The impact of perceptual complexity on road crossing decisions in younger and older adults.

Cognitive abilities decline with healthy ageing which can have a critical impact on day-to-day activities. One example is road crossing where older adults (OAs) disproportionally fall victim to pedestrian accidents. The current research examined two virtual reality experiments that investigated how the complexity of the road crossing situation impacts OAs (N = 19, ages 65-85) and younger adults (YAs, N = 34, ages 18-24) with a range of executive functioning abilities (EFs). Overall, we found that OAs were able to make safe crossing decisions, and were more cautious than YAs. This continued to be the case in high cognitive load situations. In these situations, safe decisions were associated with an increase in head movements for participants with poorer attention switching than participants with better attention switching suggesting these groups developed compensation strategies to continue to make safe decisions. In situations where participants had less time to make a crossing decision all participants had difficulties making safe crossing decisions which was amplified for OAs and participants with poorer EFs. Our findings suggest more effort should be taken to ensure that road crossing points are clear of visual obstructions and more speed limits should be placed around retirement or care homes, neither of which are legislated for in the UK and Australia

Testing the persistence of Carcharodontosauridae (Theropoda) in the Upper Cretaceous of Patagonia based on dental evidence

The deposits corresponding to the Upper Cretaceous Neuquén and San Jorge Gulf basins from northern and central Patagonia have provided two of the most complete sequences of terrestrial vertebrate faunas of all Gondwanan landmasses. Among the carnivorous components, the carcharodontosaurid theropods appeared as common elements during the Early Cretaceous and the earliest Late Cretaceous in northern and central Patagonia. Although recorded mostly in the lower Turonian, isolated teeth suggest their presence in younger strata in northern and central Patagonia, reaching the clade in the region as late as the early Maastrichtian. Here, we verify the assignment of such isolated teeth previously identified as belonging to Carcharodontosauridae from the Upper Cretaceous strata of northern and central Patagonia. Using three different methods, namely a cladistic analysis performed on a dentition-based data matrix, and discriminant and cluster analyses conducted on a large dataset of theropod crown measurements, we assign a tooth from Candeleros Formation to carcharodontosaurid theropods and teeth from Cerro Lisandro, Bajo Barreal, Portezuelo, Plottier and Allen formations to abelisaurid theropods. These new reappraisals provide additional evidence about the extinction of Carcharodontosauridae in South America at about the late Turonian–earliest Coniacian as part of a general faunistic turnover event, with the last clear evidence of this lineage in Patagonia coming from the early–middle Turonian.Fil: Meso, Jorge Gustavo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigación en Paleobiología y Geología; ArgentinaFil: Juárez Valieri, R. D.. Gobierno de la Provincia de Río Negro. Ministerio de Turismo, Cultura y Deporte. Secretaría de Cultura; ArgentinaFil: Porfiri, Juan Domingo. Museo del Desierto Patagónico; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Museo de Ciencias Naturales; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Ingeniería; ArgentinaFil: Da Silva Correa, Samuel Aparecido. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Centro Científico Tecnológico Conicet - Patagonia Norte. Instituto de Investigación en Paleobiología y Geología; ArgentinaFil: Martinelli, Agustín Guillermo. Consejo Nacional de Investigaciones Científicas y Técnicas. Oficina de Coordinación Administrativa Parque Centenario. Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales "Bernardino Rivadavia"; ArgentinaFil: Casal, G. A.. Universidad Nacional de la Patagonia "San Juan Bosco"; ArgentinaFil: Canudo, J. I.. Universidad de Zaragoza; EspañaFil: Poblete, F.. Museo del Desierto Patagónico; ArgentinaFil: Dos Santos, D.. Museo del Desierto Patagónico; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Museo de Ciencias Naturales; Argentina. Universidad Nacional del Comahue. Facultad de Ingeniería; Argentin

Evidence of inverted-gravity driven variation in predictive sensorimotor function.

We move our eyes to place the fovea into the part of a viewed scene currently of interest. Recent evidence suggests that each human has signature patterns of eye movements like handwriting which depend on their sensitivity, allocation of attention and experience. Use of implicit knowledge of how earth's gravity influences object motion has been shown to aid dynamic perception. We used a projected ball tracking task with a plain background offering no context cues to probe the effect of acquired experience about physical laws of gravitation on performance differences of 44 participants under a simulated gravity and an atypical (upward) antigravity condition. Performance measured by the unsigned difference between instantaneous eye and stimulus positions (RMSE) was consistently worse in the antigravity condition. In the vertical RMSE, participants took about 200ms longer to improve to the best performance for antigravity compared to gravity trials. The antigravity condition produced a divergence of individual performance which was correlated with levels of questionnaire based quantified traits of schizotypy but not control traits. Grouping participants by high or low traits revealed a negative relationship between schizotypy traits level and both initiation and maintenance of tracking, a result consistent with trait related impoverished sensory prediction. The findings confirm for the first time that where cues enabling exact estimation of acceleration are unavailable, knowledge of gravity contributes to dynamic prediction improving motion processing. With acceleration expectations violated, we demonstrate that antigravity tracking could act as a multivariate diagnostic window into predictive brain function

Bifurcation study of a neural field competition model with an application to perceptual switching in motion integration.

Perceptual multistability is a phenomenon in which alternate interpretations of a fixed stimulus are perceived intermittently. Although correlates between activity in specific cortical areas and perception have been found, the complex patterns of activity and the underlying mechanisms that gate multistable perception are little understood. Here, we present a neural field competition model in which competing states are represented in a continuous feature space. Bifurcation analysis is used to describe the different types of complex spatio-temporal dynamics produced by the model in terms of several parameters and for different inputs. The dynamics of the model was then compared to human perception investigated psychophysically during long presentations of an ambiguous, multistable motion pattern known as the barberpole illusion. In order to do this, the model is operated in a parameter range where known physiological response properties are reproduced whilst also working close to bifurcation. The model accounts for characteristic behaviour from the psychophysical experiments in terms of the type of switching observed and changes in the rate of switching with respect to contrast. In this way, the modelling study sheds light on the underlying mechanisms that drive perceptual switching in different contrast regimes. The general approach presented is applicable to a broad range of perceptual competition problems in which spatial interactions play a role

The Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health (SEGH): building for the future of early career researchers

In a 2019 editorial entitled ‘The Society for Environmental Geochemistry and Health (SEGH): building for the future’ (Watts et al. 2019), SEGH President Dr Michael Watts and all current board members outlined their aspirations and initiatives for the Society’s expansion into the new decade and beyond. Central to these efforts was the establishment of a dedicated group of early career researchers (ECRs) within SEGH to foster interaction, collaboration, mentorship and ultimately the expansion of this demographic. SEGH defines ECRs as undergraduate or postgraduate (Masters/PhD) students or as scientists having received their highest degree (BSc, MSc or PhD) within the past 5 years. ECRs currently make up approximately 20% of SEGH memberships, and nurturing growth at grassroots level is a critical strategy in preserving the Society’s long-term future if it is to remain relevant in an ever more competitive research landscape. With this in mind, ECR representatives currently sitting on the board took the initiative to follow up the 2019 editorial from an ECR perspective, with contributions made exclusively by members of this group. Drawing from personal experiences, we focus on key aspects of SEGH as a society and a community, but more importantly as a wider discipline and career path. We highlight the unique selling points of SEGH membership to ECRs, while voicing our wishes for improvement with the overall aim of promoting the society, and the society’s core values. Our hope is that we can attract more ECRs to our diverse community and enhance the experience of our current members

Four Dimensions of Journalistic Convergence: A preliminary approach to current media trends at Spain

Convergence is a very polysemous concept that has been used to describe various trends in journalism that have something in common: the blurring of the limits between different media, professional skills and roles. This paper proposes to analytically structure convergence into four dimensions: integrated production, multiskilled professionals, multiplatform delivery and active audience. This analytical grid can help in exploring convergence avoiding deterministic assumptions and allowing to map its development in different media companies as an open process with diverse outcomes. A sample of 58 Spanish cases is studied using the conceptual framework. Multiplatform delivery is the most popular convergence strategy, and in any given dimension developments tend not to radically change established professional routines and values. Integration and multiskilling dimensions seem to be closely related and mainly developed in local and regional media with small staffs. Delivery and audience strategies are more complex in national media