Visual segmentation of complex naturalistic structures in an infant eye-tracking search task

An infant's everyday visual environment is composed of a complex array of entities, some of which are well integrated into their surroundings. Although infants are already sensitive to some categories in their first year of life, it is not clear which visual information supports their detection of meaningful elements within naturalistic scenes. Here we investigated the impact of image characteristics on 8-month-olds' search performance using a gaze contingent eye-tracking search task. Infants had to detect a target patch on a background image. The stimuli consisted of images taken from three categories: vegetation, non-living natural elements (e.g., stones), and manmade artifacts, for which we also assessed target background differences in lower- and higher-level visual properties. Our results showed that larger target-background differences in the statistical properties scaling invariance and entropy, and also stimulus backgrounds including low pictorial depth, predicted better detection performance. Furthermore, category membership only affected search performance if supported by luminance contrast. Data from an adult comparison group also indicated that infants' search performance relied more on lower-order visual properties than adults. Taken together, these results suggest that infants use a combination of property- and category-related information to parse complex visual stimuli

Quality of Minority Health Communication: An Analysis of Hispanic-Targeted Health Websites.

The Internet has become one of the most used forms of health communication media. Using the Health on the Net code of conduct, this study examined the quality of health information available on the Internet for one of the United State\u27s fastest growing minorities, Hispanics. When comparing Hispanic-targeted websites with those that target the majority population, this study found significant differences with respect to quality. Specifically, sites targeting Hispanics had a lower level of quality than those that targeted the majority population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR

Cells that express all five proteins of vesicular stomatitis virus from cloned cDNAs support replication, assembly, and budding of defective interfering particles

An alternative approach to structurefunction analysis of vesicular stomatitis virus (VSV) gene products and their interactions with one another during each phase of the viral life cycle is described. We showed previously by using the vaccinia viruslT7 RNA polymerase expression system that when cells expressing the nucleocapsid protein (N), the phosphoprotein (NS), and the large polymerase protein (L) of VSV were superinfected with defective interfering (DI) particles, rapid and efflicient replication and amplification of DI particle RNA occurred. Here, we demonstrate that all five VSV proteins can be expressed simultaneously when cells are cotransfected with plasmids containing the matrix protein (M) gene and the glycoprotein (G) gene of VSV in addition to plasmids containing the genes for the N, NS, and L proteins. When cells coexpressing all five VSV proteins were superinfected with DI particles, which because of their defectiveness are unable to express any viral proteins or to replicate, DI particle replication, assembly, and budding were observed and infectious DI particles were released into the culture fluids. Omission of either the M or G protein expression resulted in no DI particle budding. The vector-supported DI particles were similar in size and morphology to the authentic DI particles generated from cells coinfected with DI particles and helper VSV and their infectivity could be blocked by anti-VSV or anti-G antiserum. The successful replication, assembly, and budding of DI particles from cells expressing all five VSV proteins from cloned cDNAs provide a powerful approach for detailed structure-function analysis of the VSV gene products in each step of the replicative cycle of the virus

How Spokesperson Rank and Selected Media Channels Impact Perceptions in Crisis Communication

This study examined the impact of spokesperson’s rank and selected media channels in crisis communication by employing different ranks (i.e., CEO and communication director spokespersons) and media channels (blogs, websites, and newspapers). Findings indicated that CEO spokespersons were more effective in terms of lowering publics’ crisis responsibility attributions than communication director spokespersons and that blogs were more effective in lowering crisis responsibility attributions than websites and newspapers