Categorical perception effects reflect differences in typicality on within-category trials

Many studies have shown better discrimination of two stimuli that cross a category boundary than of two stimuli belonging to the same category. This finding, known as categorical perception, is generally assumed to reflect consistently good performance on cross-category trials, relative to within-category trials. However, Roberson, D., Damjanovic, L., and Pilling, M. (Memory & Cognition, 35, 1814-1829, 2007) revealed that performance on within-category pairs of morphed facial expressions matched performance on cross-category trials when the target was a good exemplar of its category. Here, we investigate the generality of that finding by conducting new analyses of data from a series of studies of categorical perception in facial identity and color domains with speakers of different languages. Consistent with Roberson et al. (2007), the new analyses demonstrate that performance for central targets on within-category trials is as good as performance on cross-category trials. Participants perform badly on within-category items only when the target is closer to the category boundary than is the distractor. These results provide no support for the view that categorical perception is associated with increased perceptual sensitivity at category boundaries. © 2010 Psychonomic Society, Inc

Color Vision: Color Categories Vary with Language after All

An intriguing new study with Russian and English participants has provided compelling support for the view that ‘categorical perception’ of color categories is verbally mediated and varies with culture and language

A single exercise bout enhances the manufacture of viral-specific T-cells from healthy donors: implications for allogeneic adoptive transfer immunotherapy

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) and Epstein-Barr virus (EBV) infections remain a major cause of morbidity and mortality after allogeneic hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). The adoptive transfer of donor-derived viral-specific cytotoxic T-cells (VSTs) is an effective treatment for controlling CMV and EBV infections after HSCT; however, new practical methods are required to augment the ex vivo manufacture of multi-VSTs from healthy donors. This study investigated the effects of a single exercise bout on the ex vivo manufacture of multi-VSTs. PBMCs isolated from healthy CMV/EBV seropositive participants before (PRE) and immediately after (POST) 30-minutes of cycling exercise were stimulated with CMV (pp65 and IE1) and EBV (LMP2A and BMLF1) peptides and expanded over 8 days. The number (fold difference from PRE) of T-cells specific for CMV pp65 (2.6), EBV LMP2A (2.5), and EBV BMLF1 (4.4) was greater among the VSTs expanded POST. VSTs expanded PRE and POST had similar phenotype characteristics and were equally capable of MHC-restricted killing of autologous target cells. We conclude that a single exercise bout enhances the manufacture of multi-VSTs from healthy donors without altering their phenotype or function and may serve as a simple and economical adjuvant to boost the production of multi-VSTs for allogeneic adoptive transfer immunotherapy

Ultrasonic Phased-Array Characterization for NDE Applications

Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) recently fabricated and delivered the 100-channel Ultrasonic Phased-Array Testbed System (UPATS) for NASA's Langley Research Center. NASA prepared the specifications and provided the funding to develop UPATS in order to provide a tool for the improvement of ultrasonic nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and characterization of materials. UPATS incorporates state-of-the-art phased-array concepts such as beam steering, focusing, apodization, and phase-sensitive detection which make it possible to develop more sophisticated testing methodologies. It also can be used to investigate fundamental ultrasonic propagation and detection phenomena such as refraction, diffraction, scattering, and beam broadening

Are alternative meanings of an Arabic homograph activated even when it is disambiguated by vowel diacritics?

The diacritical markers that represent most of the vowels in the Arabic orthography are typically omitted from written texts, thereby making many Arabic words phonologically and semantically ambiguous. Such words are known as heterophonic homographs and are associated with different pronunciations and meanings. The three experiments reported in this paper were conducted to investigate how Arabic readers understand diacritized heterophonic homographs. The results suggested that even when diacritics were added to disambiguate a heterophonic homograph, it was still initially processed as if it was ambiguous and its alternative meaning(s) were activated

Concreteness and word production

Two experiments are reported that investigated the effect of concreteness on the ability to generate words to fit sentence contexts. When participants attempted to retrieve words from dictionary definitions in Experiment 1, abstract words were associated with more omissions and more alternates than were concrete words. These findings are consistent with the view that the semantic-lexical weights in the word production system are weaker for abstract than for concrete words. We found no evidence that greater competition from semantic neighbors was an additional reason why abstract words were harder to produce. Participants also reported more positive tip-of-the-tongue states (TOTs) when attempting to produce abstract words from their definitions, consistent with more phonological retrieval problems for abstract than for concrete words. In Experiment 2, participants attempted to generate words to fit into a sentence that described a specific event. The difference between the numbers of abstract and concrete words recalled was significantly smaller in the event condition than in the definition condition, and evidence no longer emerged of greater phonological retrieval failure for abstract words. Overall, the results are consistent with the view that the semantic-lexical weights, but not the lexical-phonological weights, are weaker for abstract than for concrete words in the word production system. © 2012 Psychonomic Society, Inc

Acute exercise enhances the expansion of cytotoxic T-cells specific to leukemia and melanoma antigens: implications for adoptive transfer immunotherapy?

INTRODUCTION: The ex vivo expansion of tumor-associated-antigen (TAA)-specific cytotoxic T-cells from healthy donors for adoptive transfer in cancer patients has been used successfully to prevent relapse after hematopoietic stem cell transplantation (HSCT). However, this therapy is limited by the difficulty in priming and expanding sufficient numbers of functional TAA-specific T-cells, as T-cells recognizing TAA are usually low in frequency and avidity in healthy donors. Furthermore, monocyte-derived dendritic cells (Mo-DC) are used for TAA-presentation, but their manufacture is limited by low blood monocyte numbers. Therefore, large and impractical numbers of blood cells are required to successfully expand TAA-specific T-cells. Acute exercise is well-known to transiently activate and increase the numbers of T-cells and monocytes in peripheral blood. We therefore hypothesized that the immune-enhancing effects of exercise could be harnessed to enhance the ex vivo expansion of TAA-specific T-cells for adoptive transfer immunotherapy. AIMS: To examine the effects of acute exercise on (1) the number and function of TAA-specific T-cells expanded ex vivo, and 2) the generation and function of mo-DC. METHODS: 12 healthy adults (mean ± SD: Age 27±2.6yrs) completed an acute bout of stair-running exercise (time: 104±17sec). Mo-DC generated from pre and post exercise blood samples were pulsed with the melanoma-associated-antigens MAGE-A4 and PRAME, the common tumor-antigen survivin, and the leukemia-associated-antigen WT-1. Autologous DC were used to expand TAA-specific T-cells obtained before and after exercise over 14-days. T-cells were enumerated and phenotyped by flow cytometry and function was assessed by ELISPOT and antigen-specific cytotoxicity. RESULTS: A greater number of mo-DC were generated from post-exercise blood samples (pre: 2.0±1.0 X106cells, post: 5.2±2.6 X106cells). This was due to the 1.7 fold increase in blood monocytes post-exercise, as the number of mo-DC generated per input CD14+cell did not differ (pre: 0.40±0.25, post: 0.59±0.36). Total T-cell expansion was increased post-exercise (fold-increase: pre: 2.48±0.75, post: 2.90±0.74). ELISPOT revealed that the majority of donors had enrichment in TAA-specific T-cells post-exercise, as T-cell lines expanded from post-exercise samples exhibited an increased interferon-gamma response to TAA compared to T-cell lines expanded from pre-exercise samples. Exercise had no effect on T-cell phenotype or antigen-specific cytotoxicity in the expanded cells. CONCLUSION: These data indicate that a single bout of exercise enhances mo-DC generation and the expansion of TAA-specific T-cells ex vivo. Exercise may therefore serve as an adjuvant to enhance the expansion of TAA-specific T-cells in healthy donors and improve the efficacy of adoptive transfer therapy in cancer patients

Did I say dog or cat? A study of semantic error detection and correction in children

While naturalistic studies of spontaneous speech suggest that young children can monitor their speech, the mechanisms for detection and correction of speech errors in children are not well understood. In particular, there is little research on monitoring semantic errors in this population. This study provides a systematic investigation of detection and correction of semantic errors in children between the ages of 5 and 8, as they produced sentences to describe simple visual events involving nine highly familiar animals (the moving animals task). Results showed that older children made fewer errors and corrected a larger proportion of the errors that they made than younger children. We then tested the prediction of a production-based account of error monitoring that the strength of the language production system, and specifically its semantic-lexical component, should be correlated with the ability to detect and repair semantic errors. Strength of semantic-lexical mapping, as well as lexical-phonological mapping, was estimated individually for children by fitting their error patterns, obtained from an independent picture naming task, to a computational model of language production (Foygel & Dell, 2000). Children’s picture naming performance was predictive of their ability to monitor their semantic errors, above and beyond age. This relationship was specific to the strength of the semantic-lexical part of the system, as predicted by the production-based monitor

Insulin clearance and the incidence of type 2 diabetes in Hispanics and African Americans: the IRAS Family Study.

ObjectiveWe aimed to identify factors that are independently associated with the metabolic clearance rate of insulin (MCRI) and to examine the association of MCRI with incident type 2 diabetes in nondiabetic Hispanics and African Americans.Research design and methodsWe investigated 1,116 participants in the Insulin Resistance Atherosclerosis Study (IRAS) Family Study with baseline examinations from 2000 to 2002 and follow-up examinations from 2005 to 2006. Insulin sensitivity (S(I)), acute insulin response (AIR), and MCRI were determined at baseline from frequently sampled intravenous glucose tolerance tests. MCRI was calculated as the ratio of the insulin dose over the incremental area under the curve of insulin. Incident diabetes was defined as fasting glucose ≥126 mg/dL or antidiabetic medication use by self-report.ResultsWe observed that S(I) and HDL cholesterol were independent positive correlates of MCRI, whereas fasting insulin, fasting glucose, subcutaneous adipose tissue, visceral adipose tissue, and AIR were independent negative correlates (all P < 0.05) at baseline. After 5 years of follow-up, 71 (6.4%) participants developed type 2 diabetes. Lower MCRI was associated with a higher risk of incident diabetes after adjusting for demographics, lifestyle factors, HDL cholesterol, indexes of obesity and adiposity, and insulin secretion (odds ratio 2.01 [95% CI 1.30-3.10], P = 0.0064, per one-SD decrease in loge-transformed MCRI).ConclusionsOur data showed that lower MCRI predicts the incidence of type 2 diabetes