Eye contrast polarity is critical for face recognition by infants

Just as faces share the same basic arrangement of features, with two eyes above a nose above a mouth, human eyes all share the same basic contrast polarity relations, with a sclera lighter than an iris and a pupil, and this is unique among primates. The current study examined whether this bright-dark relationship of sclera to iris plays a critical role in face recognition from early in development. Specifically, we tested face discrimination in 7- and 8-month-old infants while independently manipulating the contrast polarity of the eye region and of the rest of the face. This gave four face contrast polarity conditions: fully positive condition, fully negative condition, positive face with negated eyes ( negative eyes ) condition, and negated face with positive eyes ( positive eyes ) condition. In a familiarization and novelty preference procedure, we found that 7- and 8-month-olds could discriminate between faces only when the contrast polarity of the eyes was preserved (positive) and that this did not depend on the contrast polarity of the rest of the face. This demonstrates the critical role of eye contrast polarity for face recognition in 7- and 8-month-olds and is consistent with previous findings for adults

Charging and aggregation behavior of silica particles in the presence of lysozymes

To gain insight into the colloidal stability in the presence of proteins, we measured the electrophoretic mobility and aggregation rate constant of silica particles coated with lysozymes, and the adsorbed amount of lysozymes on the silica. We also examined model analyses, which are based on the Derjaguin, Landau, Verwey, and Overbeek theory with the effect of charge heterogeneity, to discuss the aggregation of lysozyme-coated silica. Our results show that lysozymes enhance the aggregation of silica when the lysozyme-coated silica is near the isoelectric point. When the adsorbed amount of lysozyme is low, the effect of charge-patch attractive force promotes the aggregation of silica. The effect of charge heterogeneity weakens with the increase of adsorbed amount of lysozyme. Our model which takes account of the effect of charge heterogeneity can capture the trend of the aggregation of silica in the presence of lysozyme qualitatively, but there are also large quantitative discrepancies between the theoretical prediction and experimental results. Further improvement is required to describe realistic charge heterogeneity and the effect of the surface coverage of lysozyme on the silica

Empirical Relationships for Estimating Liquid Water Fraction of Melting Snowflakes

The liquid water fraction of individual snowflakes f is an important parameter when calculating the radar reflectivity of a melting layer. A ground-based observation of fat Nagaoka, Japan, was conducted by using dye-treated filter papers that were kept at a temperature of 0 degrees C. From the results of these measurements, which consisted of 6179 particles taken with 44 sheets of filter paper, two empirical relationships are proposed. The first is a relationship between the ratio of liquid water flux to total precipitation intensity (F-L; taking values from 0 to 1) and meteorological surface data. The second is a relationship to estimate fusing the melted diameter of a snowflake, median mass diameter, and F-L. It was determined that the root-mean-square errors for estimating F-L and f by using these relationships were 0.160 and 0.144, respectively. It was also found that the ratio of raindrop flux to the total precipitation intensity F-R was always below 0.1 when F-L was less than 0.6 but increased rapidly when F-L exceeded 0.8

Tailor-made circulatory management based on the stress–velocity relationship in preterm infants

Preterm infants frequently experience pulmonary hemorrhage or cerebral intraventricular hemorrhage after birth. The immature myocardium of the left ventricle faces a high afterload after the baby is separated from the placenta. However, the preterm left ventricle has limited ability to respond to such an increase in afterload. This results in depressed cardiac function and a deterioration in hemodynamics. We speculated that the perinatal deterioration in cardiac performance would be closely related to serious hemorrhages. To prove our hypothesis, we studied the interrelationship between the perinatal changes in cardiac performance and the incidences of intraventricular and pulmonary hemorrhage. We obtained the stress–velocity relationship (rate-corrected mean fiber shortening velocity and end-systolic wall stress relationship) by M-mode echocardiography and arterial blood pressure measurement. We found that the incidences of intraventricular and/or pulmonary hemorrhages were higher in infants with an excessive afterload, which resulted in a decrease in the function of the left ventricle. We suggest that careful attention to keep the afterload at an acceptable level by vasodilator therapy and sedation may reduce or prevent these serious complications. In this review, we will discuss our data along with related literature