Nanotechnology in the context of organic food processing

Nanotechnology, the science of the ultra small, is up-and-coming as the technological platform for the next wave of development and transformation of agri-food systems. It is quickly moving from the laboratory onto supermarket shelves and our kitchen tables (Scrinis and Lyons, 2007). Therefore we investigated in a literature review and a comparison of the findings with the EU regulation of organic farming to what degree nanotechnology can be applied in organic food production. The regulations do not restrict the use of nanotechnology in general. Because little is known about the impact on environment and human health, precaution should be taken when it comes to applying this technology in organic food production

Temporal processing and context dependency in C. elegans mechanosensation

A quantitative understanding of how sensory signals are transformed into motor outputs places useful constraints on brain function and helps reveal the brain's underlying computations. We investigate how the nematode C. elegans responds to time-varying mechanosensory signals using a high-throughput optogenetic assay and automated behavior quantification. In the prevailing picture of the touch circuit, the animal's behavior is determined by which neurons are stimulated and by the stimulus amplitude. In contrast, we find that the behavioral response is tuned to temporal properties of mechanosensory signals, like its integral and derivative, that extend over many seconds. Mechanosensory signals, even in the same neurons, can be tailored to elicit different behavioral responses. Moreover, we find that the animal's response also depends on its behavioral context. Most dramatically, the animal ignores all tested mechanosensory stimuli during turns. Finally, we present a linear-nonlinear model that predicts the animal's behavioral response to stimulus.Comment: 40 pages, 8 main figures, 19 supplementary figure

Processing advantage for emotional words in bilingual speakers

Effects of emotion on word processing are well established in monolingual speakers. However, studies that have assessed whether affective features of words undergo the same processing in a native and non-native language have provided mixed results: studies that have found differences between L1 and L2 processing, attributed it to the fact that a second language (L2) learned late in life would not be processed affectively, because affective associations are established during childhood. Other studies suggest that adult learners show similar effects of emotional features in L1 and L2. Differences in affective processing of L2 words can be linked to age and context of learning, proficiency, language dominance, and degree of similarity between the L2 and the L1. Here, in a lexical decision task on tightly matched negative, positive and neutral words, highly proficient English speakers from typologically different L1 showed the same facilitation in processing emotionally valenced words as native English speakers, regardless of their L1, the age of English acquisition or the frequency and context of English use

The influence of semantic context on initial eye landing sites in words

To determine the role of ongoing processing on eye guidance in reading, two studies examined the effects of semantic context on the eyes' initial landing position in words of different levels of processing diffculty. Results from both studies clearly indicate a shift of the initial fixation location towards the end of the words for words that can be predicted from a prior semantic context. However, shifts occur only in high-frequency words and with prior fixations close to the beginning of the target word. These results suggest that ongoing perceptual and linguistic processes can affect the decision of where to send the eyes next in reading. They are explained in terms of the easiness of processing associated with the target words when located in parafoveal vision. It is concluded that two critical factors might help observing effects of linguistic variables on initial landing sites, namely, the frequency of the target word and the position where the eyes are launched from as regards to the beginning of the target word. Results also provide evidence for an early locus of semantic context effects in reading

Negation in context: evidence from the visual world paradigm

Literature assumes that negation is more difficult to understand than affirmation, but this might depend on the pragmatic context. The goal of this paper is to show that pragmatic knowledge modulates the unfolding processing of negation due to the previous activation of the negated situation. To test this, we used the visual world paradigm. In this task, we presented affirmative (e.g., her dad was rich) and negative sentences (e.g., her dad was not poor) while viewing two images of the affirmed and denied entities. The critical sentence in each item was preceded by one of three types of contexts: an inconsistent context (e.g., She supposed that her dad had little savings) that activates the negated situation (a poor man), a consistent context (e.g., She supposed that her dad had enough savings) that activates the actual situation (a rich man), or a neutral context (e.g., her dad lived on the other side of town) that activates neither of the two models previously suggested. The results corroborated our hypothesis. Pragmatics is implicated in the unfolding processing of negation. We found an increase in fixations on the target compared to the baseline for negative sentences at 800 ms in the neutral context, 600 ms in the inconsistent context, and 1450 ms in the consistent context. Thus, when the negated situation has been previously introduced via an inconsistent context, negation is facilitated

Shared structuring resources across domains : double task effects from linguistic processing on the structural integration of pitch sequences

Many studies have reported evidence suggesting that resources involved in linguistic structural processing might be domain-general by demonstrating interference from simultaneously presented non-linguistic stimuli on the processing of sentences (Slevc, Rosenberg, &amp; Patel, 2009). However, the complexity of the analysed linguistic processes often precludes the interpretation of such interference as being based on structural—rather than more general—processing resources (Perruchet &amp; Poulin-Charronnat, 2013). We therefore used linguistic structure as a source of interference for another structural processing task, by asking participants to read sentences while processing experimentally manipulated pitch sequences. Half of the sentences contained a segment with either an “out-of-context” sentential violation or a “garden path” unexpectancy. Furthermore, the pitch sequences contained a cluster shift, which did or did not align with the sentential unexpectancies. A two-tone recognition task followed each pitch sequence, providing an index of the strength with which this structural boundary was processed. When a “garden path” unexpectancy (requiring structural reintegration) accompanied the cluster shift, the structural boundary induced by this shift was processed more shallowly. No such effect occurred with non-reintegratable “out-of-context” sentential violations. Furthermore, the discussed interference effect can be isolated from general pitch recognition performance, supporting the interpretation of such interference as being based on overlapping structural processing resources (Kljajevic, 2010; Patel, 2003). </jats:p