observe a "Janus face" of flow with its various sub-dimensions in online gambling. Empirical data were collected from 500 online gamblers by applying a structured questionnaire with established scales. The data were analyzed with a confirmatory factor analysis and a double-hurdle model to separate casual gamblers who are unsusceptible to any addiction issues from gamblers affected by initiatory addiction issues. The findings indicate that online gambling addiction is negatively influenced by two sub-dimensions of flow experience, namely a sense of control and concentration on the task at hand, whereas it is enhanced by a transformation of time and autotelic experience.

Enhancing a Face-to-Face Course with Online Lectures: Instructional and Pedagogical Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Keefe, Thomas

Since 1999, and as part of an Ameritech grant, the author has systematically investigated use of streaming media to enhance face-to-face classes. Technology invites experimentation but raises questions about such things as student acceptance, student use, academic performance, and what to do with class time when lectures are put online. Students…

"Just another pretty face": a multidimensional scaling approach to face attractiveness and variability.

PubMed

Potter, Timothy; Corneille, Olivier; Ruys, Kirsten I; Rhodes, Ginwan

2007-04-01

Findings on both attractiveness and memory for faces suggest that people should perceive more similarity among attractive than among unattractive faces. A multidimensional scaling approach was used to test this hypothesis in two studies. In Study 1, we derived a psychological face space from similarity ratings of attractive and unattractive Caucasian female faces. In Study 2, we derived a face space for attractive and unattractive male faces of Caucasians and non-Caucasians. Both studies confirm that attractive faces are indeed more tightly clustered than unattractive faces in people's psychological face spaces. These studies provide direct and original support for theoretical assumptions previously made in the face space and face memory literatures.

Risk in the Clouds?: Security Issues Facing Government Use of Cloud Computing

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Wyld, David C.

Cloud computing is poised to become one of the most important and fundamental shifts in how computing is consumed and used. Forecasts show that government will play a lead role in adopting cloud computing - for data storage, applications, and processing power, as IT executives seek to maximize their returns on limited procurement budgets in these challenging economic times. After an overview of the cloud computing concept, this article explores the security issues facing public sector use of cloud computing and looks to the risk and benefits of shifting to cloud-based models. It concludes with an analysis of the challenges that lie ahead for government use of cloud resources.

(Im)migrant Voices: An Ethnographic Inquiry into Contemporary (Im)migrant Issues Faced by (Im)migrant University Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Cantu, Elizabeth A.

2016-01-01

This dissertation examines contemporary issues that 18 (im)migrant university students faced during a time of highly militarized U.S.-Mexico border relations while living in Arizona during the time of this dissertation research. Utilizing critical race theory and public sphere theory as theoretical frameworks, the project addresses several related…

Cross-National Similarities and Differences in Employee Perceptions of Issues in the Work Environment

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ripley, David; Hudson, Irene; Turner, Robin; Osman-Gani, AAhad

2006-01-01

This exploratory study examines cross-national similarities and differences in employee perceptions of issues in the work environment in 17 organizational work settings in seven Asia-Pacific countries; Australia, Malaysia, New Zealand, Singapore, South Korea, Taiwan, and the United States. Employees at these 17 sites indicated their degree of…

Recognition Memory for Realistic Synthetic Faces

PubMed Central

Yotsumoto, Yuko; Kahana, Michael J.; Wilson, Hugh R.; Sekuler, Robert

2006-01-01

A series of experiments examined short-term recognition memory for trios of briefly-presented, synthetic human faces derived from three real human faces. The stimuli were graded series of faces, which differed by varying known amounts from the face of the average female. Faces based on each of the three real faces were transformed so as to lie along orthogonal axes in a 3-D face space. Experiment 1 showed that the synthetic faces' perceptual similarity stucture strongly influenced recognition memory. Results were fit by NEMo, a noisy exemplar model of perceptual recognition memory. The fits revealed that recognition memory was influenced both by the similarity of the probe to series items, and by the similarities among the series items themselves. Non-metric multi-dimensional scaling (MDS) showed that faces' perceptual representations largely preserved the 3-D space in which the face stimuli were arrayed. NEMo gave a better account of the results when similarity was defined as perceptual, MDS similarity rather than physical proximity of one face to another. Experiment 2 confirmed the importance of within-list homogeneity directly, without mediation of a model. We discuss the affinities and differences between visual memory for synthetic faces and memory for simpler stimuli. PMID:17948069

The nature of face representations in subcortical regions.

PubMed

Gabay, Shai; Burlingham, Charles; Behrmann, Marlene

2014-07-01

Studies examining the neural correlates of face perception in humans have focused almost exclusively on the distributed cortical network of face-selective regions. Recently, however, investigations have also identified subcortical correlates of face perception and the question addressed here concerns the nature of these subcortical face representations. To explore this issue, we presented to participants pairs of images sequentially to the same or to different eyes. Superior performance in the former over latter condition implicates monocular, prestriate portions of the visual system. Over a series of five experiments, we manipulated both lower-level (size, location) as well as higher-level (identity) similarity across the pair of faces. A monocular advantage was observed even when the faces in a pair differed in location and in size, implicating some subcortical invariance across lower-level image properties. A monocular advantage was also observed when the faces in a pair were two different images of the same individual, indicating the engagement of subcortical representations in more abstract, higher-level aspects of face processing. We conclude that subcortical structures of the visual system are involved, perhaps interactively, in multiple aspects of face perception, and not simply in deriving initial coarse representations. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Facing Up to the Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wakefield, Rowan; And Others

1984-01-01

Major long-term issues that will have to be addressed by the president and Congress are discussed. These include the changing American family, America's growing international debt, changing trends in agribusiness, industrial policy, and nuclear weapons and strategic deterrence. (RM)

Talking about epilepsy: Challenges parents face when communicating with their child about epilepsy and epilepsy-related issues.

PubMed

O'Toole, Stephanie; Lambert, Veronica; Gallagher, Pamela; Shahwan, Amre; Austin, Joan K

2016-04-01

The aim of this qualitative study was to explore the challenges that parents of children with epilepsy experienced when engaging in dialog with their child about epilepsy and epilepsy-related issues. Using a qualitative exploratory approach, interviews were conducted with 34 parents of children with epilepsy (aged 6-16 years), consisting of 27 mothers and 7 fathers. Data were transcribed verbatim and thematically analyzed. Findings revealed five main themes: normalizing epilepsy, the invisibility of epilepsy, information concealment, fear of misinforming the child, and difficulty in discussing particular epilepsy-related issues. Many of the communicative challenges experienced by parents impacted on their ability to engage openly in parent-child dialog about epilepsy in the home. Parents face specific challenges when choosing to communicate with their child about epilepsy, relating to creating a sense of normality, reducing fear of causing their child worry, and having a lack of epilepsy-related knowledge. Healthcare professionals who work closely with families living with epilepsy should remain mindful of the importance of discussing family communication surrounding epilepsy and the challenges parents of children with epilepsy face when talking about epilepsy within the home. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

The Facespan-the perceptual span for face recognition.

PubMed

Papinutto, Michael; Lao, Junpeng; Ramon, Meike; Caldara, Roberto; Miellet, Sébastien

2017-05-01

In reading, the perceptual span is a well-established concept that refers to the amount of information that can be read in a single fixation. Surprisingly, despite extensive empirical interest in determining the perceptual strategies deployed to process faces and an ongoing debate regarding the factors or mechanism(s) underlying efficient face processing, the perceptual span for faces-the Facespan-remains undetermined. To address this issue, we applied the gaze-contingent Spotlight technique implemented in an old-new face recognition paradigm. This procedure allowed us to parametrically vary the amount of facial information available at a fixated location in order to determine the minimal aperture size at which face recognition performance plateaus. As expected, accuracy increased nonlinearly with spotlight size apertures. Analyses of Structural Similarity comparing the available information during spotlight and natural viewing conditions indicate that the Facespan-the minimum spatial extent of preserved facial information leading to comparable performance as in natural viewing-encompasses 7° of visual angle in our viewing conditions (size of the face stimulus: 15.6°; viewing distance: 70 cm), which represents 45% of the face. The present findings provide a benchmark for future investigations that will address if and how the Facespan is modulated by factors such as cultural, developmental, idiosyncratic, or task-related differences.

Clinical track faculty: merits and issues.

PubMed

Lee, Won-Hee; Kim, Cho Ja; Roh, Young Sook; Shin, Hyunsook; Kim, Mi Ja

2007-01-01

Clinical track faculty (CTF) has been in operation for more than two decades in the United States, and 12 of the top 20 schools of nursing with the highest National Institutes of Health funding in the United States have CTF in place. Yet, only limited articles have been published regarding the merits and issues related to its operation. This article examines the advantages/merits of establishing CTF in schools of nursing, discusses the qualification criteria and types of appointment for CTF, and analyzes issues related to operating CTF in Korea. A questionnaire survey and two workshops were conducted involving faculty from a college of nursing and clinical nurse managers from university-affiliated medical centers and community agencies. Most of the respondents indicated that establishing CTF was advantageous. Merits included the following: increasing reality-based clinical education and training; decreasing the reality shock of students; increasing student satisfaction; and linking education, practice, and research more effectively. Major issues were as follows: getting the approval of medical centers/universities; developing an agreement on CTF operation between the college of nursing and clinical agencies; clarifying types and criteria of appointment and promotion; and developing a statement on role and compensation policies. Most issues are similar to what U.S. schools of nursing have faced, except for the first one. In conclusion, establishing CTF in Korea appears to be highly desirable. Merits outweigh issues/concerns, and Korean nursing schools may look for an opportune time for obtaining the approval of medical centers/universities. Nursing schools in other countries that face a similar challenge of providing clinical teaching with high research performance may consider instituting CTF.

Framing faces: Frame alignment impacts holistic face perception.

PubMed

Curby, Kim M; Entenman, Robert

2016-11-01

Traditional accounts of face perception emphasise the importance of the prototypical configuration of features within faces. However, here we probe influences of more general perceptual grouping mechanisms on holistic face perception. Participants made part-matching judgments about composite faces presented in intact external oval frames or frames made from misaligned oval parts. This manipulation served to disrupt basic perceptual grouping cues that facilitate the grouping of the two face halves together. This manipulation also produced an external face contour like that in the standard misaligned condition used within the classic composite face task. Notably, by introducing a discontinuity in the external contour, grouping of the face halves into a cohesive unit was discouraged, but face configuration was preserved. Conditions where both the face parts and the frames were misaligned together, as in the typical composite task paradigm, or where just the internal face parts where misaligned, were also included. Disrupting only the face frame similarly disrupted holistic face perception as disrupting both the frame and face configuration. However, misaligned face parts presented in aligned frames also incurred a cost to holistic perception. These findings provide support for the contribution of general-purpose perceptual grouping mechanisms to holistic face perception and are presented and discussed in the context of an enhanced object-based selection account of holistic perception.

Adjudicating between face-coding models with individual-face fMRI responses

PubMed Central

Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus

2017-01-01

The perceptual representation of individual faces is often explained with reference to a norm-based face space. In such spaces, individuals are encoded as vectors where identity is primarily conveyed by direction and distinctiveness by eccentricity. Here we measured human fMRI responses and psychophysical similarity judgments of individual face exemplars, which were generated as realistic 3D animations using a computer-graphics model. We developed and evaluated multiple neurobiologically plausible computational models, each of which predicts a representational distance matrix and a regional-mean activation profile for 24 face stimuli. In the fusiform face area, a face-space coding model with sigmoidal ramp tuning provided a better account of the data than one based on exemplar tuning. However, an image-processing model with weighted banks of Gabor filters performed similarly. Accounting for the data required the inclusion of a measurement-level population averaging mechanism that approximates how fMRI voxels locally average distinct neuronal tunings. Our study demonstrates the importance of comparing multiple models and of modeling the measurement process in computational neuroimaging. PMID:28746335

The Courage To Care: Addressing Sexual Minority Issues on Campus.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ottenritter, Nan

1998-01-01

Sexual minority students face issues similar to those of ethnic and racial minority students. This article provides a framework for assessing the community college's inclusion of sexual minority students: lesbians, gays, bisexual, and transgender (LGBT) individuals. The first section of the article assesses community colleges in terms of sexual…

Selected Issues Facing U.S. Graduate Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Neal, Homer A.

Three issues are discussed that relate to (1) the need for the United States to become more technologically competitive and more daring in ways to produce, nurture and encourage high quality research and (2) the state of the talent pool that must produce the scientists, mathematicians and engineers to do this research. The first issue concerns…

Face features and face configurations both contribute to visual crowding.

PubMed

Sun, Hsin-Mei; Balas, Benjamin

2015-02-01

Crowding refers to the inability to recognize an object in peripheral vision when other objects are presented nearby (Whitney & Levi Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 15, 160-168, 2011). A popular explanation of crowding is that features of the target and flankers are combined inappropriately when they are located within an integration field, thus impairing target recognition (Pelli, Palomares, & Majaj Journal of Vision, 4(12), 12:1136-1169, 2004). However, it remains unclear which features of the target and flankers are combined inappropriately to cause crowding (Levi Vision Research, 48, 635-654, 2008). For example, in a complex stimulus (e.g., a face), to what extent does crowding result from the integration of features at a part-based level or at the level of global processing of the configural appearance? In this study, we used a face categorization task and different types of flankers to examine how much the magnitude of visual crowding depends on the similarity of face parts or of global configurations. We created flankers with face-like features (e.g., the eyes, nose, and mouth) in typical and scrambled configurations to examine the impacts of part appearance and global configuration on the visual crowding of faces. Additionally, we used "electrical socket" flankers that mimicked first-order face configuration but had only schematic features, to examine the extent to which global face geometry impacted crowding. Our results indicated that both face parts and configurations contribute to visual crowding, suggesting that face similarity as realized under crowded conditions includes both aspects of facial appearance.

Less impairment in face imagery than face perception in early prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Michelon, Pascale; Biederman, Irving

2003-01-01

There have been a number of reports of preserved face imagery in prosopagnosia. We put this issue to experimental test by comparing the performance of MJH, a 34-year-old prosopagnosic since the age of 5, to controls on tasks where the participants had to judge faces of current celebrities, either in terms of overall similarity (Of Bette Midler, Hillary Clinton, and Diane Sawyer, whose face looks least like the other two?) or on individual features (Is Ronald Reagan's nose pointy?). For each task, a performance measure reflecting the degree of agreement of each participant with the average of the others (not including MJH) was calculated. On the imagery versions of these tasks, MJH was within the lower range of the controls for the agreement measure (though significantly below the mean of the controls). When the same tasks were performed from pictures, agreement among the controls markedly increased whereas MJH's performance was virtually unaffected, placing him well below the range of the controls. This pattern was also apparent with a test of facial features of emotion (Are the eyes wrinkled when someone is surprised?). On three non-face imagery tasks assessing color (What color is a football?), relative lengths of animal's tails (Is a bear's tail long in proportion to its body?), and mental size comparisons (What is bigger, a camel or a zebra?), MJH was within or close to the lower end of the normal range. As most of the celebrities became famous after the onset of MJH's prosopagnosia, our confirmation of the reports of less impaired face imagery in some prosopagnosics cannot be attributed to pre-lesion storage. We speculate that face recognition, in contrast to object recognition, relies more heavily on a representation that describes the initial spatial filter values so the metrics of the facial surface can be specified. If prosopagnosia is regarded as a form of simultanagnosia in which some of these filter values cannot be registered on any one encounter with

Cultural and hierarchical influences: ethical issues faced by Taiwanese nursing students.

PubMed

Yeh, Mei-Yu; Wu, Shu-Mei; Che, Hui-Lian

2010-05-01

OBJECTIVES Improving nurses' competence in resolving clinical ethical issues must start with ethics education in training and clinical practice. However, many students complain that they cannot apply classroom learning to actual clinical scenarios. This study explored ethical issues and dilemmas, and their impact experienced by student nurses in clinical practice. METHODS Focus groups were conducted with 44 first-year student nurses from a 2-year college course in northern Taiwan. Interviews were tape-recorded and verbatim transcripts were analysed using content analysis. RESULTS Students expressed and discussed their views in eight focus groups. Analysis of interviews revealed five themes: frustration at inability to help some patients; oppression caused by lower status; lack of honesty and ethical courage; powerlessness, and self-encouragement in adversity. CONCLUSIONS Taiwanese nurse ethics training was only recently introduced and the curriculum has not addressed the clinical reality in Taiwan. This reality includes limitations arising from the medical hierarchy and the socio-cultural role of families in medical decision making, which may inhibit ethical judgements and decision making. In clinical dilemmas, the most common problems faced by Taiwanese nursing students involved not knowing how to handle some situations, inability to abide by principles, and a lack of appropriate role models. Hence, we suggest that nursing ethics education should: (i) integrate scenarios involving ethical dilemmas into daily routines; (ii) give students opportunities to discuss their feelings about their experiences; (iii) allow teachers and students to talk about scenarios with ethical implications, and (iv) provide students with opportunities to reflect on clinical scenarios in order to clarify their values and learn how to respect the value of life.

Assessment of Issues Facing Immigrant and Refugee Families

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Segal, Uma A.; Mayadas, Nazneen S.

2005-01-01

This article identifies the different problems immigrants and refugees face in the United States, especially socioeconomic and psychosocial concerns that often relate to the experience of migration. Traditional familial roles and responsibilities are frequently challenged, exacerbated by sociocultural differences and inadequate understandings…

Biosimilars--global issues, national solutions.

PubMed

Knezevic, Ivana; Griffiths, Elwyn

2011-09-01

Biotechnology derived medicinal products are presently the best characterized biologicals with considerable production and clinical experience, and have revolutionized the treatment of some of the most difficult-to-treat diseases, prolonging and improving the quality of life and patient care. They are also currently one of the fastest growing segments of the pharmaceutical industry market. The critical challenge that the biopharmaceutical industry is facing is the expiry of patents for the first generation of biopharmaceuticals, mainly recombinant DNA derived products, such as interferons, growth hormone and erythropoetin. The question that immediately arose was how should such copies of the originator products be licensed, bearing in mind that they are highly complex biological molecules produced by equally complex biological production processes with their inherent problem of biological variability. Copying biologicals is much more complex than copying small molecules and the critical issue was how to handle the licensing of products if relying in part on data from an innovator product. Since 2004 there has been considerable international consultation on how to deal with biosimilars and biological copy products. This has led to a better understanding of the challenges in the regulatory evaluation of the quality, safety and efficacy of "biosimilars", to the exchange of information between regulators, as well as to the identification of key issues. The aim of this article is to provide a brief overview of the scientific and regulatory challenges faced in developing and evaluating similar biotherapeutic products for global use. It is intended as an introduction to the series of articles in this special issue of Biologicals devoted to similar biotherapeutic products. Copyright © 2011. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

A novel thermal face recognition approach using face pattern words

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Yufeng

2010-04-01

A reliable thermal face recognition system can enhance the national security applications such as prevention against terrorism, surveillance, monitoring and tracking, especially at nighttime. The system can be applied at airports, customs or high-alert facilities (e.g., nuclear power plant) for 24 hours a day. In this paper, we propose a novel face recognition approach utilizing thermal (long wave infrared) face images that can automatically identify a subject at both daytime and nighttime. With a properly acquired thermal image (as a query image) in monitoring zone, the following processes will be employed: normalization and denoising, face detection, face alignment, face masking, Gabor wavelet transform, face pattern words (FPWs) creation, face identification by similarity measure (Hamming distance). If eyeglasses are present on a subject's face, an eyeglasses mask will be automatically extracted from the querying face image, and then masked with all comparing FPWs (no more transforms). A high identification rate (97.44% with Top-1 match) has been achieved upon our preliminary face dataset (of 39 subjects) from the proposed approach regardless operating time and glasses-wearing condition.e

Early (M170) activation of face-specific cortex by face-like objects.

PubMed

Hadjikhani, Nouchine; Kveraga, Kestutis; Naik, Paulami; Ahlfors, Seppo P

2009-03-04

The tendency to perceive faces in random patterns exhibiting configural properties of faces is an example of pareidolia. Perception of 'real' faces has been associated with a cortical response signal arising at approximately 170 ms after stimulus onset, but what happens when nonface objects are perceived as faces? Using magnetoencephalography, we found that objects incidentally perceived as faces evoked an early (165 ms) activation in the ventral fusiform cortex, at a time and location similar to that evoked by faces, whereas common objects did not evoke such activation. An earlier peak at 130 ms was also seen for images of real faces only. Our findings suggest that face perception evoked by face-like objects is a relatively early process, and not a late reinterpretation cognitive phenomenon.

The Wharton Symposium: Facing the Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sullivan, David M.

1982-01-01

A public relations practitioner reports enthusiastically on his return to the campus for an "intellectually-broadening" public relations symposium. He summarizes critical social and economic issues addressed by distinguished scholars and experienced practitioners. For journal availability, see CS 705 902. (PD)

Early (N170) activation of face-specific cortex by face-like objects

PubMed Central

Hadjikhani, Nouchine; Kveraga, Kestutis; Naik, Paulami; Ahlfors, Seppo P.

2009-01-01

The tendency to perceive faces in random patterns exhibiting configural properties of faces is an example of pareidolia. Perception of ‘real’ faces has been associated with a cortical response signal arising at about 170ms after stimulus onset; but what happens when non-face objects are perceived as faces? Using magnetoencephalography (MEG), we found that objects incidentally perceived as faces evoked an early (165ms) activation in the ventral fusiform cortex, at a time and location similar to that evoked by faces, whereas common objects did not evoke such activation. An earlier peak at 130 ms was also seen for images of real faces only. Our findings suggest that face perception evoked by face-like objects is a relatively early process, and not a late re-interpretation cognitive phenomenon. PMID:19218867

Effects of Synchronicity and Belongingness on Face-to-Face and Computer-Mediated Constructive Controversy

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Saltarelli, Andy J.; Roseth, Cary J.

2014-01-01

Adapting face-to-face (FTF) pedagogies to online settings raises boundary questions about the contextual conditions in which the same instructional method stimulates different outcomes. We address this issue by examining FTF and computer-mediated communication (CMC) versions of constructive controversy, a cooperative learning procedure involving…

Visual Search Efficiency is Greater for Human Faces Compared to Animal Faces

PubMed Central

Simpson, Elizabeth A.; Mertins, Haley L.; Yee, Krysten; Fullerton, Alison; Jakobsen, Krisztina V.

2015-01-01

The Animate Monitoring Hypothesis proposes that humans and animals were the most important categories of visual stimuli for ancestral humans to monitor, as they presented important challenges and opportunities for survival and reproduction; however, it remains unknown whether animal faces are located as efficiently as human faces. We tested this hypothesis by examining whether human, primate, and mammal faces elicit similarly efficient searches, or whether human faces are privileged. In the first three experiments, participants located a target (human, primate, or mammal face) among distractors (non-face objects). We found fixations on human faces were faster and more accurate than primate faces, even when controlling for search category specificity. A final experiment revealed that, even when task-irrelevant, human faces slowed searches for non-faces, suggesting some bottom-up processing may be responsible for the human face search efficiency advantage. PMID:24962122

Fusing face-verification algorithms and humans.

PubMed

O'Toole, Alice J; Abdi, Hervé; Jiang, Fang; Phillips, P Jonathon

2007-10-01

It has been demonstrated recently that state-of-the-art face-recognition algorithms can surpass human accuracy at matching faces over changes in illumination. The ranking of algorithms and humans by accuracy, however, does not provide information about whether algorithms and humans perform the task comparably or whether algorithms and humans can be fused to improve performance. In this paper, we fused humans and algorithms using partial least square regression (PLSR). In the first experiment, we applied PLSR to face-pair similarity scores generated by seven algorithms participating in the Face Recognition Grand Challenge. The PLSR produced an optimal weighting of the similarity scores, which we tested for generality with a jackknife procedure. Fusing the algorithms' similarity scores using the optimal weights produced a twofold reduction of error rate over the most accurate algorithm. Next, human-subject-generated similarity scores were added to the PLSR analysis. Fusing humans and algorithms increased the performance to near-perfect classification accuracy. These results are discussed in terms of maximizing face-verification accuracy with hybrid systems consisting of multiple algorithms and humans.

Challenges and issues facing the future of nursing education: implications for ethnic minority faculty and students.

PubMed

Davis, Sheila P; Davis, Danyetta D

2010-01-01

Current trends in higher education in the United States demand that nursing take stock of how it is prepared or being prepared to face challenges and issues impacting on its future. The intense effort made to attract students to pursue advanced training in science and engineering in the United States pales in comparison to the numbers of science and engineering majors produced yearly in international schools. As a result, more and more jobs are being outsourced to international markets. Could international outsourcing become a method of nursing education? Authors submit that to remain competitive, the nursing profession must attract a younger cohort of technologically savvy students and faculty reflective of the growing diverse population in the United States. Additionally, nursing programs in research universities face even more daunting challenges as it relates to mandates for funded research programs of educational units. This article offers suggestions and recommendations for nursing programs in higher education institutions on ways to attract and retain ethnic minorities and of how to harness the power of research to address burgeoning societal health challenges.

The Effects of Health Education through Face To Face Teaching and Educational Movies, on Suburban Women in Childbearing Age.

PubMed

Vameghi, R; Mohammad, K; Karimloo, M; Soleimani, F; Sajedi, F

2010-01-01

The aim of the study was to compare the effects of 'face-to-face education' and 'educational movies' on 'knowledge' and 'practice' of women of child-bearing-age, in terms of health-care during pregnancy and during infancy in a suburban region near Tehran City, Iran. In this quasi-experimental study, the sample included 873 married women. Questionnaires for knowledge and practice assessment were designed. The women were assigned to three groups: control (group I), face-to-face education (group II), and educational movie (group III). Knowledge questionnaires were completed before and immediately after intervention. Practice questionnaires were completed before and three months after intervention. Both questionnaires consisted of two types of questions: type A (concerning infant care issues) and type B (concerning prenatal health care). There was a significant difference in post-test knowledge between groups I and II and between groups I and III, but not between groups II and III. In terms of post-test practice, the changes were determined for every individual question, and significantly, better results were seen in group II, especially concerning type B questions. Face to face education lead to better practice than educational movies. In addition, significantly better practice occurred regarding child health care issues rather than prenatal issues in both groups. Realistic and tangible issues, those easy to practice, and with little or no economical burden imposed on the family, progressed from the knowledge state to the practice state more successfully in both groups.

Facing Aggression: Cues Differ for Female versus Male Faces

PubMed Central

Geniole, Shawn N.; Keyes, Amanda E.; Mondloch, Catherine J.; Carré, Justin M.; McCormick, Cheryl M.

2012-01-01

The facial width-to-height ratio (face ratio), is a sexually dimorphic metric associated with actual aggression in men and with observers' judgements of aggression in male faces. Here, we sought to determine if observers' judgements of aggression were associated with the face ratio in female faces. In three studies, participants rated photographs of female and male faces on aggression, femininity, masculinity, attractiveness, and nurturing. In Studies 1 and 2, for female and male faces, judgements of aggression were associated with the face ratio even when other cues in the face related to masculinity were controlled statistically. Nevertheless, correlations between the face ratio and judgements of aggression were smaller for female than for male faces (F1,36 = 7.43, p = 0.01). In Study 1, there was no significant relationship between judgements of femininity and of aggression in female faces. In Study 2, the association between judgements of masculinity and aggression was weaker in female faces than for male faces in Study 1. The weaker association in female faces may be because aggression and masculinity are stereotypically male traits. Thus, in Study 3, observers rated faces on nurturing (a stereotypically female trait) and on femininity. Judgements of nurturing were associated with femininity (positively) and masculinity (negatively) ratings in both female and male faces. In summary, the perception of aggression differs in female versus male faces. The sex difference was not simply because aggression is a gendered construct; the relationships between masculinity/femininity and nurturing were similar for male and female faces even though nurturing is also a gendered construct. Masculinity and femininity ratings are not associated with aggression ratings nor with the face ratio for female faces. In contrast, all four variables are highly inter-correlated in male faces, likely because these cues in male faces serve as “honest signals”. PMID:22276184

Facing aggression: cues differ for female versus male faces.

PubMed

Geniole, Shawn N; Keyes, Amanda E; Mondloch, Catherine J; Carré, Justin M; McCormick, Cheryl M

2012-01-01

The facial width-to-height ratio (face ratio), is a sexually dimorphic metric associated with actual aggression in men and with observers' judgements of aggression in male faces. Here, we sought to determine if observers' judgements of aggression were associated with the face ratio in female faces. In three studies, participants rated photographs of female and male faces on aggression, femininity, masculinity, attractiveness, and nurturing. In Studies 1 and 2, for female and male faces, judgements of aggression were associated with the face ratio even when other cues in the face related to masculinity were controlled statistically. Nevertheless, correlations between the face ratio and judgements of aggression were smaller for female than for male faces (F(1,36) = 7.43, p = 0.01). In Study 1, there was no significant relationship between judgements of femininity and of aggression in female faces. In Study 2, the association between judgements of masculinity and aggression was weaker in female faces than for male faces in Study 1. The weaker association in female faces may be because aggression and masculinity are stereotypically male traits. Thus, in Study 3, observers rated faces on nurturing (a stereotypically female trait) and on femininity. Judgements of nurturing were associated with femininity (positively) and masculinity (negatively) ratings in both female and male faces. In summary, the perception of aggression differs in female versus male faces. The sex difference was not simply because aggression is a gendered construct; the relationships between masculinity/femininity and nurturing were similar for male and female faces even though nurturing is also a gendered construct. Masculinity and femininity ratings are not associated with aggression ratings nor with the face ratio for female faces. In contrast, all four variables are highly inter-correlated in male faces, likely because these cues in male faces serve as "honest signals".

A psychosocial comparison of computer-mediated and face-to-face language use among severely disturbed adolescents.

PubMed

Zimmerman, D P

1987-01-01

This study analyzes the content of communications among 18 severely disturbed adolescents. Interactions were recorded from two sources: computer-based "conferences" for the group, and small group face-to-face sessions which addressed similar topics. The purpose was to determine whether there are important differences in indications of psychological state, interpersonal interest, and expressive style. The research was significant, given the strong attraction of computers to many adolescents and the paucity of research on social-psychological effects of this technology. A content analysis based on a total sample of 10,224 words was performed using the Harvard IV Psychosociological Dictionary. Results indicated that computer-mediated communication was more expressive of feelings and made more frequent mention of interpersonal issues. Further, it displayed a more positive object-relations stance, was less negative in expressive style, and appeared to diminish certain traditional gender differences in group communication. These findings suggest that the computer may have an interesting adjunct role to play in reducing communication deficits commonly observed in severely disturbed adolescent clinical populations.

How to Teach Controversial Constitutional Issues Facing Women.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berry, Mary Frances

1988-01-01

Explains that teaching the historical context of women's legal issues allows future voters to make informed decisions. Suggests ways of including the Equal Rights Amendment, sexual harassment, sexual discrimination, and abortion in the high school curriculum. Recommends several anthologies of primary materials for teaching these issues. (LS)

Challenges Facing a Deaf Family Member Concerning a Loved One’s Dying

PubMed Central

Kehl, Karen A.; Gartner, Constance M.

2010-01-01

Individuals who are Deaf face challenges both similar and unique from those faced by hearing individuals when a family member is dying. This study was guided by the question “What are the challenges faced by a Deaf family member when a loved one is dying?” Methods - This qualitative study is guided by critical theory and an interpretive perspective. Robert, a college-educated older adult who has been Deaf from birth was interviewed in American Sign Language using a death history format. Results – There are challenges for Deaf family members that affect communication with both the dying person and health care professionals. Patient-family communication issues included physical challenges and financial challenges. Lack of cultural competence concerning the Deaf community created challenges communicating with professionals. Decision-making was also a challenge. Conclusions These findings provide a framework for future research concerning the needs of Deaf individuals facing the end of life and provide guidance for clinicians. PMID:19910395

Heritability maps of human face morphology through large-scale automated three-dimensional phenotyping

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Tsagkrasoulis, Dimosthenis; Hysi, Pirro; Spector, Tim; Montana, Giovanni

2017-04-01

The human face is a complex trait under strong genetic control, as evidenced by the striking visual similarity between twins. Nevertheless, heritability estimates of facial traits have often been surprisingly low or difficult to replicate. Furthermore, the construction of facial phenotypes that correspond to naturally perceived facial features remains largely a mystery. We present here a large-scale heritability study of face geometry that aims to address these issues. High-resolution, three-dimensional facial models have been acquired on a cohort of 952 twins recruited from the TwinsUK registry, and processed through a novel landmarking workflow, GESSA (Geodesic Ensemble Surface Sampling Algorithm). The algorithm places thousands of landmarks throughout the facial surface and automatically establishes point-wise correspondence across faces. These landmarks enabled us to intuitively characterize facial geometry at a fine level of detail through curvature measurements, yielding accurate heritability maps of the human face (www.heritabilitymaps.info).

Virtual versus face-to-face clinical simulation in relation to student knowledge, anxiety, and self-confidence in maternal-newborn nursing: A randomized controlled trial.

PubMed

Cobbett, Shelley; Snelgrove-Clarke, Erna

2016-10-01

Clinical simulations can provide students with realistic clinical learning environments to increase their knowledge, self-confidence, and decrease their anxiety prior to entering clinical practice settings. To compare the effectiveness of two maternal newborn clinical simulation scenarios; virtual clinical simulation and face-to-face high fidelity manikin simulation. Randomized pretest-posttest design. A public research university in Canada. Fifty-six third year Bachelor of Science in Nursing students. Participants were randomized to either face-to-face or virtual clinical simulation and then to dyads for completion of two clinical simulations. Measures included: (1) Nursing Anxiety and Self-Confidence with Clinical Decision Making Scale (NASC-CDM) (White, 2011), (2) knowledge pretest and post-test related to preeclampsia and group B strep, and (3) Simulation Completion Questionnaire. Before and after each simulation students completed a knowledge test and the NASC-CDM and the Simulation Completion Questionnaire at study completion. There were no statistically significant differences in student knowledge and self-confidence between face-to-face and virtual clinical simulations. Anxiety scores were higher for students in the virtual clinical simulation than for those in the face-to-face simulation. Students' self-reported preference was face-to-face citing the similarities to practicing in a 'real' situation and the immediate debrief. Students not liking the virtual clinical simulation most often cited technological issues as their rationale. Given the equivalency of knowledge and self-confidence when undergraduate nursing students participate in either maternal newborn clinical scenarios of face-to-face or virtual clinical simulation identified in this trial, it is important to take into the consideration costs and benefits/risks of simulation implementation. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

How Category Structure Influences the Perception of Object Similarity: The Atypicality Bias

PubMed Central

Tanaka, James William; Kantner, Justin; Bartlett, Marni

2011-01-01

Why do some faces appear more similar than others? Beyond structural factors, we speculate that similarity is governed by the organization of faces located in a multi-dimensional face space. To test this hypothesis, we morphed a typical face with an atypical face. If similarity judgments are guided purely by their physical properties, the morph should be perceived to be equally similar to its typical parent as its atypical parent. However, contrary to the structural prediction, our results showed that the morph face was perceived to be more similar to the atypical face than the typical face. Our empirical studies show that the atypicality bias is not limited to faces, but extends to other object categories (birds) whose members share common shape properties. We also demonstrate atypicality bias is malleable and can change subject to category learning and experience. Collectively, the empirical evidence indicates that perceptions of face and object similarity are affected by the distribution of stimuli in a face or object space. In this framework, atypical stimuli are located in a sparser region of the space where there is less competition for recognition and therefore, these representations capture a broader range of inputs. In contrast, typical stimuli are located in a denser region of category space where there is increased competition for recognition and hence, these representation draw a more restricted range of face inputs. These results suggest that the perceived likeness of an object is influenced by the organization of surrounding exemplars in the category space. PMID:22685441

Attitudes of Middle School Students: Learning Online Compared to Face to Face

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Edwards, Clayton; Rule, Audrey

2013-01-01

Education in an online setting is an increasingly popular method of instruction. Previous studies comparing college or high school student performance in online and face-to-face courses found, in most cases, similar achievement between conditions. However, research is lacking regarding middle school students' academic performance and attitudes…

Colleague 1990. An Annual Collection of Articles on Academic and Administrative Issues Facing Community Colleges of the State University of New York.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

State Univ. of New York, Albany.

Designed as a means of communicating creative ideas in community college education, this journal contains 12 articles on instructional and administrative issues facing the community colleges of the State University of New York. This collection includes the following: (1) "Egalitarian Education in an Elitist Environment," by Eduardo J.…

Is naming faces different from naming objects? Semantic interference in a face- and object-naming task.

PubMed

Marful, Alejandra; Paolieri, Daniela; Bajo, M Teresa

2014-04-01

A current debate regarding face and object naming concerns whether they are equally vulnerable to semantic interference. Although some studies have shown similar patterns of interference, others have revealed different effects for faces and objects. In Experiment 1, we compared face naming to object naming when exemplars were presented in a semantically homogeneous context (grouped by their category) or in a semantically heterogeneous context (mixed) across four cycles. The data revealed significant slowing for both face and object naming in the homogeneous context. This semantic interference was explained as being due to lexical competition from the conceptual activation of category members. When focusing on the first cycle, a facilitation effect for objects but not for faces appeared. This result permits us to explain the previously observed discrepancies between face and object naming. Experiment 2 was identical to Experiment 1, with the exception that half of the stimuli were presented as face/object names for reading. Semantic interference was present for both face and object naming, suggesting that faces and objects behave similarly during naming. Interestingly, during reading, semantic interference was observed for face names but not for object names. This pattern is consistent with previous assumptions proposing the activation of a person identity during face name reading.

A specialized face-processing model inspired by the organization of monkey face patches explains several face-specific phenomena observed in humans.

PubMed

Farzmahdi, Amirhossein; Rajaei, Karim; Ghodrati, Masoud; Ebrahimpour, Reza; Khaligh-Razavi, Seyed-Mahdi

2016-04-26

Converging reports indicate that face images are processed through specialized neural networks in the brain -i.e. face patches in monkeys and the fusiform face area (FFA) in humans. These studies were designed to find out how faces are processed in visual system compared to other objects. Yet, the underlying mechanism of face processing is not completely revealed. Here, we show that a hierarchical computational model, inspired by electrophysiological evidence on face processing in primates, is able to generate representational properties similar to those observed in monkey face patches (posterior, middle and anterior patches). Since the most important goal of sensory neuroscience is linking the neural responses with behavioral outputs, we test whether the proposed model, which is designed to account for neural responses in monkey face patches, is also able to predict well-documented behavioral face phenomena observed in humans. We show that the proposed model satisfies several cognitive face effects such as: composite face effect and the idea of canonical face views. Our model provides insights about the underlying computations that transfer visual information from posterior to anterior face patches.

Is having similar eye movement patterns during face learning and recognition beneficial for recognition performance? Evidence from hidden Markov modeling.

PubMed

Chuk, Tim; Chan, Antoni B; Hsiao, Janet H

2017-12-01

The hidden Markov model (HMM)-based approach for eye movement analysis is able to reflect individual differences in both spatial and temporal aspects of eye movements. Here we used this approach to understand the relationship between eye movements during face learning and recognition, and its association with recognition performance. We discovered holistic (i.e., mainly looking at the face center) and analytic (i.e., specifically looking at the two eyes in addition to the face center) patterns during both learning and recognition. Although for both learning and recognition, participants who adopted analytic patterns had better recognition performance than those with holistic patterns, a significant positive correlation between the likelihood of participants' patterns being classified as analytic and their recognition performance was only observed during recognition. Significantly more participants adopted holistic patterns during learning than recognition. Interestingly, about 40% of the participants used different patterns between learning and recognition, and among them 90% switched their patterns from holistic at learning to analytic at recognition. In contrast to the scan path theory, which posits that eye movements during learning have to be recapitulated during recognition for the recognition to be successful, participants who used the same or different patterns during learning and recognition did not differ in recognition performance. The similarity between their learning and recognition eye movement patterns also did not correlate with their recognition performance. These findings suggested that perceptuomotor memory elicited by eye movement patterns during learning does not play an important role in recognition. In contrast, the retrieval of diagnostic information for recognition, such as the eyes for face recognition, is a better predictor for recognition performance. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Face recognition increases during saccade preparation.

PubMed

Lin, Hai; Rizak, Joshua D; Ma, Yuan-ye; Yang, Shang-chuan; Chen, Lin; Hu, Xin-tian

2014-01-01

Face perception is integral to human perception system as it underlies social interactions. Saccadic eye movements are frequently made to bring interesting visual information, such as faces, onto the fovea for detailed processing. Just before eye movement onset, the processing of some basic features, such as the orientation, of an object improves at the saccade landing point. Interestingly, there is also evidence that indicates faces are processed in early visual processing stages similar to basic features. However, it is not known whether this early enhancement of processing includes face recognition. In this study, three experiments were performed to map the timing of face presentation to the beginning of the eye movement in order to evaluate pre-saccadic face recognition. Faces were found to be similarly processed as simple objects immediately prior to saccadic movements. Starting ∼ 120 ms before a saccade to a target face, independent of whether or not the face was surrounded by other faces, the face recognition gradually improved and the critical spacing of the crowding decreased as saccade onset was approaching. These results suggest that an upcoming saccade prepares the visual system for new information about faces at the saccade landing site and may reduce the background in a crowd to target the intended face. This indicates an important role of pre-saccadic eye movement signals in human face recognition.

Visual Search for Faces with Emotional Expressions

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Frischen, Alexandra; Eastwood, John D.; Smilek, Daniel

2008-01-01

The goal of this review is to critically examine contradictory findings in the study of visual search for emotionally expressive faces. Several key issues are addressed: Can emotional faces be processed preattentively and guide attention? What properties of these faces influence search efficiency? Is search moderated by the emotional state of the…

Speaking from the Inside: Challenges Faced by Communication Researchers Investigating Disease-Related Issues in a Hospital Setting.

PubMed

Bourquin, Céline; Stiefel, Friedrich; Singy, Pascal

2015-09-01

This commentary came from within the framework of integrating the humanities in medicine and from accompanying research on disease-related issues by teams involving clinicians and researchers in medical humanities. The purpose is to reflect on the challenges faced by researchers when conducting emotionally laden research and on how they impact observations and subsequent research findings. This commentary is furthermore a call to action since it promotes the institutionalization of a supportive context for medical humanities researchers who have not been trained to cope with sensitive medical topics in research. To that end, concrete recommendations regarding training and supervision were formulated.

Is Beauty in the Face of the Beholder?

PubMed Central

Laeng, Bruno; Vermeer, Oddrun; Sulutvedt, Unni

2013-01-01

Opposing forces influence assortative mating so that one seeks a similar mate while at the same time avoiding inbreeding with close relatives. Thus, mate choice may be a balancing of phenotypic similarity and dissimilarity between partners. In the present study, we assessed the role of resemblance to Self’s facial traits in judgments of physical attractiveness. Participants chose the most attractive face image of their romantic partner among several variants, where the faces were morphed so as to include only 22% of another face. Participants distinctly preferred a “Self-based morph” (i.e., their partner’s face with a small amount of Self’s face blended into it) to other morphed images. The Self-based morph was also preferred to the morph of their partner’s face blended with the partner’s same-sex “prototype”, although the latter face was (“objectively”) judged more attractive by other individuals. When ranking morphs differing in level of amalgamation (i.e., 11% vs. 22% vs. 33%) of another face, the 22% was chosen consistently as the preferred morph and, in particular, when Self was blended in the partner’s face. A forced-choice signal-detection paradigm showed that the effect of self-resemblance operated at an unconscious level, since the same participants were unable to detect the presence of their own faces in the above morphs. We concluded that individuals, if given the opportunity, seek to promote “positive assortment” for Self’s phenotype, especially when the level of similarity approaches an optimal point that is similar to Self without causing a conscious acknowledgment of the similarity. PMID:23874608

Writing as Involvement: A Case for Face-to-Face Classroom Talk in a Computer Age.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Berggren, Anne G.

The abandonment of face-to-face voice conversations in favor of the use of electronic conversations in composition classes is an issue to be interrogated. In a recent push to "prepare students for the 21st century," teachers are asked to teach computer applications in the humanities--and composition teachers, who will teach writing in…

Colleague 1989. An Annual Collection of Articles on Academic and Administrative Issues Facing Community Colleges of the State University of New York.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

State Univ. of New York, Albany.

Designed as a means of communicating creative ideas in community college education, this second edition of Colleague contains 11 articles on instructional and administrative issues facing the community colleges of the State University of New York. The collection includes: (1) "Professional Growth and Development: An In-House Effort," by Alvin J.…

Animal Health and Welfare Issues Facing Organic Production Systems

PubMed Central

Sutherland, Mhairi A.; Webster, Jim; Sutherland, Ian

2013-01-01

Simple Summary The demand for organically grown, animal derived produce is increasing due to a growing desire for consumer products that have minimal chemical inputs and high animal welfare standards. Evaluation of the scientific literature suggests that a major challenge facing organic animal production systems is the management and treatment of health-related issues. However, implementation of effective management practices can help organic animal producers achieve and maintain high standards of health and welfare, which is necessary to assure consumers that organic animal-based food and fibre has not only been produced with minimal or no chemical input, but under high standards of animal welfare. Abstract The demand for organically-grown produce is increasing worldwide, with one of the drivers being an expectation among consumers that animals have been farmed to a high standard of animal welfare. This review evaluates whether this expectation is in fact being met, by describing the current level of science-based knowledge of animal health and welfare in organic systems. The primary welfare risk in organic production systems appears to be related to animal health. Organic farms use a combination of management practices, alternative and complementary remedies and convenional medicines to manage the health of their animals and in many cases these are at least as effective as management practices employed by non-organic producers. However, in contrast to non-organic systems, there is still a lack of scientifically evaluated, organically acceptable therapeutic treatments that organic animal producers can use when current management practices are not sufficient to maintain the health of their animals. The development of such treatments are necessary to assure consumers that organic animal-based food and fibre has not only been produced with minimal or no chemical input, but under high standards of animal welfare. PMID:26479750

Comparing Role-Playing Activities in Second Life and Face-to-Face Environments

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Gao, Fei; Noh, Jeongmin J.; Koehler, Matthew J.

2009-01-01

This study compared student performances in role-playing activities in both a face-to-face (FTF) environment and a virtual 3D environment, Second Life (SL). We found that students produced a similar amount of communication in the two environments, but the communication styles were different. In SL role-playing activities, students took more…

Parent Education for Dialogic Reading: Online and Face-to-Face Delivery Methods

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beschorner, Beth; Hutchison, Amy

2016-01-01

This study explored the impact of a parent education program and the contextual factors that influenced the experiences of families in the program. Seventeen parents completed a 9-week, face-to-face program and 15 parents completed a similar online program. This study was designed as a multiple case study and utilized multimethods for data…

Facing Diabetes: What You Need to Know

MedlinePlus

... of this page please turn Javascript on. Feature: Diabetes Facing Diabetes: What You Need to Know Past Issues / Fall ... your loved ones. Photos: AP The Faces of Diabetes Diabetes strikes millions of Americans, young and old, ...

Current Issues: Critical Issues Confronting the Nation and the World [and] Current Issues Teacher's Guide.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Whittaker, Lynn Page

1991-01-01

This annual publication contains reading materials designed to help students understand the complexities of the domestic and foreign policy issues facing the United States. The first portion of the book features background reading on the structure of the Federal Government. Next, 10 domestic policy issues are covered: the economy, education, civil…

Holistic face training enhances face processing in developmental prosopagnosia

PubMed Central

Cohan, Sarah; Nakayama, Ken

2014-01-01

Prosopagnosia has largely been regarded as an untreatable disorder. However, recent case studies using cognitive training have shown that it is possible to enhance face recognition abilities in individuals with developmental prosopagnosia. Our goal was to determine if this approach could be effective in a larger population of developmental prosopagnosics. We trained 24 developmental prosopagnosics using a 3-week online face-training program targeting holistic face processing. Twelve subjects with developmental prosopagnosia were assessed before and after training, and the other 12 were assessed before and after a waiting period, they then performed the training, and were then assessed again. The assessments included measures of front-view face discrimination, face discrimination with view-point changes, measures of holistic face processing, and a 5-day diary to quantify potential real-world improvements. Compared with the waiting period, developmental prosopagnosics showed moderate but significant overall training-related improvements on measures of front-view face discrimination. Those who reached the more difficult levels of training (‘better’ trainees) showed the strongest improvements in front-view face discrimination and showed significantly increased holistic face processing to the point of being similar to that of unimpaired control subjects. Despite challenges in characterizing developmental prosopagnosics’ everyday face recognition and potential biases in self-report, results also showed modest but consistent self-reported diary improvements. In summary, we demonstrate that by using cognitive training that targets holistic processing, it is possible to enhance face perception across a group of developmental prosopagnosics and further suggest that those who improved the most on the training task received the greatest benefits. PMID:24691394

A specialized face-processing model inspired by the organization of monkey face patches explains several face-specific phenomena observed in humans

PubMed Central

Farzmahdi, Amirhossein; Rajaei, Karim; Ghodrati, Masoud; Ebrahimpour, Reza; Khaligh-Razavi, Seyed-Mahdi

2016-01-01

Converging reports indicate that face images are processed through specialized neural networks in the brain –i.e. face patches in monkeys and the fusiform face area (FFA) in humans. These studies were designed to find out how faces are processed in visual system compared to other objects. Yet, the underlying mechanism of face processing is not completely revealed. Here, we show that a hierarchical computational model, inspired by electrophysiological evidence on face processing in primates, is able to generate representational properties similar to those observed in monkey face patches (posterior, middle and anterior patches). Since the most important goal of sensory neuroscience is linking the neural responses with behavioral outputs, we test whether the proposed model, which is designed to account for neural responses in monkey face patches, is also able to predict well-documented behavioral face phenomena observed in humans. We show that the proposed model satisfies several cognitive face effects such as: composite face effect and the idea of canonical face views. Our model provides insights about the underlying computations that transfer visual information from posterior to anterior face patches. PMID:27113635

Beyond face validity - A comment on Nicholls, Licht, and Pearl. [gender-related personality traits

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Spence, Janet T.; Helmreich, Robert L.

1983-01-01

In their discussion of the Bem Sex Role Inventory (BSRI; Bem, 1974) and the Personal Attributes Questionnaire (PAQ; Spence and Helmrich, 1978), Nicholls, et al. (1982) blur two issues. The first concerns the legitimacy of equating the clusters of gender-related personality traits tapped by these instruments with the global constructs of masculinity and feminity. The second concerns item similarity between the PAQ and BSRI M scales and measures of self-esteem and the question of whether the several instruments measure the same or separable constructs. Decisions about each of these issues involve complex considerations that do not directly involve face validity.

Critical Problems Facing Technology Education: Perceptions of Indiana Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lazaros, Edward J.; Rogers, George E.

2006-01-01

In 1993 Wicklein conducted a study to determine the present and the future critical issues and problems facing the technology education (TE) profession. The Wicklein study questioned 25 panelists from 15 states and the District of Columbia to ascertain the issues and problems facing TE. However, in the Wicklein study, only seven of the panelists…

Global climate change: A strategic issue facing Illinois

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Womeldorff, P.J.

1995-12-31

This paper discusses global climate change, summarizes activities related to climate change, and identifies possible outcomes of the current debate on the subject. Aspects of climate change related to economic issues are very briefly summarized; it is suggested that the end result will be a change in lifestyle in developed countries. International activities, with an emphasis on the Framework Convention on Climate Change, and U.S. activities are outlined. It is recommended that the minimum action required is to work to understand the issue and prepare for possible action.

Key anticipated regulatory issues for clinical use of human induced pluripotent stem cells.

PubMed

Knoepfler, Paul S

2012-09-01

The production of human induced pluripotent stem cells (hiPSCs) has greatly expanded the realm of possible stem cell-based regenerative medicine therapies and has particularly exciting potential for autologous therapies. However, future therapies based on hiPSCs will first have to address not only similar regulatory issues as those facing human embryonic stem cells with the US FDA and international regulatory agencies, but also hiPSCs have raised unique concerns as well. While the first possible clinical use of hiPSCs remains down the road, as a field it would be wise for us to anticipate potential roadblocks and begin formulating solutions. In this article, I discuss the potential regulatory issues facing hiPSCs and propose some potential changes in the direction of the field in response.

Managing Information Technology: Facing the Issues. Track VI: Academic Computing Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

CAUSE, Boulder, CO.

Eight papers making up Track VI of the 1989 conference of the Professional Association for the Management of Information Technology in Higher Education (known as CAUSE, an acronym of the association's former name) are presented in this document. The focus of Track VI is on academic computing issues, and the papers include: "Loan-a-Mac: A…

Families Facing the Nuclear Taboo.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Jacobs, Judith Bula

1988-01-01

Discusses attitudes of 12 families participating in group which was formed to focus on issues related to the possibility of a nuclear disaster. Why and how these families are facing the nuclear taboo plus various outcomes of doing so are discussed as well as the role of the professional in encouraging such openness about these difficult issues.…

Reverse engineering the face space: Discovering the critical features for face identification.

PubMed

Abudarham, Naphtali; Yovel, Galit

2016-01-01

How do we identify people? What are the critical facial features that define an identity and determine whether two faces belong to the same person or different people? To answer these questions, we applied the face space framework, according to which faces are represented as points in a multidimensional feature space, such that face space distances are correlated with perceptual similarities between faces. In particular, we developed a novel method that allowed us to reveal the critical dimensions (i.e., critical features) of the face space. To that end, we constructed a concrete face space, which included 20 facial features of natural face images, and asked human observers to evaluate feature values (e.g., how thick are the lips). Next, we systematically and quantitatively changed facial features, and measured the perceptual effects of these manipulations. We found that critical features were those for which participants have high perceptual sensitivity (PS) for detecting differences across identities (e.g., which of two faces has thicker lips). Furthermore, these high PS features vary minimally across different views of the same identity, suggesting high PS features support face recognition across different images of the same face. The methods described here set an infrastructure for discovering the critical features of other face categories not studied here (e.g., Asians, familiar) as well as other aspects of face processing, such as attractiveness or trait inferences.

Phoneme Similarity and Confusability

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Bailey, T.M.; Hahn, U.

2005-01-01

Similarity between component speech sounds influences language processing in numerous ways. Explanation and detailed prediction of linguistic performance consequently requires an understanding of these basic similarities. The research reported in this paper contrasts two broad classes of approach to the issue of phoneme similarity-theoretically…

The Effects of Prediction on the Perception for Own-Race and Other-Race Faces

PubMed Central

Ran, Guangming; Zhang, Qi; Chen, Xu; Pan, Yangu

2014-01-01

Human beings do not passively perceive important social features about others such as race and age in social interactions. Instead, it is proposed that humans might continuously generate predictions about these social features based on prior similar experiences. Pre-awareness of racial information conveyed by others' faces enables individuals to act in “culturally appropriate” ways, which is useful for interpersonal relations in different ethnicity groups. However, little is known about the effects of prediction on the perception for own-race and other-race faces. Here, we addressed this issue using high temporal resolution event-related potential techniques. In total, data from 24 participants (13 women and 11 men) were analyzed. It was found that the N170 amplitudes elicited by other-race faces, but not own-race faces, were significantly smaller in the predictable condition compared to the unpredictable condition, reflecting a switch to holistic processing of other-race faces when those faces were predictable. In this respect, top-down prediction about face race might contribute to the elimination of the other-race effect (one face recognition impairment). Furthermore, smaller P300 amplitudes were observed for the predictable than for unpredictable conditions, which suggested that the prediction of race reduced the neural responses of human brains. PMID:25422892

Face Search at Scale.

PubMed

Wang, Dayong; Otto, Charles; Jain, Anil K

2017-06-01

Given the prevalence of social media websites, one challenge facing computer vision researchers is to devise methods to search for persons of interest among the billions of shared photos on these websites. Despite significant progress in face recognition, searching a large collection of unconstrained face images remains a difficult problem. To address this challenge, we propose a face search system which combines a fast search procedure, coupled with a state-of-the-art commercial off the shelf (COTS) matcher, in a cascaded framework. Given a probe face, we first filter the large gallery of photos to find the top- k most similar faces using features learned by a convolutional neural network. The k retrieved candidates are re-ranked by combining similarities based on deep features and those output by the COTS matcher. We evaluate the proposed face search system on a gallery containing 80 million web-downloaded face images. Experimental results demonstrate that while the deep features perform worse than the COTS matcher on a mugshot dataset (93.7 percent versus 98.6 percent TAR@FAR of 0.01 percent), fusing the deep features with the COTS matcher improves the overall performance ( 99.5 percent TAR@FAR of 0.01 percent). This shows that the learned deep features provide complementary information over representations used in state-of-the-art face matchers. On the unconstrained face image benchmarks, the performance of the learned deep features is competitive with reported accuracies. LFW database: 98.20 percent accuracy under the standard protocol and 88.03 percent TAR@FAR of 0.1 percent under the BLUFR protocol; IJB-A benchmark: 51.0 percent TAR@FAR of 0.1 percent (verification), rank 1 retrieval of 82.2 percent (closed-set search), 61.5 percent FNIR@FAR of 1 percent (open-set search). The proposed face search system offers an excellent trade-off between accuracy and scalability on galleries with millions of images. Additionally, in a face search experiment involving

Special Issues in Working with Gifted Minority Adolescents.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lindstrom, Rena R.; Van Sant, Sondra

1986-01-01

Gifted adolescents from minority groups face the same issues all gifted young people face, but the addition of racial and cultural factors increases the complexity of these issues. Discusses individual versus cultural pressures that affect identity, issues related to assisting students with long-range planning, and two models for programming.…

Spatiotemporal dynamics of similarity-based neural representations of facial identity.

PubMed

Vida, Mark D; Nestor, Adrian; Plaut, David C; Behrmann, Marlene

2017-01-10

Humans' remarkable ability to quickly and accurately discriminate among thousands of highly similar complex objects demands rapid and precise neural computations. To elucidate the process by which this is achieved, we used magnetoencephalography to measure spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity with high temporal resolution during visual discrimination among a large and carefully controlled set of faces. We also compared these neural data to lower level "image-based" and higher level "identity-based" model-based representations of our stimuli and to behavioral similarity judgments of our stimuli. Between ∼50 and 400 ms after stimulus onset, face-selective sources in right lateral occipital cortex and right fusiform gyrus and sources in a control region (left V1) yielded successful classification of facial identity. In all regions, early responses were more similar to the image-based representation than to the identity-based representation. In the face-selective regions only, responses were more similar to the identity-based representation at several time points after 200 ms. Behavioral responses were more similar to the identity-based representation than to the image-based representation, and their structure was predicted by responses in the face-selective regions. These results provide a temporally precise description of the transformation from low- to high-level representations of facial identity in human face-selective cortex and demonstrate that face-selective cortical regions represent multiple distinct types of information about face identity at different times over the first 500 ms after stimulus onset. These results have important implications for understanding the rapid emergence of fine-grained, high-level representations of object identity, a computation essential to human visual expertise.

Spatiotemporal dynamics of similarity-based neural representations of facial identity

PubMed Central

Vida, Mark D.; Nestor, Adrian; Plaut, David C.; Behrmann, Marlene

2017-01-01

Humans’ remarkable ability to quickly and accurately discriminate among thousands of highly similar complex objects demands rapid and precise neural computations. To elucidate the process by which this is achieved, we used magnetoencephalography to measure spatiotemporal patterns of neural activity with high temporal resolution during visual discrimination among a large and carefully controlled set of faces. We also compared these neural data to lower level “image-based” and higher level “identity-based” model-based representations of our stimuli and to behavioral similarity judgments of our stimuli. Between ∼50 and 400 ms after stimulus onset, face-selective sources in right lateral occipital cortex and right fusiform gyrus and sources in a control region (left V1) yielded successful classification of facial identity. In all regions, early responses were more similar to the image-based representation than to the identity-based representation. In the face-selective regions only, responses were more similar to the identity-based representation at several time points after 200 ms. Behavioral responses were more similar to the identity-based representation than to the image-based representation, and their structure was predicted by responses in the face-selective regions. These results provide a temporally precise description of the transformation from low- to high-level representations of facial identity in human face-selective cortex and demonstrate that face-selective cortical regions represent multiple distinct types of information about face identity at different times over the first 500 ms after stimulus onset. These results have important implications for understanding the rapid emergence of fine-grained, high-level representations of object identity, a computation essential to human visual expertise. PMID:28028220

Carbon-Type Analysis and Comparison of Original and Reblended FACE Diesel Fuels (FACE 2, FACE 4, and FACE 7)

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Bays, J. Timothy; King, David L.; O'Hagan, Molly J.

This report summarizes the carbon-type analysis from 1H and 13C{1H} nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy (NMR) of Fuels for Advanced Combustion Engines (FACE) diesel blends, FD-2B, FD 4B, and FD-7B, and makes comparison of the new blends with the original FACE diesel blends, FD 2A, FD 4A, and FD-7A, respectively. Generally, FD-2A and FD-2B are more similar than the A and B blends of FD-4 and FD-7. The aromatic carbon content is roughly equivalent, although the new FACE blends have decreased monoaromatic content and increased di- and tri-cycloaromatic content, as well as a higher overall aromatic content, than the original FACEmore » blends. The aromatic components of the new FACE blends generally have a higher alkyl substitution with longer alkyl substituents. The naphthenic and paraffinic contents remained relatively consistent. Based on aliphatic methyl and methylene carbon ratios, cetane numbers for FD-2A and -2B, and FD-7A and -7B are predicted to be consistent, while the cetane number for FD-4B is predicted to be higher than FD-4A. Overall, the new FACE fuel blends are fairly consistent with the original FACE fuel blends, but there are observable differences. In addition to providing important comparative compositional information on reformulated FACE diesel blends, this report also provides important information about the capabilities of the team at Pacific Northwest National Laboratory in the use of NMR spectroscopy for the detailed characterization and comparison of fuels and fuel blends.« less

Dietary Issues Inpatients Face With Being Vegetarian

PubMed Central

Potter-Dunlop, Julie A.; Tse, Alice M.

2016-01-01

This article reviews the literature from 1985 through 2010 on research related to the dietary issues vegetarian inpatients may encounter in the acute care setting. A thematic portrayal of vegetarianism in the context of the inpatient setting is described. Implications for future research and nursing practice are identified. PMID:22157507

Great Decisions 1990: Foreign Policy Issues Facing the Nation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoepli, Nancy L., Ed.

The 1990 Great Decisions program, part of an annual series on foreign policy issues, is intended to create better better public understanding through information and analyses of important international issues. Current information is presented so that participants may be stimulated toward discussion, form opinions and contribute to the policy…

Sexual and reproductive health issues facing Southeast Asian beer promoters: a qualitative pilot study

PubMed Central

2010-01-01

Background In Southeast Asia, hundreds of thousands of young rural women migrate from their villages to the larger cities in search of work. Many find employment with beer companies or in the clubs where beer is sold, promoting the sale of beer. Previous research suggests these young migrants are in a highly vulnerable position. This paper will describe the findings of an October 2009 meeting to develop a research agenda on the sexual and reproductive health of beer promoters and a subsequent pilot study of focus groups with beer promoters to review this agenda. Methods Participants of the research meeting representing beer promoters, academics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government and the beer industry from Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam collaborated in the development of three key research themes. The themes were verified in focus group discussions with beer promoters organized by local research partners in all four countries. The focus group participants were asked what they felt were the key sexual and reproductive health issues facing them in a non-directive and unstructured manner, and then asked to comment more specifically on the research priorities developed at the meeting. The focus groups were recorded digitally, transcribed, and translated into English. The data were analyzed by coding for common themes and then developing matrices to compare themes between groups. Results The participants of the meeting identified three key research themes: occupational health (including harassment and violence, working conditions, and fair pay), gender and social norms (focusing on the impact of power relations between the genders on women's health), and reproductive health (knowledge and access to reproductive health care services). The participants in the focus groups in all four countries agreed that these were key priorities for them, though the emphasis on the most important issues varied between groups of women. Sexual harassment in the

Sexual and reproductive health issues facing Southeast Asian beer promoters: a qualitative pilot study.

PubMed

Webber, Gail C; Spitzer, Denise L

2010-07-01

In Southeast Asia, hundreds of thousands of young rural women migrate from their villages to the larger cities in search of work. Many find employment with beer companies or in the clubs where beer is sold, promoting the sale of beer. Previous research suggests these young migrants are in a highly vulnerable position. This paper will describe the findings of an October 2009 meeting to develop a research agenda on the sexual and reproductive health of beer promoters and a subsequent pilot study of focus groups with beer promoters to review this agenda. Participants of the research meeting representing beer promoters, academics, non-governmental organizations (NGOs), government and the beer industry from Cambodia, Thailand, Laos, and Vietnam collaborated in the development of three key research themes. The themes were verified in focus group discussions with beer promoters organized by local research partners in all four countries. The focus group participants were asked what they felt were the key sexual and reproductive health issues facing them in a non-directive and unstructured manner, and then asked to comment more specifically on the research priorities developed at the meeting. The focus groups were recorded digitally, transcribed, and translated into English. The data were analyzed by coding for common themes and then developing matrices to compare themes between groups. The participants of the meeting identified three key research themes: occupational health (including harassment and violence, working conditions, and fair pay), gender and social norms (focusing on the impact of power relations between the genders on women's health), and reproductive health (knowledge and access to reproductive health care services). The participants in the focus groups in all four countries agreed that these were key priorities for them, though the emphasis on the most important issues varied between groups of women. Sexual harassment in the workplace and challenges in

Face-to-face or face-to-screen? Undergraduates' opinions and test performance in classroom vs. online learning

PubMed Central

Kemp, Nenagh; Grieve, Rachel

2014-01-01

As electronic communication becomes increasingly common, and as students juggle study, work, and family life, many universities are offering their students more flexible learning opportunities. Classes once delivered face-to-face are often replaced by online activities and discussions. However, there is little research comparing students' experience and learning in these two modalities. The aim of this study was to compare undergraduates' preference for, and academic performance on, class material and assessment presented online vs. in traditional classrooms. Psychology students (N = 67) at an Australian university completed written exercises, a class discussion, and a written test on two academic topics. The activities for one topic were conducted face-to-face, and the other online, with topics counterbalanced across two groups. The results showed that students preferred to complete activities face-to-face rather than online, but there was no significant difference in their test performance in the two modalities. In their written responses, students expressed a strong preference for class discussions to be conducted face-to-face, reporting that they felt more engaged, and received more immediate feedback, than in online discussion. A follow-up study with a separate group (N = 37) confirmed that although students appreciated the convenience of completing written activities online in their own time, they also strongly preferred to discuss course content with peers in the classroom rather than online. It is concluded that online and face-to-face activities can lead to similar levels of academic performance, but that students would rather do written activities online but engage in discussion in person. Course developers could aim to structure classes so that students can benefit from both the flexibility of online learning, and the greater engagement experienced in face-to-face discussion. PMID:25429276

Face-to-face or face-to-screen? Undergraduates' opinions and test performance in classroom vs. online learning.

PubMed

Kemp, Nenagh; Grieve, Rachel

2014-01-01

As electronic communication becomes increasingly common, and as students juggle study, work, and family life, many universities are offering their students more flexible learning opportunities. Classes once delivered face-to-face are often replaced by online activities and discussions. However, there is little research comparing students' experience and learning in these two modalities. The aim of this study was to compare undergraduates' preference for, and academic performance on, class material and assessment presented online vs. in traditional classrooms. Psychology students (N = 67) at an Australian university completed written exercises, a class discussion, and a written test on two academic topics. The activities for one topic were conducted face-to-face, and the other online, with topics counterbalanced across two groups. The results showed that students preferred to complete activities face-to-face rather than online, but there was no significant difference in their test performance in the two modalities. In their written responses, students expressed a strong preference for class discussions to be conducted face-to-face, reporting that they felt more engaged, and received more immediate feedback, than in online discussion. A follow-up study with a separate group (N = 37) confirmed that although students appreciated the convenience of completing written activities online in their own time, they also strongly preferred to discuss course content with peers in the classroom rather than online. It is concluded that online and face-to-face activities can lead to similar levels of academic performance, but that students would rather do written activities online but engage in discussion in person. Course developers could aim to structure classes so that students can benefit from both the flexibility of online learning, and the greater engagement experienced in face-to-face discussion.

Automatic face recognition in HDR imaging

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Pereira, Manuela; Moreno, Juan-Carlos; Proença, Hugo; Pinheiro, António M. G.

2014-05-01

The gaining popularity of the new High Dynamic Range (HDR) imaging systems is raising new privacy issues caused by the methods used for visualization. HDR images require tone mapping methods for an appropriate visualization on conventional and non-expensive LDR displays. These visualization methods might result in completely different visualization raising several issues on privacy intrusion. In fact, some visualization methods result in a perceptual recognition of the individuals, while others do not even show any identity. Although perceptual recognition might be possible, a natural question that can rise is how computer based recognition will perform using tone mapping generated images? In this paper, a study where automatic face recognition using sparse representation is tested with images that result from common tone mapping operators applied to HDR images. Its ability for the face identity recognition is described. Furthermore, typical LDR images are used for the face recognition training.

Internal versus external features in triggering the brain waveforms for conjunction and feature faces in recognition.

PubMed

Nie, Aiqing; Jiang, Jingguo; Fu, Qiao

2014-08-20

Previous research has found that conjunction faces (whose internal features, e.g. eyes, nose, and mouth, and external features, e.g. hairstyle and ears, are from separate studied faces) and feature faces (partial features of these are studied) can produce higher false alarms than both old and new faces (i.e. those that are exactly the same as the studied faces and those that have not been previously presented) in recognition. The event-related potentials (ERPs) that relate to conjunction and feature faces at recognition, however, have not been described as yet; in addition, the contributions of different facial features toward ERPs have not been differentiated. To address these issues, the present study compared the ERPs elicited by old faces, conjunction faces (the internal and the external features were from two studied faces), old internal feature faces (whose internal features were studied), and old external feature faces (whose external features were studied) with those of new faces separately. The results showed that old faces not only elicited an early familiarity-related FN400, but a more anterior distributed late old/new effect that reflected recollection. Conjunction faces evoked similar late brain waveforms as old internal feature faces, but not to old external feature faces. These results suggest that, at recognition, old faces hold higher familiarity than compound faces in the profiles of ERPs and internal facial features are more crucial than external ones in triggering the brain waveforms that are characterized as reflecting the result of familiarity.

Representational Similarity of Body Parts in Human Occipitotemporal Cortex.

PubMed

Bracci, Stefania; Caramazza, Alfonso; Peelen, Marius V

2015-09-23

Regions in human lateral and ventral occipitotemporal cortices (OTC) respond selectively to pictures of the human body and its parts. What are the organizational principles underlying body part responses in these regions? Here we used representational similarity analysis (RSA) of fMRI data to test multiple possible organizational principles: shape similarity, physical proximity, cortical homunculus proximity, and semantic similarity. Participants viewed pictures of whole persons, chairs, and eight body parts (hands, arms, legs, feet, chests, waists, upper faces, and lower faces). The similarity of multivoxel activity patterns for all body part pairs was established in whole person-selective OTC regions. The resulting neural similarity matrices were then compared with similarity matrices capturing the hypothesized organizational principles. Results showed that the semantic similarity model best captured the neural similarity of body parts in lateral and ventral OTC, which followed an organization in three clusters: (1) body parts used as action effectors (hands, feet, arms, and legs), (2) noneffector body parts (chests and waists), and (3) face parts (upper and lower faces). Whole-brain RSA revealed, in addition to OTC, regions in parietal and frontal cortex in which neural similarity was related to semantic similarity. In contrast, neural similarity in occipital cortex was best predicted by shape similarity models. We suggest that the semantic organization of body parts in high-level visual cortex relates to the different functions associated with the three body part clusters, reflecting the unique processing and connectivity demands associated with the different types of information (e.g., action, social) different body parts (e.g., limbs, faces) convey. Significance statement: While the organization of body part representations in motor and somatosensory cortices has been well characterized, the principles underlying body part representations in visual cortex

Children with Autism Spectrum Disorder scan own-race faces differently from other-race faces.

PubMed

Yi, Li; Quinn, Paul C; Fan, Yuebo; Huang, Dan; Feng, Cong; Joseph, Lisa; Li, Jiao; Lee, Kang

2016-01-01

It has been well documented that people recognize and scan other-race faces differently from faces of their own race. The current study examined whether this cross-racial difference in face processing found in the typical population also exists in individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD). Participants included 5- to 10-year-old children with ASD (n=29), typically developing (TD) children matched on chronological age (n=29), and TD children matched on nonverbal IQ (n=29). Children completed a face recognition task in which they were asked to memorize and recognize both own- and other-race faces while their eye movements were tracked. We found no recognition advantage for own-race faces relative to other-race faces in any of the three groups. However, eye-tracking results indicated that, similar to TD children, children with ASD exhibited a cross-racial face-scanning pattern: they looked at the eyes of other-race faces longer than at those of own-race faces, whereas they looked at the mouth of own-race faces longer than at that of other-race faces. The findings suggest that although children with ASD have difficulty with processing some aspects of faces, their ability to process face race information is relatively spared. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Cultural similarities and differences in perceiving and recognizing facial expressions of basic emotions.

PubMed

Yan, Xiaoqian; Andrews, Timothy J; Young, Andrew W

2016-03-01

The ability to recognize facial expressions of basic emotions is often considered a universal human ability. However, recent studies have suggested that this commonality has been overestimated and that people from different cultures use different facial signals to represent expressions (Jack, Blais, Scheepers, Schyns, & Caldara, 2009; Jack, Caldara, & Schyns, 2012). We investigated this possibility by examining similarities and differences in the perception and categorization of facial expressions between Chinese and white British participants using whole-face and partial-face images. Our results showed no cultural difference in the patterns of perceptual similarity of expressions from whole-face images. When categorizing the same expressions, however, both British and Chinese participants were slightly more accurate with whole-face images of their own ethnic group. To further investigate potential strategy differences, we repeated the perceptual similarity and categorization tasks with presentation of only the upper or lower half of each face. Again, the perceptual similarity of facial expressions was similar between Chinese and British participants for both the upper and lower face regions. However, participants were slightly better at categorizing facial expressions of their own ethnic group for the lower face regions, indicating that the way in which culture shapes the categorization of facial expressions is largely driven by differences in information decoding from this part of the face. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Critical Social Theory: Core Tenets, Inherent Issues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Freeman, Melissa; Vasconcelos, Erika Franca S.

2010-01-01

This chapter outlines the core tenets of critical social theory and describes inherent issues facing evaluators conducting critical theory evaluation. Using critical pedagogy as an example, the authors describe the issues facing evaluators by developing four of the subtheories that comprise a critical social theory: (a) a theory of false…

Face-Likeness and Image Variability Drive Responses in Human Face-Selective Ventral Regions

PubMed Central

Davidenko, Nicolas; Remus, David A.; Grill-Spector, Kalanit

2012-01-01

The human ventral visual stream contains regions that respond selectively to faces over objects. However, it is unknown whether responses in these regions correlate with how face-like stimuli appear. Here, we use parameterized face silhouettes to manipulate the perceived face-likeness of stimuli and measure responses in face- and object-selective ventral regions with high-resolution fMRI. We first use “concentric hyper-sphere” (CH) sampling to define face silhouettes at different distances from the prototype face. Observers rate the stimuli as progressively more face-like the closer they are to the prototype face. Paradoxically, responses in both face- and object-selective regions decrease as face-likeness ratings increase. Because CH sampling produces blocks of stimuli whose variability is negatively correlated with face-likeness, this effect may be driven by more adaptation during high face-likeness (low-variability) blocks than during low face-likeness (high-variability) blocks. We tested this hypothesis by measuring responses to matched-variability (MV) blocks of stimuli with similar face-likeness ratings as with CH sampling. Critically, under MV sampling, we find a face-specific effect: responses in face-selective regions gradually increase with perceived face-likeness, but responses in object-selective regions are unchanged. Our studies provide novel evidence that face-selective responses correlate with the perceived face-likeness of stimuli, but this effect is revealed only when image variability is controlled across conditions. Finally, our data show that variability is a powerful factor that drives responses across the ventral stream. This indicates that controlling variability across conditions should be a critical tool in future neuroimaging studies of face and object representation. PMID:21823208

Using the internet to recruit rural MSM for HIV risk assessment: sampling issues.

PubMed

Bowen, Anne; Williams, Mark; Horvath, Keith

2004-09-01

The Internet is an emerging research tool that may be useful for contacting and working with rural men who have sex with men (MSM). Little is known about HIV risks for rural men and Internet methodological issues are only beginning to be examined. Internet versus conventionally recruited samples have shown both similarities and differences in their demographic characteristics. In this study, rural MSM from three sizes of town were recruited by two methods: conventional (e.g. face-to-face/snowball) or Internet. After stratifying for size of city, demographic characteristics of the two groups were similar. Both groups had ready access to the Internet. Patterns of sexual risk were similar across the city sizes but varied by recruitment approach, with the Internet group presenting a somewhat higher HIV sexual risk profile. Overall, these findings suggest the Internet provides a useful and low cost approach to recruiting and assessing HIV sexual risks for rural White MSM. Further research is needed on methods for recruiting rural minority MSM.

Face adaptation improves gender discrimination.

PubMed

Yang, Hua; Shen, Jianhong; Chen, Juan; Fang, Fang

2011-01-01

Adaptation to a visual pattern can alter the sensitivities of neuronal populations encoding the pattern. However, the functional roles of adaptation, especially in high-level vision, are still equivocal. In the present study, we performed three experiments to investigate if face gender adaptation could affect gender discrimination. Experiments 1 and 2 revealed that adapting to a male/female face could selectively enhance discrimination for male/female faces. Experiment 3 showed that the discrimination enhancement induced by face adaptation could transfer across a substantial change in three-dimensional face viewpoint. These results provide further evidence suggesting that, similar to low-level vision, adaptation in high-level vision could calibrate the visual system to current inputs of complex shapes (i.e. face) and improve discrimination at the adapted characteristic. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Neuronal integration in visual cortex elevates face category tuning to conscious face perception

PubMed Central

Fahrenfort, Johannes J.; Snijders, Tineke M.; Heinen, Klaartje; van Gaal, Simon; Scholte, H. Steven; Lamme, Victor A. F.

2012-01-01

The human brain has the extraordinary capability to transform cluttered sensory input into distinct object representations. For example, it is able to rapidly and seemingly without effort detect object categories in complex natural scenes. Surprisingly, category tuning is not sufficient to achieve conscious recognition of objects. What neural process beyond category extraction might elevate neural representations to the level where objects are consciously perceived? Here we show that visible and invisible faces produce similar category-selective responses in the ventral visual cortex. The pattern of neural activity evoked by visible faces could be used to decode the presence of invisible faces and vice versa. However, only visible faces caused extensive response enhancements and changes in neural oscillatory synchronization, as well as increased functional connectivity between higher and lower visual areas. We conclude that conscious face perception is more tightly linked to neural processes of sustained information integration and binding than to processes accommodating face category tuning. PMID:23236162

Comparing Online and Face-to-Face Instruction at a Large Virtual University: Data and Issues in the Measurement of Quality. AIR 2001 Annual Forum Paper.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wisan, Gail; Nazma, Shirin; Pscherer, Charles P., Jr.

The fiscal year 2000 Alumni Survey at a large, substantially online university was used to assess undergraduate students' satisfaction with both online and face-to-face academic quality and student services. Students who had taken online classes evaluated both their online and face-to-face classes. In addition, students who took only face-to-face…

Face-Evoked Steady-State Visual Potentials: Effects of Presentation Rate and Face Inversion

PubMed Central

Gruss, L. Forest; Wieser, Matthias J.; Schweinberger, Stefan R.; Keil, Andreas

2012-01-01

Face processing can be explored using electrophysiological methods. Research with event-related potentials has demonstrated the so-called face inversion effect, in which the N170 component is enhanced in amplitude and latency to inverted, compared to upright, faces. The present study explored the extent to which repetitive lower-level visual cortical engagement, reflected in flicker steady-state visual evoked potentials (ssVEPs), shows similar amplitude enhancement to face inversion. We also asked if inversion-related ssVEP modulation would be dependent on the stimulation rate at which upright and inverted faces were flickered. To this end, multiple tagging frequencies were used (5, 10, 15, and 20 Hz) across two studies (n = 21, n = 18). Results showed that amplitude enhancement of the ssVEP for inverted faces was found solely at higher stimulation frequencies (15 and 20 Hz). By contrast, lower frequency ssVEPs did not show this inversion effect. These findings suggest that stimulation frequency affects the sensitivity of ssVEPs to face inversion. PMID:23205009

A Still-face Paradigm for Young Children: 2½ Year-olds’ Reactions to Maternal Unavailability during the Still-face

PubMed Central

Weinberg, M. Katherine; Beeghly, Marjorie; Olson, Karen L.; Tronick, Ed

2011-01-01

This study evaluated similarities and differences in 2½ year-old children’s reactions to maternal unavailability during a brief still-face episode and subsequent resumption of social interaction during a reunion episode. Seventy mothers and children were videotaped in the Toddler Still-Face paradigm (T-SF), an age appropriate adaptation of the Face-to-Face Still-Face paradigm. Similar to their younger counterparts, 2½ year-olds displayed the traditional “still-face effect,” including an increase in negative affect, gaze aversion, and a wide array of behaviors indicative of proximity seeking to the mother, solicitation of her attention, and avoidance and a “reunion effect,” characterized by a carryover of negative affect and avoidance behavior (e.g., moving away from the mother) from the still-face episode to the reunion play episode. However, differences in toddlers’ behaviors during the still-face and reunion episodes were also observed, which highlight age-related changes in the toddlers’ ability to cope with the stress of maternal unavailability during the still-face during the third year of life. Contrary to reports for younger infants, few gender differences were found in toddlers’ reactions to the still-face. The findings support the hypothesis that the toddlers are attempting to make meaning out of an unexpected and senseless event. PMID:22384309

Normal composite face effects in developmental prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Biotti, Federica; Wu, Esther; Yang, Hua; Jiahui, Guo; Duchaine, Bradley; Cook, Richard

2017-10-01

Upright face perception is thought to involve holistic processing, whereby local features are integrated into a unified whole. Consistent with this view, the top half of one face appears to fuse perceptually with the bottom half of another, when aligned spatially and presented upright. This 'composite face effect' reveals a tendency to integrate information from disparate regions when faces are presented canonically. In recent years, the relationship between susceptibility to the composite effect and face recognition ability has received extensive attention both in participants with normal face recognition and participants with developmental prosopagnosia. Previous results suggest that individuals with developmental prosopagnosia may show reduced susceptibility to the effect suggestive of diminished holistic face processing. Here we describe two studies that examine whether developmental prosopagnosia is associated with reduced composite face effects. Despite using independent samples of developmental prosopagnosics and different composite procedures, we find no evidence for reduced composite face effects. The experiments yielded similar results; highly significant composite effects in both prosopagnosic groups that were similar in magnitude to the effects found in participants with normal face processing. The composite face effects exhibited by both samples and the controls were greatly diminished when stimulus arrangements were inverted. Our finding that the whole-face binding process indexed by the composite effect is intact in developmental prosopagnosia indicates that other factors are responsible for developmental prosopagnosia. These results are also inconsistent with suggestions that susceptibility to the composite face effect and face recognition ability are tightly linked. While the holistic process revealed by the composite face effect may be necessary for typical face perception, it is not sufficient; individual differences in face recognition ability

Managing Information Technology: Facing the Issues. Track II: Funding and Accountability Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

CAUSE, Boulder, CO.

Eight papers making up Track II of the 1989 conference of the Professional Association for the Management of Information Technology in Higher Education (known as CAUSE, an acronym for the association's former name) are presented in this document. The focus of Track II is on funding and accountability issues, and the papers include: "A…

Managing Information Technology: Facing the Issues. Track III: Organization and Personnel Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

CAUSE, Boulder, CO.

Seven papers making up Track III of the 1989 conference of the Professional Association for the Management of Information Technology in Higher Education (known as CAUSE, an acronym of the association's former name) are presented in this document. The focus of Track III is on organization and personnel issues, and the papers include: "How to…

Managing Information Technology: Facing the Issues. Track IV: Policy and Standards Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

CAUSE, Boulder, CO.

Seven papers making up Track IV of the 1989 conference of the Professional Association for the Management of Information Technology in Higher Education (known as CAUSE; an acronym of the association's former name) are presented in this document. The focus of Track IV is on policy and standards issues and the papers include: "Developing…

Managing Information Technology: Facing the Issues. Track VII: Applications and Technology Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

CAUSE, Boulder, CO.

Eight papers making up Track VII of the 1989 conference of the Professional Association for the Management of Information Technology in Higher Education (known as CAUSE, an acronym of the association's former name) are presented in this document. The focus of Track VII is on applications and technology issues, and the papers include: "The…

International and domestic regulator issues facing the Canadian MSAT system

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bahman, Azarbar; Langlois, Jacques R.; Frank, Christopher J.

1988-01-01

International and domestic regulatory issues which affect the implementation of a mobile satellite system (MSAT) over North America are addressed. WARC-MOB-87, MSAT frequency co-ordination, frequency sharing and key Canadian domestic issues are discussed.

The Coverage Issue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yoshinobu, Stan; Jones, Matthew G.

2012-01-01

A significant issue mathematics instructors face is how to cover all the material. Mathematics teachers of all levels have some external and internal pressures to "get through" all the required material. The authors define "the coverage issue" to be the set of difficulties that arise in attempting to cover a lengthy list of topics. Principal among…

Top Strategic Issues Facing HBCUs, Now and into the Future

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hodge-Clark, Kristen; Daniels, Brandon D.

2014-01-01

Created in a time of segregation and discrimination to educate students of color, Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) have played a pivotal role in transforming the landscape of higher education in the United States. Today, in an era of rapid transformation, HBCUs face historic challenges as well as new obstacles. Questions about…

Riverine ecosystem services and the thermoelectric sector: strategic issues facing the Northeastern United States

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miara, A.; Vorosmarty, C. J.; Stewart, R.; Wollheim, W. M.; Rosenzweig, B.

2013-12-01

Major strategic issues facing the global thermoelectric sector include environmental regulation, climate change and increasing electricity demand. We have addressed such issues by modeling thermoelectric generation in the Northeastern United States that is reliant on cooling under five sensitivity tests to evaluate losses/gains in power production, thermal pollution and suitable aquatic habitat, comparing the contemporary baseline (2000-2010) with potential future states. Integral to the analysis, we developed a methodology to quantify river water availability for cooling, which we define as an ecosystem service. Projected climate conditions reduce river water available for efficient power plant operations and the river's capacity to absorb waste heat, causing a loss of regional thermoelectric generation (RTG) (2.5%) in some summers that, compared to the contemporary baseline, is equal to the summertime electricity consumption of 1.3 million Northeastern US homes. Vulnerabilities to warm temperatures and thermal pollution can be alleviated through the use of more efficient natural gas (NG) power plants that have a reduced reliance on cooling water. Conversion of once-through (OT) to cooling tower (CT) systems and the Clean Water Act (CWA) temperature limit regulation, both of which reduce efficiencies at the single plant level, show potential to yield beneficial increases in RTG. This is achieved by obviating the need for large volumes of river water, thereby reducing plant-to-plant interferences through lowering the impact of upstream thermal pollution and preserving a minimum standard of cooling water. The results and methodology framework presented here, which can be extrapolated to other regional assessments with contrasting climates and thermoelectric profiles, can identify opportunities and support decision-making to achieve more efficient energy systems and riverine ecosystem protection.

Riverine ecosystem services and the thermoelectric sector: strategic issues facing the Northeastern United States

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Miara, Ariel; Vörösmarty, Charles J.; Stewart, Robert J.; Wollheim, Wilfred M.; Rosenzweig, Bernice

2013-06-01

Major strategic issues facing the global thermoelectric sector include environmental regulation, climate change and increasing electricity demand. We have addressed such issues by modeling thermoelectric generation in the Northeastern United States that is reliant on cooling under five sensitivity tests to evaluate losses/gains in power production, thermal pollution and suitable aquatic habitat, comparing the contemporary baseline (2000-2010) with potential future states. Integral to the analysis, we developed a methodology to quantify river water availability for cooling, which we define as an ecosystem service. Projected climate conditions reduce river water available for efficient power plant operations and the river’s capacity to absorb waste heat, causing a loss of regional thermoelectric generation (RTG) (2.5%) in some summers that, compared to the contemporary baseline, is equal to the summertime electricity consumption of 1.3 million Northeastern US homes. Vulnerabilities to warm temperatures and thermal pollution can be alleviated through the use of more efficient natural gas (NG) power plants that have a reduced reliance on cooling water. Conversion of once-through (OT) to cooling tower (CT) systems and the Clean Water Act (CWA) temperature limit regulation, both of which reduce efficiencies at the single plant level, show potential to yield beneficial increases in RTG. This is achieved by obviating the need for large volumes of river water, thereby reducing plant-to-plant interferences through lowering the impact of upstream thermal pollution and preserving a minimum standard of cooling water. The results and methodology framework presented here, which can be extrapolated to other regional assessments with contrasting climates and thermoelectric profiles, can identify opportunities and support decision-making to achieve more efficient energy systems and riverine ecosystem protection.

Processing of configural and componential information in face-selective cortical areas.

PubMed

Zhao, Mintao; Cheung, Sing-Hang; Wong, Alan C-N; Rhodes, Gillian; Chan, Erich K S; Chan, Winnie W L; Hayward, William G

2014-01-01

We investigated how face-selective cortical areas process configural and componential face information and how race of faces may influence these processes. Participants saw blurred (preserving configural information), scrambled (preserving componential information), and whole faces during fMRI scan, and performed a post-scan face recognition task using blurred or scrambled faces. The fusiform face area (FFA) showed stronger activation to blurred than to scrambled faces, and equivalent responses to blurred and whole faces. The occipital face area (OFA) showed stronger activation to whole than to blurred faces, which elicited similar responses to scrambled faces. Therefore, the FFA may be more tuned to process configural than componential information, whereas the OFA similarly participates in perception of both. Differences in recognizing own- and other-race blurred faces were correlated with differences in FFA activation to those faces, suggesting that configural processing within the FFA may underlie the other-race effect in face recognition.

Wheelchair Seating Assessment and Intervention: A Comparison Between Telerehabilitation and Face-to-Face Service

PubMed Central

Barlow, Ingrid G; Liu, Lili; Sekulic, Angela

2009-01-01

This study compared outcomes of wheelchair seating and positioning interventions provided by telerehabilitation (n=10) and face-to-face (n=20; 10 in each of two comparison groups, one urban and one rural). Comparison clients were matched to the telerehabilitation clients in age, diagnosis, and type of seating components received. Clients and referring therapists rated their satisfaction and identified if seating intervention goals were met. Clients recorded travel expenses incurred or saved, and all therapists recorded time spent providing service. Wait times and completion times were tracked. Clients seen by telerehabilitation had similar satisfaction ratings and were as likely to have their goals met as clients seen face-to-face; telerehabilitation clients saved travel costs. Rural referring therapists who used telerehabilitation spent more time in preparation and follow-up than the other groups. Clients assessed by telerehabilitation had shorter wait times for assessment than rural face-to-face clients, but their interventions took as long to complete. PMID:25945159

Self-esteem, interpersonal risk, and preference for e-mail to face-to-face communication.

PubMed

Joinson, Adam N

2004-08-01

The media choices made by high and low self-esteem Internet users were studied using web-based methodology (n = 265). Participants were asked to rank four media (face-to-face, e-mail, letter, and telephone) in order of preference across four different communication scenarios designed to pose an interpersonal risk. The level of interpersonal risk posed by two of the scenarios (asking for a pay rise and asking for a date) were also experimentally manipulated by randomly allocating participants to a 25%, 50%, or 75% chance of rejection. Low self-esteem users (LSE) showed a significant preference toward e-mail communication compared to high self-esteem users (HSE). This pattern was reversed for face-to-face preferences. Similarly, a greater chance of rejection in a scenario led to e-mail being preferred to face-to-face communication. The results are discussed in light of both the strategic use of different media and the motivated Internet user.

Spatial location in brief, free-viewing face encoding modulates contextual face recognition

PubMed Central

Felisberti, Fatima M.; McDermott, Mark R.

2013-01-01

The effect of the spatial location of faces in the visual field during brief, free-viewing encoding in subsequent face recognition is not known. This study addressed this question by tagging three groups of faces with cheating, cooperating or neutral behaviours and presenting them for encoding in two visual hemifields (upper vs. lower or left vs. right). Participants then had to indicate if a centrally presented face had been seen before or not. Head and eye movements were free in all phases. Findings showed that the overall recognition of cooperators was significantly better than cheaters, and it was better for faces encoded in the upper hemifield than in the lower hemifield, both in terms of a higher d′ and faster reaction time (RT). The d′ for any given behaviour in the left and right hemifields was similar. The RT in the left hemifield did not vary with tagged behaviour, whereas the RT in the right hemifield was longer for cheaters than for cooperators. The results showed that memory biases in contextual face recognition were modulated by the spatial location of briefly encoded faces and are discussed in terms of scanning reading habits, top-left bias in lighting preference and peripersonal space. PMID:24349694

Individual differences in adaptive coding of face identity are linked to individual differences in face recognition ability.

PubMed

Rhodes, Gillian; Jeffery, Linda; Taylor, Libby; Hayward, William G; Ewing, Louise

2014-06-01

Despite their similarity as visual patterns, we can discriminate and recognize many thousands of faces. This expertise has been linked to 2 coding mechanisms: holistic integration of information across the face and adaptive coding of face identity using norms tuned by experience. Recently, individual differences in face recognition ability have been discovered and linked to differences in holistic coding. Here we show that they are also linked to individual differences in adaptive coding of face identity, measured using face identity aftereffects. Identity aftereffects correlated significantly with several measures of face-selective recognition ability. They also correlated marginally with own-race face recognition ability, suggesting a role for adaptive coding in the well-known other-race effect. More generally, these results highlight the important functional role of adaptive face-coding mechanisms in face expertise, taking us beyond the traditional focus on holistic coding mechanisms. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Observed touch on a non-human face is not remapped onto the human observer's own face.

PubMed

Beck, Brianna; Bertini, Caterina; Scarpazza, Cristina; Làdavas, Elisabetta

2013-01-01

Visual remapping of touch (VRT) is a phenomenon in which seeing a human face being touched enhances detection of tactile stimuli on the observer's own face, especially when the observed face expresses fear. This study tested whether VRT would occur when seeing touch on monkey faces and whether it would be similarly modulated by facial expressions. Human participants detected near-threshold tactile stimulation on their own cheeks while watching fearful, happy, and neutral human or monkey faces being concurrently touched or merely approached by fingers. We predicted minimal VRT for neutral and happy monkey faces but greater VRT for fearful monkey faces. The results with human faces replicated previous findings, demonstrating stronger VRT for fearful expressions than for happy or neutral expressions. However, there was no VRT (i.e. no difference between accuracy in touch and no-touch trials) for any of the monkey faces, regardless of facial expression, suggesting that touch on a non-human face is not remapped onto the somatosensory system of the human observer.

Observed Touch on a Non-Human Face Is Not Remapped onto the Human Observer's Own Face

PubMed Central

Beck, Brianna; Bertini, Caterina; Scarpazza, Cristina; Làdavas, Elisabetta

2013-01-01

Visual remapping of touch (VRT) is a phenomenon in which seeing a human face being touched enhances detection of tactile stimuli on the observer's own face, especially when the observed face expresses fear. This study tested whether VRT would occur when seeing touch on monkey faces and whether it would be similarly modulated by facial expressions. Human participants detected near-threshold tactile stimulation on their own cheeks while watching fearful, happy, and neutral human or monkey faces being concurrently touched or merely approached by fingers. We predicted minimal VRT for neutral and happy monkey faces but greater VRT for fearful monkey faces. The results with human faces replicated previous findings, demonstrating stronger VRT for fearful expressions than for happy or neutral expressions. However, there was no VRT (i.e. no difference between accuracy in touch and no-touch trials) for any of the monkey faces, regardless of facial expression, suggesting that touch on a non-human face is not remapped onto the somatosensory system of the human observer. PMID:24250781

Issues and Challenges Facing the Minority Woman Dentist.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Sinkford, Jeanne C.

1992-01-01

The status of minority women dentists is reviewed, and initiatives to improve it are noted. Issues and challenges for African-American female dentists are outlined, including negative racial/gender stereotypes, lack of advancement opportunities, difficulties in starting practices and securing professional and social support systems, lack of…

Recognition of face and non-face stimuli in autistic spectrum disorder.

PubMed

Arkush, Leo; Smith-Collins, Adam P R; Fiorentini, Chiara; Skuse, David H

2013-12-01

The ability to remember faces is critical for the development of social competence. From childhood to adulthood, we acquire a high level of expertise in the recognition of facial images, and neural processes become dedicated to sustaining competence. Many people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) have poor face recognition memory; changes in hairstyle or other non-facial features in an otherwise familiar person affect their recollection skills. The observation implies that they may not use the configuration of the inner face to achieve memory competence, but bolster performance in other ways. We aimed to test this hypothesis by comparing the performance of a group of high-functioning unmedicated adolescents with ASD and a matched control group on a "surprise" face recognition memory task. We compared their memory for unfamiliar faces with their memory for images of houses. To evaluate the role that is played by peripheral cues in assisting recognition memory, we cropped both sets of pictures, retaining only the most salient central features. ASD adolescents had poorer recognition memory for faces than typical controls, but their recognition memory for houses was unimpaired. Cropping images of faces did not disproportionately influence their recall accuracy, relative to controls. House recognition skills (cropped and uncropped) were similar in both groups. In the ASD group only, performance on both sets of task was closely correlated, implying that memory for faces and other complex pictorial stimuli is achieved by domain-general (non-dedicated) cognitive mechanisms. Adolescents with ASD apparently do not use domain-specialized processing of inner facial cues to support face recognition memory. © 2013 International Society for Autism Research, Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Holistic processing for other-race faces in chinese participants occurs for upright but not inverted faces.

PubMed

Crookes, Kate; Favelle, Simone; Hayward, William G

2013-01-01

Recent evidence suggests stronger holistic processing for own-race faces may underlie the own-race advantage in face memory. In previous studies Caucasian participants have demonstrated larger holistic processing effects for Caucasian over Asian faces. However, Asian participants have consistently shown similar sized effects for both Asian and Caucasian faces. We investigated two proposed explanations for the holistic processing of other-race faces by Asian participants: (1) greater other-race exposure, (2) a general global processing bias. Holistic processing was tested using the part-whole task. Participants were living in predominantly own-race environments and other-race contact was evaluated. Despite reporting significantly greater contact with own-race than other-race people, Chinese participants displayed strong holistic processing for both Asian and Caucasian upright faces. In addition, Chinese participants showed no evidence of holistic processing for inverted faces arguing against a general global processing bias explanation. Caucasian participants, in line with previous studies, displayed stronger holistic processing for Caucasian than Asian upright faces. For inverted faces there were no race-of-face differences. These results are used to suggest that Asians may make more general use of face-specific mechanisms than Caucasians.

Holistic Processing for Other-Race Faces in Chinese Participants Occurs for Upright but Not Inverted Faces

PubMed Central

Crookes, Kate; Favelle, Simone; Hayward, William G.

2013-01-01

Recent evidence suggests stronger holistic processing for own-race faces may underlie the own-race advantage in face memory. In previous studies Caucasian participants have demonstrated larger holistic processing effects for Caucasian over Asian faces. However, Asian participants have consistently shown similar sized effects for both Asian and Caucasian faces. We investigated two proposed explanations for the holistic processing of other-race faces by Asian participants: (1) greater other-race exposure, (2) a general global processing bias. Holistic processing was tested using the part-whole task. Participants were living in predominantly own-race environments and other-race contact was evaluated. Despite reporting significantly greater contact with own-race than other-race people, Chinese participants displayed strong holistic processing for both Asian and Caucasian upright faces. In addition, Chinese participants showed no evidence of holistic processing for inverted faces arguing against a general global processing bias explanation. Caucasian participants, in line with previous studies, displayed stronger holistic processing for Caucasian than Asian upright faces. For inverted faces there were no race-of-face differences. These results are used to suggest that Asians may make more general use of face-specific mechanisms than Caucasians. PMID:23386840

Mapping the emotional face. How individual face parts contribute to successful emotion recognition.

PubMed

Wegrzyn, Martin; Vogt, Maria; Kireclioglu, Berna; Schneider, Julia; Kissler, Johanna

2017-01-01

Which facial features allow human observers to successfully recognize expressions of emotion? While the eyes and mouth have been frequently shown to be of high importance, research on facial action units has made more precise predictions about the areas involved in displaying each emotion. The present research investigated on a fine-grained level, which physical features are most relied on when decoding facial expressions. In the experiment, individual faces expressing the basic emotions according to Ekman were hidden behind a mask of 48 tiles, which was sequentially uncovered. Participants were instructed to stop the sequence as soon as they recognized the facial expression and assign it the correct label. For each part of the face, its contribution to successful recognition was computed, allowing to visualize the importance of different face areas for each expression. Overall, observers were mostly relying on the eye and mouth regions when successfully recognizing an emotion. Furthermore, the difference in the importance of eyes and mouth allowed to group the expressions in a continuous space, ranging from sadness and fear (reliance on the eyes) to disgust and happiness (mouth). The face parts with highest diagnostic value for expression identification were typically located in areas corresponding to action units from the facial action coding system. A similarity analysis of the usefulness of different face parts for expression recognition demonstrated that faces cluster according to the emotion they express, rather than by low-level physical features. Also, expressions relying more on the eyes or mouth region were in close proximity in the constructed similarity space. These analyses help to better understand how human observers process expressions of emotion, by delineating the mapping from facial features to psychological representation.

Mapping the emotional face. How individual face parts contribute to successful emotion recognition

PubMed Central

Wegrzyn, Martin; Vogt, Maria; Kireclioglu, Berna; Schneider, Julia; Kissler, Johanna

2017-01-01

Which facial features allow human observers to successfully recognize expressions of emotion? While the eyes and mouth have been frequently shown to be of high importance, research on facial action units has made more precise predictions about the areas involved in displaying each emotion. The present research investigated on a fine-grained level, which physical features are most relied on when decoding facial expressions. In the experiment, individual faces expressing the basic emotions according to Ekman were hidden behind a mask of 48 tiles, which was sequentially uncovered. Participants were instructed to stop the sequence as soon as they recognized the facial expression and assign it the correct label. For each part of the face, its contribution to successful recognition was computed, allowing to visualize the importance of different face areas for each expression. Overall, observers were mostly relying on the eye and mouth regions when successfully recognizing an emotion. Furthermore, the difference in the importance of eyes and mouth allowed to group the expressions in a continuous space, ranging from sadness and fear (reliance on the eyes) to disgust and happiness (mouth). The face parts with highest diagnostic value for expression identification were typically located in areas corresponding to action units from the facial action coding system. A similarity analysis of the usefulness of different face parts for expression recognition demonstrated that faces cluster according to the emotion they express, rather than by low-level physical features. Also, expressions relying more on the eyes or mouth region were in close proximity in the constructed similarity space. These analyses help to better understand how human observers process expressions of emotion, by delineating the mapping from facial features to psychological representation. PMID:28493921

Own-race faces capture attention faster than other-race faces: evidence from response time and the N2pc.

PubMed

Zhou, Guomei; Cheng, Zhijie; Yue, Zhenzhu; Tredoux, Colin; He, Jibo; Wang, Ling

2015-01-01

Studies have shown that people are better at recognizing human faces from their own-race than from other-races, an effect often termed the Own-Race Advantage. The current study investigates whether there is an Own-Race Advantage in attention and its neural correlates. Participants were asked to search for a human face among animal faces. Experiment 1 showed a classic Own-Race Advantage in response time both for Chinese and Black South African participants. Using event-related potentials (ERPs), Experiment 2 showed a similar Own-Race Advantage in response time for both upright faces and inverted faces. Moreover, the latency of N2pc for own-race faces was earlier than that for other-race faces. These results suggested that own-race faces capture attention more efficiently than other-race faces.

Issues Validation: A New Environmental Scanning Technique for Family Life Educators.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Weigel, Randy R.; And Others

1992-01-01

Three-state study used Issues Validation, environmental scanning process for family life educators that combines literature reviews, professional and public opinion, and survey research to identify issues facing families and youth. Samples of residents, local advisory committees, and community professionals ranked 30 issues facing families and…

Visual adaptation and face perception.

PubMed

Webster, Michael A; MacLeod, Donald I A

2011-06-12

The appearance of faces can be strongly affected by the characteristics of faces viewed previously. These perceptual after-effects reflect processes of sensory adaptation that are found throughout the visual system, but which have been considered only relatively recently in the context of higher level perceptual judgements. In this review, we explore the consequences of adaptation for human face perception, and the implications of adaptation for understanding the neural-coding schemes underlying the visual representation of faces. The properties of face after-effects suggest that they, in part, reflect response changes at high and possibly face-specific levels of visual processing. Yet, the form of the after-effects and the norm-based codes that they point to show many parallels with the adaptations and functional organization that are thought to underlie the encoding of perceptual attributes like colour. The nature and basis for human colour vision have been studied extensively, and we draw on ideas and principles that have been developed to account for norms and normalization in colour vision to consider potential similarities and differences in the representation and adaptation of faces.

The neural code for face orientation in the human fusiform face area.

PubMed

Ramírez, Fernando M; Cichy, Radoslaw M; Allefeld, Carsten; Haynes, John-Dylan

2014-09-03

Humans recognize faces and objects with high speed and accuracy regardless of their orientation. Recent studies have proposed that orientation invariance in face recognition involves an intermediate representation where neural responses are similar for mirror-symmetric views. Here, we used fMRI, multivariate pattern analysis, and computational modeling to investigate the neural encoding of faces and vehicles at different rotational angles. Corroborating previous studies, we demonstrate a representation of face orientation in the fusiform face-selective area (FFA). We go beyond these studies by showing that this representation is category-selective and tolerant to retinal translation. Critically, by controlling for low-level confounds, we found the representation of orientation in FFA to be compatible with a linear angle code. Aspects of mirror-symmetric coding cannot be ruled out when FFA mean activity levels are considered as a dimension of coding. Finally, we used a parametric family of computational models, involving a biased sampling of view-tuned neuronal clusters, to compare different face angle encoding models. The best fitting model exhibited a predominance of neuronal clusters tuned to frontal views of faces. In sum, our findings suggest a category-selective and monotonic code of face orientation in the human FFA, in line with primate electrophysiology studies that observed mirror-symmetric tuning of neural responses at higher stages of the visual system, beyond the putative homolog of human FFA. Copyright © 2014 the authors 0270-6474/14/3412155-13$15.00/0.

In your face: transcendence in embodied interaction

PubMed Central

Gallagher, Shaun

2014-01-01

In cognitive psychology, studies concerning the face tend to focus on questions about face recognition, theory of mind (ToM) and empathy. Questions about the face, however, also fit into a very different set of issues that are central to ethics. Based especially on the work of Levinas, philosophers have come to see that reference to the face of another person can anchor conceptions of moral responsibility and ethical demand. Levinas points to a certain irreducibility and transcendence implicit in the face of the other. In this paper I argue that the notion of transcendence involved in this kind of analysis can be given a naturalistic interpretation by drawing on recent interactive approaches to social cognition found in developmental psychology, phenomenology, and the study of autism. PMID:25071523

What's in a crowd? Analysis of face-to-face behavioral networks.

PubMed

Isella, Lorenzo; Stehlé, Juliette; Barrat, Alain; Cattuto, Ciro; Pinton, Jean-François; Van den Broeck, Wouter

2011-02-21

The availability of new data sources on human mobility is opening new avenues for investigating the interplay of social networks, human mobility and dynamical processes such as epidemic spreading. Here we analyze data on the time-resolved face-to-face proximity of individuals in large-scale real-world scenarios. We compare two settings with very different properties, a scientific conference and a long-running museum exhibition. We track the behavioral networks of face-to-face proximity, and characterize them from both a static and a dynamic point of view, exposing differences and similarities. We use our data to investigate the dynamics of a susceptible-infected model for epidemic spreading that unfolds on the dynamical networks of human proximity. The spreading patterns are markedly different for the conference and the museum case, and they are strongly impacted by the causal structure of the network data. A deeper study of the spreading paths shows that the mere knowledge of static aggregated networks would lead to erroneous conclusions about the transmission paths on the dynamical networks. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Contextual modulation of biases in face recognition.

PubMed

Felisberti, Fatima Maria; Pavey, Louisa

2010-09-23

The ability to recognize the faces of potential cooperators and cheaters is fundamental to social exchanges, given that cooperation for mutual benefit is expected. Studies addressing biases in face recognition have so far proved inconclusive, with reports of biases towards faces of cheaters, biases towards faces of cooperators, or no biases at all. This study attempts to uncover possible causes underlying such discrepancies. Four experiments were designed to investigate biases in face recognition during social exchanges when behavioral descriptors (prosocial, antisocial or neutral) embedded in different scenarios were tagged to faces during memorization. Face recognition, measured as accuracy and response latency, was tested with modified yes-no, forced-choice and recall tasks (N = 174). An enhanced recognition of faces tagged with prosocial descriptors was observed when the encoding scenario involved financial transactions and the rules of the social contract were not explicit (experiments 1 and 2). Such bias was eliminated or attenuated by making participants explicitly aware of "cooperative", "cheating" and "neutral/indifferent" behaviors via a pre-test questionnaire and then adding such tags to behavioral descriptors (experiment 3). Further, in a social judgment scenario with descriptors of salient moral behaviors, recognition of antisocial and prosocial faces was similar, but significantly better than neutral faces (experiment 4). The results highlight the relevance of descriptors and scenarios of social exchange in face recognition, when the frequency of prosocial and antisocial individuals in a group is similar. Recognition biases towards prosocial faces emerged when descriptors did not state the rules of a social contract or the moral status of a behavior, and they point to the existence of broad and flexible cognitive abilities finely tuned to minor changes in social context.

Neural architecture underlying classification of face perception paradigms.

PubMed

Laird, Angela R; Riedel, Michael C; Sutherland, Matthew T; Eickhoff, Simon B; Ray, Kimberly L; Uecker, Angela M; Fox, P Mickle; Turner, Jessica A; Fox, Peter T

2015-10-01

We present a novel strategy for deriving a classification system of functional neuroimaging paradigms that relies on hierarchical clustering of experiments archived in the BrainMap database. The goal of our proof-of-concept application was to examine the underlying neural architecture of the face perception literature from a meta-analytic perspective, as these studies include a wide range of tasks. Task-based results exhibiting similar activation patterns were grouped as similar, while tasks activating different brain networks were classified as functionally distinct. We identified four sub-classes of face tasks: (1) Visuospatial Attention and Visuomotor Coordination to Faces, (2) Perception and Recognition of Faces, (3) Social Processing and Episodic Recall of Faces, and (4) Face Naming and Lexical Retrieval. Interpretation of these sub-classes supports an extension of a well-known model of face perception to include a core system for visual analysis and extended systems for personal information, emotion, and salience processing. Overall, these results demonstrate that a large-scale data mining approach can inform the evolution of theoretical cognitive models by probing the range of behavioral manipulations across experimental tasks. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Public health issues.

PubMed

Ward, R D

1992-04-01

In a recent MSMS survey, MSMS members ranked public health as one the top five issues of major concern to Michigan physicians. Tobacco use, chronic illness, and HIV-infected health care workers comprise some of the major public health issues facing physicians and patients in Michigan. Following is a brief examination of each of these issues. Also included is a brief discussion of medical doctors as public health directors. Should all public health directors be medical doctors? This question is addressed in this cover story.

Alternatives to the face-to-face consultation in general practice: focused ethnographic case study.

PubMed

Atherton, Helen; Brant, Heather; Ziebland, Sue; Bikker, Annemieke; Campbell, John; Gibson, Andy; McKinstry, Brian; Porqueddu, Tania; Salisbury, Chris

2018-04-01

NHS policy encourages general practices to introduce alternatives to the face-to-face consultation, such as telephone, email, e-consultation systems, or internet video. Most have been slow to adopt these, citing concerns about workload. This project builds on previous research by focusing on the experiences of patients and practitioners who have used one or more of these alternatives. To understand how, under what conditions, for which patients, and in what ways, alternatives to face-to-face consultations present benefits and challenges to patients and practitioners in general practice. Focused ethnographic case studies took place in eight UK general practices between June 2015 and March 2016. Non-participant observation, informal conversations with staff, and semi-structured interviews with staff and patients were conducted. Practice documents and protocols were reviewed. Data were analysed through charting and the 'one sheet of paper' mind-map method to identify the line of argument in each thematic report. Case study practices had different rationales for offering alternatives to the face-to-face consultation. Beliefs varied about which patients and health issues were suitable. Co-workers were often unaware of each other's practice; for example, practice policies for use of e-consultations systems with patients were not known about or followed. Patients reported benefits including convenience and access. Staff and some patients regarded the face-to-face consultation as the ideal. Experience of implementing alternatives to the face-to-face consultation suggests that changes in patient access and staff workload may be both modest and gradual. Practices planning to implement them should consider carefully their reasons for doing so and involve the whole practice team. © British Journal of General Practice 2018.

Fast and Famous: Looking for the Fastest Speed at Which a Face Can be Recognized

PubMed Central

Barragan-Jason, Gladys; Besson, Gabriel; Ceccaldi, Mathieu; Barbeau, Emmanuel J.

2012-01-01

Face recognition is supposed to be fast. However, the actual speed at which faces can be recognized remains unknown. To address this issue, we report two experiments run with speed constraints. In both experiments, famous faces had to be recognized among unknown ones using a large set of stimuli to prevent pre-activation of features which would speed up recognition. In the first experiment (31 participants), recognition of famous faces was investigated using a rapid go/no-go task. In the second experiment, 101 participants performed a highly time constrained recognition task using the Speed and Accuracy Boosting procedure. Results indicate that the fastest speed at which a face can be recognized is around 360–390 ms. Such latencies are about 100 ms longer than the latencies recorded in similar tasks in which subjects have to detect faces among other stimuli. We discuss which model of activation of the visual ventral stream could account for such latencies. These latencies are not consistent with a purely feed-forward pass of activity throughout the visual ventral stream. An alternative is that face recognition relies on the core network underlying face processing identified in fMRI studies (OFA, FFA, and pSTS) and reentrant loops to refine face representation. However, the model of activation favored is that of an activation of the whole visual ventral stream up to anterior areas, such as the perirhinal cortex, combined with parallel and feed-back processes. Further studies are needed to assess which of these three models of activation can best account for face recognition. PMID:23460051

Predicting Causes of Data Quality Issues in a Clinical Data Research Network.

PubMed

Khare, Ritu; Ruth, Byron J; Miller, Matthew; Tucker, Joshua; Utidjian, Levon H; Razzaghi, Hanieh; Patibandla, Nandan; Burrows, Evanette K; Bailey, L Charles

2018-01-01

Clinical data research networks (CDRNs) invest substantially in identifying and investigating data quality problems. While identification is largely automated, the investigation and resolution are carried out manually at individual institutions. In the PEDSnet CDRN, we found that only approximately 35% of the identified data quality issues are resolvable as they are caused by errors in the extract-transform-load (ETL) code. Nonetheless, with no prior knowledge of issue causes, partner institutions end up spending significant time investigating issues that represent either inherent data characteristics or false alarms. This work investigates whether the causes (ETL, Characteristic, or False alarm) can be predicted before spending time investigating issues. We trained a classifier on the metadata from 10,281 real-world data quality issues, and achieved a cause prediction F1-measure of up to 90%. While initially tested on PEDSnet, the proposed methodology is applicable to other CDRNs facing similar bottlenecks in handling data quality results.

Genetic specificity of face recognition.

PubMed

Shakeshaft, Nicholas G; Plomin, Robert

2015-10-13

Specific cognitive abilities in diverse domains are typically found to be highly heritable and substantially correlated with general cognitive ability (g), both phenotypically and genetically. Recent twin studies have found the ability to memorize and recognize faces to be an exception, being similarly heritable but phenotypically substantially uncorrelated both with g and with general object recognition. However, the genetic relationships between face recognition and other abilities (the extent to which they share a common genetic etiology) cannot be determined from phenotypic associations. In this, to our knowledge, first study of the genetic associations between face recognition and other domains, 2,000 18- and 19-year-old United Kingdom twins completed tests assessing their face recognition, object recognition, and general cognitive abilities. Results confirmed the substantial heritability of face recognition (61%), and multivariate genetic analyses found that most of this genetic influence is unique and not shared with other cognitive abilities.

Simultaneous Versus Sequential Presentation in Testing Recognition Memory for Faces.

PubMed

Finley, Jason R; Roediger, Henry L; Hughes, Andrea D; Wahlheim, Christopher N; Jacoby, Larry L

2015-01-01

Three experiments examined the issue of whether faces could be better recognized in a simul- taneous test format (2-alternative forced choice [2AFC]) or a sequential test format (yes-no). All experiments showed that when target faces were present in the test, the simultaneous procedure led to superior performance (area under the ROC curve), whether lures were high or low in similarity to the targets. However, when a target-absent condition was used in which no lures resembled the targets but the lures were similar to each other, the simultaneous procedure yielded higher false alarm rates (Experiments 2 and 3) and worse overall performance (Experi- ment 3). This pattern persisted even when we excluded responses that participants opted to withhold rather than volunteer. We conclude that for the basic recognition procedures used in these experiments, simultaneous presentation of alternatives (2AFC) generally leads to better discriminability than does sequential presentation (yes-no) when a target is among the alterna- tives. However, our results also show that the opposite can occur when there is no target among the alternatives. An important future step is to see whether these patterns extend to more realistic eyewitness lineup procedures. The pictures used in the experiment are available online at http://www.press.uillinois.edu/journals/ajp/media/testing_recognition/.

Face-to-face: Perceived personal relevance amplifies face processing

PubMed Central

Pittig, Andre; Schupp, Harald T.; Alpers, Georg W.

2017-01-01

Abstract The human face conveys emotional and social information, but it is not well understood how these two aspects influence face perception. In order to model a group situation, two faces displaying happy, neutral or angry expressions were presented. Importantly, faces were either facing the observer, or they were presented in profile view directed towards, or looking away from each other. In Experiment 1 (n = 64), face pairs were rated regarding perceived relevance, wish-to-interact, and displayed interactivity, as well as valence and arousal. All variables revealed main effects of facial expression (emotional > neutral), face orientation (facing observer > towards > away) and interactions showed that evaluation of emotional faces strongly varies with their orientation. Experiment 2 (n = 33) examined the temporal dynamics of perceptual-attentional processing of these face constellations with event-related potentials. Processing of emotional and neutral faces differed significantly in N170 amplitudes, early posterior negativity (EPN), and sustained positive potentials. Importantly, selective emotional face processing varied as a function of face orientation, indicating early emotion-specific (N170, EPN) and late threat-specific effects (LPP, sustained positivity). Taken together, perceived personal relevance to the observer—conveyed by facial expression and face direction—amplifies emotional face processing within triadic group situations. PMID:28158672

Face-to-face: Perceived personal relevance amplifies face processing.

PubMed

Bublatzky, Florian; Pittig, Andre; Schupp, Harald T; Alpers, Georg W

2017-05-01

The human face conveys emotional and social information, but it is not well understood how these two aspects influence face perception. In order to model a group situation, two faces displaying happy, neutral or angry expressions were presented. Importantly, faces were either facing the observer, or they were presented in profile view directed towards, or looking away from each other. In Experiment 1 (n = 64), face pairs were rated regarding perceived relevance, wish-to-interact, and displayed interactivity, as well as valence and arousal. All variables revealed main effects of facial expression (emotional > neutral), face orientation (facing observer > towards > away) and interactions showed that evaluation of emotional faces strongly varies with their orientation. Experiment 2 (n = 33) examined the temporal dynamics of perceptual-attentional processing of these face constellations with event-related potentials. Processing of emotional and neutral faces differed significantly in N170 amplitudes, early posterior negativity (EPN), and sustained positive potentials. Importantly, selective emotional face processing varied as a function of face orientation, indicating early emotion-specific (N170, EPN) and late threat-specific effects (LPP, sustained positivity). Taken together, perceived personal relevance to the observer-conveyed by facial expression and face direction-amplifies emotional face processing within triadic group situations. © The Author (2017). Published by Oxford University Press.

Multivoxel patterns in face-sensitive temporal regions reveal an encoding schema based on detecting life in a face.

PubMed

Looser, Christine E; Guntupalli, Jyothi S; Wheatley, Thalia

2013-10-01

More than a decade of research has demonstrated that faces evoke prioritized processing in a 'core face network' of three brain regions. However, whether these regions prioritize the detection of global facial form (shared by humans and mannequins) or the detection of life in a face has remained unclear. Here, we dissociate form-based and animacy-based encoding of faces by using animate and inanimate faces with human form (humans, mannequins) and dog form (real dogs, toy dogs). We used multivariate pattern analysis of BOLD responses to uncover the representational similarity space for each area in the core face network. Here, we show that only responses in the inferior occipital gyrus are organized by global facial form alone (human vs dog) while animacy becomes an additional organizational priority in later face-processing regions: the lateral fusiform gyri (latFG) and right superior temporal sulcus. Additionally, patterns evoked by human faces were maximally distinct from all other face categories in the latFG and parts of the extended face perception system. These results suggest that once a face configuration is perceived, faces are further scrutinized for whether the face is alive and worthy of social cognitive resources.

Measuring sexual dimorphism with a race-gender face space.

PubMed

Hopper, William J; Finklea, Kristin M; Winkielman, Piotr; Huber, David E

2014-10-01

Faces are complex visual objects, and faces chosen to vary in 1 regard may unintentionally vary in other ways, particularly if the correlation is a property of the population of faces. Here, we present an example of a correlation that arises from differences in the degree of sexual dimorphism. In Experiment 1, paired similarity ratings were collected for a set of 40 real face images chosen to vary in terms of gender and race (Asian vs. White). Multidimensional scaling (MDS) placed these stimuli in a "face space," with different attributes corresponding to different dimensions. Gender was found to vary more for White faces, resulting in a negative or positive correlation between gender and race when only considering male or only considering female faces. This increased sexual dimorphism for White faces may provide an alternative explanation for differences in face processing between White and Asian faces (e.g., the own-race bias, face attractiveness biases, etc.). Studies of face processing that are unconfounded by this difference in the degree of sexual dimorphism require stimuli that are decorrelated in terms of race and gender. Decorrelated faces were created using a morphing technique, spacing the morphs uniformly around a ring in the 2-dimensional (2D) race-gender plane. In Experiment 2, paired similarity ratings confirmed the 2D positions of the morph faces. In Experiment 3, race and gender category judgments varied uniformly for these decorrelated stimuli. Our results and stimuli should prove useful for studying sexual dimorphism and for the study of face processing more generally.

Visual adaptation and face perception

PubMed Central

Webster, Michael A.; MacLeod, Donald I. A.

2011-01-01

The appearance of faces can be strongly affected by the characteristics of faces viewed previously. These perceptual after-effects reflect processes of sensory adaptation that are found throughout the visual system, but which have been considered only relatively recently in the context of higher level perceptual judgements. In this review, we explore the consequences of adaptation for human face perception, and the implications of adaptation for understanding the neural-coding schemes underlying the visual representation of faces. The properties of face after-effects suggest that they, in part, reflect response changes at high and possibly face-specific levels of visual processing. Yet, the form of the after-effects and the norm-based codes that they point to show many parallels with the adaptations and functional organization that are thought to underlie the encoding of perceptual attributes like colour. The nature and basis for human colour vision have been studied extensively, and we draw on ideas and principles that have been developed to account for norms and normalization in colour vision to consider potential similarities and differences in the representation and adaptation of faces. PMID:21536555

Socially Important Faces Are Processed Preferentially to Other Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces in a Priming Task across a Range of Viewpoints

PubMed Central

Keyes, Helen; Zalicks, Catherine

2016-01-01

Using a priming paradigm, we investigate whether socially important faces are processed preferentially compared to other familiar and unfamiliar faces, and whether any such effects are affected by changes in viewpoint. Participants were primed with frontal images of personally familiar, famous or unfamiliar faces, and responded to target images of congruent or incongruent identity, presented in frontal, three quarter or profile views. We report that participants responded significantly faster to socially important faces (a friend’s face) compared to other highly familiar (famous) faces or unfamiliar faces. Crucially, responses to famous and unfamiliar faces did not differ. This suggests that, when presented in the context of a socially important stimulus, socially unimportant familiar faces (famous faces) are treated in a similar manner to unfamiliar faces. This effect was not tied to viewpoint, and priming did not affect socially important face processing differently to other faces. PMID:27219101

Alternatives to the face-to-face consultation in general practice: focused ethnographic case study

PubMed Central

Atherton, Helen; Brant, Heather; Ziebland, Sue; Bikker, Annemieke; Campbell, John; Gibson, Andy; McKinstry, Brian; Porqueddu, Tania; Salisbury, Chris

2018-01-01

Background NHS policy encourages general practices to introduce alternatives to the face-to-face consultation, such as telephone, email, e-consultation systems, or internet video. Most have been slow to adopt these, citing concerns about workload. This project builds on previous research by focusing on the experiences of patients and practitioners who have used one or more of these alternatives. Aim To understand how, under what conditions, for which patients, and in what ways, alternatives to face-to-face consultations present benefits and challenges to patients and practitioners in general practice. Design and setting Focused ethnographic case studies took place in eight UK general practices between June 2015 and March 2016. Method Non-participant observation, informal conversations with staff, and semi-structured interviews with staff and patients were conducted. Practice documents and protocols were reviewed. Data were analysed through charting and the ‘one sheet of paper’ mind-map method to identify the line of argument in each thematic report. Results Case study practices had different rationales for offering alternatives to the face-to-face consultation. Beliefs varied about which patients and health issues were suitable. Co-workers were often unaware of each other’s practice; for example, practice policies for use of e-consultations systems with patients were not known about or followed. Patients reported benefits including convenience and access. Staff and some patients regarded the face-to-face consultation as the ideal. Conclusion Experience of implementing alternatives to the face-to-face consultation suggests that changes in patient access and staff workload may be both modest and gradual. Practices planning to implement them should consider carefully their reasons for doing so and involve the whole practice team. PMID:29378697

Challenges for Novice School Leaders: Facing Today's Issues in School Administration

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beam, Andrea P.; Claxton, Russell L.; Smith, Samuel J.

2016-01-01

Challenges for novice school leaders evolve as information is managed differently and as societal and regulatory expectations change. This study addresses unique challenges faced by practicing school administrators (n = 159) during their first three years in a school leadership position. It focuses on their perceptions, how perceptions of present…

Random-Profiles-Based 3D Face Recognition System

PubMed Central

Joongrock, Kim; Sunjin, Yu; Sangyoun, Lee

2014-01-01

In this paper, a noble nonintrusive three-dimensional (3D) face modeling system for random-profile-based 3D face recognition is presented. Although recent two-dimensional (2D) face recognition systems can achieve a reliable recognition rate under certain conditions, their performance is limited by internal and external changes, such as illumination and pose variation. To address these issues, 3D face recognition, which uses 3D face data, has recently received much attention. However, the performance of 3D face recognition highly depends on the precision of acquired 3D face data, while also requiring more computational power and storage capacity than 2D face recognition systems. In this paper, we present a developed nonintrusive 3D face modeling system composed of a stereo vision system and an invisible near-infrared line laser, which can be directly applied to profile-based 3D face recognition. We further propose a novel random-profile-based 3D face recognition method that is memory-efficient and pose-invariant. The experimental results demonstrate that the reconstructed 3D face data consists of more than 50 k 3D point clouds and a reliable recognition rate against pose variation. PMID:24691101

Score Fusion and Decision Fusion for the Performance Improvement of Face Recognition

DTIC Science & Technology

2013-07-01

0.1). A Hamming distance (HD) [7] is calculated with the FP-CGF to measure the similarities among faces. The matched face has the shortest HD from...then put into a face pattern byte (FPB) pixel- by-pixel. A HD is calculated with the FPB to measure the similarities among faces, and recognition is...all query users are included in the database), the recognition performance can be measured by a verification rate (VR), the percentage of the

[Health and humanization Diploma: the value of reflection and face to face learning].

PubMed

Martínez-Gutiérrez, Javiera; Magliozzi, Pietro; Torres, Patricio; Soto, Mauricio; Walker, Rosa

2015-03-01

In a rapidly changing culture like ours, with emphasis on productivity, there is a strong need to find the meaning of health care work using learning instances that privilege reflection and face to face contact with others. The Diploma in Health and Humanization (DSH), was developed as an interdisciplinary space for training on issues related to humanization. To analyze the experience of DSH aiming to identify the elements that students considered key factors for the success of the program. We conducted a focus group with DSH graduates, identifying factors associated with satisfaction. Transcripts were coded and analyzed by two independent reviewers. DSH graduates valued a safe space, personal interaction, dialogue and respect as learning tools of the DSH. They also appreciates the opportunity to have emotional interactions among students and between them and the teacher as well as the opportunity to share personal stories and their own search for meaning. DSH is a learning experience in which their graduates value the ability to think about their vocation and the affective interaction with peers and teachers. We hope to contribute to the development of face to face courses in the area of humanization. Face to face methodology is an excellent teaching technique for contents related to the meaning of work, and more specifically, to a group of learners that require affective communication and a personal connection of their work with their own values and beliefs.

Genetic specificity of face recognition

PubMed Central

Shakeshaft, Nicholas G.; Plomin, Robert

2015-01-01

Specific cognitive abilities in diverse domains are typically found to be highly heritable and substantially correlated with general cognitive ability (g), both phenotypically and genetically. Recent twin studies have found the ability to memorize and recognize faces to be an exception, being similarly heritable but phenotypically substantially uncorrelated both with g and with general object recognition. However, the genetic relationships between face recognition and other abilities (the extent to which they share a common genetic etiology) cannot be determined from phenotypic associations. In this, to our knowledge, first study of the genetic associations between face recognition and other domains, 2,000 18- and 19-year-old United Kingdom twins completed tests assessing their face recognition, object recognition, and general cognitive abilities. Results confirmed the substantial heritability of face recognition (61%), and multivariate genetic analyses found that most of this genetic influence is unique and not shared with other cognitive abilities. PMID:26417086

Comparing face-to-face and online qualitative research with people with multiple sclerosis.

PubMed

Synnot, Anneliese; Hill, Sophie; Summers, Michael; Taylor, Michael

2014-03-01

We compared face-to-face focus groups and an online forum in qualitative research with people with multiple sclerosis (MS) and family members. Although the merits and challenges of online qualitative research have been considered by others, there is limited literature directly comparing these two data collection methods for people with disability or chronic illness. Twenty-seven people participated in one of four focus groups and 33 people took part in an online forum. Demographic and MS-related characteristics were similar between the two groups, with a slight nonsignificant trend toward nonmetropolitan residence in online forum participants. There was a high level of overlap in the themes generated between groups. Participant responses in the online forum were more succinct and on-topic, yet in the focus groups interaction was greater. Online qualitative research methods can facilitate research participation for people with chronic illness or disability, yielding generally comparable information to that gathered via face-to-face methods.

Emerging Issues, 2006. Policy Brief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Howard, Mimi

2006-01-01

The Education Commission of the States (ECS) recently conducted analyses, interviews and a survey for a study designed to identify the most pressing early learning issues facing policymakers. The goal was to hear both from those who are faced with making decisions and from those who are on the ground conducting research and developing programs. To…

Chinese Characters Elicit Face-Like N170 Inversion Effects

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wang, Man-Ying; Kuo, Bo-Cheng; Cheng, Shih-Kuen

2011-01-01

Recognition of both faces and Chinese characters is commonly believed to rely on configural information. While faces typically exhibit behavioral and N170 inversion effects that differ from non-face stimuli (Rossion, Joyce, Cottrell, & Tarr, 2003), the current study examined whether a similar reliance on configural processing may result in similar…

Holistic face representation is highly orientation-specific.

PubMed

Rosenthal, Gideon; Levakov, Gidon; Avidan, Galia

2017-09-29

It has long been argued that face processing requires disproportionate reliance on holistic processing (HP), relative to that required for nonface object recognition. Nevertheless, whether the holistic nature of face perception is achieved via a unique internal representation or by the employment of an automated attention mechanism is still debated. Previous studies had used the face inversion effect (FIE), a unique face-processing marker, or the face composite task, a gold standard paradigm measuring holistic processing, to examine the validity of these two different hypotheses, with some studies combining the two paradigms. However, the results of such studies remain inconclusive, particularly pertaining to the issue of the two proposed HP mechanisms-an internal representation as opposed to an automated attention mechanism. Here, using the complete composite paradigm design, we aimed to examine whether face rotation yields a nonlinear or a linear drop in HP, thus supporting an account that face processing is based either on an orientation-dependent internal representation or on automated attention. Our results reveal that even a relatively small perturbation in face orientation (30 deg away from upright) already causes a sharp decline in HP. These findings support the face internal representation hypothesis and the notion that the holistic processing of faces is highly orientation-specific.

Cost-Utility and Cost-Effectiveness Analyses of Face-to-Face Versus Telephone-Based Nonpharmacologic Multidisciplinary Treatments for Patients With Generalized Osteoarthritis.

PubMed

Cuperus, Nienke; van den Hout, Wilbert B; Hoogeboom, Thomas J; van den Hoogen, Frank H J; Vliet Vlieland, Thea P M; van den Ende, Cornelia H M

2016-04-01

To evaluate, from a societal perspective, the cost utility and cost effectiveness of a nonpharmacologic face-to-face treatment program compared with a telephone-based treatment program for patients with generalized osteoarthritis (GOA). An economic evaluation was carried out alongside a randomized clinical trial involving 147 patients with GOA. Program costs were estimated from time registrations. One-year medical and nonmedical costs were estimated using cost questionnaires. Quality-adjusted life years (QALYs) were estimated using the EuroQol (EQ) classification system, EQ rating scale, and the Short Form 6D (SF-6D). Daily function was measured using the Health Assessment Questionnaire (HAQ) disability index (DI). Cost and QALY/effect differences were analyzed using multilevel regression analysis and cost-effectiveness acceptability curves. Medical costs of the face-to-face treatment and telephone-based treatment were estimated at €387 and €252, respectively. The difference in total societal costs was nonsignificantly in favor of the face-to-face program (difference €708; 95% confidence interval [95% CI] -€5,058, €3,642). QALYs were similar for both groups according to the EQ, but were significantly in favor of the face-to-face group, according to the SF-6D (difference 0.022 [95% CI 0.000, 0.045]). Daily function was similar according to the HAQ DI. Since both societal costs and QALYs/effects were in favor of the face-to-face program, the economic assessment favored this program, regardless of society's willingness to pay. There was a 65-90% chance that the face-to-face program had better cost utility and a 60-70% chance of being cost effective. This economic evaluation from a societal perspective showed that a nonpharmacologic, face-to-face treatment program for patients with GOA was likely to be cost effective, relative to a telephone-based program. © 2016, American College of Rheumatology.

Ethical Issues in Online Education

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Anderson, Bill; Simpson, Mary

2007-01-01

Teaching at a distance raises ethical issues particular to the distance context. When distance teaching is also online teaching, the situation is even more complex. Online teaching environments amplify the ethical issues faced by instructors and students. Online sites support complex discourses and multiple relationships; they cross physical,…

The DalHouses: 100 new photographs of houses with ratings of typicality, familiarity, and degree of similarity to faces.

PubMed

Filliter, Jillian H; Glover, Jacqueline M; McMullen, Patricia A; Salmon, Joshua P; Johnson, Shannon A

2016-03-01

Houses have often been used as comparison stimuli in face-processing studies because of the many attributes they share with faces (e.g., distinct members of a basic category, consistent internal features, mono-orientation, and relative familiarity). Despite this, no large, well-controlled databases of photographs of houses that have been developed for research use currently exist. To address this gap, we photographed 100 houses and carefully edited these images. We then asked 41 undergraduate students (18 to 31 years of age) to rate each house on three dimensions: typicality, likeability, and face-likeness. The ratings had a high degree of face validity, and analyses revealed a significant positive correlation between typicality and likeability. We anticipate that this stimulus set (i.e., the DalHouses) and the associated ratings will prove useful to face-processing researchers by minimizing the effort required to acquire stimuli and allowing for easier replication and extension of studies. The photographs of all 100 houses and their ratings data can be obtained at http://dx.doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.1279430.

A face versus non-face context influences amygdala responses to masked fearful eye whites.

PubMed

Kim, M Justin; Solomon, Kimberly M; Neta, Maital; Davis, F Caroline; Oler, Jonathan A; Mazzulla, Emily C; Whalen, Paul J

2016-12-01

The structure of the mask stimulus is crucial in backward masking studies and we recently demonstrated such an effect when masking faces. Specifically, we showed that activity of the amygdala is increased to fearful facial expressions masked with neutral faces and decreased to fearful expressions masked with a pattern mask-but critically both masked conditions discriminated fearful expressions from happy expressions. Given this finding, we sought to test whether masked fearful eye whites would produce a similar profile of amygdala response in a face vs non-face context. During functional magnetic resonance imaging scanning sessions, 30 participants viewed fearful or happy eye whites masked with either neutral faces or pattern images. Results indicated amygdala activity was increased to fearful vs happy eye whites in the face mask condition, but decreased to fearful vs happy eye whites in the pattern mask condition-effectively replicating and expanding our previous report. Our data support the idea that the amygdala is responsive to fearful eye whites, but that the nature of this activity observed in a backward masking design depends on the mask stimulus. © The Author (2016). Published by Oxford University Press.

A unified coding strategy for processing faces and voices

PubMed Central

Yovel, Galit; Belin, Pascal

2013-01-01

Both faces and voices are rich in socially-relevant information, which humans are remarkably adept at extracting, including a person's identity, age, gender, affective state, personality, etc. Here, we review accumulating evidence from behavioral, neuropsychological, electrophysiological, and neuroimaging studies which suggest that the cognitive and neural processing mechanisms engaged by perceiving faces or voices are highly similar, despite the very different nature of their sensory input. The similarity between the two mechanisms likely facilitates the multi-modal integration of facial and vocal information during everyday social interactions. These findings emphasize a parsimonious principle of cerebral organization, where similar computational problems in different modalities are solved using similar solutions. PMID:23664703

ADA members weigh in on critical issues.

PubMed

Burgess, Karen; Ruesch, Jon D; Mikkelsen, Matthew C; Wagner, Karen Schaid

2003-01-01

Science, new technology, patient care, dental reimbursement and government regulations all affect today's dental practitioners. To find out more about how such challenges may affect current private practitioners, the American Dental Association conducted the 2000 Membership Needs and Opinions Survey. A questionnaire was sent to 6,310 ADA members in January 2000 with follow-up mailings in February, March and April 2000. Data collection was completed in July 2000. The survey included questions on critical professional issues, and on perceptions of the ADA and ADA priorities. A total of 3,558 completed surveys were received for an adjusted response rate of 59.5 percent. Members rated the identified issues' level of importance to them. The top three issues included "maintaining my ability to recommend the treatment option I feel is most appropriate for my patients," "receiving fair reimbursement for the dental services I provide," and "protecting myself, my staff and my patients from communicable diseases." New dentists found other items to be more significant to them compared with members overall. Although ADA members as a whole had similar views on critical issues facing dentistry and ADA priorities, there were significant differences regarding some issues. New dentists were far more concerned about securing funds for their practice and paying off debt than were all ADA members. Minority dentists expressed greater levels of concern about certain issues than did all ADA members. When planning and implementing ADA activities, the Association should continue to take into account members' relative rankings of professional issues and note issues of special interest to selected membership subgroups.

Comparing young people's experience of technology-delivered v. face-to-face mindfulness and relaxation: two-armed qualitative focus group study.

PubMed

Tunney, Conall; Cooney, Patricia; Coyle, David; O'Reilly, Gary

2017-04-01

Background The current popularity of mindfulness-based practices has coincided with the increase in access to mobile technology. This has led to many mindfulness apps and programs becoming available, some specifically for children. However, little is known about the experience of engaging with mindfulness through these mediums. Aims To explore children's experience of mindfulness delivered both face-to-face and through a computer game to highlight any differences or similarities. Method A two-armed qualitative focus groups design was used to explore children's experiences. The first arm offered mindfulness exercises in a traditional face-to-face setting with guided meditations. The second arm offered mindfulness exercises through a computer game avatar. Results Themes of relaxation, engagement, awareness, thinking, practice and directing attention emerged from both arms of focus groups. Subthematic codes highlight key differences as well as similarities in the experience of mindfulness. Conclusions These results indicate that mindfulness delivered via technology can offer a rich experience. © The Royal College of Psychiatrists 2017.

Simultaneous face and voice processing in schizophrenia.

PubMed

Liu, Taosheng; Pinheiro, Ana P; Zhao, Zhongxin; Nestor, Paul G; McCarley, Robert W; Niznikiewicz, Margaret

2016-05-15

While several studies have consistently demonstrated abnormalities in the unisensory processing of face and voice in schizophrenia (SZ), the extent of abnormalities in the simultaneous processing of both types of information remains unclear. To address this issue, we used event-related potentials (ERP) methodology to probe the multisensory integration of face and non-semantic sounds in schizophrenia. EEG was recorded from 18 schizophrenia patients and 19 healthy control (HC) subjects in three conditions: neutral faces (visual condition-VIS); neutral non-semantic sounds (auditory condition-AUD); neutral faces presented simultaneously with neutral non-semantic sounds (audiovisual condition-AUDVIS). When compared with HC, the schizophrenia group showed less negative N170 to both face and face-voice stimuli; later P270 peak latency in the multimodal condition of face-voice relative to unimodal condition of face (the reverse was true in HC); reduced P400 amplitude and earlier P400 peak latency in the face but not in the voice-face condition. Thus, the analysis of ERP components suggests that deficits in the encoding of facial information extend to multimodal face-voice stimuli and that delays exist in feature extraction from multimodal face-voice stimuli in schizophrenia. In contrast, categorization processes seem to benefit from the presentation of simultaneous face-voice information. Timepoint by timepoint tests of multimodal integration did not suggest impairment in the initial stages of processing in schizophrenia. Published by Elsevier B.V.

A novel numerical framework for self-similarity in plasticity: Wedge indentation in single crystals

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Juul, K. J.; Niordson, C. F.; Nielsen, K. L.; Kysar, J. W.

2018-03-01

A novel numerical framework for analyzing self-similar problems in plasticity is developed and demonstrated. Self-similar problems of this kind include processes such as stationary cracks, void growth, indentation etc. The proposed technique offers a simple and efficient method for handling this class of complex problems by avoiding issues related to traditional Lagrangian procedures. Moreover, the proposed technique allows for focusing the mesh in the region of interest. In the present paper, the technique is exploited to analyze the well-known wedge indentation problem of an elastic-viscoplastic single crystal. However, the framework may be readily adapted to any constitutive law of interest. The main focus herein is the development of the self-similar framework, while the indentation study serves primarily as verification of the technique by comparing to existing numerical and analytical studies. In this study, the three most common metal crystal structures will be investigated, namely the face-centered cubic (FCC), body-centered cubic (BCC), and hexagonal close packed (HCP) crystal structures, where the stress and slip rate fields around the moving contact point singularity are presented.

Modelling the perceptual similarity of facial expressions from image statistics and neural responses.

PubMed

Sormaz, Mladen; Watson, David M; Smith, William A P; Young, Andrew W; Andrews, Timothy J

2016-04-01

The ability to perceive facial expressions of emotion is essential for effective social communication. We investigated how the perception of facial expression emerges from the image properties that convey this important social signal, and how neural responses in face-selective brain regions might track these properties. To do this, we measured the perceptual similarity between expressions of basic emotions, and investigated how this is reflected in image measures and in the neural response of different face-selective regions. We show that the perceptual similarity of different facial expressions (fear, anger, disgust, sadness, happiness) can be predicted by both surface and feature shape information in the image. Using block design fMRI, we found that the perceptual similarity of expressions could also be predicted from the patterns of neural response in the face-selective posterior superior temporal sulcus (STS), but not in the fusiform face area (FFA). These results show that the perception of facial expression is dependent on the shape and surface properties of the image and on the activity of specific face-selective regions. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Outsourcing issues for nurse practitioner practices.

PubMed

Mackey, Thomas A; McNiel, Nancy O; Klingensmith, Kenneth

2004-01-01

Nurse practitioner managed practices face multiple business and clinical processes. While most practice managers are prepared as clinicians, they are not well prepared to deal with the daily multiple business infrastructure issues they face. To provide for increased efficiency and effectiveness, nurse practitioner practices should consider outsourcing context business functions.

Future Public Policy and Ethical Issues Facing the Agricultural and Microbial Genomics Sectors of the Biotechnology Industry: A Roundtable Discussion

DOE Office of Scientific and Technical Information (OSTI.GOV)

Diane E. Hoffmann

2003-09-12

On September 12, 2003, the University of Maryland School of Law's Intellectual Property and Law & Health Care Programs jointly sponsored and convened a roundtable discussion on the future public policy and ethical issues that will likely face the agricultural and microbial genomics sectors of the biotechnology industry. As this industry has developed over the last two decades, societal concerns have moved from what were often local issues, e.g., the safety of laboratories where scientists conducted recombinant DNA research on transgenic microbes, animals and crops, to more global issues. These newer issues include intellectual property, international trade, risks of geneticallymore » engineered foods and microbes, bioterrorism, and marketing and labeling of new products sold worldwide. The fast paced nature of the biotechnology industry and its new developments often mean that legislators, regulators and society, in general, must play ''catch up'' in their efforts to understand the issues, the risks, and even the benefits, that may result from the industry's new ways of conducting research, new products, and novel methods of product marketing and distribution. The goal of the roundtable was to develop a short list of the most significant public policy and ethical issues that will emerge as a result of advances in these sectors of the biotechnology industry over the next five to six years. More concretely, by ''most significant'' the conveners meant the types of issues that would come to the attention of members of Congress or state legislators during this time frame and for which they would be better prepared if they had well researched and timely background information. A concomitant goal was to provide a set of focused issues for academic debate and scholarship so that policy makers, industry leaders and regulators would have the intellectual resources they need to better understand the issues and concerns at stake. The goal was not to provide answers to any of

Psychosocial oncofertility issues faced by adolescents and young adults over their lifetime: a review of the research.

PubMed

Crawshaw, Marilyn

2013-03-01

This review considers psychosocial oncofertility research relevant to adolescents and young adults over their lifetime. There is growing awareness of the fertility preservation needs of younger males including lowering practical barriers and attending to emotional impact. Despite decisional challenges facing females--the experimental nature of procedures, time involved and potential involvement of partners/donors (for embryo cryopreservation)--findings suggest they too benefit from fertility information at diagnosis and access to fertility specialists. Studies consistently report that fertility concerns affect well-being, relationships and life planning. Both genders thus want fertility issues to be raised proactively by professionals in the years following diagnosis: to help them make informed decisions at a time relevant to them, develop coping strategies for current and future related areas and to be referred to specialist and/or therapeutic help if needed. Little is known about why cancer survivors are less likely to marry or have children, or about their parenthood experiences.

Combined effects of inversion and feature removal on N170 responses elicited by faces and car fronts

PubMed Central

Kloth, Nadine; Itier, Roxane J.; Schweinberger, Stefan R.

2014-01-01

The face-sensitive N170 is typically enhanced for inverted compared to upright faces. Itier, Alain, Sedore, and McIntosh (2007) recently suggested that this N170 inversion effect is mainly driven by the eye region which becomes salient when the face configuration is disrupted. Here we tested whether similar effects could be observed with non-face objects that are structurally similar to faces in terms of possessing a homogeneous within-class first-order feature configuration. We presented upright and inverted pictures of intact car fronts, car fronts without lights, and isolated lights, in addition to analogous face conditions. Upright cars elicited substantial N170 responses of similar amplitude to those evoked by upright faces. In strong contrast to face conditions however, the car-elicited N170 was mainly driven by the global shape rather than the presence or absence of lights, and was dramatically reduced for isolated lights. Overall, our data confirm a differential influence of the eye region in upright and inverted faces. Results for car fronts do not suggest similar interactive encoding of eye-like features and configuration for non-face objects, even when these objects possess a similar feature configuration as faces. PMID:23485023

Learning cardiopulmonary resuscitation theory with face-to-face versus audiovisual instruction for secondary school students: a randomized controlled trial.

PubMed

Cerezo Espinosa, Cristina; Nieto Caballero, Sergio; Juguera Rodríguez, Laura; Castejón-Mochón, José Francisco; Segura Melgarejo, Francisca; Sánchez Martínez, Carmen María; López López, Carmen Amalia; Pardo Ríos, Manuel

2018-02-01

To compare secondary students' learning of basic life support (BLS) theory and the use of an automatic external defibrillator (AED) through face-to-face classroom instruction versus educational video instruction. A total of 2225 secondary students from 15 schools were randomly assigned to one of the following 5 instructional groups: 1) face-to-face instruction with no audiovisual support, 2) face-to-face instruction with audiovisual support, 3) audiovisual instruction without face-to-face instruction, 4) audiovisual instruction with face-to-face instruction, and 5) a control group that received no instruction. The students took a test of BLS and AED theory before instruction, immediately after instruction, and 2 months later. The median (interquartile range) scores overall were 2.33 (2.17) at baseline, 5.33 (4.66) immediately after instruction (P<.001) and 6.00 (3.33) (P<.001). All groups except the control group improved their scores. Scores immediately after instruction and 2 months later were statistically similar after all types of instruction. No significant differences between face-to-face instruction and audiovisual instruction for learning BLS and AED theory were found in secondary school students either immediately after instruction or 2 months later.

Face recognition using facial expression: a novel approach

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Singh, Deepak Kumar; Gupta, Priya; Tiwary, U. S.

2008-04-01

Facial expressions are undoubtedly the most effective nonverbal communication. The face has always been the equation of a person's identity. The face draws the demarcation line between identity and extinction. Each line on the face adds an attribute to the identity. These lines become prominent when we experience an emotion and these lines do not change completely with age. In this paper we have proposed a new technique for face recognition which focuses on the facial expressions of the subject to identify his face. This is a grey area on which not much light has been thrown earlier. According to earlier researches it is difficult to alter the natural expression. So our technique will be beneficial for identifying occluded or intentionally disguised faces. The test results of the experiments conducted prove that this technique will give a new direction in the field of face recognition. This technique will provide a strong base to the area of face recognition and will be used as the core method for critical defense security related issues.

Cognitive-behavioral therapy in depressed primary care patients with co-occurring problematic alcohol use: effect of telephone-administered vs. face-to-face treatment-a secondary analysis.

PubMed

Kalapatapu, Raj K; Ho, Joyce; Cai, Xuan; Vinogradov, Sophia; Batki, Steven L; Mohr, David C

2014-01-01

This secondary analysis of a larger study compared adherence to telephone-administered cognitive-behavioral therapy (T-CBT) vs. face-to-face CBT and depression outcomes in depressed primary care patients with co-occurring problematic alcohol use. To our knowledge, T-CBT has never been directly compared to face-to-face CBT in such a sample of primary care patients. Participants were randomized in a 1:1 ratio to face-to-face CBT or T-CBT for depression. Participants receiving T-CBT (n = 50) and face-to-face CBT (n = 53) were compared at baseline, end of treatment (week 18), and three-month and six-month follow-ups. Face-to-face CBT and T-CBT groups did not significantly differ in age, sex, ethnicity, marital status, educational level, severity of depression, antidepressant use, and total score on the Alcohol Use Disorders Identification Test. Face-to-face CBT and T-CBT groups were similar on all treatment adherence outcomes and depression outcomes at all time points. T-CBT and face-to-face CBT had similar treatment adherence and efficacy for the treatment of depression in depressed primary care patients with co-occurring problematic alcohol use. When targeting patients who might have difficulties in accessing care, primary care clinicians may consider both types of CBT delivery when treating depression in patients with co-occurring problematic alcohol use.

Providers and patients face-to-face: what is the time?

PubMed

Racine, Andrew D

2017-10-10

The frequency of visiting primary care providers and the duration of those visits varies substantially by patient demographics and across different developed countries. The significance of a cumulative measure of this time spent with providers in face-to-face visits is not well understood. In a recent IJHPR issue Nathan and co-authors have suggested a new metric for capturing the cumulative time spent annually in face-to-face encounters between providers and patients. The annual accumulated duration of time (AADC) of visits was constructed using a 2% random sample of adult patients from the Clalit health plan in Israel for the year 2012. The authors calculated the mean AADC to be 65.7 min with average visit durations of 7.6 min. A presumption underlying this analysis is that the metric captures the magnitude of activity devoted to eliciting relevant clinical information, synthesizing the significance of those data, and communicating the importance of that thinking to patients so that they might make informed decisions regarding their health care. But measuring the time spent with a provider is but a surrogate marker of these activities and the lack of correlation between time spent with providers and health outcomes suggests that as a surrogate it may not be that robust a measure. It is possible that what is being captured through this metric is the influence of economic incentives faced by individual practitioners and the structure of health care financing in different societies rather than a portrait either of clinical complexity or quality of care. The advent of this new measure of cumulative provider time with patients signals the importance of accurate measurement as a vital first step in understanding the meaning of data but reminds us of an obligation to inquire beyond the measurements themselves to arrive at appropriate policy-relevant conclusions.

Functional organization of the face-sensitive areas in human occipital-temporal cortex.

PubMed

Shao, Hanyu; Weng, Xuchu; He, Sheng

2017-08-15

Human occipital-temporal cortex features several areas sensitive to faces, presumably forming the biological substrate for face perception. To date, there are piecemeal insights regarding the functional organization of these regions. They have come, however, from studies that are far from homogeneous with regard to the regions involved, the experimental design, and the data analysis approach. In order to provide an overall view of the functional organization of the face-sensitive areas, it is necessary to conduct a comprehensive study that taps into the pivotal functional properties of all the face-sensitive areas, within the context of the same experimental design, and uses multiple data analysis approaches. In this study, we identified the most robustly activated face-sensitive areas in bilateral occipital-temporal cortices (i.e., AFP, aFFA, pFFA, OFA, pcSTS, pSTS) and systemically compared their regionally averaged activation and multivoxel activation patterns to 96 images from 16 object categories, including faces and non-faces. This condition-rich and single-image analysis approach critically samples the functional properties of a brain region, allowing us to test how two basic functional properties, namely face-category selectivity and face-exemplar sensitivity are distributed among these regions. Moreover, by examining the correlational structure of neural responses to the 96 images, we characterize their interactions in the greater face-processing network. We found that (1) r-pFFA showed the highest face-category selectivity, followed by l-pFFA, bilateral aFFA and OFA, and then bilateral pcSTS. In contrast, bilateral AFP and pSTS showed low face-category selectivity; (2) l-aFFA, l-pcSTS and bilateral AFP showed evidence of face-exemplar sensitivity; (3) r-OFA showed high overall response similarities with bilateral LOC and r-pFFA, suggesting it might be a transitional stage between general and face-selective information processing; (4) r-aFFA showed high

Analytical difficulties facing today's regulatory laboratories: issues in method validation.

PubMed

MacNeil, James D

2012-08-01

The challenges facing analytical laboratories today are not unlike those faced in the past, although both the degree of complexity and the rate of change have increased. Challenges such as development and maintenance of expertise, maintenance and up-dating of equipment, and the introduction of new test methods have always been familiar themes for analytical laboratories, but international guidelines for laboratories involved in the import and export testing of food require management of such changes in a context which includes quality assurance, accreditation, and method validation considerations. Decisions as to when a change in a method requires re-validation of the method or on the design of a validation scheme for a complex multi-residue method require a well-considered strategy, based on a current knowledge of international guidance documents and regulatory requirements, as well the laboratory's quality system requirements. Validation demonstrates that a method is 'fit for purpose', so the requirement for validation should be assessed in terms of the intended use of a method and, in the case of change or modification of a method, whether that change or modification may affect a previously validated performance characteristic. In general, method validation involves method scope, calibration-related parameters, method precision, and recovery. Any method change which may affect method scope or any performance parameters will require re-validation. Some typical situations involving change in methods are discussed and a decision process proposed for selection of appropriate validation measures. © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Population. Global Issues Education Packet.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Holm, Amy E.

One of the most critical issues that faces humanity is the world population boom. The high rate of population growth can directly affect sensitive issues such as the state of the environment, economic development, health, resource uses, and consumption. Though we have achieved the capability to override many of nature's limitations, we live in a…

Current Issues Survey Report, 2007

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Camp, John S.; DeBlois, Peter B.

2007-01-01

The Eighth Annual EDUCAUSE Current Issues Survey asked campus information technology leaders to rate the most critical IT challenges facing them, their campuses, and/or their systems. Four findings associated with all respondents to this year's survey merit special mention. First, for the 2007 survey, the CIC decided to split a key issue choice…

Education Issues. GAO Transition Series.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Comptroller General of the U.S., Washington, DC.

This summary report is one of a series addressing major policy, management, or program issues facing Congress and the administration. The issues identified in this report indicate the need to: reduce the cost and preserve the integrity of higher education student loan and grant programs; enhance the federal role in monitoring lenders, agencies,…

Critical Issues that Face Tertiary Education Institutions and Administration.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Williams, Gareth

1983-01-01

Issues of the university's role in social and economic progress, educational demand, employment needs and patterns, changes in instructional methods, research, and managing change without growth are discussed. The need to extract long-term policy needs from the multiplicity of short-term administrative demands is examined. (MSE)

Community Colleges--Prevention Challenges. Issues in Prevention

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Higher Education Center for Alcohol, Drug Abuse, and Violence Prevention, 2012

2012-01-01

This issue of "Issues in Prevention" focuses on prevention challenges facing community colleges. This issue contains the following articles: (1) Prevention at Community Colleges; (2) Q&A With William Auvenshine; (3) Chancellor's Initiative at the University of Wisconsin-Stout; (4) Alcohol Marketing in the Digital Age; and (5) Higher Education…

Bus driver fatigue and stress issues study

DOT National Transportation Integrated Search

2001-02-01

Fatigue-related issues associated with motorcoach drivers differ from the issues faced by truck drivers because of the distinct nature of their jobs. For example, truck and motorcoach drivers deal with different vehicular operating characteristics, n...

Self-esteem Modulates the P3 Component in Response to the Self-face Processing after Priming with Emotional Faces

PubMed Central

Guan, Lili; Zhao, Yufang; Wang, Yige; Chen, Yujie; Yang, Juan

2017-01-01

The self-face processing advantage (SPA) refers to the research finding that individuals generally recognize their own face faster than another’s face; self-face also elicits an enhanced P3 amplitude compared to another’s face. It has been suggested that social evaluation threats could weaken the SPA and that self-esteem could be regarded as a threat buffer. However, little research has directly investigated the neural evidence of how self-esteem modulates the social evaluation threat to the SPA. In the current event-related potential study, 27 healthy Chinese undergraduate students were primed with emotional faces (angry, happy, or neutral) and were asked to judge whether the target face (self, friend, and stranger) was familiar or unfamiliar. Electrophysiological results showed that after priming with emotional faces (angry and happy), self-face elicited similar P3 amplitudes to friend-face in individuals with low self-esteem, but not in individuals with high self-esteem. The results suggest that as low self-esteem raises fears of social rejection and exclusion, priming with emotional faces (angry and happy) can weaken the SPA in low self-esteem individuals but not in high self-esteem individuals. PMID:28868041

Self-esteem Modulates the P3 Component in Response to the Self-face Processing after Priming with Emotional Faces.

PubMed

Guan, Lili; Zhao, Yufang; Wang, Yige; Chen, Yujie; Yang, Juan

2017-01-01

The self-face processing advantage (SPA) refers to the research finding that individuals generally recognize their own face faster than another's face; self-face also elicits an enhanced P3 amplitude compared to another's face. It has been suggested that social evaluation threats could weaken the SPA and that self-esteem could be regarded as a threat buffer. However, little research has directly investigated the neural evidence of how self-esteem modulates the social evaluation threat to the SPA. In the current event-related potential study, 27 healthy Chinese undergraduate students were primed with emotional faces (angry, happy, or neutral) and were asked to judge whether the target face (self, friend, and stranger) was familiar or unfamiliar. Electrophysiological results showed that after priming with emotional faces (angry and happy), self-face elicited similar P3 amplitudes to friend-face in individuals with low self-esteem, but not in individuals with high self-esteem. The results suggest that as low self-esteem raises fears of social rejection and exclusion, priming with emotional faces (angry and happy) can weaken the SPA in low self-esteem individuals but not in high self-esteem individuals.

Congenital prosopagnosia: face-blind from birth.

PubMed

Behrmann, Marlene; Avidan, Galia

2005-04-01

Congenital prosopagnosia refers to the deficit in face processing that is apparent from early childhood in the absence of any underlying neurological basis and in the presence of intact sensory and intellectual function. Several such cases have been described recently and elucidating the mechanisms giving rise to this impairment should aid our understanding of the psychological and neural mechanisms mediating face processing. Fundamental questions include: What is the nature and extent of the face-processing deficit in congenital prosopagnosia? Is the deficit related to a more general perceptual deficit such as the failure to process configural information? Are any neural alterations detectable using fMRI, ERP or structural analyses of the anatomy of the ventral visual cortex? We discuss these issues in relation to the existing literature and suggest directions for future research.

Face recognition ability matures late: evidence from individual differences in young adults.

PubMed

Susilo, Tirta; Germine, Laura; Duchaine, Bradley

2013-10-01

Does face recognition ability mature early in childhood (early maturation hypothesis) or does it continue to develop well into adulthood (late maturation hypothesis)? This fundamental issue in face recognition is typically addressed by comparing child and adult participants. However, the interpretation of such studies is complicated by children's inferior test-taking abilities and general cognitive functions. Here we examined the developmental trajectory of face recognition ability in an individual differences study of 18-33 year-olds (n = 2,032), an age interval in which participants are competent test takers with comparable general cognitive functions. We found a positive association between age and face recognition, controlling for nonface visual recognition, verbal memory, sex, and own-race bias. Our study supports the late maturation hypothesis in face recognition, and illustrates how individual differences investigations of young adults can address theoretical issues concerning the development of perceptual and cognitive abilities. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Non-rigid, but not rigid, motion interferes with the processing of structural face information in developmental prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Maguinness, Corrina; Newell, Fiona N

2015-04-01

There is growing evidence to suggest that facial motion is an important cue for face recognition. However, it is poorly understood whether motion is integrated with facial form information or whether it provides an independent cue to identity. To provide further insight into this issue, we compared the effect of motion on face perception in two developmental prosopagnosics and age-matched controls. Participants first learned faces presented dynamically (video), or in a sequence of static images, in which rigid (viewpoint) or non-rigid (expression) changes occurred. Immediately following learning, participants were required to match a static face image to the learned face. Test face images varied by viewpoint (Experiment 1) or expression (Experiment 2) and were learned or novel face images. We found similar performance across prosopagnosics and controls in matching facial identity across changes in viewpoint when the learned face was shown moving in a rigid manner. However, non-rigid motion interfered with face matching across changes in expression in both individuals with prosopagnosia compared to the performance of control participants. In contrast, non-rigid motion did not differentially affect the matching of facial expressions across changes in identity for either prosopagnosics (Experiment 3). Our results suggest that whilst the processing of rigid motion information of a face may be preserved in developmental prosopagnosia, non-rigid motion can specifically interfere with the representation of structural face information. Taken together, these results suggest that both form and motion cues are important in face perception and that these cues are likely integrated in the representation of facial identity. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

An electrophysiological signature of summed similarity in visual working memory.

PubMed

van Vugt, Marieke K; Sekuler, Robert; Wilson, Hugh R; Kahana, Michael J

2013-05-01

Summed-similarity models of short-term item recognition posit that participants base their judgments of an item's prior occurrence on that item's summed similarity to the ensemble of items on the remembered list. We examined the neural predictions of these models in 3 short-term recognition memory experiments using electrocorticographic/depth electrode recordings and scalp electroencephalography. On each experimental trial, participants judged whether a test face had been among a small set of recently studied faces. Consistent with summed-similarity theory, participants' tendency to endorse a test item increased as a function of its summed similarity to the items on the just-studied list. To characterize this behavioral effect of summed similarity, we successfully fit a summed-similarity model to individual participant data from each experiment. Using the parameters determined from fitting the summed-similarity model to the behavioral data, we examined the relation between summed similarity and brain activity. We found that 4-9 Hz theta activity in the medial temporal lobe and 2-4 Hz delta activity recorded from frontal and parietal cortices increased with summed similarity. These findings demonstrate direct neural correlates of the similarity computations that form the foundation of several major cognitive theories of human recognition memory. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2013 APA, all rights reserved.

Combined effects of inversion and feature removal on N170 responses elicited by faces and car fronts.

PubMed

Kloth, Nadine; Itier, Roxane J; Schweinberger, Stefan R

2013-04-01

The face-sensitive N170 is typically enhanced for inverted compared to upright faces. Itier, Alain, Sedore, and McIntosh (2007) recently suggested that this N170 inversion effect is mainly driven by the eye region which becomes salient when the face configuration is disrupted. Here we tested whether similar effects could be observed with non-face objects that are structurally similar to faces in terms of possessing a homogeneous within-class first-order feature configuration. We presented upright and inverted pictures of intact car fronts, car fronts without lights, and isolated lights, in addition to analogous face conditions. Upright cars elicited substantial N170 responses of similar amplitude to those evoked by upright faces. In strong contrast to face conditions however, the car-elicited N170 was mainly driven by the global shape rather than the presence or absence of lights, and was dramatically reduced for isolated lights. Overall, our data confirm a differential influence of the eye region in upright and inverted faces. Results for car fronts do not suggest similar interactive encoding of eye-like features and configuration for non-face objects, even when these objects possess a similar feature configuration as faces. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Facing the Issues: Challenges, Censorship, and Reflection through Dialogue

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lent, ReLeah Cossett

2008-01-01

ReLeah Cossett Lent provides practical advice for ensuring that books are kept on shelves and in classrooms for students to read. She outlines steps for creating professional learning communities that engage with censorship issues and prepare schools to deal with book challenges in thoughtful, supportive ways. (Contains 4 figures.)

The face of female dominance: Women with dominant faces have lower cortisol.

PubMed

Gonzalez-Santoyo, Isaac; Wheatley, John R; Welling, Lisa L M; Cárdenas, Rodrigo A; Jimenez-Trejo, Francisco; Dawood, Khytam; Puts, David A

2015-05-01

The human face displays a wealth of information, including information about dominance and fecundity. Dominance and fecundity are also associated with lower concentrations of the stress hormone cortisol, suggesting that cortisol may negatively predict facial dominance and attractiveness. We digitally photographed 61 women's faces, had these images rated by men and women for dominance, attractiveness, and femininity, and explored relationships between these perceptions and women's salivary cortisol concentrations. In a first study, we found that women with more dominant-appearing, but not more attractive, faces had lower cortisol levels. These associations were not due to age, ethnicity, time since waking, testosterone, or its interaction with cortisol. In a second study, composite images of women with low cortisol were perceived as more dominant than those of women with high cortisol significantly more often than chance by two samples of viewers, with a similar but non-significant trend in a third sample. However, data on perceptions of attractiveness were mixed; low-cortisol images were viewed as more attractive by two samples of US viewers and as less attractive by a sample of Mexican viewers. Our results suggest that having a more dominant-appearing face may be associated with lower stress and hence lower cortisol in women, and provide further evidence regarding the information content of the human face. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Face Pareidolia in the Rhesus Monkey.

PubMed

Taubert, Jessica; Wardle, Susan G; Flessert, Molly; Leopold, David A; Ungerleider, Leslie G

2017-08-21

Face perception in humans and nonhuman primates is rapid and accurate [1-4]. In the human brain, a network of visual-processing regions is specialized for faces [5-7]. Although face processing is a priority of the primate visual system, face detection is not infallible. Face pareidolia is the compelling illusion of perceiving facial features on inanimate objects, such as the illusory face on the surface of the moon. Although face pareidolia is commonly experienced by humans, its presence in other species is unknown. Here we provide evidence for face pareidolia in a species known to possess a complex face-processing system [8-10]: the rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta). In a visual preference task [11, 12], monkeys looked longer at photographs of objects that elicited face pareidolia in human observers than at photographs of similar objects that did not elicit illusory faces. Examination of eye movements revealed that monkeys fixated the illusory internal facial features in a pattern consistent with how they view photographs of faces [13]. Although the specialized response to faces observed in humans [1, 3, 5-7, 14] is often argued to be continuous across primates [4, 15], it was previously unclear whether face pareidolia arose from a uniquely human capacity. For example, pareidolia could be a product of the human aptitude for perceptual abstraction or result from frequent exposure to cartoons and illustrations that anthropomorphize inanimate objects. Instead, our results indicate that the perception of illusory facial features on inanimate objects is driven by a broadly tuned face-detection mechanism that we share with other species. Published by Elsevier Ltd.

Counseling Issues for Adult Women in Career Transition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Ronzio, Cynthia R.

2012-01-01

This article addresses current psychosocial issues facing women in career transition and the implications of those issues for career counselors. Specifically, psychosocial developmental trajectories, the roles of family and relationships, the importance of underlying physical and mental health issues, and sociocultural and contextual stressors are…

Face Recognition Is Affected by Similarity in Spatial Frequency Range to a Greater Degree Than Within-Category Object Recognition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Collin, Charles A.; Liu, Chang Hong; Troje, Nikolaus F.; McMullen, Patricia A.; Chaudhuri, Avi

2004-01-01

Previous studies have suggested that face identification is more sensitive to variations in spatial frequency content than object recognition, but none have compared how sensitive the 2 processes are to variations in spatial frequency overlap (SFO). The authors tested face and object matching accuracy under varying SFO conditions. Their results…

Robust Point Set Matching for Partial Face Recognition.

PubMed

Weng, Renliang; Lu, Jiwen; Tan, Yap-Peng

2016-03-01

Over the past three decades, a number of face recognition methods have been proposed in computer vision, and most of them use holistic face images for person identification. In many real-world scenarios especially some unconstrained environments, human faces might be occluded by other objects, and it is difficult to obtain fully holistic face images for recognition. To address this, we propose a new partial face recognition approach to recognize persons of interest from their partial faces. Given a pair of gallery image and probe face patch, we first detect keypoints and extract their local textural features. Then, we propose a robust point set matching method to discriminatively match these two extracted local feature sets, where both the textural information and geometrical information of local features are explicitly used for matching simultaneously. Finally, the similarity of two faces is converted as the distance between these two aligned feature sets. Experimental results on four public face data sets show the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Navigating "thorny" issues

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hutchinson, Kashema; Gilbert, Aderinsola; Malyukova, Anna

2016-09-01

In their article Mindfulness and discussing ` thorny' issues in the classroom Konstantinos Alexakos et al. (Cult Stud Sci Educ, 2016. doi: 10.1007/s11422-015-9718-0) describe "thorny" issues as "difficult topics to discuss because they are more personal to some perhaps even cause pain and violence." As women from different backgrounds, we engage in a metalogue, which expands on our thoughts and emotions the thorny issues evoked. Our discussion is grounded in theoretical frameworks of mindfulness, wellness, and safe space for learning. We also reflect on our experiences of facing some of the thorny issues in our academic and personal lives. Having trust and respect for one another and being aware of thorny issues allows for a meaningful conversation about the complexity and nuances involved in discussing difficult topics in a classroom setting.

Face memory and face recognition in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder: A systematic review.

PubMed

Romani, Maria; Vigliante, Miriam; Faedda, Noemi; Rossetti, Serena; Pezzuti, Lina; Guidetti, Vincenzo; Cardona, Francesco

2018-06-01

This review focuses on facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with attention deficit hyperactivity disorder (ADHD). A systematic review, using PRISMA guidelines, was conducted to identify original articles published prior to May 2017 pertaining to memory, face recognition, affect recognition, facial expression recognition and recall of faces in children and adolescents with ADHD. The qualitative synthesis based on different studies shows a particular focus of the research on facial affect recognition without paying similar attention to the structural encoding of facial recognition. In this review, we further investigate facial recognition abilities in children and adolescents with ADHD, providing synthesis of the results observed in the literature, while detecting face recognition tasks used on face processing abilities in ADHD and identifying aspects not yet explored. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Short-term Internet search using makes people rely on search engines when facing unknown issues.

PubMed

Wang, Yifan; Wu, Lingdan; Luo, Liang; Zhang, Yifen; Dong, Guangheng

2017-01-01

The Internet search engines, which have powerful search/sort functions and ease of use features, have become an indispensable tool for many individuals. The current study is to test whether the short-term Internet search training can make people more dependent on it. Thirty-one subjects out of forty subjects completed the search training study which included a pre-test, a six-day's training of Internet search, and a post-test. During the pre- and post- tests, subjects were asked to search online the answers to 40 unusual questions, remember the answers and recall them in the scanner. Un-learned questions were randomly presented at the recalling stage in order to elicited search impulse. Comparing to the pre-test, subjects in the post-test reported higher impulse to use search engines to answer un-learned questions. Consistently, subjects showed higher brain activations in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex in the post-test than in the pre-test. In addition, there were significant positive correlations self-reported search impulse and brain responses in the frontal areas. The results suggest that a simple six-day's Internet search training can make people dependent on the search tools when facing unknown issues. People are easily dependent on the Internet search engines.

Short-term Internet search using makes people rely on search engines when facing unknown issues

PubMed Central

Wang, Yifan; Wu, Lingdan; Luo, Liang; Zhang, Yifen

2017-01-01

The Internet search engines, which have powerful search/sort functions and ease of use features, have become an indispensable tool for many individuals. The current study is to test whether the short-term Internet search training can make people more dependent on it. Thirty-one subjects out of forty subjects completed the search training study which included a pre-test, a six-day’s training of Internet search, and a post-test. During the pre- and post- tests, subjects were asked to search online the answers to 40 unusual questions, remember the answers and recall them in the scanner. Un-learned questions were randomly presented at the recalling stage in order to elicited search impulse. Comparing to the pre-test, subjects in the post-test reported higher impulse to use search engines to answer un-learned questions. Consistently, subjects showed higher brain activations in dorsolateral prefrontal cortex and anterior cingulate cortex in the post-test than in the pre-test. In addition, there were significant positive correlations self-reported search impulse and brain responses in the frontal areas. The results suggest that a simple six-day’s Internet search training can make people dependent on the search tools when facing unknown issues. People are easily dependent on the Internet search engines. PMID:28441408

Issues facing families of infants discharged after cardiac surgery: the perceptions of charity helpline staff.

PubMed

Wray, Jo; Tregay, Jenifer; Bull, Catherine; Knowles, Rachel L; Crowe, Sonya; Brown, Katherine

2018-03-05

To elicit the perceptions of helpline staff who talk to parents of children discharged after cardiac surgery in infancy about parents' key concerns. A qualitative study involving semistructured interviews with 10 staff at four heart charities. Interviews were recorded, transcribed and analysed using Framework analysis. Staff identified the knowledge, communication and support needs of parents which they described in terms of the impact of patient and family factors, sources of support and systems. Staff perceptions of helplines, in terms of the function of a helpline and the roles of its staff, together with staff's personal views based on their experience of multiple encounters with many families, influenced how they viewed families' needs and responded to their requests. Helpline staff provided important, previously uncaptured evidence about the challenges faced by parents of children discharged after cardiac surgery in infancy. Staff have an important role in supporting communication, in terms of speaking to families about how to talk to professionals and talking to professionals directly to get or give information when parents are unable to do so. Capturing the perspective of helpline staff about communication issues has highlighted the need for interventions with professionals as well as parents. ©2018 Foundation Acta Paediatrica. Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Effective Connectivity Reveals Largely Independent Parallel Networks of Face and Body Patches.

PubMed

Premereur, Elsie; Taubert, Jessica; Janssen, Peter; Vogels, Rufin; Vanduffel, Wim

2016-12-19

The primate brain processes objects in the ventral visual pathway. One object category, faces, is processed in a hierarchical network of interconnected areas along this pathway. It remains unknown whether such an interconnected network is specific for faces or whether there are similar networks for other object classes. For example, the primate inferotemporal cortex also contains a set of body-selective patches, adjacent to the face-selective patches, but it is not known whether these body-selective patches form a similar discretely connected network or whether cross-talk exists between the face- and body-processing systems. To address these questions, we combined fMRI with electrical microstimulation to determine the effective connectivity of fMRI-defined face and body patches. We found that microstimulation of face patches caused increased fMRI activation throughout the face-processing system; microstimulation of the body patches gave similar results restricted to the body-processing system. Critically, our results revealed largely segregated connectivity patterns for the body and face patches. These results suggest that face and body patches form two interconnected hierarchical networks that are largely separated within the monkey inferotemporal cortex. Only a restricted number of voxels were activated by stimulation of both the body and face patches. The latter regions may be important for the integration of face and body information. Our findings are not only essential to advance our understanding of the neural circuits that enable social cognition, but they also provide further insights into the organizing principles of the inferotemporal cortex. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Great Decisions 1989. Foreign Policy Issues Facing the Nation.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Hoepli, Nancy L., Ed.

This briefing book provides the only material needed to participate in the 1989 Great Decisions national non-partisan program of volunteer run discussions on U.S. foreign policy issues for classrooms and community groups. Everyone who participates in the program is invited to fill out the opinion ballots provided in the back of the book; the…

Face-specific impairment in holistic perception following focal lesion of the right anterior temporal lobe.

PubMed

Busigny, Thomas; Van Belle, Goedele; Jemel, Boutheina; Hosein, Anthony; Joubert, Sven; Rossion, Bruno

2014-04-01

Recent studies have provided solid evidence for pure cases of prosopagnosia following brain damage. The patients reported so far have posterior lesions encompassing either or both the right inferior occipital cortex and fusiform gyrus, and exhibit a critical impairment in generating a sufficiently detailed holistic percept to individualize faces. Here, we extended these observations to include the prosopagnosic patient LR (Bukach, Bub, Gauthier, & Tarr, 2006), whose damage is restricted to the anterior region of the right temporal lobe. First, we report that LR is able to discriminate parametrically defined individual exemplars of nonface object categories as accurately and quickly as typical observers, which suggests that the visual similarity account of prosopagnosia does not explain his impairments. Then, we show that LR does not present with the typical face inversion effect, whole-part advantage, or composite face effect and, therefore, has impaired holistic perception of individual faces. Moreover, the patient is more impaired at matching faces when the facial part he fixates is masked than when it is selectively revealed by means of gaze contingency. Altogether these observations support the view that the nature of the critical face impairment does not differ qualitatively across patients with acquired prosopagnosia, regardless of the localization of brain damage: all these patients appear to be impaired to some extent at what constitutes the heart of our visual expertise with faces, namely holistic perception at a sufficiently fine-grained level of resolution to discriminate exemplars of the face class efficiently. This conclusion raises issues regarding the existing criteria for diagnosis/classification of patients as cases of apperceptive or associative prosopagnosia. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Recognizing the same face in different contexts: Testing within-person face recognition in typical development and in autism

PubMed Central

Neil, Louise; Cappagli, Giulia; Karaminis, Themelis; Jenkins, Rob; Pellicano, Elizabeth

2016-01-01

Unfamiliar face recognition follows a particularly protracted developmental trajectory and is more likely to be atypical in children with autism than those without autism. There is a paucity of research, however, examining the ability to recognize the same face across multiple naturally varying images. Here, we investigated within-person face recognition in children with and without autism. In Experiment 1, typically developing 6- and 7-year-olds, 8- and 9-year-olds, 10- and 11-year-olds, 12- to 14-year-olds, and adults were given 40 grayscale photographs of two distinct male identities (20 of each face taken at different ages, from different angles, and in different lighting conditions) and were asked to sort them by identity. Children mistook images of the same person as images of different people, subdividing each individual into many perceived identities. Younger children divided images into more perceived identities than adults and also made more misidentification errors (placing two different identities together in the same group) than older children and adults. In Experiment 2, we used the same procedure with 32 cognitively able children with autism. Autistic children reported a similar number of identities and made similar numbers of misidentification errors to a group of typical children of similar age and ability. Fine-grained analysis using matrices revealed marginal group differences in overall performance. We suggest that the immature performance in typical and autistic children could arise from problems extracting the perceptual commonalities from different images of the same person and building stable representations of facial identity. PMID:26615971

Dissociated neural basis of two behavioral hallmarks of holistic face processing: The whole-part effect and composite-face effect.

PubMed

Li, Jin; Huang, Lijie; Song, Yiying; Liu, Jia

2017-07-28

It has been long proposed that our extraordinary face recognition ability stems from holistic face processing. Two widely-used behavioral hallmarks of holistic face processing are the whole-part effect (WPE) and composite-face effect (CFE). However, it remains unknown whether these two effects reflect similar or different aspects of holistic face processing. Here we investigated this question by examining whether the WPE and CFE involved shared or distinct neural substrates in a large sample of participants (N=200). We found that the WPE and CFE showed hemispheric dissociation in the fusiform face area (FFA), that is, the WPE was correlated with face selectivity in the left FFA, while the CFE was correlated with face selectivity in the right FFA. Further, the correlation between the WPE and face selectivity was largely driven by the FFA response to faces, whereas the association between the CFE and face selectivity resulted from suppressed response to objects in the right FFA. Finally, we also observed dissociated correlation patterns of the WPE and CFE in other face-selective regions and across the whole brain. These results suggest that the WPE and CFE may reflect different aspects of holistic face processing, which shed new light on the behavioral dissociations of these two effects demonstrated in literature. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Anterior temporal face patches: a meta-analysis and empirical study

PubMed Central

Von Der Heide, Rebecca J.; Skipper, Laura M.; Olson, Ingrid R.

2013-01-01

Evidence suggests the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) plays an important role in person identification and memory. In humans, neuroimaging studies of person memory report consistent activations in the ATL to famous and personally familiar faces and studies of patients report resection or damage of the ATL causes an associative prosopagnosia in which face perception is intact but face memory is compromised. In addition, high-resolution fMRI studies of non-human primates and electrophysiological studies of humans also suggest regions of the ventral ATL are sensitive to novel faces. The current study extends previous findings by investigating whether similar subregions in the dorsal, ventral, lateral, or polar aspects of the ATL are sensitive to personally familiar, famous, and novel faces. We present the results of two studies of person memory: a meta-analysis of existing fMRI studies and an empirical fMRI study using optimized imaging parameters. Both studies showed left-lateralized ATL activations to familiar individuals while novel faces activated the right ATL. Activations to famous faces were quite ventral, similar to what has been reported in previous high-resolution fMRI studies of non-human primates. These findings suggest that face memory-sensitive patches in the human ATL are in the ventral/polar ATL. PMID:23378834

Pose-Invariant Face Recognition via RGB-D Images.

PubMed

Sang, Gaoli; Li, Jing; Zhao, Qijun

2016-01-01

Three-dimensional (3D) face models can intrinsically handle large pose face recognition problem. In this paper, we propose a novel pose-invariant face recognition method via RGB-D images. By employing depth, our method is able to handle self-occlusion and deformation, both of which are challenging problems in two-dimensional (2D) face recognition. Texture images in the gallery can be rendered to the same view as the probe via depth. Meanwhile, depth is also used for similarity measure via frontalization and symmetric filling. Finally, both texture and depth contribute to the final identity estimation. Experiments on Bosphorus, CurtinFaces, Eurecom, and Kiwi databases demonstrate that the additional depth information has improved the performance of face recognition with large pose variations and under even more challenging conditions.

The Effects of Similarity on High-Level Visual Working Memory Processing.

PubMed

Yang, Li; Mo, Lei

2017-01-01

Similarity has been observed to have opposite effects on visual working memory (VWM) for complex images. How can these discrepant results be reconciled? To answer this question, we used a change-detection paradigm to test visual working memory performance for multiple real-world objects. We found that working memory for moderate similarity items was worse than that for either high or low similarity items. This pattern was unaffected by manipulations of stimulus type (faces vs. scenes), encoding duration (limited vs. self-paced), and presentation format (simultaneous vs. sequential). We also found that the similarity effects differed in strength in different categories (scenes vs. faces). These results suggest that complex real-world objects are represented using a centre-surround inhibition organization . These results support the category-specific cortical resource theory and further suggest that centre-surround inhibition organization may differ by category.

Neural synchronization during face-to-face communication.

PubMed

Jiang, Jing; Dai, Bohan; Peng, Danling; Zhu, Chaozhe; Liu, Li; Lu, Chunming

2012-11-07

Although the human brain may have evolutionarily adapted to face-to-face communication, other modes of communication, e.g., telephone and e-mail, increasingly dominate our modern daily life. This study examined the neural difference between face-to-face communication and other types of communication by simultaneously measuring two brains using a hyperscanning approach. The results showed a significant increase in the neural synchronization in the left inferior frontal cortex during a face-to-face dialog between partners but none during a back-to-back dialog, a face-to-face monologue, or a back-to-back monologue. Moreover, the neural synchronization between partners during the face-to-face dialog resulted primarily from the direct interactions between the partners, including multimodal sensory information integration and turn-taking behavior. The communicating behavior during the face-to-face dialog could be predicted accurately based on the neural synchronization level. These results suggest that face-to-face communication, particularly dialog, has special neural features that other types of communication do not have and that the neural synchronization between partners may underlie successful face-to-face communication.

Multicultural Education: Issues and Perspectives. 6th Edition

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Banks, James A.; Banks, Cherry A. McGee

2006-01-01

Today's classrooms are more diverse than ever before. In order to reach these students, educators must be aware of the issues facing their various cultural, racial, ethnic, and language groups. Focusing on the pertinent issues in multicultural education, this new edition raises these critical issues and facilitates meaningful discussion. It has…

CTE's Role in Urban Education. Issue Brief

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Association for Career and Technical Education (ACTE), 2012

2012-01-01

This Issue Brief explores the promising role that career and technical education programs play in addressing key student achievement issues facing urban schools. CTE programs engage urban students by providing rigorous and relevant coursework, fostering positive relationships, establishing clear pathways and connecting education and…

Issues and special features of animal health research

PubMed Central

2011-01-01

In the rapidly changing context of research on animal health, INRA launched a collective discussion on the challenges facing the field, its distinguishing features, and synergies with biomedical research. As has been declared forcibly by the heads of WHO, FAO and OIE, the challenges facing animal health, beyond diseases transmissible to humans, are critically important and involve food security, agriculture economics, and the ensemble of economic activities associated with agriculture. There are in addition issues related to public health (zoonoses, xenobiotics, antimicrobial resistance), the environment, and animal welfare. Animal health research is distinguished by particular methodologies and scientific questions that stem from the specific biological features of domestic species and from animal husbandry practices. It generally does not explore the same scientific questions as research on human biology, even when the same pathogens are being studied, and the discipline is rooted in a very specific agricultural and economic context. Generic and methodological synergies nevertheless exist with biomedical research, particularly with regard to tools and biological models. Certain domestic species furthermore present more functional similarities with humans than laboratory rodents. The singularity of animal health research in relation to biomedical research should be taken into account in the organization, evaluation, and funding of the field through a policy that clearly recognizes the specific issues at stake. At the same time, the One Health approach should facilitate closer collaboration between biomedical and animal health research at the level of research teams and programmes. PMID:21864344

Issues and special features of animal health research.

PubMed

Ducrot, Christian; Bed'hom, Bertrand; Béringue, Vincent; Coulon, Jean-Baptiste; Fourichon, Christine; Guérin, Jean-Luc; Krebs, Stéphane; Rainard, Pascal; Schwartz-Cornil, Isabelle; Torny, Didier; Vayssier-Taussat, Muriel; Zientara, Stephan; Zundel, Etienne; Pineau, Thierry

2011-08-24

In the rapidly changing context of research on animal health, INRA launched a collective discussion on the challenges facing the field, its distinguishing features, and synergies with biomedical research. As has been declared forcibly by the heads of WHO, FAO and OIE, the challenges facing animal health, beyond diseases transmissible to humans, are critically important and involve food security, agriculture economics, and the ensemble of economic activities associated with agriculture. There are in addition issues related to public health (zoonoses, xenobiotics, antimicrobial resistance), the environment, and animal welfare.Animal health research is distinguished by particular methodologies and scientific questions that stem from the specific biological features of domestic species and from animal husbandry practices. It generally does not explore the same scientific questions as research on human biology, even when the same pathogens are being studied, and the discipline is rooted in a very specific agricultural and economic context.Generic and methodological synergies nevertheless exist with biomedical research, particularly with regard to tools and biological models. Certain domestic species furthermore present more functional similarities with humans than laboratory rodents.The singularity of animal health research in relation to biomedical research should be taken into account in the organization, evaluation, and funding of the field through a policy that clearly recognizes the specific issues at stake. At the same time, the One Health approach should facilitate closer collaboration between biomedical and animal health research at the level of research teams and programmes.

Face to Faith: Teaching Global Citizenship

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Beauchamp, Marcia

2011-01-01

The Tony Blair Faith Foundation has created a program that enables students to learn directly with, from, and about one another's culture, religion and beliefs. Face to Faith is a state-of-the-art educational program that addresses cross-cultural and inter-religious understanding in the context of study about global issues. The program uses…

Neurocomputational bases of object and face recognition.

PubMed Central

Biederman, I; Kalocsai, P

1997-01-01

A number of behavioural phenomena distinguish the recognition of faces and objects, even when members of a set of objects are highly similar. Because faces have the same parts in approximately the same relations, individuation of faces typically requires specification of the metric variation in a holistic and integral representation of the facial surface. The direct mapping of a hypercolumn-like pattern of activation onto a representation layer that preserves relative spatial filter values in a two-dimensional (2D) coordinate space, as proposed by C. von der Malsburg and his associates, may account for many of the phenomena associated with face recognition. An additional refinement, in which each column of filters (termed a 'jet') is centred on a particular facial feature (or fiducial point), allows selectivity of the input into the holistic representation to avoid incorporation of occluding or nearby surfaces. The initial hypercolumn representation also characterizes the first stage of object perception, but the image variation for objects at a given location in a 2D coordinate space may be too great to yield sufficient predictability directly from the output of spatial kernels. Consequently, objects can be represented by a structural description specifying qualitative (typically, non-accidental) characterizations of an object's parts, the attributes of the parts, and the relations among the parts, largely based on orientation and depth discontinuities (as shown by Hummel & Biederman). A series of experiments on the name priming or physical matching of complementary images (in the Fourier domain) of objects and faces documents that whereas face recognition is strongly dependent on the original spatial filter values, evidence from object recognition indicates strong invariance to these values, even when distinguishing among objects that are as similar as faces. PMID:9304687

Exploring morally relevant issues facing families in their decisions to monitor the health-related behaviours of loved ones.

PubMed

Gammon, D; Christiansen, E K; Wynn, R

2009-07-01

Patient self-management of disease is increasingly supported by technologies that can monitor a wide range of behavioural and biomedical parameters. Incorporated into everyday devices such as cell phones and clothes, these technologies become integral to the psychosocial aspects of everyday life. Many technologies are likely to be marketed directly to families with ill members, and families may enlist the support of clinicians in shaping use. Current ethical frameworks are mainly conceptualised from the perspective of caregivers, researchers, developers and regulators in order to ensure the ethics of their own practices. This paper focuses on families as autonomous decision-makers outside the regulated context of healthcare. We discuss some morally relevant issues facing families in their decisions to monitor the health-related behaviours of loved ones. An example - remote parental monitoring of adolescent blood glucose - is presented and discussed through the lens of two contrasting accounts of ethics; one reflecting the predominant focus on health outcomes within the health technology assessment (HTA) framework and the other that attends to the broader sociocultural contexts shaping technologies and their implications. Issues discussed include the focus of assessments, informed consent and child assent, and family co-creation of system characteristics and implications. The parents' decisions to remotely monitor their child has relational implications that are likely to influence conflict levels and thus also health outcomes. Current efforts to better integrate outcome assessments with social and ethical assessments are particularly relevant for informed decision-making about health monitoring technologies in families.

Phasic alertness enhances processing of face and non-face stimuli in congenital prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Tanzer, Michal; Weinbach, Noam; Mardo, Elite; Henik, Avishai; Avidan, Galia

2016-08-01

Congenital prosopagnosia (CP) is a severe face processing impairment that occurs in the absence of any obvious brain damage and has often been associated with a more general deficit in deriving holistic relations between facial features or even between non-face shape dimensions. Here we further characterized this deficit and examined a potential way to ameliorate it. To this end we manipulated phasic alertness using alerting cues previously shown to modulate attention and enhance global processing of visual stimuli in normal observers. Specifically, we first examined whether individuals with CP, similarly to controls, would show greater global processing when exposed to an alerting cue in the context of a non-facial task (Navon global/local task). We then explored the effect of an alerting cue on face processing (upright/inverted face discrimination). Confirming previous findings, in the absence of alerting cues, controls showed a typical global bias in the Navon task and an inversion effect indexing holistic processing in the upright/inverted task, while CP failed to show these effects. Critically, when alerting cues preceded the experimental trials, both groups showed enhanced global interference and a larger inversion effect. These results suggest that phasic alertness may modulate visual processing and consequently, affect global/holistic perception. Hence, these findings further reinforce the notion that global/holistic processing may serve as a possible mechanism underlying the face processing deficit in CP. Moreover, they imply a possible route for enhancing face processing in individuals with CP and thus shed new light on potential amelioration of this disorder. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Recognizing the same face in different contexts: Testing within-person face recognition in typical development and in autism.

PubMed

Neil, Louise; Cappagli, Giulia; Karaminis, Themelis; Jenkins, Rob; Pellicano, Elizabeth

2016-03-01

Unfamiliar face recognition follows a particularly protracted developmental trajectory and is more likely to be atypical in children with autism than those without autism. There is a paucity of research, however, examining the ability to recognize the same face across multiple naturally varying images. Here, we investigated within-person face recognition in children with and without autism. In Experiment 1, typically developing 6- and 7-year-olds, 8- and 9-year-olds, 10- and 11-year-olds, 12- to 14-year-olds, and adults were given 40 grayscale photographs of two distinct male identities (20 of each face taken at different ages, from different angles, and in different lighting conditions) and were asked to sort them by identity. Children mistook images of the same person as images of different people, subdividing each individual into many perceived identities. Younger children divided images into more perceived identities than adults and also made more misidentification errors (placing two different identities together in the same group) than older children and adults. In Experiment 2, we used the same procedure with 32 cognitively able children with autism. Autistic children reported a similar number of identities and made similar numbers of misidentification errors to a group of typical children of similar age and ability. Fine-grained analysis using matrices revealed marginal group differences in overall performance. We suggest that the immature performance in typical and autistic children could arise from problems extracting the perceptual commonalities from different images of the same person and building stable representations of facial identity. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Formulating face verification with semidefinite programming.

PubMed

Yan, Shuicheng; Liu, Jianzhuang; Tang, Xiaoou; Huang, Thomas S

2007-11-01

This paper presents a unified solution to three unsolved problems existing in face verification with subspace learning techniques: selection of verification threshold, automatic determination of subspace dimension, and deducing feature fusing weights. In contrast to previous algorithms which search for the projection matrix directly, our new algorithm investigates a similarity metric matrix (SMM). With a certain verification threshold, this matrix is learned by a semidefinite programming approach, along with the constraints of the kindred pairs with similarity larger than the threshold, and inhomogeneous pairs with similarity smaller than the threshold. Then, the subspace dimension and the feature fusing weights are simultaneously inferred from the singular value decomposition of the derived SMM. In addition, the weighted and tensor extensions are proposed to further improve the algorithmic effectiveness and efficiency, respectively. Essentially, the verification is conducted within an affine subspace in this new algorithm and is, hence, called the affine subspace for verification (ASV). Extensive experiments show that the ASV can achieve encouraging face verification accuracy in comparison to other subspace algorithms, even without the need to explore any parameters.

A retrospective look at replacing face-to-face embryology instruction with online lectures in a human anatomy course.

PubMed

Beale, Elmus G; Tarwater, Patrick M; Lee, Vaughan H

2014-01-01

Embryology is integrated into the Clinically Oriented Anatomy course at the Texas Tech University Health Sciences Center School of Medicine. Before 2008, the same instructor presented embryology in 13 face-to-face lectures distributed by organ systems throughout the course. For the 2008 and 2009 offerings of the course, a hybrid embryology instruction model with four face-to-face classes that supplemented online recorded lectures was used. One instructor delivered the lectures face-to-face in 2007 and by online videos in 2008-2009, while a second instructor provided the supplemental face-to-face classes in 2008-2009. The same embryology learning objectives and selected examination questions were used for each of the three years. This allowed direct comparison of learning outcomes, as measured by examination performance, for students receiving only face-to-face embryology instruction versus the hybrid approach. Comparison of the face-to-face lectures to the hybrid approach showed no difference in overall class performance on embryology questions that were used all three years. Moreover, there was no differential effect of the delivery method on the examination scores for bottom quartile students. Students completed an end-of-course survey to assess their opinions. They rated the two forms of delivery similarly on a six-point Likert scale and reported that face-to-face lectures have the advantage of allowing them to interact with the instructor, whereas online lectures could be paused, replayed, and viewed at any time. These experiences suggest the need for well-designed prospective studies to determine whether online lectures can be used to enhance the efficacy of embryology instruction. © 2013 American Association of Anatomists.

Are participants in face-to-face and internet support groups the same? Comparison of demographics and depression levels among women bereaved by stillbirth.

PubMed

Gold, Katherine J; Normandin, Margaret M; Boggs, Martha E

2016-12-01

Support groups can help individuals cope with difficult health situations but have been understudied for women with perinatal bereavement. An early study suggested those using internet support groups had high rates of positive depression screens, raising the question whether these users were more symptomatic than those in similar face-to-face support groups. We therefore conducted two convenience sample surveys of women bereaved by perinatal loss, one looking at use of online support groups and the other in-person support groups. The surveys identified demographics, use of peer support, potential confounders, and current depression symptoms using the Edinburgh Postnatal Depression Scale (EPDS). Four hundred sixteen women from 18 internet groups and 60 women from 13 in-person groups met inclusion criteria. Participants in both groups were predominantly Caucasian, highly educated, and had private insurance. Severe depression symptoms were similar in the two groups despite the different modalities. Women in both face-to-face or internet groups for pregnancy and perinatal loss demonstrated similar scores on depression screens. Women of color, poor, and less-educated women were starkly underrepresented in both types of groups, raising questions about knowledge of support options, barriers to use, preferences for bereavement support, and optimization of groups for a broader population.

Decoding representations of face identity that are tolerant to rotation.

PubMed

Anzellotti, Stefano; Fairhall, Scott L; Caramazza, Alfonso

2014-08-01

In order to recognize the identity of a face we need to distinguish very similar images (specificity) while also generalizing identity information across image transformations such as changes in orientation (tolerance). Recent studies investigated the representation of individual faces in the brain, but it remains unclear whether the human brain regions that were found encode representations of individual images (specificity) or face identity (specificity plus tolerance). In the present article, we use multivoxel pattern analysis in the human ventral stream to investigate the representation of face identity across rotations in depth, a kind of transformation in which no point in the face image remains unchanged. The results reveal representations of face identity that are tolerant to rotations in depth in occipitotemporal cortex and in anterior temporal cortex, even when the similarity between mirror symmetrical views cannot be used to achieve tolerance. Converging evidence from different analysis techniques shows that the right anterior temporal lobe encodes a comparable amount of identity information to occipitotemporal regions, but this information is encoded over a smaller extent of cortex. © The Author 2013. Published by Oxford University Press. All rights reserved. For Permissions, please e-mail: journals.permissions@oup.com.

The fusiform face area: a cortical region specialized for the perception of faces

PubMed Central

Kanwisher, Nancy; Yovel, Galit

2006-01-01

face perception, by addressing (and rebutting) five of the most widely discussed alternatives to this hypothesis. In §4, we consider recent findings that are beginning to provide clues into the computations conducted in the FFA and the nature of the representations the FFA extracts from faces. We argue that the FFA is engaged both in detecting faces and in extracting the necessary perceptual information to recognize them, and that the properties of the FFA mirror previously identified behavioural signatures of face-specific processing (e.g. the face-inversion effect). Section 5 asks how the computations and representations in the FFA differ from those occurring in other nearby regions of cortex that respond strongly to faces and objects. The evidence indicates clear functional dissociations between these regions, demonstrating that the FFA shows not only functional specificity but also area specificity. We end by speculating in §6 on some of the broader questions raised by current research on the FFA, including the developmental origins of this region and the question of whether faces are unique versus whether similarly specialized mechanisms also exist for other domains of high-level perception and cognition. PMID:17118927

Results of the ASCD/NCSS Social Issues Survey: Are the Issues Studied in School the Important Issues Facing Humankind?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Molnar, Alex

1983-01-01

According to National Council for the Social Studies and the Association for Supervision and Curriculum Development respondents, the issues deemed important--nuclear disarmament, pollution, worldwide wealth and poverty, and alternatives to the U.S. social-economic-political system--are not included in the social studies to the extent they should…

Oxytocin eliminates the own-race bias in face recognition memory.

PubMed

Blandón-Gitlin, Iris; Pezdek, Kathy; Saldivar, Sesar; Steelman, Erin

2014-09-11

The neuropeptide Oxytocin influences a number of social behaviors, including processing of faces. We examined whether Oxytocin facilitates the processing of out-group faces and reduce the own-race bias (ORB). The ORB is a robust phenomenon characterized by poor recognition memory of other-race faces compared to the same-race faces. In Experiment 1, participants received intranasal solutions of Oxytocin or placebo prior to viewing White and Black faces. On a subsequent recognition test, whereas in the placebo condition the same-race faces were better recognized than other-race faces, in the Oxytocin condition Black and White faces were equally well recognized, effectively eliminating the ORB. In Experiment 2, Oxytocin was administered after the study phase. The ORB resulted, but Oxytocin did not significantly reduce the effect. This study is the first to show that Oxytocin can enhance face memory of out-group members and underscore the importance of social encoding mechanisms underlying the own-race bias. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled Oxytocin and Social Behav. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Losing face: impaired discrimination of featural and configural information in the mouth region of an inverted face.

PubMed

Tanaka, James W; Kaiser, Martha D; Hagen, Simen; Pierce, Lara J

2014-05-01

Given that all faces share the same set of features-two eyes, a nose, and a mouth-that are arranged in similar configuration, recognition of a specific face must depend on our ability to discern subtle differences in its featural and configural properties. An enduring question in the face-processing literature is whether featural or configural information plays a larger role in the recognition process. To address this question, the face dimensions task was designed, in which the featural and configural properties in the upper (eye) and lower (mouth) regions of a face were parametrically and independently manipulated. In a same-different task, two faces were sequentially presented and tested in their upright or in their inverted orientation. Inversion disrupted the perception of featural size (Exp. 1), featural shape (Exp. 2), and configural changes in the mouth region, but it had relatively little effect on the discrimination of featural size and shape and configural differences in the eye region. Inversion had little effect on the perception of information in the top and bottom halves of houses (Exp. 3), suggesting that the lower-half impairment was specific to faces. Spatial cueing to the mouth region eliminated the inversion effect (Exp. 4), suggesting that participants have a bias to attend to the eye region of an inverted face. The collective findings from these experiments suggest that inversion does not differentially impair featural or configural face perceptions, but rather impairs the perception of information in the mouth region of the face.

A face in a (temporal) crowd.

PubMed

Hacker, Catrina M; Meschke, Emily X; Biederman, Irving

2018-03-20

Familiar objects, specified by name, can be identified with high accuracy when embedded in a rapidly presented sequence of images at rates exceeding 10 images/s. Not only can target objects be detected at such brief presentation rates, they can also be detected under high uncertainty, where their classification is defined negatively, e.g., "Not a Tool." The identification of a familiar speaker's voice declines precipitously when uncertainty is increased from one to a mere handful of possible speakers. Is the limitation imposed by uncertainty, i.e., the number of possible individuals, a general characteristic of processes for person individuation such that the identifiability of a familiar face would undergo a similar decline with uncertainty? Specifically, could the presence of an unnamed celebrity, thus any celebrity, be detected when presented in a rapid sequence of unfamiliar faces? If so, could the celebrity be identified? Despite the markedly greater physical similarity of faces compared to objects that are, say, not tools, the presence of a celebrity could be detected with moderately high accuracy (∼75%) at rates exceeding 7 faces/s. False alarms were exceedingly rare as almost all the errors were misses. Detection accuracy by moderate congenital prosopagnosics was lower than controls, but still well above chance. Given the detection of the presence of a celebrity, all subjects were almost always able to identify that celebrity, providing no role for a covert familiarity signal outside of awareness. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Famous face recognition, face matching, and extraversion.

PubMed

Lander, Karen; Poyarekar, Siddhi

2015-01-01

It has been previously established that extraverts who are skilled at interpersonal interaction perform significantly better than introverts on a face-specific recognition memory task. In our experiment we further investigate the relationship between extraversion and face recognition, focusing on famous face recognition and face matching. Results indicate that more extraverted individuals perform significantly better on an upright famous face recognition task and show significantly larger face inversion effects. However, our results did not find an effect of extraversion on face matching or inverted famous face recognition.

Hole Feature on Conical Face Recognition for Turning Part Model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zubair, A. F.; Abu Mansor, M. S.

2018-03-01

Computer Aided Process Planning (CAPP) is the bridge between CAD and CAM and pre-processing of the CAD data in the CAPP system is essential. For CNC turning part, conical faces of part model is inevitable to be recognised beside cylindrical and planar faces. As the sinus cosines of the cone radius structure differ according to different models, face identification in automatic feature recognition of the part model need special intention. This paper intends to focus hole on feature on conical faces that can be detected by CAD solid modeller ACIS via. SAT file. Detection algorithm of face topology were generated and compared. The study shows different faces setup for similar conical part models with different hole type features. Three types of holes were compared and different between merge faces and unmerge faces were studied.

Global precedence effects account for individual differences in both face and object recognition performance.

PubMed

Gerlach, Christian; Starrfelt, Randi

2018-03-20

There has been an increase in studies adopting an individual difference approach to examine visual cognition and in particular in studies trying to relate face recognition performance with measures of holistic processing (the face composite effect and the part-whole effect). In the present study we examine whether global precedence effects, measured by means of non-face stimuli in Navon's paradigm, can also account for individual differences in face recognition and, if so, whether the effect is of similar magnitude for faces and objects. We find evidence that global precedence effects facilitate both face and object recognition, and to a similar extent. Our results suggest that both face and object recognition are characterized by a coarse-to-fine temporal dynamic, where global shape information is derived prior to local shape information, and that the efficiency of face and object recognition is related to the magnitude of the global precedence effect.

Peer Educators Responding to Students with Mental Health Issues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Daddona, Mark F.

2011-01-01

As more college students face severe mental health issues, peer educators need effective communication skills and knowledge of campus counseling services to properly make referrals while continuing the peer relationship. This chapter presents an overview of current mental health issues in college students. These issues must be understood and…

Ideal proportions in full face front view, contemporary versus antique.

PubMed

Mommaerts, M Y; Moerenhout, B A M M L

2011-03-01

To compare the facial proportions of contemporary harmonious faces with those of antiquity, to validate classical canons and to determine new ones useful in orthofacial surgery planning. Contemporary beautiful faces were retrieved from yearly polls of People Magazine and FHM. Selected B/W frontal facial photographs of 31 men and 74 women were ranked by 20 patients who had to undergo orthofacial surgery. The top-15 female faces and the top-10 male faces were analyzed with Scion Image software. The classical facial index, the Bruges facial index, the ratio lower facial height/total facial height and the vertical tri-partite of the lower face were calculated. The same analysis was done on pictures of classical sculptures representing seven goddesses and 12 gods. Harmonious contemporary female faces have a significantly lower classical facial index, indicating that facial height is less or facial width is larger than in male and even than in antique female faces. The Bruges index indicates a similar difference between ideal contemporary female and male faces. The contemporary male has a higher lower face (48%) compared to total facial height than the contemporary female (45%), although this is statistically not significant (P=0.08). The lower facial thirds index remained quite stabile for 2500 years, without gender difference. A good canon for both sexes today is stomion-gnathion being 70% of subnasale-stomion. The average ideal contemporary female face is shorter than the male face, given the fact that interpupillary distance is similar. The Vitruvian thirds in the lower face have to be adjusted to a 30% upper lip, 70% lower lip-chin proportion. The contemporary ideal ratios are suitable to be implemented in an orthofacial planning concept. Copyright © 2010 European Association for Cranio-Maxillo-Facial Surgery. Published by Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Fuzzy Relational Databases: Representational Issues and Reduction Using Similarity Measures.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Prade, Henri; Testemale, Claudette

1987-01-01

Compares and expands upon two approaches to dealing with fuzzy relational databases. The proposed similarity measure is based on a fuzzy Hausdorff distance and estimates the mismatch between two possibility distributions using a reduction process. The consequences of the reduction process on query evaluation are studied. (Author/EM)

Dog Experts' Brains Distinguish Socially Relevant Body Postures Similarly in Dogs and Humans

PubMed Central

Kujala, Miiamaaria V.; Kujala, Jan; Carlson, Synnöve; Hari, Riitta

2012-01-01

We read conspecifics' social cues effortlessly, but little is known about our abilities to understand social gestures of other species. To investigate the neural underpinnings of such skills, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain activity of experts and non-experts of dog behavior while they observed humans or dogs either interacting with, or facing away from a conspecific. The posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) of both subject groups dissociated humans facing toward each other from humans facing away, and in dog experts, a distinction also occurred for dogs facing toward vs. away in a bilateral area extending from the pSTS to the inferior temporo-occipital cortex: the dissociation of dog behavior was significantly stronger in expert than control group. Furthermore, the control group had stronger pSTS responses to humans than dogs facing toward a conspecific, whereas in dog experts, the responses were of similar magnitude. These findings suggest that dog experts' brains distinguish socially relevant body postures similarly in dogs and humans. PMID:22720054

Dog experts' brains distinguish socially relevant body postures similarly in dogs and humans.

PubMed

Kujala, Miiamaaria V; Kujala, Jan; Carlson, Synnöve; Hari, Riitta

2012-01-01

We read conspecifics' social cues effortlessly, but little is known about our abilities to understand social gestures of other species. To investigate the neural underpinnings of such skills, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to study the brain activity of experts and non-experts of dog behavior while they observed humans or dogs either interacting with, or facing away from a conspecific. The posterior superior temporal sulcus (pSTS) of both subject groups dissociated humans facing toward each other from humans facing away, and in dog experts, a distinction also occurred for dogs facing toward vs. away in a bilateral area extending from the pSTS to the inferior temporo-occipital cortex: the dissociation of dog behavior was significantly stronger in expert than control group. Furthermore, the control group had stronger pSTS responses to humans than dogs facing toward a conspecific, whereas in dog experts, the responses were of similar magnitude. These findings suggest that dog experts' brains distinguish socially relevant body postures similarly in dogs and humans.

Adaptation effects to attractiveness of face photographs and art portraits are domain-specific

PubMed Central

Hayn-Leichsenring, Gregor U.; Kloth, Nadine; Schweinberger, Stefan R.; Redies, Christoph

2013-01-01

We studied the neural coding of facial attractiveness by investigating effects of adaptation to attractive and unattractive human faces on the perceived attractiveness of veridical human face pictures (Experiment 1) and art portraits (Experiment 2). Experiment 1 revealed a clear pattern of contrastive aftereffects. Relative to a pre-adaptation baseline, the perceived attractiveness of faces was increased after adaptation to unattractive faces, and was decreased after adaptation to attractive faces. Experiment 2 revealed similar aftereffects when art portraits rather than face photographs were used as adaptors and test stimuli, suggesting that effects of adaptation to attractiveness are not restricted to facial photographs. Additionally, we found similar aftereffects in art portraits for beauty, another aesthetic feature that, unlike attractiveness, relates to the properties of the image (rather than to the face displayed). Importantly, Experiment 3 showed that aftereffects were abolished when adaptors were art portraits and face photographs were test stimuli. These results suggest that adaptation to facial attractiveness elicits aftereffects in the perception of subsequently presented faces, for both face photographs and art portraits, and that these effects do not cross image domains. PMID:24349690

Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals

PubMed Central

Tate, Andrew J; Fischer, Hanno; Leigh, Andrea E; Kendrick, Keith M

2006-01-01

Visual cues from faces provide important social information relating to individual identity, sexual attraction and emotional state. Behavioural and neurophysiological studies on both monkeys and sheep have shown that specialized skills and neural systems for processing these complex cues to guide behaviour have evolved in a number of mammals and are not present exclusively in humans. Indeed, there are remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species. While human studies with brain imaging and gross neurophysiological recording approaches have revealed global aspects of the face-processing network, they cannot investigate how information is encoded by specific neural networks. Single neuron electrophysiological recording approaches in both monkeys and sheep have, however, provided some insights into the neural encoding principles involved and, particularly, the presence of a remarkable degree of high-level encoding even at the level of a specific face. Recent developments that allow simultaneous recordings to be made from many hundreds of individual neurons are also beginning to reveal evidence for global aspects of a population-based code. This review will summarize what we have learned so far from these animal-based studies about the way the mammalian brain processes the faces and the emotions they can communicate, as well as associated capacities such as how identity and emotion cues are dissociated and how face imagery might be generated. It will also try to highlight what questions and advances in knowledge still challenge us in order to provide a complete understanding of just how brain networks perform this complex and important social recognition task. PMID:17118930

Behavioural and neurophysiological evidence for face identity and face emotion processing in animals.

PubMed

Tate, Andrew J; Fischer, Hanno; Leigh, Andrea E; Kendrick, Keith M

2006-12-29

Visual cues from faces provide important social information relating to individual identity, sexual attraction and emotional state. Behavioural and neurophysiological studies on both monkeys and sheep have shown that specialized skills and neural systems for processing these complex cues to guide behaviour have evolved in a number of mammals and are not present exclusively in humans. Indeed, there are remarkable similarities in the ways that faces are processed by the brain in humans and other mammalian species. While human studies with brain imaging and gross neurophysiological recording approaches have revealed global aspects of the face-processing network, they cannot investigate how information is encoded by specific neural networks. Single neuron electrophysiological recording approaches in both monkeys and sheep have, however, provided some insights into the neural encoding principles involved and, particularly, the presence of a remarkable degree of high-level encoding even at the level of a specific face. Recent developments that allow simultaneous recordings to be made from many hundreds of individual neurons are also beginning to reveal evidence for global aspects of a population-based code. This review will summarize what we have learned so far from these animal-based studies about the way the mammalian brain processes the faces and the emotions they can communicate, as well as associated capacities such as how identity and emotion cues are dissociated and how face imagery might be generated. It will also try to highlight what questions and advances in knowledge still challenge us in order to provide a complete understanding of just how brain networks perform this complex and important social recognition task.

The Nature of Elementary Science Teachers' Experiences with Synchronous Online, Asynchronous Online and Face-to-Face Coaching

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Gilbert, Amanda M.

This study investigated the nature of instructional coaching interactions in three formats: online synchronous, online asynchronous, and face-to-face. Knight's (2007) Seven Partnership Principles of Instructional Coaching were used as a framework to analyze and compare the coaching interactions between coach and teacher to determine whether online coaching may be a viable option to provide support for the teachers unprepared to teach the new science standards. Some previous research has suggested that online communication can result in deeper personal interactions (Walther, 1996), while other studies suggest that interactions are more natural and easier in formats that are more similar to face-to-face interactions (Kock, 2005). The findings of this study support the media naturalness theory (Kock, 2005) and suggest that collaboration may be especially difficult in asynchronous online communication. Although differences were noted in the actual interactions, teacher perception remained fairly consistently positive across the three formats. Research beyond this exploratory study is needed to make findings generalizable.

A shape-based account for holistic face processing.

PubMed

Zhao, Mintao; Bülthoff, Heinrich H; Bülthoff, Isabelle

2016-04-01

Faces are processed holistically, so selective attention to 1 face part without any influence of the others often fails. In this study, 3 experiments investigated what type of facial information (shape or surface) underlies holistic face processing and whether generalization of holistic processing to nonexperienced faces requires extensive discrimination experience. Results show that facial shape information alone is sufficient to elicit the composite face effect (CFE), 1 of the most convincing demonstrations of holistic processing, whereas facial surface information is unnecessary (Experiment 1). The CFE is eliminated when faces differ only in surface but not shape information, suggesting that variation of facial shape information is necessary to observe holistic face processing (Experiment 2). Removing 3-dimensional (3D) facial shape information also eliminates the CFE, indicating the necessity of 3D shape information for holistic face processing (Experiment 3). Moreover, participants show similar holistic processing for faces with and without extensive discrimination experience (i.e., own- and other-race faces), suggesting that generalization of holistic processing to nonexperienced faces requires facial shape information, but does not necessarily require further individuation experience. These results provide compelling evidence that facial shape information underlies holistic face processing. This shape-based account not only offers a consistent explanation for previous studies of holistic face processing, but also suggests a new ground-in addition to expertise-for the generalization of holistic processing to different types of faces and to nonface objects. (c) 2016 APA, all rights reserved).

Good match exploration for infrared face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Yang, Changcai; Zhou, Huabing; Sun, Sheng; Liu, Renfeng; Zhao, Ji; Ma, Jiayi

2014-11-01

Establishing good feature correspondence is a critical prerequisite and a challenging task for infrared (IR) face recognition. Recent studies revealed that the scale invariant feature transform (SIFT) descriptor outperforms other local descriptors for feature matching. However, it only uses local appearance information for matching, and hence inevitably leads to a number of false matches. To address this issue, this paper explores global structure information (GSI) among SIFT correspondences, and proposes a new method SIFT-GSI for good match exploration. This is achieved by fitting a smooth mapping function for the underlying correct matches, which involves softassign and deterministic annealing. Quantitative comparisons with state-of-the-art methods on a publicly available IR human face database demonstrate that SIFT-GSI significantly outperforms other methods for feature matching, and hence it is able to improve the reliability of IR face recognition systems.

Afterimage induced neural activity during emotional face perception.

PubMed

Cheal, Jenna L; Heisz, Jennifer J; Walsh, Jennifer A; Shedden, Judith M; Rutherford, M D

2014-02-26

The N170 response differs when positive versus negative facial expressions are viewed. This neural response could be associated with the perception of emotions, or some feature of the stimulus. We used an aftereffect paradigm to clarify. Consistent with previous reports of emotional aftereffects, a neutral face was more likely to be described as happy following a sad face adaptation, and more likely to be described as sad following a happy face adaptation. In addition, similar to previous observations with actual emotional faces, we found differences in the latency of the N170 elicited by the neutral face following sad versus happy face adaptation, demonstrating that the emotion-specific effect on the N170 emerges even when emotion expressions are perceptually different but physically identical. The re-entry of emotional information from other brain regions may be driving the emotional aftereffects and the N170 latency differences. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Advocacy Groups Deliver Guidelines for Schools Facing Sexual-Orientation Issues

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Curriculum Review, 2006

2006-01-01

Groups that often find themselves on opposing sides of the cultural war over gay rights have bridged their divide to draft consensus guidelines designed to help public schools address sexual-orientation issues with sensitivity and respect. Representatives from the Christian Educators Association International and the Gay, Lesbian and Straight…

Developmental changes in analytic and holistic processes in face perception.

PubMed

Joseph, Jane E; DiBartolo, Michelle D; Bhatt, Ramesh S

2015-01-01

Although infants demonstrate sensitivity to some kinds of perceptual information in faces, many face capacities continue to develop throughout childhood. One debate is the degree to which children perceive faces analytically versus holistically and how these processes undergo developmental change. In the present study, school-aged children and adults performed a perceptual matching task with upright and inverted face and house pairs that varied in similarity of featural or 2(nd) order configural information. Holistic processing was operationalized as the degree of serial processing when discriminating faces and houses [i.e., increased reaction time (RT), as more features or spacing relations were shared between stimuli]. Analytical processing was operationalized as the degree of parallel processing (or no change in RT as a function of greater similarity of features or spatial relations). Adults showed the most evidence for holistic processing (most strongly for 2(nd) order faces) and holistic processing was weaker for inverted faces and houses. Younger children (6-8 years), in contrast, showed analytical processing across all experimental manipulations. Older children (9-11 years) showed an intermediate pattern with a trend toward holistic processing of 2(nd) order faces like adults, but parallel processing in other experimental conditions like younger children. These findings indicate that holistic face representations emerge around 10 years of age. In adults both 2(nd) order and featural information are incorporated into holistic representations, whereas older children only incorporate 2(nd) order information. Holistic processing was not evident in younger children. Hence, the development of holistic face representations relies on 2(nd) order processing initially then incorporates featural information by adulthood.

Developmental changes in analytic and holistic processes in face perception

PubMed Central

Joseph, Jane E.; DiBartolo, Michelle D.; Bhatt, Ramesh S.

2015-01-01

Although infants demonstrate sensitivity to some kinds of perceptual information in faces, many face capacities continue to develop throughout childhood. One debate is the degree to which children perceive faces analytically versus holistically and how these processes undergo developmental change. In the present study, school-aged children and adults performed a perceptual matching task with upright and inverted face and house pairs that varied in similarity of featural or 2nd order configural information. Holistic processing was operationalized as the degree of serial processing when discriminating faces and houses [i.e., increased reaction time (RT), as more features or spacing relations were shared between stimuli]. Analytical processing was operationalized as the degree of parallel processing (or no change in RT as a function of greater similarity of features or spatial relations). Adults showed the most evidence for holistic processing (most strongly for 2nd order faces) and holistic processing was weaker for inverted faces and houses. Younger children (6–8 years), in contrast, showed analytical processing across all experimental manipulations. Older children (9–11 years) showed an intermediate pattern with a trend toward holistic processing of 2nd order faces like adults, but parallel processing in other experimental conditions like younger children. These findings indicate that holistic face representations emerge around 10 years of age. In adults both 2nd order and featural information are incorporated into holistic representations, whereas older children only incorporate 2nd order information. Holistic processing was not evident in younger children. Hence, the development of holistic face representations relies on 2nd order processing initially then incorporates featural information by adulthood. PMID:26300838

Face recognition system and method using face pattern words and face pattern bytes

DOEpatents

Zheng, Yufeng

2014-12-23

The present invention provides a novel system and method for identifying individuals and for face recognition utilizing facial features for face identification. The system and method of the invention comprise creating facial features or face patterns called face pattern words and face pattern bytes for face identification. The invention also provides for pattern recognitions for identification other than face recognition. The invention further provides a means for identifying individuals based on visible and/or thermal images of those individuals by utilizing computer software implemented by instructions on a computer or computer system and a computer readable medium containing instructions on a computer system for face recognition and identification.

Study of the Impact of Educational Behavioral Interventions on Fatigue in Mothers in the Postpartum Period in the Groups of Face-to-Face and Electronic Training

PubMed Central

Gholami, Zahra; Mohammadirizi, Soheila; Bahadoran, Parvin

2017-01-01

Background: Maternal fatigue in the postpartum period include factors that affect the quality of life and health of both the mother and newborn. This study aimed to investigate two educational approaches regarding mother's fatigue in the postpartum period. Materials and Methods: This experimental study was performed among 110 pregnant mothers during their postpartum care using random sampling. The participants were divided in three groups, namely, face-to-face, e-learning, and control groups. Interventions included individual meetings between the researcher and mothers in the face-to-face group and giving educational compact disc to the e-learning department to improve maternal fatigue. Personal information and fertility data was obtained (before training); the maternal fatigue questionnaire Fatigue Severity Scale (FSS) was completed before and after any type of (face-to-face, e-learning, and control) education. Obtained data were analyzed using one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and repeated-measures ANOVA. Results: Results showed that both face-to-face and e-learning methods had similar maternal fatigue scores. The average change on the maternal fatigue score in the second treatment was (p = 0.02) and the third treatment was (p < 0.001)among three groups that was indicative of significant statistical differences. Similarly, there was no statistically significant difference in the average maternal fatigue score between the two groups before the intervention and in the second and third groups after the intervention. Therefore, over time, the training was unaffected. Conclusions: The findings of this study indicate that both face-to-face and e-learning methods are effective to reduce maternal postpartum fatigue. PMID:29184586

ERCMExpress. Volume 3, Issue 5

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Taylor, Matt

2007-01-01

The Emergency Response and Crisis Management (ECRM) Technical Assistance Center's newsletter "ERCMExpress" provides comprehensive information on key issues in school emergency management. Many nontraditional schools across the United States, such as storefront schools, rural schools, and alternative education facilities, face challenges…

The organization of conspecific face space in nonhuman primates

PubMed Central

Parr, Lisa A.; Taubert, Jessica; Little, Anthony C.; Hancock, Peter J. B.

2013-01-01

Humans and chimpanzees demonstrate numerous cognitive specializations for processing faces, but comparative studies with monkeys suggest that these may be the result of recent evolutionary adaptations. The present study utilized the novel approach of face space, a powerful theoretical framework used to understand the representation of face identity in humans, to further explore species differences in face processing. According to the theory, faces are represented by vectors in a multidimensional space, the centre of which is defined by an average face. Each dimension codes features important for describing a face’s identity, and vector length codes the feature’s distinctiveness. Chimpanzees and rhesus monkeys discriminated male and female conspecifics’ faces, rated by humans for their distinctiveness, using a computerized task. Multidimensional scaling analyses showed that the organization of face space was similar between humans and chimpanzees. Distinctive faces had the longest vectors and were the easiest for chimpanzees to discriminate. In contrast, distinctiveness did not correlate with the performance of rhesus monkeys. The feature dimensions for each species’ face space were visualized and described using morphing techniques. These results confirm species differences in the perceptual representation of conspecific faces, which are discussed within an evolutionary framework. PMID:22670823

Neural Representations of Personally Familiar and Unfamiliar Faces in the Anterior Inferior Temporal Cortex of Monkeys

PubMed Central

Eifuku, Satoshi; De Souza, Wania C.; Nakata, Ryuzaburo; Ono, Taketoshi; Tamura, Ryoi

2011-01-01

To investigate the neural representations of faces in primates, particularly in relation to their personal familiarity or unfamiliarity, neuronal activities were chronically recorded from the ventral portion of the anterior inferior temporal cortex (AITv) of macaque monkeys during the performance of a facial identification task using either personally familiar or unfamiliar faces as stimuli. By calculating the correlation coefficients between neuronal responses to the faces for all possible pairs of faces given in the task and then using the coefficients as neuronal population-based similarity measures between the faces in pairs, we analyzed the similarity/dissimilarity relationship between the faces, which were potentially represented by the activities of a population of the face-responsive neurons recorded in the area AITv. The results showed that, for personally familiar faces, different identities were represented by different patterns of activities of the population of AITv neurons irrespective of the view (e.g., front, 90° left, etc.), while different views were not represented independently of their facial identities, which was consistent with our previous report. In the case of personally unfamiliar faces, the faces possessing different identities but presented in the same frontal view were represented as similar, which contrasts with the results for personally familiar faces. These results, taken together, outline the neuronal representations of personally familiar and unfamiliar faces in the AITv neuronal population. PMID:21526206

Sex-typicality and attractiveness: are supermale and superfemale faces super-attractive?

PubMed

Rhodes, G; Hickford, C; Jeffery, L

2000-02-01

Many animals find extreme versions of secondary sexual characteristics attractive, and such preferences can enhance reproductive success (Andersson, 1994). We hypothesized, therefore, that extreme versions of sex-typical traits may be attractive in human faces. We created supermale and superfemale faces by exaggerating all spatial differences between an average male and an average female face. In Expt 1 the male average was preferred to a supermale (50% exaggeration of differences from the female average). There was no clear preference for the female average or the superfemale (50% exaggeration). In Expt 2, participants chose the most attractive face from sets of images containing feminized as well as masculinized images for each sex, and spanning a wider range of exaggeration levels than in Expt 1. Chinese sets were also shown, to see whether similar preferences would occur for a less familiar race (participants were Caucasian). The most attractive female image was significantly feminized for faces of both races. However, the most attractive male image for both races was also significantly feminized. These results indicate that feminization, rather than sex exaggeration per se, is attractive in human faces, and they corroborate similar findings by Perrett et al. (1998).

Sequential effects in judgements of attractiveness: the influences of face race and sex.

PubMed

Kramer, Robin S S; Jones, Alex L; Sharma, Dinkar

2013-01-01

In perceptual decision-making, a person's response on a given trial is influenced by their response on the immediately preceding trial. This sequential effect was initially demonstrated in psychophysical tasks, but has now been found in more complex, real-world judgements. The similarity of the current and previous stimuli determines the nature of the effect, with more similar items producing assimilation in judgements, while less similarity can cause a contrast effect. Previous research found assimilation in ratings of facial attractiveness, and here, we investigated whether this effect is influenced by the social categories of the faces presented. Over three experiments, participants rated the attractiveness of own- (White) and other-race (Chinese) faces of both sexes that appeared successively. Through blocking trials by race (Experiment 1), sex (Experiment 2), or both dimensions (Experiment 3), we could examine how sequential judgements were altered by the salience of different social categories in face sequences. For sequences that varied in sex alone, own-race faces showed significantly less opposite-sex assimilation (male and female faces perceived as dissimilar), while other-race faces showed equal assimilation for opposite- and same-sex sequences (male and female faces were not differentiated). For sequences that varied in race alone, categorisation by race resulted in no opposite-race assimilation for either sex of face (White and Chinese faces perceived as dissimilar). For sequences that varied in both race and sex, same-category assimilation was significantly greater than opposite-category. Our results suggest that the race of a face represents a superordinate category relative to sex. These findings demonstrate the importance of social categories when considering sequential judgements of faces, and also highlight a novel approach for investigating how multiple social dimensions interact during decision-making.

Sequential Effects in Judgements of Attractiveness: The Influences of Face Race and Sex

PubMed Central

Kramer, Robin S. S.; Jones, Alex L.; Sharma, Dinkar

2013-01-01

In perceptual decision-making, a person’s response on a given trial is influenced by their response on the immediately preceding trial. This sequential effect was initially demonstrated in psychophysical tasks, but has now been found in more complex, real-world judgements. The similarity of the current and previous stimuli determines the nature of the effect, with more similar items producing assimilation in judgements, while less similarity can cause a contrast effect. Previous research found assimilation in ratings of facial attractiveness, and here, we investigated whether this effect is influenced by the social categories of the faces presented. Over three experiments, participants rated the attractiveness of own- (White) and other-race (Chinese) faces of both sexes that appeared successively. Through blocking trials by race (Experiment 1), sex (Experiment 2), or both dimensions (Experiment 3), we could examine how sequential judgements were altered by the salience of different social categories in face sequences. For sequences that varied in sex alone, own-race faces showed significantly less opposite-sex assimilation (male and female faces perceived as dissimilar), while other-race faces showed equal assimilation for opposite- and same-sex sequences (male and female faces were not differentiated). For sequences that varied in race alone, categorisation by race resulted in no opposite-race assimilation for either sex of face (White and Chinese faces perceived as dissimilar). For sequences that varied in both race and sex, same-category assimilation was significantly greater than opposite-category. Our results suggest that the race of a face represents a superordinate category relative to sex. These findings demonstrate the importance of social categories when considering sequential judgements of faces, and also highlight a novel approach for investigating how multiple social dimensions interact during decision-making. PMID:24349226

Exploring children's face-space: a multidimensional scaling analysis of the mental representation of facial identity.

PubMed

Nishimura, Mayu; Maurer, Daphne; Gao, Xiaoqing

2009-07-01

We explored differences in the mental representation of facial identity between 8-year-olds and adults. The 8-year-olds and adults made similarity judgments of a homogeneous set of faces (individual hair cues removed) using an "odd-man-out" paradigm. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analyses were performed to represent perceived similarity of faces in a multidimensional space. Five dimensions accounted optimally for the judgments of both children and adults, with similar local clustering of faces. However, the fit of the MDS solutions was better for adults, in part because children's responses were more variable. More children relied predominantly on a single dimension, namely eye color, whereas adults appeared to use multiple dimensions for each judgment. The pattern of findings suggests that children's mental representation of faces has a structure similar to that of adults but that children's judgments are influenced less consistently by that overall structure.

Virtual & Real Face to Face Teaching

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Teneqexhi, Romeo; Kuneshka, Loreta

2016-01-01

In traditional "face to face" lessons, during the time the teacher writes on a black or white board, the students are always behind the teacher. Sometimes, this happens even in the recorded lesson in videos. Most of the time during the lesson, the teacher shows to the students his back not his face. We do not think the term "face to…

Ejection of a rear facing, golf cart passenger.

PubMed

Schau, Kyle; Masory, Oren

2013-10-01

The following report details the findings of a series of experiments and simulations performed on a commercially available, shuttle style golf cart during several maneuvers involving rapid accelerations of the vehicle. It is determined that the current set of passive restraints on these types of golf carts are not adequate in preventing ejection of a rear facing passenger during rapid accelerations in the forward and lateral directions. Experimental data and simulations show that a hip restraint must be a minimum of 13 in. above the seat in order to secure a rear facing passenger during sharp turns, compared to the current restraint height of 5 in. Furthermore, it is determined that a restraint directly in front of the rear facing passenger is necessary to prevent ejection. In addressing these issues, golf cart manufacturers could greatly reduce the likelihood of injury due to ejection of a rear facing, golf cart passenger. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Introduction of the American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery FACE TO FACE Database.

PubMed

Abraham, Manoj T; Rousso, Joseph J; Hu, Shirley; Brown, Ryan F; Moscatello, Augustine L; Finn, J Charles; Patel, Neha A; Kadakia, Sameep P; Wood-Smith, Donald

2017-07-01

The American Academy of Facial Plastic and Reconstructive Surgery FACE TO FACE database was created to gather and organize patient data primarily from international humanitarian surgical mission trips, as well as local humanitarian initiatives. Similar to cloud-based Electronic Medical Records, this web-based user-generated database allows for more accurate tracking of provider and patient information and outcomes, regardless of site, and is useful when coordinating follow-up care for patients. The database is particularly useful on international mission trips as there are often different surgeons who may provide care to patients on subsequent missions, and patients who may visit more than 1 mission site. Ultimately, by pooling data across multiples sites and over time, the database has the potential to be a useful resource for population-based studies and outcome data analysis. The objective of this paper is to delineate the process involved in creating the AAFPRS FACE TO FACE database, to assess its functional utility, to draw comparisons to electronic medical records systems that are now widely implemented, and to explain the specific benefits and disadvantages of the use of the database as it was implemented on recent international surgical mission trips.

PHOG analysis of self-similarity in aesthetic images

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Amirshahi, Seyed Ali; Koch, Michael; Denzler, Joachim; Redies, Christoph

2012-03-01

In recent years, there have been efforts in defining the statistical properties of aesthetic photographs and artworks using computer vision techniques. However, it is still an open question how to distinguish aesthetic from non-aesthetic images with a high recognition rate. This is possibly because aesthetic perception is influenced also by a large number of cultural variables. Nevertheless, the search for statistical properties of aesthetic images has not been futile. For example, we have shown that the radially averaged power spectrum of monochrome artworks of Western and Eastern provenance falls off according to a power law with increasing spatial frequency (1/f2 characteristics). This finding implies that this particular subset of artworks possesses a Fourier power spectrum that is self-similar across different scales of spatial resolution. Other types of aesthetic images, such as cartoons, comics and mangas also display this type of self-similarity, as do photographs of complex natural scenes. Since the human visual system is adapted to encode images of natural scenes in a particular efficient way, we have argued that artists imitate these statistics in their artworks. In support of this notion, we presented results that artists portrait human faces with the self-similar Fourier statistics of complex natural scenes although real-world photographs of faces are not self-similar. In view of these previous findings, we investigated other statistical measures of self-similarity to characterize aesthetic and non-aesthetic images. In the present work, we propose a novel measure of self-similarity that is based on the Pyramid Histogram of Oriented Gradients (PHOG). For every image, we first calculate PHOG up to pyramid level 3. The similarity between the histograms of each section at a particular level is then calculated to the parent section at the previous level (or to the histogram at the ground level). The proposed approach is tested on datasets of aesthetic and

Family Issues in Multigenerational Households.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Feinauer, Leslie L; And Others

1987-01-01

Studied issues faced by multigenerational families and their implications for family therapy. Major factors in multigenerational households included dependency, sibling relationships, depression, and demanding and egocentric behavior. Factors to consider during family therapy include respite care, age, interdependence, dignity, provision of care,…

What causes similarity in catchments?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Savenije, Hubert

2014-05-01

One of the biggest issues in hydrology is how to handle the heterogeneity of catchment properties at different scales. But is this really such a big issue? Is this problem not merely the consequence of how we conceptualise and how we model catchments? Is there not far more similarity than we observe. Maybe we are not looking at the right things or at the right scale to see the similarity. The identity of catchments is largely determined by: the landscape, the ecosystem living on the landscape, and the geology, in that order. Soils, which are often seen as a crucial aspect of hydrological behaviour, are far less important, as will be demonstrated. The main determinants of hydrological behaviour are: the landscape composition, the rooting depth and the phenology. These determinants are a consequence of landscape and ecosystem evolution, which, in turn, are the manifestations of entropy production. There are striking similarities between catchments. The different runoff processes from hillslopes are linked and similar in different environments (McDonnell, 2013). Wetlands behave similarly all over the world. The key is to classify landscapes and to link the ecosystems living on them to climate. The ecosystem then is the main controller of hydrological behaviour. Besides phenology, the rooting depth is key in determining runoff behaviour. Both are strongly linked to climate and much less to soil properties. An example is given of how rooting depth is determined by climate, and how rooting depth can be predicted without calibration, providing a strong constraints on the prediction of rainfall partitioning and catchment runoff.

DEB: A Diagnostic Experience Browser using similarity networks

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Casadaban, Cyprian E.

1990-01-01

Diagnostic Experience Browser (DEB): a fusion of knowledge base and data base that allows users to examine only the data which is most useful to them is described. The system combines a data base of historical cases of diagnostic trouble-shooting experience with similarity networks. A menu-driven natural language interface receives input about the user's current problem. Similarity networks provide the user with references to past cases that are most similar or most related to those they now face. The user can then choose the case that is most pertinent and browse its full textual description which, in turn, may include references to other related cases.

Prevalence of face recognition deficits in middle childhood.

PubMed

Bennetts, Rachel J; Murray, Ebony; Boyce, Tian; Bate, Sarah

2017-02-01

Approximately 2-2.5% of the adult population is believed to show severe difficulties with face recognition, in the absence of any neurological injury-a condition known as developmental prosopagnosia (DP). However, to date no research has attempted to estimate the prevalence of face recognition deficits in children, possibly because there are very few child-friendly, well-validated tests of face recognition. In the current study, we examined face and object recognition in a group of primary school children (aged 5-11 years), to establish whether our tests were suitable for children and to provide an estimate of face recognition difficulties in children. In Experiment 1 (n = 184), children completed a pre-existing test of child face memory, the Cambridge Face Memory Test-Kids (CFMT-K), and a bicycle test with the same format. In Experiment 2 (n = 413), children completed three-alternative forced-choice matching tasks with faces and bicycles. All tests showed good psychometric properties. The face and bicycle tests were well matched for difficulty and showed a similar developmental trajectory. Neither the memory nor the matching tests were suitable to detect impairments in the youngest groups of children, but both tests appear suitable to screen for face recognition problems in middle childhood. In the current sample, 1.2-5.2% of children showed difficulties with face recognition; 1.2-4% showed face-specific difficulties-that is, poor face recognition with typical object recognition abilities. This is somewhat higher than previous adult estimates: It is possible that face matching tests overestimate the prevalence of face recognition difficulties in children; alternatively, some children may "outgrow" face recognition difficulties.

Infant perceptual development for faces and spoken words: An integrated approach

PubMed Central

Watson, Tamara L; Robbins, Rachel A; Best, Catherine T

2014-01-01

There are obvious differences between recognizing faces and recognizing spoken words or phonemes that might suggest development of each capability requires different skills. Recognizing faces and perceiving spoken language, however, are in key senses extremely similar endeavors. Both perceptual processes are based on richly variable, yet highly structured input from which the perceiver needs to extract categorically meaningful information. This similarity could be reflected in the perceptual narrowing that occurs within the first year of life in both domains. We take the position that the perceptual and neurocognitive processes by which face and speech recognition develop are based on a set of common principles. One common principle is the importance of systematic variability in the input as a source of information rather than noise. Experience of this variability leads to perceptual tuning to the critical properties that define individual faces or spoken words versus their membership in larger groupings of people and their language communities. We argue that parallels can be drawn directly between the principles responsible for the development of face and spoken language perception. PMID:25132626

Caucasian Infants Scan Own- and Other-Race Faces Differently

PubMed Central

Wheeler, Andrea; Anzures, Gizelle; Quinn, Paul C.; Pascalis, Olivier; Omrin, Danielle S.; Lee, Kang

2011-01-01

Young infants are known to prefer own-race faces to other race faces and recognize own-race faces better than other-race faces. However, it is entirely unclear as to whether infants also attend to different parts of own- and other-race faces differently, which may provide an important clue as to how and why the own-race face recognition advantage emerges so early. The present study used eye tracking methodology to investigate whether 6- to 10-month-old Caucasian infants (N = 37) have differential scanning patterns for dynamically displayed own- and other-race faces. We found that even though infants spent a similar amount of time looking at own- and other-race faces, with increased age, infants increasingly looked longer at the eyes of own-race faces and less at the mouths of own-race faces. These findings suggest experience-based tuning of the infant's face processing system to optimally process own-race faces that are different in physiognomy from other-race faces. In addition, the present results, taken together with recent own- and other-race eye tracking findings with infants and adults, provide strong support for an enculturation hypothesis that East Asians and Westerners may be socialized to scan faces differently due to each culture's conventions regarding mutual gaze during interpersonal communication. PMID:21533235

Ethical Issues for Community College Student Programmers.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Friedrich, Sue

2002-01-01

Discusses examples of unique ethical issues faced by community college student programmers: member commitment, poor program attendance and lack of programming board diversity, and conflicts of interest (EV)

Adapting Local Features for Face Detection in Thermal Image.

PubMed

Ma, Chao; Trung, Ngo Thanh; Uchiyama, Hideaki; Nagahara, Hajime; Shimada, Atsushi; Taniguchi, Rin-Ichiro

2017-11-27

A thermal camera captures the temperature distribution of a scene as a thermal image. In thermal images, facial appearances of different people under different lighting conditions are similar. This is because facial temperature distribution is generally constant and not affected by lighting condition. This similarity in face appearances is advantageous for face detection. To detect faces in thermal images, cascade classifiers with Haar-like features are generally used. However, there are few studies exploring the local features for face detection in thermal images. In this paper, we introduce two approaches relying on local features for face detection in thermal images. First, we create new feature types by extending Multi-Block LBP. We consider a margin around the reference and the generally constant distribution of facial temperature. In this way, we make the features more robust to image noise and more effective for face detection in thermal images. Second, we propose an AdaBoost-based training method to get cascade classifiers with multiple types of local features. These feature types have different advantages. In this way we enhance the description power of local features. We did a hold-out validation experiment and a field experiment. In the hold-out validation experiment, we captured a dataset from 20 participants, comprising 14 males and 6 females. For each participant, we captured 420 images with 10 variations in camera distance, 21 poses, and 2 appearances (participant with/without glasses). We compared the performance of cascade classifiers trained by different sets of the features. The experiment results showed that the proposed approaches effectively improve the performance of face detection in thermal images. In the field experiment, we compared the face detection performance in realistic scenes using thermal and RGB images, and gave discussion based on the results.

How Well Do Computer-Generated Faces Tap Face Expertise?

PubMed

Crookes, Kate; Ewing, Louise; Gildenhuys, Ju-Dith; Kloth, Nadine; Hayward, William G; Oxner, Matt; Pond, Stephen; Rhodes, Gillian

2015-01-01

The use of computer-generated (CG) stimuli in face processing research is proliferating due to the ease with which faces can be generated, standardised and manipulated. However there has been surprisingly little research into whether CG faces are processed in the same way as photographs of real faces. The present study assessed how well CG faces tap face identity expertise by investigating whether two indicators of face expertise are reduced for CG faces when compared to face photographs. These indicators were accuracy for identification of own-race faces and the other-race effect (ORE)-the well-established finding that own-race faces are recognised more accurately than other-race faces. In Experiment 1 Caucasian and Asian participants completed a recognition memory task for own- and other-race real and CG faces. Overall accuracy for own-race faces was dramatically reduced for CG compared to real faces and the ORE was significantly and substantially attenuated for CG faces. Experiment 2 investigated perceptual discrimination for own- and other-race real and CG faces with Caucasian and Asian participants. Here again, accuracy for own-race faces was significantly reduced for CG compared to real faces. However the ORE was not affected by format. Together these results signal that CG faces of the type tested here do not fully tap face expertise. Technological advancement may, in the future, produce CG faces that are equivalent to real photographs. Until then caution is advised when interpreting results obtained using CG faces.

Female face preference in 4-month-olds: the importance of hairline.

PubMed

Hillairet de Boisferon, Anne; Uttley, Lesley; Quinn, Paul C; Lee, Kang; Pascalis, Olivier

2014-11-01

At 3-4 months of age, infants respond to gender information in human faces. Specifically, young infants display a visual preference toward female over male faces. In three experiments, using a visual preference task, we investigated the role of hairline information in this bias. In Experiment 1, we presented male and female composite faces with similar hairstyles to 4-month-olds and observed a preference for female faces. In Experiment 2, the faces were presented, but in this instance, without hairline cues, and the preference was eliminated. In Experiment 3, using the same cropping to eliminate hairline cues, but with feminized female faces and masculinized male faces, infants' preference toward female faces was still not in evidence. The findings show that hairline information is important in young infants' preferential orientation toward female faces. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Optimal Eye-Gaze Fixation Position for Face-Related Neural Responses

PubMed Central

Zerouali, Younes; Lina, Jean-Marc; Jemel, Boutheina

2013-01-01

It is generally agreed that some features of a face, namely the eyes, are more salient than others as indexed by behavioral diagnosticity, gaze-fixation patterns and evoked-neural responses. However, because previous studies used unnatural stimuli, there is no evidence so far that the early encoding of a whole face in the human brain is based on the eyes or other facial features. To address this issue, scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye gaze-fixations were recorded simultaneously in a gaze-contingent paradigm while observers viewed faces. We found that the N170 indexing the earliest face-sensitive response in the human brain was the largest when the fixation position is located around the nasion. Interestingly, for inverted faces, this optimal fixation position was more variable, but mainly clustered in the upper part of the visual field (around the mouth). These observations extend the findings of recent behavioral studies, suggesting that the early encoding of a face, as indexed by the N170, is not driven by the eyes per se, but rather arises from a general perceptual setting (upper-visual field advantage) coupled with the alignment of a face stimulus to a stored face template. PMID:23762224

Optimal eye-gaze fixation position for face-related neural responses.

PubMed

Zerouali, Younes; Lina, Jean-Marc; Jemel, Boutheina

2013-01-01

It is generally agreed that some features of a face, namely the eyes, are more salient than others as indexed by behavioral diagnosticity, gaze-fixation patterns and evoked-neural responses. However, because previous studies used unnatural stimuli, there is no evidence so far that the early encoding of a whole face in the human brain is based on the eyes or other facial features. To address this issue, scalp electroencephalogram (EEG) and eye gaze-fixations were recorded simultaneously in a gaze-contingent paradigm while observers viewed faces. We found that the N170 indexing the earliest face-sensitive response in the human brain was the largest when the fixation position is located around the nasion. Interestingly, for inverted faces, this optimal fixation position was more variable, but mainly clustered in the upper part of the visual field (around the mouth). These observations extend the findings of recent behavioral studies, suggesting that the early encoding of a face, as indexed by the N170, is not driven by the eyes per se, but rather arises from a general perceptual setting (upper-visual field advantage) coupled with the alignment of a face stimulus to a stored face template.

Face age modulates gaze following in young adults.

PubMed

Ciardo, Francesca; Marino, Barbara F M; Actis-Grosso, Rossana; Rossetti, Angela; Ricciardelli, Paola

2014-04-22

Gaze-following behaviour is considered crucial for social interactions which are influenced by social similarity. We investigated whether the degree of similarity, as indicated by the perceived age of another person, can modulate gaze following. Participants of three different age-groups (18-25; 35-45; over 65) performed an eye movement (a saccade) towards an instructed target while ignoring the gaze-shift of distracters of different age-ranges (6-10; 18-25; 35-45; over 70). The results show that gaze following was modulated by the distracter face age only for young adults. Particularly, the over 70 year-old distracters exerted the least interference effect. The distracters of a similar age-range as the young adults (18-25; 35-45) had the most effect, indicating a blurred own-age bias (OAB) only for the young age group. These findings suggest that face age can modulate gaze following, but this modulation could be due to factors other than just OAB (e.g., familiarity).

A framework for the recognition of 3D faces and expressions

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Li, Chao; Barreto, Armando

2006-04-01

Face recognition technology has been a focus both in academia and industry for the last couple of years because of its wide potential applications and its importance to meet the security needs of today's world. Most of the systems developed are based on 2D face recognition technology, which uses pictures for data processing. With the development of 3D imaging technology, 3D face recognition emerges as an alternative to overcome the difficulties inherent with 2D face recognition, i.e. sensitivity to illumination conditions and orientation positioning of the subject. But 3D face recognition still needs to tackle the problem of deformation of facial geometry that results from the expression changes of a subject. To deal with this issue, a 3D face recognition framework is proposed in this paper. It is composed of three subsystems: an expression recognition system, a system for the identification of faces with expression, and neutral face recognition system. A system for the recognition of faces with one type of expression (happiness) and neutral faces was implemented and tested on a database of 30 subjects. The results proved the feasibility of this framework.

The role of features and configural processing in face-race classification

PubMed Central

Zhao, Lun; Bentin, Shlomo

2011-01-01

We explored perceptual factors that might account for the other-race classification advantage (ORCA) in classifying faces by race. Testing Chinese participants in China and Israeli participants in Israel we show that: (a) The distinction between Chinese and Israeli faces is highly accurate even on the basis of isolated eyes or faces with eyes concealed, but full faces are categorized faster. (b) The ORCA is similarly robust for full faces and for face parts. (c) The ORCA was larger when the configuration of the inner-face components was distorted, reflecting delayed categorization of own-race distorted faces relative to own-race normally configured faces but no conspicuous distortion effect on other-race faces. These data demonstrate that perceptual factors can account for the ORCA independently of social bias. We suggest that one source of the ORCA in race categorization is the configural analysis applied by default while processing own-race but not other-race faces. PMID:22008980

Issues facing the future health care workforce: the importance of demand modelling.

PubMed

Segal, Leonie; Bolton, Tom

2009-05-07

This article examines issues facing the future health care workforce in Australia in light of factors such as population ageing. It has been argued that population ageing in Australia is affecting the supply of health care professionals as the health workforce ages and at the same time increasing the demand for health care services and the health care workforce.However, the picture is not that simple. The health workforce market in Australia is influenced by a wide range of factors; on the demand side by increasing levels of income and wealth, emergence of new technologies, changing disease profiles, changing public health priorities and a focus on the prevention of chronic disease. While a strong correlation is observed between age and use of health care services (and thus health care workforce), this is mediated through illness, as typified by the consistent finding of higher health care costs in the months preceding death.On the supply side, the health workforce is highly influenced by policy drivers; both national policies (eg funded education and training places) and local policies (eg work place-based retention policies). Population ageing and ageing of the health workforce is not a dominant influence. In recent years, the Australian health care workforce has grown in excess of overall workforce growth, despite an ageing health workforce. We also note that current levels of workforce supply compare favourably with many OECD countries. The future of the health workforce will be shaped by a number of complex interacting factors.Market failure, a key feature of the market for health care services which is also observed in the health care labour market - means that imbalances between demand and supply can develop and persist, and suggests a role for health workforce planning to improve efficiency in the health services sector. Current approaches to health workforce planning, especially on the demand side, tend to be highly simplistic. These include historical

Health issue advertising.

PubMed

Coleman, L J; Haran, E M

1990-01-01

"Americans say that the battle against drugs is the chief issue facing the nation" (McQueen and Shribman, 1989). The Wall Street Journal/NBC poll conducted by Peter Hart and Robert Teeter shows a public willingness to experiment with a wide variety of anti-drug efforts. "No single issue has so riveted the nation's attention since the 1982 recession," Messers. Hart and Teeter say in their analysis of the poll. They add that respondents seem willing to try almost anything to solve the drug problem (ibid). How can and does marketing affect this process? This paper will examine some of the methods and effectiveness of advertising in regard to this very timely health issue and societal challenge. For the purposes of this paper, drug discussions refer to alcohol as well. Social marketing in general will be addressed.

Using alternatives to face-to-face consultations: a survey of prevalence and attitudes in general practice

PubMed Central

Brant, Heather; Atherton, Helen; Ziebland, Sue; McKinstry, Brian; Campbell, John L; Salisbury, Chris

2016-01-01

Background The ubiquitous use of communication technologies has led to an expectation that a similar approach should extend to health care. Despite considerable rhetoric about the need for general practices to offer alternatives to face-to-face consultations, such as telephone, email, and internet video consultations, the extent to which such technologies are actually used at present is unclear. Aim The aim of the survey was to identify the frequency and range of ways in which general practices are providing (or planning) alternatives to face-to-face consultations. Design and setting A postal survey of practices around Bristol, Oxford, Lothian, the Highlands, and the Western Isles of Scotland. Method A postal questionnaire survey was sent to each of the GPs and practice managers of 421 practices between January and May 2015. Results A response was received from 319/421 practices (76%). Although the majority of the practices reported that they were conducting telephone consultations frequently (n = 211/318, 66%), fewer were implementing email consultations (n = 18/318, 6%), and most (n = 169/318, 53%) had no plans to introduce this. None were currently using internet video, and 86% (n = 273/318) had no plans to introduce internet video consultations. These findings were repeated in the reported use of alternatives to face-to-face consultations at an individual GP level. Optional free text responses were completed by 28% of responders, and offered an explanation for the (often perceived) barriers and incentives for implementation. Conclusion Despite policy pressure to introduce consultations by email and internet video, there is a general reluctance among GPs to implement alternatives to face-to-face consultations. This identifies a substantial gap between rhetoric and reality in terms of the likelihood of certain alternatives (email, video) changing practice in the near future. PMID:27215571

Using alternatives to face-to-face consultations: a survey of prevalence and attitudes in general practice.

PubMed

Brant, Heather; Atherton, Helen; Ziebland, Sue; McKinstry, Brian; Campbell, John L; Salisbury, Chris

2016-07-01

The ubiquitous use of communication technologies has led to an expectation that a similar approach should extend to health care. Despite considerable rhetoric about the need for general practices to offer alternatives to face-to-face consultations, such as telephone, email, and internet video consultations, the extent to which such technologies are actually used at present is unclear. The aim of the survey was to identify the frequency and range of ways in which general practices are providing (or planning) alternatives to face-to-face consultations. A postal survey of practices around Bristol, Oxford, Lothian, the Highlands, and the Western Isles of Scotland. A postal questionnaire survey was sent to each of the GPs and practice managers of 421 practices between January and May 2015. A response was received from 319/421 practices (76%). Although the majority of the practices reported that they were conducting telephone consultations frequently (n = 211/318, 66%), fewer were implementing email consultations (n = 18/318, 6%), and most (n = 169/318, 53%) had no plans to introduce this. None were currently using internet video, and 86% (n = 273/318) had no plans to introduce internet video consultations. These findings were repeated in the reported use of alternatives to face-to-face consultations at an individual GP level. Optional free text responses were completed by 28% of responders, and offered an explanation for the (often perceived) barriers and incentives for implementation. Despite policy pressure to introduce consultations by email and internet video, there is a general reluctance among GPs to implement alternatives to face-to-face consultations. This identifies a substantial gap between rhetoric and reality in terms of the likelihood of certain alternatives (email, video) changing practice in the near future. © British Journal of General Practice 2016.

Supplemental Instruction Online: As Effective as the Traditional Face-to-Face Model?

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Hizer, Suzanne E.; Schultz, P. W.; Bray, Richard

2017-02-01

Supplemental Instruction (SI) is a well-recognized model of academic assistance with a history of empirical evidence demonstrating increases in student grades and decreases in failure rates across many higher education institutions. However, as college students become more accustomed to learning in online venues, what is not known is whether an SI program offered online could benefit students similarly to SI sessions that occur in face-to-face settings. The in-person (traditional) SI program at California State University San Marcos has demonstrated increases in grades and lower fail rates for courses being supported in science and math. Students enrolled in four biology courses who participated in online SI received increases in academic performance similar to the students in the courses who attended traditional SI. Both the online and traditional SI participating students had higher course grades and lower fail rates as compared to students who did not participate in either form of SI. Self-selection, as measured by past cumulative college grade point average, did not differ between students who attended either form of SI or who did not attend. Student perceptions of online SI were generally positive and appeared to offer an alternative path to receive this valuable academic assistance for some students. Overall, results are promising that the highly effective traditional model can be translated to an online environment.

Ethics Issues Snare School Leaders

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Borja, Rhea R.

2005-01-01

This article reports on ethics issues involving school leaders. Some superintendents have landed in murky ethical waters for their ties to for-profit companies, highlighting the temptations administrators face as industry and education increasingly intersect. Some questionable judgments by superintendents--from accepting company-paid trips to…

Review of multiple-choice-questions and group performance - A comparison of face-to-face and virtual groups with and without facilitation

PubMed Central

Kazubke, Edda; Schüttpelz-Brauns, Katrin

2010-01-01

Background: Multiple choice questions (MCQs) are often used in exams of medical education and need careful quality management for example by the application of review committees. This study investigates whether groups communicating virtually by email are similar to face-to-face groups concerning their review process performance and whether a facilitator has positive effects. Methods: 16 small groups of students were examined, which had to evaluate and correct MCQs under four different conditions. In the second part of the investigation the changed questions were given to a new random sample for the judgement of the item quality. Results: There was no significant influence of the variables “form of review committee” and “facilitation”. However, face-to-face and virtual groups clearly differed in the required treatment times. The test condition “face to face without facilitation” was generally valued most positively concerning taking over responsibility, approach to work, sense of well-being, motivation and concentration on the task. Discussion: Face-to-face and virtual groups are equally effective in the review of MCQs but differ concerning their efficiency. The application of electronic review seems to be possible but is hardly recommendable because of the long process time and technical problems. PMID:21818213

Labor Issues. Transition Series.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Comptroller General of the U.S., Washington, DC.

Major policy, management, and program issues face the Congress and new administration in the area of labor. Many of the nation's youth are leaving school poorly prepared for the new work world. The nation already has a large group of economically disadvantaged people who lack necessary skills. Annually, 900,000 or more workers are at least…

From Caregivers to Peers: Puberty Shapes Human Face Perception.

PubMed

Picci, Giorgia; Scherf, K Suzanne

2016-11-01

Puberty prepares mammals to sexually reproduce during adolescence. It is also hypothesized to invoke a social metamorphosis that prepares adolescents to take on adult social roles. We provide the first evidence to support this hypothesis in humans and show that pubertal development retunes the face-processing system from a caregiver bias to a peer bias. Prior to puberty, children exhibit enhanced recognition for adult female faces. With puberty, superior recognition emerges for peer faces that match one's pubertal status. As puberty progresses, so does the peer recognition bias. Adolescents become better at recognizing faces with a pubertal status similar to their own. These findings reconceptualize the adolescent "dip" in face recognition by showing that it is a recalibration of the face-processing system away from caregivers toward peers. Thus, in addition to preparing the physical body for sexual reproduction, puberty shapes the perceptual system for processing the social world in new ways. © The Author(s) 2016.

Looking Back to the Future: Current Issues Facing Nursing Education From the Reflections of a Member of the Silent Generation.

PubMed

Keating, Sarah B

2016-07-01

As a member of the Silent Generation, the author, through her lived experiences, reflects upon the successes and challenges facing nursing education in the mid-20th to 21st centuries. The author looks "back to the future" and reviews current issues that surround four key nursing education milestones. From the early entry-level baccalaureate programs in the 1950s to the current growth of the Doctor of Nursing Practice as entry into advanced practice, milestones in nursing education are linked to the cultural changes and healthcare system demands that took place at the time and their influence on nursing education and the profession. Looking to the future, the author speaks of the implications from the forecasted changes in the healthcare system that will demand interdisciplinary education and practice and the continued need for nursing research to increase the body of scientific knowledge in practice, education, and technology. Keating. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

A Method for En Face OCT Imaging of Subretinal Fluid in Age-Related Macular Degeneration

PubMed Central

Mohammad, Fatimah; Wanek, Justin; Zelkha, Ruth; Lim, Jennifer I.; Chen, Judy; Shahidi, Mahnaz

2014-01-01

Purpose. The purpose of the study is to report a method for en face imaging of subretinal fluid (SRF) due to age-related macular degeneration (AMD) based on spectral domain optical coherence tomography (SDOCT). Methods. High density SDOCT imaging was performed at two visits in 4 subjects with neovascular AMD and one healthy subject. En face OCT images of a retinal layer anterior to the retinal pigment epithelium were generated. Validity, repeatability, and utility of the method were established. Results. En face OCT images generated by manual and automatic segmentation were nearly indistinguishable and displayed similar regions of SRF. En face OCT images displayed uniform intensities and similar retinal vascular patterns in a healthy subject, while the size and appearance of a hypopigmented fibrotic scar in an AMD subject were similar at 2 visits. In AMD subjects, dark regions on en face OCT images corresponded to reduced or absent light reflectance due to SRF. On en face OCT images, a decrease in SRF areas with treatment was demonstrated and this corresponded with a reduction in the central subfield retinal thickness. Conclusion. En face OCT imaging is a promising tool for visualization and monitoring of SRF area due to disease progression and treatment. PMID:25478209

Survivorship in Non-Small Cell Lung Cancer: Challenges Faced and Steps Forward.

PubMed

Vijayvergia, Namrata; Shah, Prashant C; Denlinger, Crystal S

2015-09-01

Improvements in curative therapies and the advent of screening have led to increased numbers of non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) survivors. Most survivors have undergone invasive treatment (surgery, radiation therapy, and/or chemotherapy) and carry a higher comorbidity burden than survivors of other cancers. Overall quality of life (QOL) and health-related quality of life (HRQOL) suffer during the treatment phase, with the potential for long-term decline, and both clinical characteristics and treatment impact these measures. Physical and mental components of HRQOL seem to be most at risk for decline. The issues faced by survivors include physical symptoms such as respiratory issues, fatigue, hearing loss, neuropathy, and postsurgical pain; psychological distress leading to depression, financial issues, and poor compliance with recommended guidelines; and fear or risk of recurrence and secondary malignancies. This article summarizes the major issues faced by NSCLC survivors and suggests appropriate management. Future collaborative efforts are needed to further elucidate the complex issues that affect overall QOL and HRQOL in NSCLC survivors and to develop appropriate interventions in this large and diverse survivor population. Copyright © 2015 by the National Comprehensive Cancer Network.

Changing Faces: The Early Childhood Profession in Australia.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lambert, Beverley, Ed.

This collection of 14 essays addresses the changes and challenges that the early childhood education profession in Australia has faced in recent years, and covers a wide range of important issues of particular relevance to the preparation of early childhood professionals. The essays are: (1) "The Changing Ecology of Australian Childhood"…

Food for Thought. The Changing Face of CTE

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mischel, Susan

2005-01-01

As a former career and technical education teacher, this author was often faced with the issue of students segregating themselves by culture. This article describes how she managed to break down cultural barriers and prejudice through teamwork, cooking, and class goals set with high expectations. The course she offered included student "ownership"…

Impaired holistic processing of unfamiliar individual faces in acquired prosopagnosia.

PubMed

Ramon, Meike; Busigny, Thomas; Rossion, Bruno

2010-03-01

Prosopagnosia is an impairment at individualizing faces that classically follows brain damage. Several studies have reported observations supporting an impairment of holistic/configural face processing in acquired prosopagnosia. However, this issue may require more compelling evidence as the cases reported were generally patients suffering from integrative visual agnosia, and the sensitivity of the paradigms used to measure holistic/configural face processing in normal individuals remains unclear. Here we tested a well-characterized case of acquired prosopagnosia (PS) with no object recognition impairment, in five behavioral experiments (whole/part and composite face paradigms with unfamiliar faces). In all experiments, for normal observers we found that processing of a given facial feature was affected by the location and identity of the other features in a whole face configuration. In contrast, the patient's results over these experiments indicate that she encodes local facial information independently of the other features embedded in the whole facial context. These observations and a survey of the literature indicate that abnormal holistic processing of the individual face may be a characteristic hallmark of prosopagnosia following brain damage, perhaps with various degrees of severity. Copyright (c) 2009 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Vocational Education in the 1990s: Major Issues.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Pautler, Albert J., Jr., Ed.

This book is designed to present issues facing vocational education today and in the immediate future and to serve as a potential agenda for confronting these issues and assisting in responsible and responsive policy development, financing, research, and operation of vocational education programs in the 1990s. The 14 chapters are as follows:…

HYPOTHESIS TESTING WITH THE SIMILARITY INDEX

EPA Science Inventory

Mulltilocus DNA fingerprinting methods have been used extensively to address genetic issues in wildlife populations. Hypotheses concerning population subdivision and differing levels of diversity can be addressed through the use of the similarity index (S), a band-sharing coeffic...

Familiarity and face emotion recognition in patients with schizophrenia.

PubMed

Lahera, Guillermo; Herrera, Sara; Fernández, Cristina; Bardón, Marta; de los Ángeles, Victoria; Fernández-Liria, Alberto

2014-01-01

To assess the emotion recognition in familiar and unknown faces in a sample of schizophrenic patients and healthy controls. Face emotion recognition of 18 outpatients diagnosed with schizophrenia (DSM-IVTR) and 18 healthy volunteers was assessed with two Emotion Recognition Tasks using familiar faces and unknown faces. Each subject was accompanied by 4 familiar people (parents, siblings or friends), which were photographed by expressing the 6 Ekman's basic emotions. Face emotion recognition in familiar faces was assessed with this ad hoc instrument. In each case, the patient scored (from 1 to 10) the subjective familiarity and affective valence corresponding to each person. Patients with schizophrenia not only showed a deficit in the recognition of emotions on unknown faces (p=.01), but they also showed an even more pronounced deficit on familiar faces (p=.001). Controls had a similar success rate in the unknown faces task (mean: 18 +/- 2.2) and the familiar face task (mean: 17.4 +/- 3). However, patients had a significantly lower score in the familiar faces task (mean: 13.2 +/- 3.8) than in the unknown faces task (mean: 16 +/- 2.4; p<.05). In both tests, the highest number of errors was with emotions of anger and fear. Subjectively, the patient group showed a lower level of familiarity and emotional valence to their respective relatives (p<.01). The sense of familiarity may be a factor involved in the face emotion recognition and it may be disturbed in schizophrenia. © 2013.

Housing issues and realities facing grandparent caregivers who are renters.

PubMed

Fuller-Thomson, Esme; Minkler, Meredith

2003-02-01

This study determined the prevalence of grandparents raising grandchildren who are living in rental housing and explored the sociodemographic characteristics and challenges faced by such renters. Data were obtained from the Census 2000 Supplementary Survey, a nationally representative survey of 700,000 households with a response rate of 96.8%. Frequencies and bivariate analyses were focused on the 2,639 respondents who were grandparent caregiver renters. Of the 2,350,000 grandparent caregivers in the United States in 2000, 26% were renters, almost one third of whom were spending 30% or more of their income on rent. For the quarter of a million grandparent caregiver renters living below the poverty line, 60% were spending at least 30% of their household income on rent and 3 of 10 were living in overcrowded conditions. Grandparent caregivers who are renters represent a particularly vulnerable population. The need for further research, policy, and programs for this group is discussed.

Key Issues in Instructional Computer Graphics.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wozny, Michael J.

1981-01-01

Addresses key issues facing universities which plan to establish instructional computer graphics facilities, including computer-aided design/computer aided manufacturing systems, role in curriculum, hardware, software, writing instructional software, faculty involvement, operations, and research. Thirty-seven references and two appendices are…

Not just the norm: exemplar-based models also predict face aftereffects.

PubMed

Ross, David A; Deroche, Mickael; Palmeri, Thomas J

2014-02-01

The face recognition literature has considered two competing accounts of how faces are represented within the visual system: Exemplar-based models assume that faces are represented via their similarity to exemplars of previously experienced faces, while norm-based models assume that faces are represented with respect to their deviation from an average face, or norm. Face identity aftereffects have been taken as compelling evidence in favor of a norm-based account over an exemplar-based account. After a relatively brief period of adaptation to an adaptor face, the perceived identity of a test face is shifted toward a face with attributes opposite to those of the adaptor, suggesting an explicit psychological representation of the norm. Surprisingly, despite near universal recognition that face identity aftereffects imply norm-based coding, there have been no published attempts to simulate the predictions of norm- and exemplar-based models in face adaptation paradigms. Here, we implemented and tested variations of norm and exemplar models. Contrary to common claims, our simulations revealed that both an exemplar-based model and a version of a two-pool norm-based model, but not a traditional norm-based model, predict face identity aftereffects following face adaptation.

Not Just the Norm: Exemplar-Based Models also Predict Face Aftereffects

PubMed Central

Ross, David A.; Deroche, Mickael; Palmeri, Thomas J.

2014-01-01

The face recognition literature has considered two competing accounts of how faces are represented within the visual system: Exemplar-based models assume that faces are represented via their similarity to exemplars of previously experienced faces, while norm-based models assume that faces are represented with respect to their deviation from an average face, or norm. Face identity aftereffects have been taken as compelling evidence in favor of a norm-based account over an exemplar-based account. After a relatively brief period of adaptation to an adaptor face, the perceived identity of a test face is shifted towards a face with opposite attributes to the adaptor, suggesting an explicit psychological representation of the norm. Surprisingly, despite near universal recognition that face identity aftereffects imply norm-based coding, there have been no published attempts to simulate the predictions of norm- and exemplar-based models in face adaptation paradigms. Here we implemented and tested variations of norm and exemplar models. Contrary to common claims, our simulations revealed that both an exemplar-based model and a version of a two-pool norm-based model, but not a traditional norm-based model, predict face identity aftereffects following face adaptation. PMID:23690282

Face-space: A unifying concept in face recognition research.

PubMed

Valentine, Tim; Lewis, Michael B; Hills, Peter J

2016-10-01

The concept of a multidimensional psychological space, in which faces can be represented according to their perceived properties, is fundamental to the modern theorist in face processing. Yet the idea was not clearly expressed until 1991. The background that led to the development of face-space is explained, and its continuing influence on theories of face processing is discussed. Research that has explored the properties of the face-space and sought to understand caricature, including facial adaptation paradigms, is reviewed. Face-space as a theoretical framework for understanding the effect of ethnicity and the development of face recognition is evaluated. Finally, two applications of face-space in the forensic setting are discussed. From initially being presented as a model to explain distinctiveness, inversion, and the effect of ethnicity, face-space has become a central pillar in many aspects of face processing. It is currently being developed to help us understand adaptation effects with faces. While being in principle a simple concept, face-space has shaped, and continues to shape, our understanding of face perception.

Recognition memory is modulated by visual similarity.

PubMed

Yago, Elena; Ishai, Alumit

2006-06-01

We used event-related fMRI to test whether recognition memory depends on visual similarity between familiar prototypes and novel exemplars. Subjects memorized portraits, landscapes, and abstract compositions by six painters with a unique style, and later performed a memory recognition task. The prototypes were presented with new exemplars that were either visually similar or dissimilar. Behaviorally, novel, dissimilar items were detected faster and more accurately. We found activation in a distributed cortical network that included face- and object-selective regions in the visual cortex, where familiar prototypes evoked stronger responses than new exemplars; attention-related regions in parietal cortex, where responses elicited by new exemplars were reduced with decreased similarity to the prototypes; and the hippocampus and memory-related regions in parietal and prefrontal cortices, where stronger responses were evoked by the dissimilar exemplars. Our findings suggest that recognition memory is mediated by classification of novel exemplars as a match or a mismatch, based on their visual similarity to familiar prototypes.

Women with epilepsy: clinically relevant issues

PubMed Central

Bangar, Santosh; Shastri, Abhishek; El-Sayeh, Hany; Cavanna, Andrea E.

2016-01-01

Summary Women with epilepsy (WWE) face specific challenges throughout their lifespan due to the effects of seizures and antiepileptic drugs on hormonal function, potentially affecting both sexual and reproductive health. This review article addresses the most common issues of practical relevance to clinicians treating WWE: epidemiology and clinical presentations (including catamenial epilepsy), contraception, reproductive and sexual dysfunction, pregnancy, lactation, menopause-related issues (including bone health), and mental health aspects. Awareness of these gender-specific issues and implementation/adaptation of effective interventions for WWE results in significantly improved health-related quality of life in this patient population. PMID:27678205

Addressing Physical and Emotional Issues in Children's Literature

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Johnson, Jonathon

2010-01-01

The purpose of this paper is to examine how physical and mental disabilities are addressed in children's literature. Many authors are able to integrate the issues into their work in a way that enhances the story and benefits the reader. As young readers learn about the issues and struggles faced by children with mental and physical disabilities,…

Last Breath: Art Therapy with a Lung Cancer Patient Facing Imminent Death

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Furman, Lisa R.

2011-01-01

Art therapy can be an effective way to focus on end of life issues with cancer patients facing imminent death. This viewpoint discusses ethical challenges in the treatment of a 63-year-old man with terminal lung cancer who was participating in short-term individual art therapy. Difficult issues that often surface in the final days of life may…

Comparing the visual spans for faces and letters

PubMed Central

He, Yingchen; Scholz, Jennifer M.; Gage, Rachel; Kallie, Christopher S.; Liu, Tingting; Legge, Gordon E.

2015-01-01

The visual span—the number of adjacent text letters that can be reliably recognized on one fixation—has been proposed as a sensory bottleneck that limits reading speed (Legge, Mansfield, & Chung, 2001). Like reading, searching for a face is an important daily task that involves pattern recognition. Is there a similar limitation on the number of faces that can be recognized in a single fixation? Here we report on a study in which we measured and compared the visual-span profiles for letter and face recognition. A serial two-stage model for pattern recognition was developed to interpret the data. The first stage is characterized by factors limiting recognition of isolated letters or faces, and the second stage represents the interfering effect of nearby stimuli on recognition. Our findings show that the visual span for faces is smaller than that for letters. Surprisingly, however, when differences in first-stage processing for letters and faces are accounted for, the two visual spans become nearly identical. These results suggest that the concept of visual span may describe a common sensory bottleneck that underlies different types of pattern recognition. PMID:26129858

Face-space architectures: evidence for the use of independent color-based features.

PubMed

Nestor, Adrian; Plaut, David C; Behrmann, Marlene

2013-07-01

The concept of psychological face space lies at the core of many theories of face recognition and representation. To date, much of the understanding of face space has been based on principal component analysis (PCA); the structure of the psychological space is thought to reflect some important aspects of a physical face space characterized by PCA applications to face images. In the present experiments, we investigated alternative accounts of face space and found that independent component analysis provided the best fit to human judgments of face similarity and identification. Thus, our results challenge an influential approach to the study of human face space and provide evidence for the role of statistically independent features in face encoding. In addition, our findings support the use of color information in the representation of facial identity, and we thus argue for the inclusion of such information in theoretical and computational constructs of face space.

Seeing faces is necessary for face-domain formation.

PubMed

Arcaro, Michael J; Schade, Peter F; Vincent, Justin L; Ponce, Carlos R; Livingstone, Margaret S

2017-10-01

Here we report that monkeys raised without exposure to faces did not develop face domains, but did develop domains for other categories and did show normal retinotopic organization, indicating that early face deprivation leads to a highly selective cortical processing deficit. Therefore, experience must be necessary for the formation (or maintenance) of face domains. Gaze tracking revealed that control monkeys looked preferentially at faces, even at ages prior to the emergence of face domains, but face-deprived monkeys did not, indicating that face looking is not innate. A retinotopic organization is present throughout the visual system at birth, so selective early viewing behavior could bias category-specific visual responses toward particular retinotopic representations, thereby leading to domain formation in stereotyped locations in inferotemporal cortex, without requiring category-specific templates or biases. Thus, we propose that environmental importance influences viewing behavior, viewing behavior drives neuronal activity, and neuronal activity sculpts domain formation.

Beyond Academics: Challenging Issues Facing Community College Non-Academic Support Services

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Mitchell, Judith Lynn

2012-01-01

This research focused on identifying and exploring the significant current and emerging community college non-academic support service issues. These auxiliary services, not unlike academic or student affairs, support the community college mission and vision as well as students' academic success. Since December 2007, Americans have been…

Is Education Facing a "Tech Bubble"?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Davis, Michelle R.

2013-01-01

Educational technology companies and entrepreneurs may face the risk of a "tech bubble," similar to the massive boom-and-bust that rocked the technology market in the late 1990s, according to market analysts and a recently released paper. A relatively new focus on K-12 educational technology as an investment vehicle, a surge of investors looking…

Finding Hope in the Face-to-Face.

PubMed

Edgoose, Jennifer Y C; Edgoose, Julian M

2017-05-01

What does it mean to look into the face of a patient who looks back? Face-to-face encounters are at the heart of the patient-clinician relationship but their singular significance is often lost amid the demands of today's high-tech, metric-driven health care systems. Using the framework provided by the philosopher and Holocaust survivor Emmanuel Levinas, the authors explore the unique responsibility and potential for hope found only in face-to-face encounters. Revisiting this most fundamental attribute of medicine is likely our greatest chance to reclaim who we are as clinicians and why we do what we do. © 2017 Annals of Family Medicine, Inc.

An appreciation of Bruce and Young's (1986) serial stage model of face naming after 25 years.

PubMed

Hanley, J Richard

2011-11-01

The current status of Bruce and Young's (1986) serial model of face naming is discussed 25 years after its original publication. In the first part of the paper, evidence for and against the serial model is reviewed. It is argued that there is no compelling reason why we should abandon Bruce and Young's claim that recall of a name is contingent upon prior retrieval of semantic information about the person. The current status of the claim that people's names are more difficult to recall than the names of objects is then evaluated. Finally, an account of the anatomical location in the brain of Bruce and Young's three processing stages (face familiarity, retrieval of semantic information, retrieval of names) is suggested. In particular, there is evidence that biographical knowledge about familiar people is stored in the right anterior temporal lobes (ATL) and that the left temporal pole (TP) is heavily involved in retrieval of the names of familiar people. The issue of whether these brain areas play a similar role in object processing is also discussed. ©2011 The British Psychological Society.

Similarity constraints in testing of cooled engine parts

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Colladay, R. S.; Stepka, F. S.

1974-01-01

A study is made of the effect of testing cooled parts of current and advanced gas turbine engines at the reduced temperature and pressure conditions which maintain similarity with the engine environment. Some of the problems facing the experimentalist in evaluating heat transfer and aerodynamic performance when hardware is tested at conditions other than the actual engine environment are considered. Low temperature and pressure test environments can simulate the performance of actual size prototype engine hardware within the tolerance of experimental accuracy if appropriate similarity conditions are satisfied. Failure to adhere to these similarity constraints because of test facility limitations or other reasons, can result in a number of serious errors in projecting the performance of test hardware to engine conditions.

Acceptability of psychological treatment to Chinese- and Caucasian-Australians: Internet treatment reduces barriers but face-to-face care is preferred.

PubMed

Choi, Isabella; Sharpe, Louise; Li, Stephen; Hunt, Caroline

2015-01-01

Internet treatments have the potential to improve access, especially for cultural groups who face considerable treatment barriers. This study explored the perceived barriers and likelihood of using Internet and face-to-face treatments for depression among Chinese and Caucasian Australian participants. Three-hundred ninety-five (289 Chinese, 106 Caucasian) primary care patients completed a questionnaire about depression history, previous help-seeking, perceived barriers to Internet and face-to-face treatment, and likelihood of using either treatment for depressive symptoms. Internet treatment reduced perceived barriers (including stigma, lack of motivation, concerns of bringing up upsetting feelings, time constraints, transport difficulties, and cost) for both groups to a similar degree, except for time constraints. There were heightened concerns about the helpfulness, suitability, and confidentiality of Internet treatments. Chinese participants and individuals with a probable depression history reported increased perceived barriers across treatments. Both Chinese and Caucasian groups preferred face-to-face treatment across depression severity. However, when age was controlled, there were no significant concerns about Internet treatment, and face-to-face treatment was only preferred for severe depression. Only 12 % of the entire sample refused to try Internet treatment for depression. Endorsement of perceived Internet treatment barriers (including concerns of bringing up upsetting feelings, that treatment would be unhelpful or unsuitable, lack of motivation, cost, cultural sensitivity, and confidentiality) reduced the likelihood to try Internet treatments. Internet treatment reduced perceived treatment barriers across groups, with encouraging support for Internet treatment as an acceptable form of receiving help. Negative concerns about Internet treatment need to be addressed to encourage use.

Seeing faces is necessary for face-patch formation

PubMed Central

Arcaro, Michael J.; Schade, Peter F.; Vincent, Justin L.; Ponce, Carlos R.; Livingstone, Margaret S.

2017-01-01

Here we report that monkeys raised without exposure to faces did not develop face patches, but did develop domains for other categories, and did show normal retinotopic organization, indicating that early face deprivation leads to a highly selective cortical processing deficit. Therefore experience must be necessary for the formation, or maintenance, of face domains. Gaze tracking revealed that control monkeys looked preferentially at faces, even at ages prior to the emergence of face patches, but face-deprived monkeys did not, indicating that face looking is not innate. A retinotopic organization is present throughout the visual system at birth, so selective early viewing behavior could bias category-specific visual responses towards particular retinotopic representations, thereby leading to domain formation in stereotyped locations in IT, without requiring category-specific templates or biases. Thus we propose that environmental importance influences viewing behavior, viewing behavior drives neuronal activity, and neuronal activity sculpts domain formation. PMID:28869581

Bayesian Face Recognition and Perceptual Narrowing in Face-Space

PubMed Central

Balas, Benjamin

2012-01-01

During the first year of life, infants’ face recognition abilities are subject to “perceptual narrowing,” the end result of which is that observers lose the ability to distinguish previously discriminable faces (e.g. other-race faces) from one another. Perceptual narrowing has been reported for faces of different species and different races, in developing humans and primates. Though the phenomenon is highly robust and replicable, there have been few efforts to model the emergence of perceptual narrowing as a function of the accumulation of experience with faces during infancy. The goal of the current study is to examine how perceptual narrowing might manifest as statistical estimation in “face space,” a geometric framework for describing face recognition that has been successfully applied to adult face perception. Here, I use a computer vision algorithm for Bayesian face recognition to study how the acquisition of experience in face space and the presence of race categories affect performance for own and other-race faces. Perceptual narrowing follows from the establishment of distinct race categories, suggesting that the acquisition of category boundaries for race is a key computational mechanism in developing face expertise. PMID:22709406

Four Issues in Teacher Inservice Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Butler, Loretta

The problems facing implementation of a sound inservice program are examined from diverse viewpoints. Selective samples from policy papers by relevant educational institutions and organizations are analyzed. These papers present some consensus and some conflicting perceptions on the issues of shared governance, program content, resource…

Ethical Issues Relating to Living Organ Donation in China.

PubMed

Wu, Y; Yang, T; Li, L; Ma, W

2016-01-01

Although great developments have been made in living organ donation, the ethical issues relating to living organ donation still face dilemmas in China. In this report, we discuss several ethical issues concerning living organ donation in China. It is argued that living organ donation in China could make further progress if the ethical issues proposed in this report are carefully considered. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Contributions of individual face features to face discrimination.

PubMed

Logan, Andrew J; Gordon, Gael E; Loffler, Gunter

2017-08-01

Faces are highly complex stimuli that contain a host of information. Such complexity poses the following questions: (a) do observers exhibit preferences for specific information? (b) how does sensitivity to individual face parts compare? These questions were addressed by quantifying sensitivity to different face features. Discrimination thresholds were determined for synthetic faces under the following conditions: (i) 'full face': all face features visible; (ii) 'isolated feature': single feature presented in isolation; (iii) 'embedded feature': all features visible, but only one feature modified. Mean threshold elevations for isolated features, relative to full-faces, were 0.84x, 1.08, 2.12, 3.34, 4.07 and 4.47 for head-shape, hairline, nose, mouth, eyes and eyebrows respectively. Hence, when two full faces can be discriminated at threshold, the difference between the eyes is about four times less than what is required when discriminating between isolated eyes. In all cases, sensitivity was higher when features were presented in isolation than when they were embedded within a face context (threshold elevations of 0.94x, 1.74, 2.67, 2.90, 5.94 and 9.94). This reveals a specific pattern of sensitivity to face information. Observers are between two and four times more sensitive to external than internal features. The pattern for internal features (higher sensitivity for the nose, compared to mouth, eyes and eyebrows) is consistent with lower sensitivity for those parts affected by facial dynamics (e.g. facial expressions). That isolated features are easier to discriminate than embedded features supports a holistic face processing mechanism which impedes extraction of information about individual features from full faces. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Issues facing the future health care workforce: the importance of demand modelling

PubMed Central

Segal, Leonie; Bolton, Tom

2009-01-01

This article examines issues facing the future health care workforce in Australia in light of factors such as population ageing. It has been argued that population ageing in Australia is affecting the supply of health care professionals as the health workforce ages and at the same time increasing the demand for health care services and the health care workforce. However, the picture is not that simple. The health workforce market in Australia is influenced by a wide range of factors; on the demand side by increasing levels of income and wealth, emergence of new technologies, changing disease profiles, changing public health priorities and a focus on the prevention of chronic disease. While a strong correlation is observed between age and use of health care services (and thus health care workforce), this is mediated through illness, as typified by the consistent finding of higher health care costs in the months preceding death. On the supply side, the health workforce is highly influenced by policy drivers; both national policies (eg funded education and training places) and local policies (eg work place-based retention policies). Population ageing and ageing of the health workforce is not a dominant influence. In recent years, the Australian health care workforce has grown in excess of overall workforce growth, despite an ageing health workforce. We also note that current levels of workforce supply compare favourably with many OECD countries. The future of the health workforce will be shaped by a number of complex interacting factors. Market failure, a key feature of the market for health care services which is also observed in the health care labour market – means that imbalances between demand and supply can develop and persist, and suggests a role for health workforce planning to improve efficiency in the health services sector. Current approaches to health workforce planning, especially on the demand side, tend to be highly simplistic. These include

Source Reconstruction of Brain Potentials Using Bayesian Model Averaging to Analyze Face Intra-Domain vs. Face-Occupation Cross-Domain Processing

PubMed Central

Olivares, Ela I.; Lage-Castellanos, Agustín; Bobes, María A.; Iglesias, Jaime

2018-01-01

We investigated the neural correlates of the access to and retrieval of face structure information in contrast to those concerning the access to and retrieval of person-related verbal information, triggered by faces. We experimentally induced stimulus familiarity via a systematic learning procedure including faces with and without associated verbal information. Then, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in both intra-domain (face-feature) and cross-domain (face-occupation) matching tasks while N400-like responses were elicited by incorrect eyes-eyebrows completions and occupations, respectively. A novel Bayesian source reconstruction approach plus conjunction analysis of group effects revealed that in both cases the generated N170s were of similar amplitude but had different neural origin. Thus, whereas the N170 of faces was associated predominantly to right fusiform and occipital regions (the so-called “Fusiform Face Area”, “FFA” and “Occipital Face Area”, “OFA”, respectively), the N170 of occupations was associated to a bilateral very posterior activity, suggestive of basic perceptual processes. Importantly, the right-sided perceptual P200 and the face-related N250 were evoked exclusively in the intra-domain task, with sources in OFA and extensively in the fusiform region, respectively. Regarding later latencies, the intra-domain N400 seemed to be generated in right posterior brain regions encompassing mainly OFA and, to some extent, the FFA, likely reflecting neural operations triggered by structural incongruities. In turn, the cross-domain N400 was related to more anterior left-sided fusiform and temporal inferior sources, paralleling those described previously for the classic verbal N400. These results support the existence of differentiated neural streams for face structure and person-related verbal processing triggered by faces, which can be activated differentially according to specific task demands. PMID:29628877

Source Reconstruction of Brain Potentials Using Bayesian Model Averaging to Analyze Face Intra-Domain vs. Face-Occupation Cross-Domain Processing.

PubMed

Olivares, Ela I; Lage-Castellanos, Agustín; Bobes, María A; Iglesias, Jaime

2018-01-01

We investigated the neural correlates of the access to and retrieval of face structure information in contrast to those concerning the access to and retrieval of person-related verbal information, triggered by faces. We experimentally induced stimulus familiarity via a systematic learning procedure including faces with and without associated verbal information. Then, we recorded event-related potentials (ERPs) in both intra-domain (face-feature) and cross-domain (face-occupation) matching tasks while N400-like responses were elicited by incorrect eyes-eyebrows completions and occupations, respectively. A novel Bayesian source reconstruction approach plus conjunction analysis of group effects revealed that in both cases the generated N170s were of similar amplitude but had different neural origin. Thus, whereas the N170 of faces was associated predominantly to right fusiform and occipital regions (the so-called "Fusiform Face Area", "FFA" and "Occipital Face Area", "OFA", respectively), the N170 of occupations was associated to a bilateral very posterior activity, suggestive of basic perceptual processes. Importantly, the right-sided perceptual P200 and the face-related N250 were evoked exclusively in the intra-domain task, with sources in OFA and extensively in the fusiform region, respectively. Regarding later latencies, the intra-domain N400 seemed to be generated in right posterior brain regions encompassing mainly OFA and, to some extent, the FFA, likely reflecting neural operations triggered by structural incongruities. In turn, the cross-domain N400 was related to more anterior left-sided fusiform and temporal inferior sources, paralleling those described previously for the classic verbal N400. These results support the existence of differentiated neural streams for face structure and person-related verbal processing triggered by faces, which can be activated differentially according to specific task demands.

Successful Decoding of Famous Faces in the Fusiform Face Area

PubMed Central

Axelrod, Vadim; Yovel, Galit

2015-01-01

What are the neural mechanisms of face recognition? It is believed that the network of face-selective areas, which spans the occipital, temporal, and frontal cortices, is important in face recognition. A number of previous studies indeed reported that face identity could be discriminated based on patterns of multivoxel activity in the fusiform face area and the anterior temporal lobe. However, given the difficulty in localizing the face-selective area in the anterior temporal lobe, its role in face recognition is still unknown. Furthermore, previous studies limited their analysis to occipito-temporal regions without testing identity decoding in more anterior face-selective regions, such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. In the current high-resolution functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study, we systematically examined the decoding of the identity of famous faces in the temporo-frontal network of face-selective and adjacent non-face-selective regions. A special focus has been put on the face-area in the anterior temporal lobe, which was reliably localized using an optimized scanning protocol. We found that face-identity could be discriminated above chance level only in the fusiform face area. Our results corroborate the role of the fusiform face area in face recognition. Future studies are needed to further explore the role of the more recently discovered anterior face-selective areas in face recognition. PMID:25714434

Successful decoding of famous faces in the fusiform face area.

PubMed

Axelrod, Vadim; Yovel, Galit

2015-01-01

What are the neural mechanisms of face recognition? It is believed that the network of face-selective areas, which spans the occipital, temporal, and frontal cortices, is important in face recognition. A number of previous studies indeed reported that face identity could be discriminated based on patterns of multivoxel activity in the fusiform face area and the anterior temporal lobe. However, given the difficulty in localizing the face-selective area in the anterior temporal lobe, its role in face recognition is still unknown. Furthermore, previous studies limited their analysis to occipito-temporal regions without testing identity decoding in more anterior face-selective regions, such as the amygdala and prefrontal cortex. In the current high-resolution functional Magnetic Resonance Imaging study, we systematically examined the decoding of the identity of famous faces in the temporo-frontal network of face-selective and adjacent non-face-selective regions. A special focus has been put on the face-area in the anterior temporal lobe, which was reliably localized using an optimized scanning protocol. We found that face-identity could be discriminated above chance level only in the fusiform face area. Our results corroborate the role of the fusiform face area in face recognition. Future studies are needed to further explore the role of the more recently discovered anterior face-selective areas in face recognition.

Issues in the Management of Distance Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Murgatroyd, Stephen; Woudstra, Andrew

1989-01-01

Examines key issues facing administrators at Athabasca University and discusses their implications for distance education organizations. Topics discussed include strategic planning; accountability and cost effectiveness; consortia and cooperation; instructional design; managing technological innovation; marketing; quality assurance; and…

Autistic traits are linked to reduced adaptive coding of face identity and selectively poorer face recognition in men but not women.

PubMed

Rhodes, Gillian; Jeffery, Linda; Taylor, Libby; Ewing, Louise

2013-11-01

Our ability to discriminate and recognize thousands of faces despite their similarity as visual patterns relies on adaptive, norm-based, coding mechanisms that are continuously updated by experience. Reduced adaptive coding of face identity has been proposed as a neurocognitive endophenotype for autism, because it is found in autism and in relatives of individuals with autism. Autistic traits can also extend continuously into the general population, raising the possibility that reduced adaptive coding of face identity may be more generally associated with autistic traits. In the present study, we investigated whether adaptive coding of face identity decreases as autistic traits increase in an undergraduate population. Adaptive coding was measured using face identity aftereffects, and autistic traits were measured using the Autism-Spectrum Quotient (AQ) and its subscales. We also measured face and car recognition ability to determine whether autistic traits are selectively related to face recognition difficulties. We found that men who scored higher on levels of autistic traits related to social interaction had reduced adaptive coding of face identity. This result is consistent with the idea that atypical adaptive face-coding mechanisms are an endophenotype for autism. Autistic traits were also linked with face-selective recognition difficulties in men. However, there were some unexpected sex differences. In women, autistic traits were linked positively, rather than negatively, with adaptive coding of identity, and were unrelated to face-selective recognition difficulties. These sex differences indicate that autistic traits can have different neurocognitive correlates in men and women and raise the intriguing possibility that endophenotypes of autism can differ in males and females. © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Management challenges faced by managers of New Zealand long-term care facilities.

PubMed

Madas, E; North, N

2000-01-01

This article reports on a postal survey of 78 long-term care managers in one region of New Zealand, of whom 45 (58%) responded. Most long-term care managers (73.2%) were middle-aged females holding nursing but not management qualifications. Most long-term care facilities (69%) tended to be stand-alone facilities providing a single type of care (rest home or continuing care hospital). The most prominent issues facing managers were considered to be inadequate funding to match the growing costs of providing long-term care and occupancy levels. Managers believed that political/regulatory, economic and social factors influenced these issues. Despite a turbulent health care environment and the challenges facing managers, long-term care managers reported they were coping well and valued networking.

Exploring the perceptual spaces of faces, cars and birds in children and adults

PubMed Central

Tanaka, James W.; Meixner, Tamara L.; Kantner, Justin

2011-01-01

While much developmental research has focused on the strategies that children employ to recognize faces, less is known about the principles governing the organization of face exemplars in perceptual memory. In this study, we tested a novel, child-friendly paradigm for investigating the organization of face, bird and car exemplars. Children ages 3–4, 5–6, 7–8, 9–10, 11–12 and adults were presented with 50/50 morphs of typical and atypical face, bird and car parent images. Participants were asked to judge whether the 50/50 morph more strongly resembled the typical or the atypical parent image. Young and older children and adults showed a systematic bias to the atypical faces and birds, but no bias toward the atypical cars. Collectively, these findings argue that by the age of 3, children encode and organize faces, birds and cars in a perceptual space that is strikingly similar to that of adults. Category organization for both children and adults follows Krumhansl’s (1978) distance-density principle in which the similarity between two exemplars is jointly determined by their physical appearance and the density of neighboring exemplars in the perceptual space. PMID:21676096

Cross-modal face recognition using multi-matcher face scores

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Zheng, Yufeng; Blasch, Erik

2015-05-01

The performance of face recognition can be improved using information fusion of multimodal images and/or multiple algorithms. When multimodal face images are available, cross-modal recognition is meaningful for security and surveillance applications. For example, a probe face is a thermal image (especially at nighttime), while only visible face images are available in the gallery database. Matching a thermal probe face onto the visible gallery faces requires crossmodal matching approaches. A few such studies were implemented in facial feature space with medium recognition performance. In this paper, we propose a cross-modal recognition approach, where multimodal faces are cross-matched in feature space and the recognition performance is enhanced with stereo fusion at image, feature and/or score level. In the proposed scenario, there are two cameras for stereo imaging, two face imagers (visible and thermal images) in each camera, and three recognition algorithms (circular Gaussian filter, face pattern byte, linear discriminant analysis). A score vector is formed with three cross-matched face scores from the aforementioned three algorithms. A classifier (e.g., k-nearest neighbor, support vector machine, binomial logical regression [BLR]) is trained then tested with the score vectors by using 10-fold cross validations. The proposed approach was validated with a multispectral stereo face dataset from 105 subjects. Our experiments show very promising results: ACR (accuracy rate) = 97.84%, FAR (false accept rate) = 0.84% when cross-matching the fused thermal faces onto the fused visible faces by using three face scores and the BLR classifier.

Meta-analytic review of the development of face discrimination in infancy: Face race, face gender, infant age, and methodology moderate face discrimination.

PubMed

Sugden, Nicole A; Marquis, Alexandra R

2017-11-01

Infants show facility for discriminating between individual faces within hours of birth. Over the first year of life, infants' face discrimination shows continued improvement with familiar face types, such as own-race faces, but not with unfamiliar face types, like other-race faces. The goal of this meta-analytic review is to provide an effect size for infants' face discrimination ability overall, with own-race faces, and with other-race faces within the first year of life, how this differs with age, and how it is influenced by task methodology. Inclusion criteria were (a) infant participants aged 0 to 12 months, (b) completing a human own- or other-race face discrimination task, (c) with discrimination being determined by infant looking. Our analysis included 30 works (165 samples, 1,926 participants participated in 2,623 tasks). The effect size for infants' face discrimination was small, 6.53% greater than chance (i.e., equal looking to the novel and familiar). There was a significant difference in discrimination by race, overall (own-race, 8.18%; other-race, 3.18%) and between ages (own-race: 0- to 4.5-month-olds, 7.32%; 5- to 7.5-month-olds, 9.17%; and 8- to 12-month-olds, 7.68%; other-race: 0- to 4.5-month-olds, 6.12%; 5- to 7.5-month-olds, 3.70%; and 8- to 12-month-olds, 2.79%). Multilevel linear (mixed-effects) models were used to predict face discrimination; infants' capacity to discriminate faces is sensitive to face characteristics including race, gender, and emotion as well as the methods used, including task timing, coding method, and visual angle. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Faciotopy—A face-feature map with face-like topology in the human occipital face area

PubMed Central

Henriksson, Linda; Mur, Marieke; Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus

2015-01-01

The occipital face area (OFA) and fusiform face area (FFA) are brain regions thought to be specialized for face perception. However, their intrinsic functional organization and status as cortical areas with well-defined boundaries remains unclear. Here we test these regions for “faciotopy”, a particular hypothesis about their intrinsic functional organisation. A faciotopic area would contain a face-feature map on the cortical surface, where cortical patches represent face features and neighbouring patches represent features that are physically neighbouring in a face. The faciotopy hypothesis is motivated by the idea that face regions might develop from a retinotopic protomap and acquire their selectivity for face features through natural visual experience. Faces have a prototypical configuration of features, are usually perceived in a canonical upright orientation, and are frequently fixated in particular locations. To test the faciotopy hypothesis, we presented images of isolated face features at fixation to subjects during functional magnetic resonance imaging. The responses in V1 were best explained by low-level image properties of the stimuli. OFA, and to a lesser degree FFA, showed evidence for faciotopic organization. When a single patch of cortex was estimated for each face feature, the cortical distances between the feature patches reflected the physical distance between the features in a face. Faciotopy would be the first example, to our knowledge, of a cortical map reflecting the topology, not of a part of the organism itself (its retina in retinotopy, its body in somatotopy), but of an external object of particular perceptual significance. PMID:26235800

Faciotopy-A face-feature map with face-like topology in the human occipital face area.

PubMed

Henriksson, Linda; Mur, Marieke; Kriegeskorte, Nikolaus

2015-11-01

The occipital face area (OFA) and fusiform face area (FFA) are brain regions thought to be specialized for face perception. However, their intrinsic functional organization and status as cortical areas with well-defined boundaries remains unclear. Here we test these regions for "faciotopy", a particular hypothesis about their intrinsic functional organisation. A faciotopic area would contain a face-feature map on the cortical surface, where cortical patches represent face features and neighbouring patches represent features that are physically neighbouring in a face. The faciotopy hypothesis is motivated by the idea that face regions might develop from a retinotopic protomap and acquire their selectivity for face features through natural visual experience. Faces have a prototypical configuration of features, are usually perceived in a canonical upright orientation, and are frequently fixated in particular locations. To test the faciotopy hypothesis, we presented images of isolated face features at fixation to subjects during functional magnetic resonance imaging. The responses in V1 were best explained by low-level image properties of the stimuli. OFA, and to a lesser degree FFA, showed evidence for faciotopic organization. When a single patch of cortex was estimated for each face feature, the cortical distances between the feature patches reflected the physical distance between the features in a face. Faciotopy would be the first example, to our knowledge, of a cortical map reflecting the topology, not of a part of the organism itself (its retina in retinotopy, its body in somatotopy), but of an external object of particular perceptual significance. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Ltd.. All rights reserved.

Emotional Expression and Heart Rate in High-Risk Infants during the Face-To-Face/Still-Face

PubMed Central

Mattson, Whitney I.; Ekas, Naomi V.; Lambert, Brittany; Tronick, Ed; Lester, Barry M.; Messinger, Daniel S.

2013-01-01

In infants, eye constriction—the Duchenne marker—and mouth opening appear to index the intensity of both positive and negative facial expressions. We combined eye constriction and mouth opening that co-occurred with smiles and cry-faces (respectively, the prototypic expressions of infant joy and distress) to measure emotional expression intensity. Expression intensity and heart rate were measured throughout the Face-to-Face/Still Face (FFSF) in a sample of infants with prenatal cocaine exposure who were at risk for developmental difficulties. Smiles declined and cry-faces increased in the still-face episode, but the distribution of eye constriction and mouth opening in smiles and cry-faces did not differ across episodes of the FFSF. As time elapsed in the still face episode potential indices of intensity increased, cry-faces were more likely to be accompanied by eye constriction and mouth opening. During cry-faces there were also moderately stable individual differences in the quantity of eye constriction and mouth opening. Infant heart rate was higher during cry-faces and lower during smiles, but did not vary with intensity of expression or by episode. In sum, infants express more intense negative affect as the still-face progresses, but do not show clear differences in expressive intensity between episodes of the FFSF. PMID:24095807

Holistic face perception is modulated by experience-dependent perceptual grouping.

PubMed

Curby, Kim M; Entenman, Robert J; Fleming, Justin T

2016-07-01

What role do general-purpose, experience-sensitive perceptual mechanisms play in producing characteristic features of face perception? We previously demonstrated that different-colored, misaligned framing backgrounds, designed to disrupt perceptual grouping of face parts appearing upon them, disrupt holistic face perception. In the current experiments, a similar part-judgment task with composite faces was performed: face parts appeared in either misaligned, different-colored rectangles or aligned, same-colored rectangles. To investigate whether experience can shape impacts of perceptual grouping on holistic face perception, a pre-task fostered the perception of either (a) the misaligned, differently colored rectangle frames as parts of a single, multicolored polygon or (b) the aligned, same-colored rectangle frames as a single square shape. Faces appearing in the misaligned, differently colored rectangles were processed more holistically by those in the polygon-, compared with the square-, pre-task group. Holistic effects for faces appearing in aligned, same-colored rectangles showed the opposite pattern. Experiment 2, which included a pre-task condition fostering the perception of the aligned, same-colored frames as pairs of independent rectangles, provided converging evidence that experience can modulate impacts of perceptual grouping on holistic face perception. These results are surprising given the proposed impenetrability of holistic face perception and provide insights into the elusive mechanisms underlying holistic perception.

Fusion of LBP and SWLD using spatio-spectral information for hyperspectral face recognition

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Xie, Zhihua; Jiang, Peng; Zhang, Shuai; Xiong, Jinquan

2018-01-01

Hyperspectral imaging, recording intrinsic spectral information of the skin cross different spectral bands, become an important issue for robust face recognition. However, the main challenges for hyperspectral face recognition are high data dimensionality, low signal to noise ratio and inter band misalignment. In this paper, hyperspectral face recognition based on LBP (Local binary pattern) and SWLD (Simplified Weber local descriptor) is proposed to extract discriminative local features from spatio-spectral fusion information. Firstly, the spatio-spectral fusion strategy based on statistical information is used to attain discriminative features of hyperspectral face images. Secondly, LBP is applied to extract the orientation of the fusion face edges. Thirdly, SWLD is proposed to encode the intensity information in hyperspectral images. Finally, we adopt a symmetric Kullback-Leibler distance to compute the encoded face images. The hyperspectral face recognition is tested on Hong Kong Polytechnic University Hyperspectral Face database (PolyUHSFD). Experimental results show that the proposed method has higher recognition rate (92.8%) than the state of the art hyperspectral face recognition algorithms.

Information superhighway: Issues affecting development

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

1994-09-01

Technological advances in the transmission of voice, video, and data are fostering fundamental changes in the telecommunications industry. For example, large local telephone companies plan to offer video services in competition with cable and broadcast television, while cable television companies plan to offer local telephone service over their wires in competition with the local telephone companies. The administration believes that these technological changes provide the opportunity to develop an 'Information Superhighway' that could provide every element of society with ready access to data, voice, and video communications. Concurrently, the Congress is considering sweeping changes to telecommunications regulations to keep pace with this dynamic industry. GAO prepared this report to serve as an overview of three key issues that decisionmakers may face as they deliberate telecommunications legislation; it focuses on three pivotal issues they face in formulating new telecommunications legislation: (1) managing the transition to a more competitive local telecommunications marketplace; (2) ensuring that all consumers have access to affordable telecommunications as competition develops; and (3) ensuring that the Information Superhighway provides adequate security, privacy, reliability, and interoperability.

Face Aging Effect Simulation Using Hidden Factor Analysis Joint Sparse Representation.

PubMed

Yang, Hongyu; Huang, Di; Wang, Yunhong; Wang, Heng; Tang, Yuanyan

2016-06-01

Face aging simulation has received rising investigations nowadays, whereas it still remains a challenge to generate convincing and natural age-progressed face images. In this paper, we present a novel approach to such an issue using hidden factor analysis joint sparse representation. In contrast to the majority of tasks in the literature that integrally handle the facial texture, the proposed aging approach separately models the person-specific facial properties that tend to be stable in a relatively long period and the age-specific clues that gradually change over time. It then transforms the age component to a target age group via sparse reconstruction, yielding aging effects, which is finally combined with the identity component to achieve the aged face. Experiments are carried out on three face aging databases, and the results achieved clearly demonstrate the effectiveness and robustness of the proposed method in rendering a face with aging effects. In addition, a series of evaluations prove its validity with respect to identity preservation and aging effect generation.

Ethical issues in exercise psychology.

PubMed

Pauline, Jeffrey S; Pauline, Gina A; Johnson, Scott R; Gamble, Kelly M

2006-01-01

Exercise psychology encompasses the disciplines of psychiatry, clinical and counseling psychology, health promotion, and the movement sciences. This emerging field involves diverse mental health issues, theories, and general information related to physical activity and exercise. Numerous research investigations across the past 20 years have shown both physical and psychological benefits from physical activity and exercise. Exercise psychology offers many opportunities for growth while positively influencing the mental and physical health of individuals, communities, and society. However, the exercise psychology literature has not addressed ethical issues or dilemmas faced by mental health professionals providing exercise psychology services. This initial discussion of ethical issues in exercise psychology is an important step in continuing to move the field forward. Specifically, this article will address the emergence of exercise psychology and current health behaviors and offer an overview of ethics and ethical issues, education/training and professional competency, cultural and ethnic diversity, multiple-role relationships and conflicts of interest, dependency issues, confidentiality and recording keeping, and advertisement and self-promotion.

Voicing on Virtual and Face to Face Discussion

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Yamat, Hamidah

2013-01-01

This paper presents and discusses findings of a study conducted on pre-service teachers' experiences in virtual and face to face discussions. Technology has brought learning nowadays beyond the classroom context or time zone. The learning context and process no longer rely solely on face to face communications in the presence of a teacher.…

Face to face with emotion: holistic face processing is modulated by emotional state.

PubMed

Curby, Kim M; Johnson, Kareem J; Tyson, Alyssa

2012-01-01

Negative emotions are linked with a local, rather than global, visual processing style, which may preferentially facilitate feature-based, relative to holistic, processing mechanisms. Because faces are typically processed holistically, and because social contexts are prime elicitors of emotions, we examined whether negative emotions decrease holistic processing of faces. We induced positive, negative, or neutral emotions via film clips and measured holistic processing before and after the induction: participants made judgements about cued parts of chimeric faces, and holistic processing was indexed by the interference caused by task-irrelevant face parts. Emotional state significantly modulated face-processing style, with the negative emotion induction leading to decreased holistic processing. Furthermore, self-reported change in emotional state correlated with changes in holistic processing. These results contrast with general assumptions that holistic processing of faces is automatic and immune to outside influences, and they illustrate emotion's power to modulate socially relevant aspects of visual perception.

Ethical Issues in Continuing Professional Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Lawler, Patricia Ann

2000-01-01

Continuing professional education practitioners often face ethical dilemmas regarding their obligations to multiple stakeholders and issues arising in new arenas such as the workplace, distance education, and collaboration with business. Codes of ethics can guide practice, but practitioners should also identify their personal core values system…

Issues and Trends in Literacy Education.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Robinson, Richard D., Ed.; And Others

Developed with practicing teachers in mind, this book presents reprints of 22 articles and excerpts from longer works that deal with the most significant trends and issues facing literacy educators--whole language, phonics, literacy materials, emergent literacy, spelling, assessment, content literacy, vocabulary instruction, national standards,…

Face mask ventilation--the dos and don'ts.

PubMed

Wood, Fiona E; Morley, Colin J

2013-12-01

Face mask ventilation provides respiratory support to newly born or sick infants. It is a challenging technique and difficult to ensure that an appropriate tidal volume is delivered because large and variable leaks occur between the mask and face; airway obstruction may also occur. Technique is more important than the mask shape although the size must appropriately fit the face. The essence of the technique is to roll the mask on to the face from the chin while avoiding the eyes, with a finger and thumb apply a strong even downward pressure to the top of the mask, away from the stem and sloped sides or skirt of the mask, place the other fingers under the jaw and apply a similar upward pressure. Preterm infants require continuous end-expiratory pressure to facilitate lung aeration and maintain lung volume. This is best done with a T-piece device, not a self-inflating or flow-inflating bag. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Research Involving Health Providers and Managers: Ethical Issues Faced by Researchers Conducting Diverse Health Policy and Systems Research in Kenya.

PubMed

Molyneux, Sassy; Tsofa, Benjamin; Barasa, Edwine; Nyikuri, Mary Muyoka; Waweru, Evelyn Wanjiku; Goodman, Catherine; Gilson, Lucy

2016-12-01

There is a growing interest in the ethics of Health Policy and Systems Research (HPSR), and especially in areas that have particular ethical salience across HPSR. Hyder et al (2014) provide an initial framework to consider this, and call for more conceptual and empirical work. In this paper, we respond by examining the ethical issues that arose for researchers over the course of conducting three HPSR studies in Kenya in which health managers and providers were key participants. All three studies involved qualitative work including observations and individual and group interviews. Many of the ethical dilemmas researchers faced only emerged over the course of the fieldwork, or on completion, and were related to interactions and relationships between individuals operating at different levels or positions in health/research systems. The dilemmas reveal significant ethical challenges for these forms of HPSR, and show that potential 'solutions' to dilemmas often lead to new issues and complications. Our experiences support the value of research ethics frameworks, and suggest that these can be enriched by incorporating careful consideration of context embedded social relations into research planning and conduct. Many of these essential relational elements of ethical practice, and of producing quality data, are given stronger emphasis in social science research ethics than in epidemiological, clinical or biomedical research ethics, and are particularly relevant where health systems are understood as social and political constructs. We conclude with practical and research implications. © 2016 The Authors Developing World Bioethics Published by John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Facial transplants: current situation and ethical issues.

PubMed

Petrini, C

2015-01-01

The first transplantation of a face from a cadaver was performed in 2005, since when about thirty have been performed globally. The technique is now beginning to appear in Italy. Face transplants are performed exclusively on persons who have suffered devastating lesions to the face. The ethical problems involved are very considerable, particularly where personal identity is concerned. The case records reveal surprisingly positive outcomes regarding both clinical follow-up and functional recovery, as well as psychological aspects and social integration. Thus, while early documents addressing the ethical issues involved in facial transplants were somewhat cautious or even unfavourable on the subject of this technique, a positive approach is now more prevalent.

Issues and Challenges Facing Flexible Lithium-Ion Batteries for Practical Application.

PubMed

Cha, Hyungyeon; Kim, Junhyeok; Lee, Yoonji; Cho, Jaephil; Park, Minjoon

2017-12-27

With the advent of flexible electronics, lithium-ion batteries have become a key component of high performance energy storage systems. Thus, considerable effort is made to keep up with the development of flexible lithium-ion batteries. To date, many researchers have studied newly designed batteries with flexibility, however, there are several significant challenges that need to be overcome, such as degradation of electrodes under external load, poor battery performance, and complicated cell preparation procedures. In addition, an in-depth understanding of the current challenges for flexible batteries is rarely addressed in a systematical and practical way. Herein, recent progress and current issues of flexible lithium-ion batteries in terms of battery materials and cell designs are reviewed. A critical overview of important issues and challenges for the practical application of flexible lithium-ion batteries is also provided. Finally, the strategies are discussed to overcome current limitations of the practical use of flexible lithium-based batteries, providing a direction for future research. © 2017 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Learning new faces in typical and atypical populations of children.

PubMed

Jones, Rebecca R; Blades, Mark; Coleman, Mike; Pascalis, Olivier

2013-02-01

Recognizing an individual as familiar is an important aspect of our social cognition, which requires both learning a face and recalling it. It has been suggested that children with autistic spectrum disorder (ASD) have deficits and abnormalities in face processing. We investigated whether the process by which unfamiliar faces become familiar differs in typically developing (TD) children, children with ASD, and children with developmental delay. Children were familiarized with a set of moving novel faces presented over a three-day period. Recognition of the learned faces was assessed at five time points during the three-day period. Both immediate and delayed recall of faces was tested. All groups showed improvements in face recognition at immediate recall, which indicated that learning had occurred. The TD population showed slightly better performance than the two other groups, however no difference was specific to the ASD group. All groups showed similar levels of improvements with time. Our results are discussed in terms of learning in ASD. © 2013 The Authors. Scandinavian Journal of Psychology © 2013 The Scandinavian Psychological Associations.

But I Don't Understand You: One Faculty's Observations of the Challenges Facing International Healthcare Students

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DuBose, Cheryl O.

2017-01-01

International students face many challenges when pursuing a degree in higher education. Communication and cultural differences are typically cited as the most challenging aspects of any study abroad program. Students attempting to complete a healthcare program face sometimes insurmountable issues, as communication, cultural differences, and…

Learning Compact Binary Face Descriptor for Face Recognition.

PubMed

Lu, Jiwen; Liong, Venice Erin; Zhou, Xiuzhuang; Zhou, Jie

2015-10-01

Binary feature descriptors such as local binary patterns (LBP) and its variations have been widely used in many face recognition systems due to their excellent robustness and strong discriminative power. However, most existing binary face descriptors are hand-crafted, which require strong prior knowledge to engineer them by hand. In this paper, we propose a compact binary face descriptor (CBFD) feature learning method for face representation and recognition. Given each face image, we first extract pixel difference vectors (PDVs) in local patches by computing the difference between each pixel and its neighboring pixels. Then, we learn a feature mapping to project these pixel difference vectors into low-dimensional binary vectors in an unsupervised manner, where 1) the variance of all binary codes in the training set is maximized, 2) the loss between the original real-valued codes and the learned binary codes is minimized, and 3) binary codes evenly distribute at each learned bin, so that the redundancy information in PDVs is removed and compact binary codes are obtained. Lastly, we cluster and pool these binary codes into a histogram feature as the final representation for each face image. Moreover, we propose a coupled CBFD (C-CBFD) method by reducing the modality gap of heterogeneous faces at the feature level to make our method applicable to heterogeneous face recognition. Extensive experimental results on five widely used face datasets show that our methods outperform state-of-the-art face descriptors.

Measuring Up: Assessment Issues for Teachers, Counselors, and Administrators.

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Wall, Janet E., Ed.; Walz, Garry R., Ed.

This book attempts to promote improved understanding of assessment concepts by addressing the broad expanse of issues facing educators as they go about their duties and fulfill their responsibilities in schools and classrooms. The chapters in the book address some of the "hot button" issues related to testing and assessment in our nation's…

A Self-Determination Perspective on Online Health Information Seeking: The Internet vs. Face-to-Face Office Visits With Physicians.

PubMed

Lee, Seow Ting; Lin, Julian

2016-06-01

This study elucidates the experiential and motivational aspects of online health information beyond the theoretically limited instrumental perspective that dominates the extant literature. Based on a sample of 993 online health information seekers in India, the survey found that online health information seeking offers individuals greater autonomy, competence, and relatedness compared to face-to-face office visits with physicians. According to self-determination theory, individuals are motivated to act by a sense of volition and experience of willingness, validation of one's skills and competencies, and feeling of connection with others who shaped one's decisions. These 3 psychological needs, which motivate individuals to pursue what they innately seek as human beings, help explain why individuals turn online for health information. T tests showed that all 3 self-determination theory constructs -autonomy, competence, and relatedness-were higher for online health information seeking than for face-to-face office visits with physicians. A regression analysis found that 2 variables, autonomy and relatedness, explained online health information seeking. Competence was not a significant factor, likely because of competency issues faced by individuals in interpreting, understanding, and making use of online health information. The findings, which do not suggest that online health information seeking would displace physicians as many have feared, offer promise for an integrated system of care. Office visits with physicians would necessarily evolve into an expanded communicative space of health information seeking instead of an alternative channel for health information.

Psychosocial issues of women with HIV/AIDS.

PubMed

Broun, S N

1999-02-01

This article discusses some of the issues specifically associated with women and HIV. The myth is that women do not get AIDS and that lesbians do not get AIDS either. It also explores the unique sociocultural context in which HIV-infected women exist. The hope is to put faces on the numbers that are increasing each day as women get infected, and to offer advice to therapists on how to deal with these issues.

Human sex differences in emotional processing of own-race and other-race faces.

PubMed

Ran, Guangming; Chen, Xu; Pan, Yangu

2014-06-18

There is evidence that women and men show differences in the perception of affective facial expressions. However, none of the previous studies directly investigated sex differences in emotional processing of own-race and other-race faces. The current study addressed this issue using high time resolution event-related potential techniques. In total, data from 25 participants (13 women and 12 men) were analyzed. It was found that women showed increased N170 amplitudes to negative White faces compared with negative Chinese faces over the right hemisphere electrodes. This result suggests that women show enhanced sensitivity to other-race faces showing negative emotions (fear or disgust), which may contribute toward evolution. However, the current data showed that men had increased N170 amplitudes to happy Chinese versus happy White faces over the left hemisphere electrodes, indicating that men show enhanced sensitivity to own-race faces showing positive emotions (happiness). In this respect, men might use past pleasant emotional experiences to boost recognition of own-race faces.

Emotional expression and heart rate in high-risk infants during the face-to-face/still-face.

PubMed

Mattson, Whitney I; Ekas, Naomi V; Lambert, Brittany; Tronick, Ed; Lester, Barry M; Messinger, Daniel S

2013-12-01

In infants, eye constriction-the Duchenne marker-and mouth opening appear to index the intensity of both positive and negative facial expressions. We combined eye constriction and mouth opening that co-occurred with smiles and cry-faces (respectively, the prototypic expressions of infant joy and distress) to measure emotional expression intensity. Expression intensity and heart rate were measured throughout the face-to-face/still-face (FFSF) in a sample of infants with prenatal cocaine exposure who were at risk for developmental difficulties. Smiles declined and cry-faces increased in the still-face episode, but the distribution of eye constriction and mouth opening in smiles and cry-faces did not differ across episodes of the FFSF. As time elapsed in the still face episode potential indices of intensity increased, cry-faces were more likely to be accompanied by eye constriction and mouth opening. During cry-faces there were also moderately stable individual differences in the quantity of eye constriction and mouth opening. Infant heart rate was higher during cry-faces and lower during smiles, but did not vary with intensity of expression or by episode. In sum, infants express more intense negative affect as the still-face progresses, but do not show clear differences in expressive intensity between episodes of the FFSF. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Face-n-Food: Gender Differences in Tuning to Faces.

PubMed

Pavlova, Marina A; Scheffler, Klaus; Sokolov, Alexander N

2015-01-01

Faces represent valuable signals for social cognition and non-verbal communication. A wealth of research indicates that women tend to excel in recognition of facial expressions. However, it remains unclear whether females are better tuned to faces. We presented healthy adult females and males with a set of newly created food-plate images resembling faces (slightly bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style). In a spontaneous recognition task, participants were shown a set of images in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. Females not only more readily recognized the images as a face (they reported resembling a face on images, on which males still did not), but gave on overall more face responses. The findings are discussed in the light of gender differences in deficient face perception. As most neuropsychiatric, neurodevelopmental and psychosomatic disorders characterized by social brain abnormalities are sex specific, the task may serve as a valuable tool for uncovering impairments in visual face processing.

Face-n-Food: Gender Differences in Tuning to Faces

PubMed Central

Pavlova, Marina A.; Scheffler, Klaus; Sokolov, Alexander N.

2015-01-01

Faces represent valuable signals for social cognition and non-verbal communication. A wealth of research indicates that women tend to excel in recognition of facial expressions. However, it remains unclear whether females are better tuned to faces. We presented healthy adult females and males with a set of newly created food-plate images resembling faces (slightly bordering on the Giuseppe Arcimboldo style). In a spontaneous recognition task, participants were shown a set of images in a predetermined order from the least to most resembling a face. Females not only more readily recognized the images as a face (they reported resembling a face on images, on which males still did not), but gave on overall more face responses. The findings are discussed in the light of gender differences in deficient face perception. As most neuropsychiatric, neurodevelopmental and psychosomatic disorders characterized by social brain abnormalities are sex specific, the task may serve as a valuable tool for uncovering impairments in visual face processing. PMID:26154177

'What is it like to have ME?': the discursive construction of ME in computer-mediated communication and face-to-face interaction.

PubMed

Guise, Jennifer; Widdicombe, Sue; McKinlay, Andy

2007-01-01

ME (Myalgic Encephalomyelitis) or CFS (chronic fatigue syndrome) is a debilitating illness for which no cause or medical tests have been identified. Debates over its nature have generated interest from qualitative researchers. However, participants are difficult to recruit because of the nature of their condition. Therefore, this study explores the utility of the internet as a means of eliciting accounts. We analyse data from focus groups and the internet in order to ascertain the extent to which previous research findings apply to the internet domain. Interviews were conducted among 49 members of internet groups (38 chatline, 11 personal) and 7 members of two face-to-face support groups. Discourse analysis of descriptions and accounts of ME or CFS revealed similar devices and interactional concerns in both internet and face-to-face communication. Participants constructed their condition as serious, enigmatic and not psychological. These functioned to deflect problematic assumptions about ME or CFS and to manage their accountability for the illness and its effects.

Passport Officers’ Errors in Face Matching

PubMed Central

White, David; Kemp, Richard I.; Jenkins, Rob; Matheson, Michael; Burton, A. Mike

2014-01-01

Photo-ID is widely used in security settings, despite research showing that viewers find it very difficult to match unfamiliar faces. Here we test participants with specialist experience and training in the task: passport-issuing officers. First, we ask officers to compare photos to live ID-card bearers, and observe high error rates, including 14% false acceptance of ‘fraudulent’ photos. Second, we compare passport officers with a set of student participants, and find equally poor levels of accuracy in both groups. Finally, we observe that passport officers show no performance advantage over the general population on a standardised face-matching task. Across all tasks, we observe very large individual differences: while average performance of passport staff was poor, some officers performed very accurately – though this was not related to length of experience or training. We propose that improvements in security could be made by emphasising personnel selection. PMID:25133682

Passport officers' errors in face matching.

PubMed

White, David; Kemp, Richard I; Jenkins, Rob; Matheson, Michael; Burton, A Mike

2014-01-01

Photo-ID is widely used in security settings, despite research showing that viewers find it very difficult to match unfamiliar faces. Here we test participants with specialist experience and training in the task: passport-issuing officers. First, we ask officers to compare photos to live ID-card bearers, and observe high error rates, including 14% false acceptance of 'fraudulent' photos. Second, we compare passport officers with a set of student participants, and find equally poor levels of accuracy in both groups. Finally, we observe that passport officers show no performance advantage over the general population on a standardised face-matching task. Across all tasks, we observe very large individual differences: while average performance of passport staff was poor, some officers performed very accurately--though this was not related to length of experience or training. We propose that improvements in security could be made by emphasising personnel selection.

Graphite/Cyanate Ester Face Sheets for Adaptive Optics

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Bennett, Harold; Shaffer, Joseph; Romeo, Robert

2008-01-01

It has been proposed that thin face sheets of wide-aperture deformable mirrors in adaptive-optics systems be made from a composite material consisting of cyanate ester filled with graphite. This composite material appears to offer an attractive alternative to low-thermal-expansion glasses that are used in some conventional optics and have been considered for adaptive-optics face sheets. Adaptive-optics face sheets are required to have maximum linear dimensions of the order of meters or even tens of meters for some astronomical applications. If the face sheets were to be made from low-thermal-expansion glasses, then they would also be required to have thicknesses of the order of a millimeter so as to obtain the optimum compromise between the stiffness needed for support and the flexibility needed to enable deformation to controlled shapes by use of actuators. It is difficult to make large glass sheets having thicknesses less than 3 mm, and 3-mm-thick glass sheets are too stiff to be deformable to the shapes typically required for correction of wavefronts of light that has traversed the terrestrial atmosphere. Moreover, the primary commercially produced candidate low-thermal-expansion glass is easily fractured when in the form of thin face sheets. Graphite-filled cyanate ester has relevant properties similar to those of the low-expansion glasses. These properties include a coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) of the order of a hundredth of the CTEs of other typical mirror materials. The Young s modulus (which quantifies stiffness in tension and compression) of graphite-filled cyanate ester is also similar to the Young's moduli of low-thermal-expansion glasses. However, the fracture toughness of graphite-filled cyanate ester is much greater than that of the primary candidate low-thermal-expansion glass. Therefore, graphite-filled cyanate ester could be made into nearly unbreakable face sheets, having maximum linear dimensions greater than a meter and thicknesses of

Category-Contingent Face Adaptation for Novel Colour Categories: Contingent Effects Are Seen Only after Social or Meaningful Labelling

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Little, Anthony C.; DeBruine, Lisa M.; Jones, Benedict C.

2011-01-01

A face appears normal when it approximates the average of a population. Consequently, exposure to faces biases perceptions of subsequently viewed faces such that faces similar to those recently seen are perceived as more normal. Simultaneously inducing such aftereffects in opposite directions for two groups of faces indicates somewhat discrete…

Idiosyncratic Patterns of Representational Similarity in Prefrontal Cortex Predict Attentional Performance.

PubMed

Lee, Jeongmi; Geng, Joy J

2017-02-01

The efficiency of finding an object in a crowded environment depends largely on the similarity of nontargets to the search target. Models of attention theorize that the similarity is determined by representations stored within an "attentional template" held in working memory. However, the degree to which the contents of the attentional template are individually unique and where those idiosyncratic representations are encoded in the brain are unknown. We investigated this problem using representational similarity analysis of human fMRI data to measure the common and idiosyncratic representations of famous face morphs during an identity categorization task; data from the categorization task were then used to predict performance on a separate identity search task. We hypothesized that the idiosyncratic categorical representations of the continuous face morphs would predict their distractability when searching for each target identity. The results identified that patterns of activation in the lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC) as well as in face-selective areas in the ventral temporal cortex were highly correlated with the patterns of behavioral categorization of face morphs and search performance that were common across subjects. However, the individually unique components of the categorization behavior were reliably decoded only in right LPFC. Moreover, the neural pattern in right LPFC successfully predicted idiosyncratic variability in search performance, such that reaction times were longer when distractors had a higher probability of being categorized as the target identity. These results suggest that the prefrontal cortex encodes individually unique components of categorical representations that are also present in attentional templates for target search. Everyone's perception of the world is uniquely shaped by personal experiences and preferences. Using functional MRI, we show that individual differences in the categorization of face morphs between two identities

The Caledonian face test: A new test of face discrimination.

PubMed

Logan, Andrew J; Wilkinson, Frances; Wilson, Hugh R; Gordon, Gael E; Loffler, Gunter

2016-02-01

This study aimed to develop a clinical test of face perception which is applicable to a wide range of patients and can capture normal variability. The Caledonian face test utilises synthetic faces which combine simplicity with sufficient realism to permit individual identification. Face discrimination thresholds (i.e. minimum difference between faces required for accurate discrimination) were determined in an "odd-one-out" task. The difference between faces was controlled by an adaptive QUEST procedure. A broad range of face discrimination sensitivity was determined from a group (N=52) of young adults (mean 5.75%; SD 1.18; range 3.33-8.84%). The test is fast (3-4 min), repeatable (test-re-test r(2)=0.795) and demonstrates a significant inversion effect. The potential to identify impairments of face discrimination was evaluated by testing LM who reported a lifelong difficulty with face perception. While LM's impairment for two established face tests was close to the criterion for significance (Z-scores of -2.20 and -2.27) for the Caledonian face test, her Z-score was -7.26, implying a more than threefold higher sensitivity. The new face test provides a quantifiable and repeatable assessment of face discrimination ability. The enhanced sensitivity suggests that the Caledonian face test may be capable of detecting more subtle impairments of face perception than available tests. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Brain Responses Reveal That Infants' Face Discrimination Is Guided by Statistical Learning from Distributional Information

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Altvater-Mackensen, Nicole; Jessen, Sarah; Grossmann, Tobias

2017-01-01

Infants' perception of faces becomes attuned to the environment during the first year of life. However, the mechanisms that underpin perceptual narrowing for faces are only poorly understood. Considering the developmental similarities seen in perceptual narrowing for faces and speech and the role that statistical learning has been shown to play…

Face-Lift Satisfaction Using the FACE-Q.

PubMed

Sinno, Sammy; Schwitzer, Jonathan; Anzai, Lavinia; Thorne, Charles H

2015-08-01

Face lifting is one of the most common operative procedures for facial aging and perhaps the procedure most synonymous with plastic surgery in the minds of the lay public, but no verifiable documentation of patient satisfaction exists in the literature. This study is the first to examine face-lift outcomes and patient satisfaction using a validated questionnaire. One hundred five patients undergoing a face lift performed by the senior author (C.H.T.) using a high, extended-superficial musculoaponeurotic system with submental platysma approximation technique were asked to complete anonymously the FACE-Q by e-mail. FACE-Q scores were assessed for each domain (range, 0 to 100), with higher scores indicating greater satisfaction with appearance or superior quality of life. Fifty-three patients completed the FACE-Q (50.5 percent response rate). Patients demonstrated high satisfaction with facial appearance (mean ± SD, 80.7 ± 22.3), and quality of life, including social confidence (90.4 ± 16.6), psychological well-being (92.8 ± 14.3), and early life impact (92.2 ± 16.4). Patients also reported extremely high satisfaction with their decision to undergo face lifting (90.5 ± 15.9). On average, patients felt they appeared 6.9 years younger than their actual age. Patients were most satisfied with the appearance of their nasolabial folds (86.2 ± 18.5), cheeks (86.1 ± 25.4), and lower face/jawline (86.0 ± 20.6), compared with their necks (78.1 ± 25.6) and area under the chin (67.9 ± 32.3). Patients who responded in this study were extremely satisfied with their decision to undergo face lifting and the outcomes and quality of life following the procedure.

A Face Inversion Effect without a Face

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Brandman, Talia; Yovel, Galit

2012-01-01

Numerous studies have attributed the face inversion effect (FIE) to configural processing of internal facial features in upright but not inverted faces. Recent findings suggest that face mechanisms can be activated by faceless stimuli presented in the context of a body. Here we asked whether faceless stimuli with or without body context may induce…

Hospital web-site marketing: analysis, issues, and trends.

PubMed

Sanchez, P M; Maier-Donati, P

1999-01-01

As hospitals continue to incorporate web technology into their overall marketing and communications strategies, they face several issues which we explore in this paper. Hospitals' effectiveness in dealing with these issues will affect the benefits received from this technology. We provide an exploratory analysis of current hospital web sites and develop implications for future web site development. Likewise, recommendations based on our research are also provided.

Adaboost multi-view face detection based on YCgCr skin color model

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Lan, Qi; Xu, Zhiyong

2016-09-01

Traditional Adaboost face detection algorithm uses Haar-like features training face classifiers, whose detection error rate is low in the face region. While under the complex background, the classifiers will make wrong detection easily to the background regions with the similar faces gray level distribution, which leads to the error detection rate of traditional Adaboost algorithm is high. As one of the most important features of a face, skin in YCgCr color space has good clustering. We can fast exclude the non-face areas through the skin color model. Therefore, combining with the advantages of the Adaboost algorithm and skin color detection algorithm, this paper proposes Adaboost face detection algorithm method that bases on YCgCr skin color model. Experiments show that, compared with traditional algorithm, the method we proposed has improved significantly in the detection accuracy and errors.

Reduced autonomic responses to faces in Capgras delusion.

PubMed

Ellis, H D; Young, A W; Quayle, A H; De Pauw, K W

1997-07-22

People experiencing the Capgras delusion claim that others, usually those quite close emotionally, have been replaced by near-identical impostors. Ellis & Young suggested in 1990 that the Capgras delusion results from damage to a neurological system involved in orienting responses to seen faces based on their personal significance. This hypothesis predicts that people suffering the Capgras delusion will be hyporesponsive to familiar faces. We tested this prediction in five people with Capgras delusion. Comparison data were obtained from five middle-aged members of the general public, and a psychiatric control group of five patients taking similar anti-psychotic medication. Capgras delusion patients did not reveal autonomic discrimination between familiar and unfamiliar faces, but orienting responses to auditory tones were normal in magnitude and rate of initial habituation, showing that the hyporesponsiveness is circumscribed.

Reduced autonomic responses to faces in Capgras delusion.

PubMed Central

Ellis, H D; Young, A W; Quayle, A H; De Pauw, K W

1997-01-01

People experiencing the Capgras delusion claim that others, usually those quite close emotionally, have been replaced by near-identical impostors. Ellis & Young suggested in 1990 that the Capgras delusion results from damage to a neurological system involved in orienting responses to seen faces based on their personal significance. This hypothesis predicts that people suffering the Capgras delusion will be hyporesponsive to familiar faces. We tested this prediction in five people with Capgras delusion. Comparison data were obtained from five middle-aged members of the general public, and a psychiatric control group of five patients taking similar anti-psychotic medication. Capgras delusion patients did not reveal autonomic discrimination between familiar and unfamiliar faces, but orienting responses to auditory tones were normal in magnitude and rate of initial habituation, showing that the hyporesponsiveness is circumscribed. PMID:9263474

Issues engulfed Saudi Arabia construction workers

NASA Astrophysics Data System (ADS)

Al-Emad, N. H.; Rahman, I. A.

2018-04-01

This paper presents an exploratory study conducted in Makkah city to uncover issues faced by construction workers from the construction leaders’ perspective. Eleven construction leaders/experts were interviewed to unleash their experiences on handling the foreign workers working in Makkah construction projects. Most of the experts are senior management staffs with more than 10 years’ working experience in Saudi Arabia construction industry. The interviews were carried out in semi structured mode where all the information was captured manually and also electronically. The identified issues were sorted based on its commonality into 10 clusters. Hence in each cluster, the numbers of issue considered by the experts are reflecting the importance of that particular cluster. The result of the clusters according to the number of issues mentioned by the experts are safety issues, restricted government regulation, demotivated issues, lack of quality workers, poor living quality, communication barriers, adaption issues, poor attitudes, lack of logistical arrangements and lack of education. With these identified issues it will assist the construction players in the construction industry of Saudi Arabia in dealing with their workers.

Face to Face Communications in Space

NASA Technical Reports Server (NTRS)

Cohen, Malcolm M.; Davon, Bonnie P. (Technical Monitor)

1999-01-01

It has been reported that human face-to-face communications in space are compromised by facial edema, variations in the orientations of speakers and listeners, and background noises that are encountered in the shuttle and in space stations. To date, nearly all reports have been anecdotal or subjective, in the form of post-flight interviews or questionnaires; objective and quantitative data are generally lacking. Although it is acknowledged that efficient face-to-face communications are essential for astronauts to work safely and effectively, specific ways in which the space environment interferes with non-linguistic communication cues are poorly documented. Because we have only a partial understanding of how non-linguistic communication cues may change with mission duration, it is critically important to obtain objective data, and to evaluate these cues under well-controlled experimental conditions.

Missing Faces from the Orchestra: An Issue of Social Justice?

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

DeLorenzo, Lisa C.

2012-01-01

There is a surprising lack of black and Latino musicians in major orchestras in the United States as well as in other venues for classical music. Similarly, many American high school performing ensembles reflect the same underrepresentation. This article examines the literature on race, socioeconomic factors, and urban teaching and provides…

Attractiveness of own-race, other-race, and mixed-race faces.

PubMed

Rhodes, Gillian; Lee, Kieran; Palermo, Romina; Weiss, Mahi; Yoshikawa, Sakiko; Clissa, Peter; Williams, Tamsyn; Peters, Marianne; Winkler, Chris; Jeffery, Linda

2005-01-01

Averaged face composites, which represent the central tendency of a familiar population of faces, are attractive. If this prototypicality contributes to their appeal, then averaged composites should be more attractive when their component faces come from a familiar, own-race population than when they come from a less familiar, other-race population. We compared the attractiveness of own-race composites, other-race composites, and mixed-race composites (where the component faces were from both races). In experiment 1, Caucasian participants rated own-race composites as more attractive than other-race composites, but only for male faces. However, mixed-race (Caucasian/Japanese) composites were significantly more attractive than own-race composites, particularly for the opposite sex. In experiment 2, Caucasian and Japanese participants living in Australia and Japan, respectively, selected the most attractive face from a continuum with exaggerated Caucasian characteristics at one end and exaggerated Japanese characteristics at the other, with intervening images including a Caucasian averaged composite, a mixed-race averaged composite, and a Japanese averaged composite. The most attractive face was, again, a mixed-race composite, for both Caucasian and Japanese participants. In experiment 3, Caucasian participants rated individual Eurasian faces as significantly more attractive than either Caucasian or Asian faces. Similar results were obtained with composites. Eurasian faces and composites were also rated as healthier than Caucasian or Asian faces and composites, respectively. These results suggest that signs of health may be more important than prototypicality in making average faces attractive.

Graph-based similarity concepts in virtual screening.

PubMed

Hutter, Michael C

2011-03-01

Applying similarity for finding new promising compounds is a key issue in drug design. Conversely, quantifying similarity between molecules has remained a difficult task despite the numerous approaches. Here, some general aspects along with recent developments regarding similarity criteria are collected. For the purpose of virtual screening, the compounds have to be encoded into a computer-readable format that permits a comparison, according to given similarity criteria, comprising the use of the 3D structure, fingerprints, graph-based and alignment-based approaches. Whereas finding the most common substructures is the most obvious method, more recent approaches take into account chemical modifications that appear throughout existing drugs, from various therapeutic categories and targets.

Race-specific perceptual discrimination improvement following short individuation training with faces

PubMed Central

McGugin, Rankin Williams; Tanaka, James W.; Lebrecht, Sophie; Tarr, Michael J.; Gauthier, Isabel

2010-01-01

This study explores the effect of individuation training on the acquisition of race-specific expertise. First, we investigated whether practice individuating other-race faces yields improvement in perceptual discrimination for novel faces of that race. Second, we asked whether there was similar improvement for novel faces of a different race for which participants received equal practice, but in an orthogonal task that did not require individuation. Caucasian participants were trained to individuate faces of one race (African American or Hispanic) and to make difficult eye luminance judgments on faces of the other race. By equating these tasks we are able to rule out raw experience, visual attention or performance/success-induced positivity as the critical factors that produce race-specific improvements. These results indicate that individuation practice is one mechanism through which cognitive, perceptual, and/or social processes promote growth of the own-race face recognition advantage. PMID:21429002

Development of Socioscientific Issues-Based Teaching for Preservice Science Teachers

ERIC Educational Resources Information Center

Nuangchalerm, Prasart

2009-01-01

Problem statement: In the context of science education reform in Thailand, we need to prepare science teachers who can face science and social issues controversial; teachers can response the question socioscientific issues and let their students to meet the goal of science education. This study investigated the conception leading preservice…

Understanding gender bias in face recognition: effects of divided attention at encoding.