Selective attention and the auditory vertex potential. 2: Effects of signal intensity and masking noise

A randomized sequence of tone bursts was delivered to subjects at short inter-stimulus intervals with the tones originating from one of three spatially and frequency specific channels. The subject's task was to count the tones in one of the three channels at a time, ignoring the other two, and press a button after each tenth tone. In different conditions, tones were given at high and low intensities and with or without a background white noise to mask the tones. The N sub 1 component of the auditory vertex potential was found to be larger in response to attended channel tones in relation to unattended tones. This selective enhancement of N sub 1 was minimal for loud tones presented without noise and increased markedly for the lower tone intensity and in noise added conditions

Selective attention and the auditory vertex potential. 1: Effects of stimulus delivery rate

Enhancement of the auditory vertex potentials with selective attention to dichotically presented tone pips was found to be critically sensitive to the range of inter-stimulus intervals in use. Only at the shortest intervals was a clear-cut enhancement of the latency component to stimuli observed for the attended ear

Respiratory syncytial virus outbreak in a long-term care facility detected using reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction: an argument for real-time detection methods.

ObjectivesTo report an outbreak of respiratory synctyial virus (RSV) in a long-term care facility (LTCF) during ongoing routine respiratory illness surveillance.DesignRapid antigen testing, viral culture, direct fluorescent antibody (DFA) testing, and reverse transcriptase polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) testing for up to 15 viruses in symptomatic residents and chart review.SettingA 120-bed LTCF.MeasurementsComparison of rapid antigen testing, respiratory viral cultures, and DFA testing and RT-PCR in residents with symptoms of a respiratory tract infection.ResultsTwenty-two of 52 residents developed symptoms of a respiratory tract infection between January 29, 2008, and February 26, 2008. RSV was detected using RT-PCR in seven (32%) of the 22 cases. None of the seven cases had positive RSV rapid antigen testing, and only two had positive culture or DFA results. This outbreak occurred during a time when state wide RSV rates were rapidly declining. One patient was admitted to the hospital during the infection and subsequently died.ConclusionRSV may cause outbreaks in LTCFs that traditional diagnostic methods do not detect. RT-PCR can provide a more timely and accurate diagnosis of outbreaks, which allows for early symptomatic treatment, rational use of antibiotics, and improved infection control

Ethnographic research on crime and control: Editors’ introduction

Jennifer Fleetwood and Gary R. Potter introduce a special section on ethnographic research on crime and control

Effects of dried distillers grains with solubles on sow carcass fat quality

A pilot experiment was conducted to determine the effects of feeding nonpregnant (open) sows a diet containing 50% dried distillers grains with solubles (DDGS) on growth and carcass fat quality. A total of 8 open sows were allotted to 1 of 2 diets by parity and BW. One diet was a standard corn-soybean meal-based gestation diet; the second diet was a corn-soybean meal-based diet that contained 50% DDGS. All sows were fed 5 lb/d of feed in a single feeding for 92 d. All sows were harvested on d 92 at the Kansas State University Meat Laboratory for determination of carcass fat quality. As expected, no differences in BW or backfat change were found (P \u3e 0.62) for the feeding period. Additionally, no differences (P \u3e 0.23) in lipid oxidation as measured by 2-thiobarbituric acid reactive substances (TBARS) assay were reported either initially or after 5 d of retail display for sows fed 50% DDGS compared with controls. Lipid oxidation increased (P \u3c 0.003) as measured by TBARS assay for both treatments from d 1 to 5 as expected. Jowl fatty acid analysis revealed an increase in linoleic acid (P \u3c 0.01), total polyunsaturated fatty acids (P \u3c 0.01), and the ratio of polyunsaturated fatty acids to saturated fatty acids (P \u3c 0.03). Also, there was a trend for increased jowl iodine value (P \u3c 0.08) for sows fed 50% DDGS compared with the controls. In summary, feeding 50% DDGS to open sows for 92 d did not significantly affect BW, backfat, and lipid oxidation compared with controls. However, feeding 50% DDGS increased the concentration of linoleic acid and total polyunsaturated fatty acids and tended to increase jowl iodine value compared with controls.; Swine Day, 2008, Kansas State University, Manhattan, KS, 200

Beliefs about the Minds of Others Influence How We Process Sensory Information

Attending where others gaze is one of the most fundamental mechanisms of social cognition. The present study is the first to examine the impact of the attribution of mind to others on gaze-guided attentional orienting and its ERP correlates. Using a paradigm in which attention was guided to a location by the gaze of a centrally presented face, we manipulated participants' beliefs about the gazer: gaze behavior was believed to result either from operations of a mind or from a machine. In Experiment 1, beliefs were manipulated by cue identity (human or robot), while in Experiment 2, cue identity (robot) remained identical across conditions and beliefs were manipulated solely via instruction, which was irrelevant to the task. ERP results and behavior showed that participants' attention was guided by gaze only when gaze was believed to be controlled by a human. Specifically, the P1 was more enhanced for validly, relative to invalidly, cued targets only when participants believed the gaze behavior was the result of a mind, rather than of a machine. This shows that sensory gain control can be influenced by higher-order (task-irrelevant) beliefs about the observed scene. We propose a new interdisciplinary model of social attention, which integrates ideas from cognitive and social neuroscience, as well as philosophy in order to provide a framework for understanding a crucial aspect of how humans' beliefs about the observed scene influence sensory processing

Representing environmental harm and resistance on Twitter: The case of the TAP pipeline

This research explores a new methodological path for doing green cultural criminological research via social media. It provides original case-study data and aims to stimulate further empirical and theoretical debate. In particular, the study explores how Twitter users have represented the harms related to an ongoing pipeline project in Italy (referred to as TAP), and the resistance to those harms. To these ends, it offers a virtual and visual ethnography of Twitter posts and posted images

Criminology or Zemiology? Yes, please! on the refusal of choice between false alternatives

Buried deep within the zemiological movement and its supportive literature is the implicit assumption that the word zemia, the organising concept around which zemiology is built, simply represents ‘the Greek word for harm’. This interpretation has supported numerous drives to ‘move beyond criminology’ and erect strict borders between the study of crime and harm. However, a deeper, albeit still rather brief, exploration of zemia reveals that it possesses a broader range of meaning than that commonly afforded to it. By beginning to unpick zemia’s semantic genealogy, it appears that the conventional use of the word to support the imposition of false alternatives between criminology and zemiology is untenable. Accordingly, this chapter attempts to foreground a more integrated approach to the study of crime and harm