The face, beauty, and symmetry: Perceiving asymmetry in beautiful faces

The relationship between bilateral facial symmetry and beauty remains to be clarified. Here, straight head-on photographs of “beautiful” faces from the collections of professional modeling agencies were selected. First, beauty ratings were obtained for these faces. Then, the authors created symmetrical left-left and right-right composites of the beautiful faces and asked a new group of subjects to choose the most attractive pair member. “Same” responses were allowed. No difference between the left-left and right-right composites was revealed but significant differences were obtained between “same” and the left-left or right-right. These results show that subjects detected asymmetry in beauty and suggest that very beautiful faces can be functionally asymmetrical

A non-abelian conjecture of Tate-Shafarevich type for hyperbolic curves

We state a conjectural criterion for identifying global integral points on a hyperbolic curve over $\mathbb{Z}$ in terms of Selmer schemes inside non-abelian cohomology functors with coefficients in $\mathbb{Q}_p$-unipotent fundamental groups. For $\mathbb{P}^1\setminus \{0,1,\infty\}$ and the complement of the origin in semi-stable elliptic curves of rank 0, we compute the local image of global Selmer schemes, which then allows us to numerically confirm our conjecture in a wide range of cases.Comment: Improvements to the exposition and numerous minor corrections throughou

Nonprofits and Social Change. Introduction: An Anchor. Reshaping the Relationship

In response to a variety of internal and external forces, including the recent economic downturn, nonprofit organizations in both Israel and the United States have increasingly been called upon to provide a safety net and serve as central players in the development, strengthening, and maintenance of civil society. These shifts include the privatization of services, blurring of the sectors and their traditional roles in providing services, reduced funding from traditional sources, welfare reforms including devolution, opening of new markets, enhanced role of faith-based people and organizations in service provision, intensified dependency and connectedness of policy makers and stakeholders, and the subsequent change in the relationship between citizens and institutions. These and other trends have led organizations to seek and create ways to restructure their internal and external roles and relationships with societal institutions

Vantage Point: The Representation of Place and the Visual Experience

We, as human beings, are unique creatures that have a need to form places. This obsession with claiming spaces and turning them into places starts at a young age. Maybe it is the first time a child goes to the park and claims a corner of the sand pit, because they think the sand is better on the right side. Perhaps it is a specific seat in the bleachers a person sits in at every home football game. Or maybe it is much more significant, like the spot on the path by the curved tree, next to the bike shed where you said good-bye to your family the first day of your freshman year in college

Islamic Law in Iran: Can It Protect the International Legal Right of Freedom of Religion and Belief?

Differences among civilizations are a critical consideration in the development and enforcement of public international law. As non-Western countries gain a more sophisticated and influential presence in the UN and other intergovernmental bodies, these bodies are forced to reconcile their historic and elemental positions with those of member states that may have fundamental differences in their views of governmental power, human rights, and the role of international authority. Religion is one area of particular interest because of its divisive implications for major players on the world stage. Religious beliefs inform the moral frameworks of many of the world\u27s most prominent policymakers. Whereas some nations are self-consciously religious in their policymaking, others, though potentially equally as informed in their moral structures by religion, claim to be secular in their statehood. Though the world is becoming more fragmented by ideology, it is also better connected through technology, and it is the role of legal scholars and policymakers to determine whether the maintenance of an international collaborative government body really is feasible in all areas of law. This Development explores the potential for compatibility between Islamic Law and human rights-in particular the freedom of religion and belief. As manifestations of Qur\u27anic law are as diverse as interpretations of Western liberal law, this Development focuses on Iranian Qur\u27anic law with only brief mentions of the implications of Islamic law for other countries. Though the Iranian interpretation of Islamic law is by no means representative of all Islamic nations, because of its conservative nature, it can serve as a benchmark in the analysis of other governmental systems. [CONT

Self-referential cognition and empathy in autism.

BACKGROUND: Individuals with autism spectrum conditions (ASC) have profound impairments in the interpersonal social domain, but it is unclear if individuals with ASC also have impairments in the intrapersonal self-referential domain. We aimed to evaluate across several well validated measures in both domains, whether both self-referential cognition and empathy are impaired in ASC and whether these two domains are related to each other. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Thirty adults aged 19-45, with Asperger Syndrome or high-functioning autism and 30 age, sex, and IQ matched controls participated in the self-reference effect (SRE) paradigm. In the SRE paradigm, participants judged adjectives in relation to the self, a similar close other, a dissimilar non-close other, or for linguistic content. Recognition memory was later tested. After the SRE paradigm, several other complimentary self-referential cognitive measures were taken. Alexithymia and private self-consciousness were measured via self-report. Self-focused attention was measured on the Self-Focus Sentence Completion task. Empathy was measured with 3 self-report instruments and 1 performance measure of mentalizing (Eyes test). Self-reported autistic traits were also measured with the Autism Spectrum Quotient (AQ). Although individuals with ASC showed a significant SRE in memory, this bias was decreased compared to controls. Individuals with ASC also showed reduced memory for the self and a similar close other and also had concurrent impairments on measures of alexithymia, self-focused attention, and on all 4 empathy measures. Individual differences in self-referential cognition predicted mentalizing ability and self-reported autistic traits. More alexithymia and less self memory was predictive of larger mentalizing impairments and AQ scores regardless of diagnosis. In ASC, more self-focused attention is associated with better mentalizing ability and lower AQ scores, while in controls, more self-focused attention is associated with decreased mentalizing ability and higher AQ scores. Increasing private self-consciousness also predicted better mentalizing ability, but only for individuals with ASC. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: We conclude that individuals with ASC have broad impairments in both self-referential cognition and empathy. These two domains are also intrinsically linked and support predictions made by simulation theory. Our results also highlight a specific dysfunction in ASC within cortical midlines structures of the brain such as the medial prefrontal cortex

A Low-Hassle, Low-Cost Method to Survey Student Attitudes about Library Space

This article discusses how two members of the space planning committee at Lehman College library created a brief paper survey, distributed it to students in the library, and designed a Google spreadsheet to enable the committee to work as a group to compile results. We provide our survey tool as an example; explain how we simplified data compilation through a “quick and dirty” coding process; outline step-by-step instructions on how to design a Google spreadsheet that enables many librarians to input survey results consistently; and describe our mistakes and “lessons learned.” We believe our practical approach could be easily implemented as a space planning tool in any number of libraries—even those with small staffs and budgets

Effect of Ga Content on Defect States in CuIn\u3csub\u3e1-x\u3c/sub\u3eGa\u3csub\u3ex\u3c/sub\u3eSe\u3csub\u3e2\u3c/sub\u3e Photovoltaic Devices

Defects in the band gap of CuIn1-xGaxSe2 have been characterized using transient photocapacitance spectroscopy. The measured spectra clearly show response from a band of defects centered around 0.8 eV from the valence band edge as well as an exponential distribution of band tail states. Despite Ga contents ranging from Ga/(In+Ga)=0.0 to 0.8, the defect bandwidth and its position relative to the valence band remain constant. This defect band may act as an important recombination center, contributing to the decrease in device efficiency with increasing Ga content

Harnessing Change to Create Sustainable Growth; The Visitacion/ Guadalupe Valley

A Regional Perspective is a report authored by Visitacion Valley Community Development Corporation and Asian Neighborhood Design as the first steps in efforts to create a regional planning perspective, collecting and analyzing data to assist in planning efforts towards sustainable growth, building relationships between regional stakeholders and decision-makers, and providing community outreach to inform and encourage community participation