Embodying functionally relevant action sounds in patients with spinal cord injury

Growing evidence indicates that perceptual-motor codes may be associated with and influenced by actual bodily states. Following a spinal cord injury (SCI), for example, individuals exhibit reduced visual sensitivity to biological motion. However, a dearth of direct evidence exists about whether profound alterations in sensorimotor traffic between the body and brain influence audio-motor representations. We tested 20 wheelchair-bound individuals with lower skeletal-level SCI who were unable to feel and move their lower limbs, but have retained upper limb function. In a two-choice, matching-to-sample auditory discrimination task, the participants were asked to determine which of two action sounds matched a sample action sound presented previously. We tested aural discrimination ability using sounds that arose from wheelchair, upper limb, lower limb, and animal actions. Our results indicate that an inability to move the lower limbs did not lead to impairment in the discrimination of lower limb-related action sounds in SCI patients. Importantly, patients with SCI discriminated wheelchair sounds more quickly than individuals with comparable auditory experience (i.e. physical therapists) and inexperienced, able-bodied subjects. Audio-motor associations appear to be modified and enhanced to incorporate external salient tools that now represent extensions of their body schema

Capital Region Climate Change Forum: Citizens' Report

The Capital Region Climate Change Forum was organised, facilitated and evaluated by the Institute for Sustainable Futures (ISF) at the University of Technology, Sydney (UTS). The NSW Greenhouse Office and the ACT Department of Territory and Municipal Services provided funding for the Forum. The Forum was held from Friday 1 December to Sunday 3 December 2006. The primary objectives of the Forum were to: * Test the use of a citizens jury as a way of helping the community to engage with the issue of climate change and develop informed recommendations on how to respond * Provide the NSW and ACT Governments with a greater understanding of how the community in the Capital Region would like to respond to climate change * Improve understanding of community perspectives on climate change more broadly. The Forum grew out of an earlier proposal for a National Conversation on Climate Change (NCCC), developed by ISF. The NCCC proposal is provided in Appendix A. The aim of the NCCC is to stimulate public debate on Australia's response to climate change by undertaking a series of high profile citizen forums in all Australian states and developing an associated website and other media outputs. It seeks to promote public deliberation on climate change response. Deliberation is an approach to decision making in which citizens consider relevant facts from multiple points of view, converse with one another to think critically about options before them and enlarge their perspectives, opinions and understandings. In a deliberative process, participants are provided with information, training, time and other resources to allow them to learn about and debate an issue and come to a considered view. A deliberative process acts as a capacity building exercise in which non expert members of the community are empowered to discuss and form valid opinions about the subject

The Thin-Skin Electromagnetic Field Near a Surface Crack in a Ferromagnetic Metal

A problem fundamental to all electromagnetic methods of NDT is that of modeling accurately the changes in an applied field that are produced by a flaw. The structure of such fields depends significantly on two dimensionless numbers. The first of these is the ratio of the skin-depth δ to the global length scale of the perturbed field, which is given by the crack dimension l Many studies relate specifically to thin-skin fields where δ/l « 1 and the present study is also in this context. Within the classification of thin-skin fields, widely different surface distributions can arise depending on the value of the second parameter m=l/µrδ where µr is the relative magnetic permeability of the metal specimen [1]. Values of m vary from very small to very large depending on the material properties and the operating frequency. In the Wolfson Unit at University College London a great deal of work has been done at frequencies around 103 Hz on cracks in ferromagnetic steels where µr is large enough to make m small. The limiting form of surface field obtained as m- 0 is then the surface unfolded field [1,2]. On the other hand, many other investigations have been carried out on non-magnetic materials whereµr=1 so that m is large in thin-skin situations (e.g. Auld et al. [3]). In this case the algorithm for constructing the surface field around a flaw is based on a Born approximation which considers the surface field outside a surface-breaking crack to be unchanged by the presence of the flaw.</p

Magnetic signatures of plasma-depleted flux tubes in the Saturnian inner magnetosphere

Initial Cassini observations have revealed evidence for interchanging magnetic flux tubes in the inner Saturnian magnetosphere. Some of the reported flux tubes differ remarkably by their magnetic signatures, having a depressed or enhanced magnetic pressure relative to their surroundings. The ones with stronger fields have been interpreted previously as either outward moving mass-loaded or inward moving plasma-depleted flux tubes based on magnetometer observations only. We use detailed multi-instrumental observations of small and large density depletions in the inner Saturnian magnetosphere from Cassini Rev. A orbit that enable us to discriminate amongst the two previous and opposite interpretations. Our analysis undoubtedly confirms the similar nature of both types of reported interchanging magnetic flux tubes, which are plasma-depleted, whatever their magnetic signatures are. Their different magnetic signature is clearly an effect associated with latitude. These Saturnian plasma-depleted flux tubes ultimately may play a similar role as the Jovian ones

Prayer and psychological health: a study among sixth-form pupils attending Catholic and Protestant schools in Northern Ireland

Eysenck's dimensional model of personality includes two indicators of psychological health, defined as neuroticism and psychoticism. In order to examine the association between psychological health and prayer, two samples of sixth-form pupils in Northern Ireland (16- to 18-year-olds) attending Catholic (N = 1246) and Protestant (N = 1060) schools completed the abbreviated Revised Eysenck Personality Questionnaire alongside a simple measure of prayer frequency. The data demonstrated a positive association between prayer frequency and better levels of psychological health as assessed by Eysenck's notion of psychoticism. Among pupils attending both Catholic and Protestant schools, higher levels of prayer were associated with lower psychoticism scores. Among pupils attending Catholic schools, however, higher levels of prayer were also associated with higher neuroticism scores

Plasma electrons above Saturn's main rings: CAPS observations

We present observations of thermal ( similar to 0.6 - 100eV) electrons observed near Saturn's main rings during Cassini's Saturn Orbit Insertion (SOI) on 1 July 2004. We find that the intensity of electrons is broadly anticorrelated with the ring optical depth at the magnetic footprint of the field line joining the spacecraft to the rings. We see enhancements corresponding to the Cassini division and Encke gap. We suggest that some of the electrons are generated by photoemission from ring particle surfaces on the illuminated side of the rings, the far side from the spacecraft. Structure in the energy spectrum over the Cassini division and A-ring may be related to photoelectron emission followed by acceleration, or, more likely, due to photoelectron production in the ring atmosphere or ionosphere

Searching for faces differs from categorization: Evidence from scenes and eye movements

This study examined whether the detection of frontal, ¾ and profile face views differs from their categorization as faces. Experiment 1 compared three tasks that required observers to determine the presence or absence of a face but varied in the extent to which they had to search for faces in simple displays and small or large scenes to make this decision. Performance was equivalent for all face views in simple displays and small scenes, but was notably slower for profile views when this required the search for faces in extended scene displays. This search effect was confirmed in Experiment 2, which compared observers’ eye movements with their response times to faces in visual scenes. These results demonstrate that the categorization of faces at fixation is dissociable from the detection of faces in space. Consequently, we suggest that face detection should be studied with extended visual displays, such as natural scenes