Skin Admittance Measurement for Emotion Recognition: A Study over Frequency Sweep

The electrodermal activity (EDA) is a reliable physiological signal for monitoring the sympathetic nervous system. Several studies have demonstrated that EDA can be a source of effective markers for the assessment of emotional states in humans. There are two main methods for measuring EDA: endosomatic (internal electrical source) and exosomatic (external electrical source). Even though the exosomatic approach is the most widely used, differences between alternating current (AC) and direct current (DC) methods and their implication in the emotional assessment field have not yet been deeply investigated. This paper aims at investigating how the admittance contribution of EDA, studied at different frequency sources, affects the EDA statistical power in inferring on the subject?s arousing level (neutral or aroused). To this extent, 40 healthy subjects underwent visual affective elicitations, including neutral and arousing levels, while EDA was gathered through DC and AC sources from 0 to 1 kHz. Results concern the accuracy of an automatic, EDA feature-based arousal recognition system for each frequency source. We show how the frequency of the external electrical source affects the accuracy of arousal recognition. This suggests a role of skin susceptance in the study of affective stimuli through electrodermal response

Development of Asymmetic Deacylative Allylation

Herein we present the development of asymmetric deacylative allylation of ketone enolates. The reaction directly couples readily available ketone pronucleophiles with allylic alcohols using facile retro-Claisen cleavage to form reactive intermediates in situ. The simplicity and robustness of the reaction conditions is demonstrated by the preparation of > 6 grams of an allylated tetralone from commercially available materials. Furthermore, use of non-racemic PHOX ligands allows intermolecular formation of quaternary stereocenters directly from allylic alcohols

Researching Zika in pregnancy:lessons for global preparedness

Our understanding of congenital infections is based on prospective studies of women infected during pregnancy. The EU has funded three consortia to study Zika virus, each including a prospective study of pregnant women. Another multi-centre study has been funded by the US National Institutes of Health. This Personal View describes the study designs required to research Zika virus, and questions whether funding academics in the EU and USA to work with collaborators in outbreak areas is an effective strategy. 3 years after the 2015\u201316 Zika virus outbreaks, these collaborations have taught us little about vertical transmission of the virus. In the time taken to approve funding, agree contracts, secure ethics approval, and equip laboratories, Zika virus had largely disappeared. By contrast, prospective studies based on local surveillance and standard-of-care protocols have already provided valuable data. Threats to fetal and child health pose new challenges for global preparedness requiring support for the design and implementation of locally appropriate protocols. These protocols can answer the key questions earlier than externally designed studies and at lower cost. Local protocols can also provide a framework for recruitment of unexposed controls that are required to study less specific outcomes. Other priorities include accelerated development of non-invasive tests, and longer-term storage of neonatal and antenatal samples to facilitate retrospective reconstruction of cohort studies

User acceptability of saliva and gargle samples for identifying COVID-19 positive high-risk workers and household contacts

Throughout the COVID-19 pandemic nasopharyngeal or nose and/or throat swabs (NTS) have been the primary approach for collecting patient samples for the subsequent detection of viral RNA. However, this procedure, if undertaken correctly, can be unpleasant and therefore deters individuals from providing high quality samples. To overcome these limitations other modes of sample collection have been explored. In a cohort of frontline health care workers we have compared saliva and gargle samples to gold-standard NTS. 93% of individuals preferred providing saliva or gargle samples, with little sex-dependent variation. Viral titers collected in samples were analyzed using standard methods and showed that gargle and saliva were similarly comparable for identifying COVID-19 positive individuals compared to NTS (92% sensitivity; 98% specificity). We suggest that gargle and saliva collection are viable alternatives to NTS swabs and may encourage testing to provide better disease diagnosis and population surveillance

Characterization of the Blue-Light-Activated Adenylyl Cyclase mPAC by Flash Photolysis and FTIR Spectroscopy

The recently discovered photo-activated adenylyl cyclase (mPAC from Microcoleus chthonoplastes) is the first PAC that owes a light-, oxygen- and voltage-sensitive (LOV) domain for blue-light sensing. The photoreaction of the mPAC receptor was studied by time-resolved UV/vis and light-induced Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) absorption difference spectroscopy. The photocycle comprises of the typical triplet state LOV715 and the thio-adduct state LOV390. While the adduct state decays with a time constant of 8 s, the lifetime of the triplet state is with 656 ns significantly shorter than in all other reported LOV domains. The light-induced FTIR difference spectrum shows the typical bands of the LOV390 and LOV450 intermediates. The negative S-H stretching vibration at 2573 cm−1 is asymmetric suggesting two rotamer configurations of the protonated side chain of C194. A positive band at 3632 cm−1 is observed, which is assigned to an internal water molecule. In contrast to other LOV domains, mPAC exhibits a second positive feature at 3674 cm−1 which is due to the O-H stretch of a second intrinsic water molecule and the side chain of Y476. We conclude that the latter might be involved in the dimerization of the cyclase domain which is crucial for ATP binding

Accruals quality vis-a-vis disclosure quality: Substitutes or complements?

The impact of accruals quality and disclosure quality on stock returns is a topical issue in market-based accounting research. Most of the debate is centred on their incremental ability to predict future earnings. Recent studies suggest that higher information risk proxied by either lower accruals quality or lower disclosure quality results in higher stock returns. This paper examines the relationship between accruals quality and disclosure quality, and investigates whether they are complements or substitutes in explaining the time-series variation in portfolio returns. Applying portfolio groupings, we find a positive association between accruals quality and disclosure quality, suggesting that firms with higher disclosure quality engage less in earnings management and have higher accruals quality. Asset pricing tests show that an accruals quality factor and a disclosure quality factor explain the time-series variation in the excess returns of similar sets of portfolios. This suggests that they contain similar information and confirms the substitutive nature of accruals quality and disclosure quality factors

New Faces and New Masks of Today's Consumer

In 1995, we proposed that consumption and contemporary consumerism could not be studied or understood separately from the world of work and production. We proposed that contemporary consumerism was built on the back of what we referred to as `the Fordist Deal'. This deal, pioneered by Henry Ford for his employees, was the promise of ever increasing standards of living in exchange for a quiescent labour force accepting alienating work. Since that deal was struck, consumerism came to signify a general pre-occupation with consumption standards and choice as well as a willingness to read meanings in material commodities and to equate happiness and success with material possessions. In this sense, Ford may be seen as the father both of mass production and mass consumption. Since the Fordist high noon of consumerism in the West, mass consumption is widely seen as having fragmented into a proliferation of highly individualized niche products. For its part, a considerable part of mass production has migrated to countries with lower wages and looser environmental and social controls, fueling their own variants of consumerism. In this article, we examine the gradual erosion of the Fordist Deal in the light of developments in the last 10 years or so, seeking to assess the future of consumerism at a global level. We also seek to identify and discuss some emerging conceptualizations of the consumer, some of the new faces and masks assumed by the archetypal character of our types. We analyse some of the tensions and contradictions lurking behind these conceptualizations and try to envisage some of the real choices facing consumers today and some of the processes of social change that hinge on the outcomes of these choices. The article identifies a fundamental paradox between the ubiquity of the consumer in contemporary discourses and the virtual impossibility of generalizing about consumers. We suggest, then, that the consumer may be viewed as one of those `essentially contested concepts' proposed by Gallie that defy domestication. The consumer, we argue, is unmanageable, both as a concept, since no-one can pin it down to one specific conceptualization at the expense of all others, and as an entity, since attempts to control and manage the consumer lead to the consumer mutating from one impersonation to another. It is precisely this paradox that we seek to capture in our article's title. The article concludes with a consideration of three basic challenges that are liable to lead to fundamental reorientation of consumption and production, as well as of our conceptualizations and theorizing about them. These challenges are the outcomes of environmental, demographic and social factors that, we argue, make the current situation unsustainable and will bring about its dissolution

Defining myocardial tissue abnormalities in end-stage renal failure with cardiac magnetic resonance imaging using native T1 mapping

Noninvasive quantification of myocardial fibrosis in end-stage renal disease is challenging. Gadolinium contrast agents previously used for cardiac magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are contraindicated because of an association with nephrogenic systemic fibrosis. In other populations, increased myocardial native T1 times on cardiac MRI have been shown to be a surrogate marker of myocardial fibrosis. We applied this method to 33 incident hemodialysis patients and 28 age- and sex-matched healthy volunteers who underwent MRI at 3.0T. Native T1 relaxation times and feature tracking–derived global longitudinal strain as potential markers of fibrosis were compared and associated with cardiac biomarkers. Left ventricular mass indices were higher in the hemodialysis than the control group. Global, Septal and midseptal T1 times were all significantly higher in the hemodialysis group (global T1 hemodialysis 1171 ± 27 ms vs. 1154 ± 32 ms; septal T1 hemodialysis 1184 ± 29 ms vs. 1163 ± 30 ms; and midseptal T1 hemodialysis 1184 ± 34 ms vs. 1161 ± 29 ms). In the hemodialysis group, T1 times correlated with left ventricular mass indices. Septal T1 times correlated with troponin and electrocardiogram-corrected QT interval. The peak global longitudinal strain was significantly reduced in the hemodialysis group (hemodialysis -17.7±5.3% vs. -21.8±6.2%). For hemodialysis patients, the peak global longitudinal strain significantly correlated with left ventricular mass indices (R = 0.426), and a trend was seen for correlation with galectin-3, a biomarker of cardiac fibrosis. Thus, cardiac tissue properties of hemodialysis patients consistent with myocardial fibrosis can be determined noninvasively and associated with multiple structural and functional abnormalities