The biological effects of urethane

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston Universit

Face masks have a limited effect on the feeling of being looked at

Introduction: Wearing face masks has been promoted as an effective measure to reduce the spread of COVID-19. Because face masks cover a major part of the face, they have detrimental effects on various aspects of social cognition. Yet, a highly important feature of the face is not occluded by face masks: the eyes. The eyes play an important role in social interactions: knowing where another person is looking is of central importance when interacting with others. Recent research has reported an attentional shift toward the eye region as a consequence of the widespread exposure to face masks. However, no study has yet investigated the influence of face masks on the perception of eye gaze direction. Here we investigated whether face masks have an effect on the feeling of being looked at. Assuming an attentional shift toward the eyes, we might expect more accurate gaze perception in faces wearing face masks. Methods: Sixty-five participants decided for a series of realistic avatar faces whether each face was making eye contact or not. Half of the faces wore face masks, the other half did not. For each participant and separately for each condition (mask vs. no mask), we calculated the cone of direct gaze (CoDG), a commonly used measure to quantify the range of gaze angles within which an observer assumes mutual gaze. Results: Contrary to our expectations, results show that mutual gaze is not recognized more accurately in masked faces. Rather, the CoDG was, on average, slightly wider for faces wearing masks compared to faces without masks. Discussion: Notwithstanding the relatively small effect of face mask, these findings potentially have implications on our social interactions. If we inadvertently feel looked at by an onlooker, we may react inappropriately by reciprocating the alleged approach orientation

Motivational aspects of recognizing a smile

What are the underlying processes that enable human beings to recognize a happy face? Clearly, featural and configural cues will help to identify the distinctive smile. In addition, the motivational state of the observer will influence the interpretation of emotional expressions. Therefore, a model accounting for emotion recognition is only complete if bottom-up and top-down aspects are integrate

Feeling of guilt explains why people react differently to resource depletion warnings

Despite insistent warnings from climate scientists, the global environmental situation is further deteriorating. To date, only very few studies have investigated the impact of warnings on sustainable decision-making in controlled laboratory settings. Moreover, the few existing studies mainly looked at average warning reactions rather than taking individual differences into account. Here, we investigated individual differences in the reaction to resource depletion warnings and scrutinized the impact of emotions on behavioural changes by applying a resource dilemma task with warnings. Data-driven and model-free cluster analyses identified four different types of consumption behaviour. Importantly, guilt was positively related to sustainable decision-making after warnings. In contrast, a lack of guilt was associated with no behavioural change or even worse with more unsustainable behaviour after warnings. These findings contribute to the debate over effective climate change communication by demonstrating that issuing warnings about the climate crisis only leads to the intended behavioural changes if people experience guilt

Experimental data on filling and emptying of a large-scale pipeline

Laboratory-scale experiments are one of the most important means to explore the evolution of air-water interfaces and the mechanisms of pressure oscillations in pipelines during rapid filling and emptying processes. This study presents a dataset obtained from the experimental results of the flow behaviours during the pressure-gradient-driven filling and emptying processes of a large-scale pipeline. Based on these data, it is possible to study the evolution of the water-air and air-water interfaces and their breaking during pipe filling and emptying. The experimental equipment includes a variety of components (such as tanks, valves, bends, pipes of different materials and diameters, anchors, supports and water basin) and the operation procedures are rather complex. The flow behaviours are measured by various instruments; hence a thorough hydrodynamic analysis is possible. All these features and data frameworks make the current study particularly useful as a test case for real rapid filling and emptying processes and syphoning.</p

I spy with my little eye: The detection of changes in emotional faces and the influence of facial feedback in Parkinson disease

Background and purpose Parkinson disease (PD) is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder that affects the motor system but also involves deficits in emotional processing such as facial emotion recognition. In healthy participants, it has been shown that facial mimicry, the automatic imitation of perceived facial expressions, facilitates the interpretation of the emotional states of our counterpart. In PD patients, recent studies revealed reduced facial mimicry and consequently reduced facial feedback, suggesting that this reduction might contribute to the prominent emotion recognition deficits found in PD. Methods We investigated the influence of facial mimicry on facial emotion recognition. Twenty PD patients and 20 healthy controls (HCs) underwent a classical facial mimicry manipulation (holding a pen with the lips, teeth, or nondominant hand) while performing an emotional change detection task with faces. Results As expected, emotion recognition was significantly influenced by facial mimicry manipulation in HCs, further supporting the hypothesis of facial feedback and the related theory of embodied simulation. Importantly, patients with PD, generally and independent from the facial mimicry manipulation, were impaired in their ability to detected emotion changes. Our data further show that PD patients' facial emotional recognition abilities are completely unaffected by mimicry manipulation, suggesting that PD patients cannot profit from an artificial modulation of the already impaired facial feedback. Conclusions These findings suggest that it is not the hypomimia and the absence of facial feedback per se, but a disruption of the facial feedback loop, that leads to the prominent emotion recognition deficit in PD patients

The scent of attractiveness: levels of reproductive hormones explain individual differences in women's body odour

Individuals are thought to have their own distinctive body odour which reportedly plays an important role in mate choice. In the present study we investigated individual differences in body odours of women and examined whether some women generally smell more attractive than others or whether odour preferences are a matter of individual taste. We then explored whether levels of reproductive hormones explain women's body odour attractiveness, to test the idea that body odour attractiveness may act as a chemosensory marker of reproductive fitness. Fifty-seven men rated body odours of 28 healthy, naturally cycling women of reproductive age. We collected all odours at peak fertility to control for menstrual cycle effects on body odour attractiveness. Women's salivary oestradiol, progesterone, testosterone and cortisol levels were assessed at the time of odour collection to test whether hormone levels explain body odour attractiveness. We found that the men highly agreed on how attractive they found women's body odours. Interestingly, women's body odour attractiveness was predicted by their oestradiol and progesterone levels: the higher a woman's levels of oestradiol and the lower her levels of progesterone, the more attractive her body odour was rated. In showing that women's body odour attractiveness is explained by levels of female reproductive hormones, but not by levels of cortisol or testosterone, we provide evidence that body odour acts as a valid cue to potential fertility