Is the Self Always Better than a Friend? Self-Face Recognition in Christians and Atheists

Early behavioral studies found that human adults responded faster to their own faces than faces of familiar others or strangers, a finding referred to as self-face advantage. Recent research suggests that the self-face advantage is mediated by implicit positive association with the self and is influenced by sociocultural experience. The current study investigated whether and how Christian belief and practice affect the processing of self-face in a Chinese population. Christian and Atheist participants were recruited for an implicit association test (IAT) in Experiment 1 and a face-owner identification task in Experiment 2. Experiment 1 found that atheists responded faster to self-face when it shared the same response key with positive compared to negative trait adjectives. This IAT effect, however, was significantly reduced in Christians. Experiment 2 found that atheists responded faster to self-face compared to a friend’s face, but this self-face advantage was significantly reduced in Christians. Hierarchical regression analyses further showed that the IAT effect positively predicted self-face advantage in atheists but not in Christians. Our findings suggest that Christian belief and practice may weaken implicit positive association with the self and thus decrease the advantage of the self over a friend during face recognition in the believers

Double dissociation of neural responses supporting perceptual and cognitive components of social cognition: Evidence from processing of others' pain

Models on how perceptual and cognitive information on others' mental states are treated by the cognitive architecture are often framed as duplex models considering two independent systems. In the context of the neuroscience of empathy analogous systems have been described. Using event-related potentials (i.e., ERPs) technique, we tested the hypothesis of temporal dissociation of two functional systems. We implemented a design in which perceptual (i.e., painful or neutral facial expressions) and contextual (i.e., painful or neutral related sentences) cues on others' mental states were orthogonally manipulated. Painful expressions selectively modulated the early activity at 110\u2013360 ms over fronto-central and centro-parietal regions, whereas painful contexts selectively modulated the late activity at 400\u2013840 ms over these same regions. Notably, the reactions to pain triggered by these cues added up when both were available, that is the joint reaction was characterized by additive effects. These findings favor a model assuming distinct neural paths of perceptual and cognitive processing, at least when the cognitive component is triggered by language

Global Analysis for Rough Solutions to the Davey-Stewartson System

The global well-posedness of rough solutions to the Cauchy problem for the Davey-Stewartson system is obtained. It reads that if the initial data is in Hs with s > 2/5, then there exists a global solution in time, and the Hs norm of the solution obeys polynomial-in-time bounds. The new ingredient in this paper is an interaction Morawetz estimate, which generates a new space-time Lt,x4 estimate for nonlinear equation with the relatively general defocusing power nonlinearity

Macroscopic fundamental diagram with volume-delay relationship: model derivation, empirical validation and invariance property

This paper presents a macroscopic fundamental diagram model with volume-delay relationship (MFD-VD) for road traffic networks, by exploring two new data sources: license plate cameras (LPCs) and road congestion indices (RCIs). We derive a first-order, nonlinear and implicit ordinary differential equation involving the network accumulation (the volume) and average congestion index (the delay), and use empirical data from a 266 km$^2$ urban network to fit an accumulation-based MFD with $R^2>0.9$. The issue of incomplete traffic volume observed by the LPCs is addressed with a theoretical derivation of the observability-invariant property: The ratio of traffic volume to the critical value (corresponding to the peak of the MFD) is independent of the (unknown) proportion of those detected vehicles. Conditions for such a property to hold is discussed in theory and verified empirically. This offers a practical way to estimate the ratio-to-critical-value, which is an important indicator of network saturation and efficiency, by simply working with a finite set of LPCs. The significance of our work is the introduction of two new data sources widely available to study empirical MFDs, as well as the removal of the assumptions of full observability, known detection rates, and spatially uniform sensors, which are typically required in conventional approaches based on loop detector and floating car data.Comment: 31 pages, 17 figure

Determination of conifer age biomarker DAL1 interactome using Y2H-seq

Age is a sophisticated physiological signal that ensures the sequence of different developmental stages in organisms. The regulation of ageing pathways appears to differ between gymnosperms and angiosperms. We previously identified DAL1 as a conserved conifer age biomarker that plays a crucial role in the transition from vegetative to reproductive life-history phases in pines. Therefore, elucidating the specific interaction events related to DAL1 is key to understanding how age drives conifer development. Large-scale yeast two-hybrid (Y2H) analysis followed by next-generation high-throughput sequencing (Y2H-seq) allowed us to identify 135 PtDAL1 interacting proteins in Pinus tabuliformis. Our study found that PtDAL1 interacting proteins showed an ageing-related module, with sophisticated interacting networks composed of transcription factors (TFs), transcriptional regulators (TRs), and kinases. These interacting proteins are produced in response to a variety of phytohormones and environmental signals, and are likely involved in wood formation, needle development, oleoresin terpenoids biosynthesis, and reproductive development. In this study, we propose a novel regulation model of conifer ageing pathways whereby PtDAL1 coordinates different environmental stimuli and interacts with corresponding proteins to regulate appropriate development

Mortality Awareness: New Directions

Thinking about our own death and its salience in relation to decision making has become a fruitful area of multidisciplinary research across the breadth of psychological science. By bringing together experts from philosophy, cognitive and affective neuroscience, clinical and computational psychiatry we have attempted to set out the current state of the art and point to areas of further enquiry. One stimulus for doing this is the need to engage with policy makers who are now having to consider guidelines on suicide and assisted suicide so that they may be aware of their own as well as the wider populations' cognitive processes when confronted with the ultimate truth of mortality

Critical Role of Phosphorus in Hollow Structures Cobalt-Based Phosphides as Bifunctional Catalysts for Water Splitting

Cobalt phosphides electrocatalysts have great potential for water splitting, but the unclear active sides hinder the further development of cobalt phosphides. Wherein, three different cobalt phosphides with the same hollow structure morphology (CoP-HS, CoP-HS, CoP-HS) based on the same sacrificial template of ZIF-67 are prepared. Surprisingly, these cobalt phosphides exhibit similar OER performances but quite different HER performances. The identical OER performance of these CoP-HS in alkaline solution is attributed to the similar surface reconstruction to CoOOH. CoP-HS exhibits the best catalytic activity for HER among these CoP-HS in both acidic and alkaline media, originating from the adjusted electronic density of phosphorus to affect absorption–desorption process on H. Moreover, the calculated ΔG based on P-sites of CoP-HS follows a quite similar trend with the normalized overpotential and Tafel slope, indicating the important role of P-sites for the HER process. Moreover, CoP-HS displays good performance (cell voltage of 1.67 V at a current density of 50 mA cm) and high stability in 1 M KOH. For the first time, this work detailly presents the critical role of phosphorus in cobalt-based phosphides for water splitting, which provides the guidance for future investigations on transition metal phosphides from material design to mechanism understanding.W.Z. and N.H. contributed equally to this work. X.Z. and J.F. are grateful for the Research Foundation-Flanders (FWO) project (12ZV320N). Funding from National Natural Science Foundation of China (project No.: 22005250, 21776120, and 51901161) is appreciated. M.X. is grateful to the National Natural Science Foundation of China (project No.: 22179109). W.Z. is grateful to the China Scholarship Council (NO. 201808310068). W.G. is grateful to the China Scholarship Council (NO. 201806030189). S.X. is grateful to the China Scholarship Council. K.W. is grateful to the Oversea Study Program of Guangzhou Elite Project. Funding from the Research Foundation–Flanders (FWO) (project No.: G0B3218N) and Natural Science Foundation of Fujian Province, China (No.: 2018J01433) is acknowledged. ICN2 acknowledges funding from Generalitat de Catalunya 2017 SGR 327 and the Spanish MINECO project ECOCAT and subproject NANOGEN. ICN2 is supported by the Severo Ochoa program from Spanish MINECO (Grant No. SEV-2017-0706) and is funded by the CERCA Programme/Generalitat de Catalunya. Part of the present work has been performed in the framework of Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona Materials Science Ph.D. program. This work has received funding from the European Union's Horizon 2020 Research and Innovation Programme under grant agreement No. 654360 NFFA-Europe. X.H. thanks China Scholarship Council for scholarship support (201804910551)