The Effect of Gender on Recalling Facial Features: Does Our Gender Determine Which Features Are Encoded at First Glance?

Previous research has implied that the accuracy of facial recognition may depend on the amount of time and attention paid to a particular feature. Recent studies have suggested that there may be an observer sex difference in visual scanning of unfamiliar faces, implying women and men may be processing different information (Hall, Hutton, & Morgan, 2010). While it has been shown repeatedly that women are more accurate at facial recognition and recognition of emotion, it has not yet been discovered if there is an individual feature that makes their increased recall possible. A better understanding of the interaction between gender and facial feature recall will help to increase knowledge surrounding the cognitive processes associated with facial recognition. It may also provide an understanding of whether or not there are gender differences regarding which facial features make individuals memorable. The current study was conducted using 55 participants, 37 women and 18 men, who were asked to observe four faces, and then later distinguish features of those faces from a group of distractors. Results of a 2x5 ANOVA show a significant main effect of features, and a non-significant trend of participant gender. This indicates that men and women process and encode facial features differently, and certain features are remembered more than others in unfamiliar facial recognition

Fashioning Florence: Portraiture and Civic Identity in the Mid-Sixteenth Century

Despite intense socio-political upheaval, portraiture flourished in Florence of the 1530s-1540s. These works remain understudied, and are primarily examined in isolation from their broader context. This study evaluates a series of case studies to determine novel approaches to formulating identity through portraiture during the chaotic second quarter of the sixteenth century in Florence. Positioning the sitter as part of a collective, the artists and their patrons use assertions of civic identity to transcend a sense of otherness as they forge new identities and define new positions. Situated in the transition from republic to duchy, this project offers new insights into portraits by the foremost contemporaneous artists while outlining ways the genre reflected evolving concepts of civic identity. This focused study deepens our understanding of sixteenth-century portraiture and the nature of self-presentation and civic identity. It further offers a framework for considering portraiture and expressions of identity in times of turmoil

Societal Opinon of Government and Private Agencies’ Surveillance Capabilities Post 9-11

Since the September 11, 2001 attacks, the United States has placed an increased focus upon government and private agencies to engage in surveillance practices in order to combat terrorism. The passing of the United States PATRIOT ACT (2001) expanded the surveillance capabilities of law enforcement officials thus allowing both federal and state agencies to legally wiretap a range of communication devices. Under the justification of “fighting terrorism,” federal and state agencies now have more access to sensitive data on/about a range of persons including subjects of interest. Legal scholars (Bam, 2015, as well as the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU), have questioned the constitutionality of the advancement of surveillance practices in government agencies including the role private agencies play in assisting federal agencies in criminal investigations. Even so, research dedicated to how the public understands the expansion of state and federal surveillance capabilities, and connections to private entities, is under studied. Using the Globalization of Personal Data (GPD) survey questionnaire from Surveillance, Privacy, and the Globalization of Personal Information by Elia Zureik, the goal of this research project is to identify how individuals in the United States perceive the transfer of their personal data between government and private agencies. Through non-probability online quota sampling methods (Singleton and Straits, 2005), responses from participants stratified into five different racial stratums are analyzed and used to examine the extent to which citizens in the United States are either concerned or unconcerned about surveillance practices used by government (state and federal) and private agencies. In order to examine the impact that levels of knowledge and awareness of current surveillance technology and legislative policies has on citizens’ concerns, this research project also seeks to examine important socio-demographic differences between respondents. Ultimately, this research represents an attempt to establish a dialogue for future policy makers discussing how citizens perceive the “dataveillance” capabilities of government and private agencies, and whether current legislation goes far enough to protect citizens from unreasonable government intrusions

Concept Mapping as a Mechanism for Assessing Science Teachers’ Cross-Disciplinary Field-Based Learning

Two common goals of science teacher professional development (PD) are increased content knowledge (CK) and improved readiness to teach through inquiry. However, PD assessment challenges arise when the context is structured around inquiry-based, participant-driven learning, and when the content crosses scientific disciplines. This study extended the use of concept mapping as an assessment tool for examining changes in the content knowledge of 21 high school science teachers who participated in a field-based environmental science summer institute. The scoring rubric focused on documenting concepts, links, and map organization and scope in an attempt to capture development of cross- disciplinary knowledge in ways that correspond with theories of expertise development. The analysis revealed significant gains from pre-PD to post PD maps in the sophistication of links between concepts and in the number of additional, participant-generated scientifically valid concepts. Relative to the initial maps, post PD maps also manifested more complete clustering of concepts. Findings are discussed in reference to previous studies on teachers’ learning and implications for future research using concept mapping as a means of assessing teacher PD

Editors' Note

Editors' Note for the Proceedings of the 2020 Annual Meeting on Phonology (AMP 2020), held at the University of California, Santa Cruz in September 2020

Cefazolin inoculum effect and methicillin-susceptible Staphylococcus aureus osteoarticular infections in children

Select methicillin-susceptibl

Persistent organic pollutants (POPs) increase rage signaling to promote downstream cardiovascular remodeling

© 2019 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Background: Antimicrobial resistance (AMR) is a global threat and the antimicrobial stewardship program (ASP) is a globally used tool to combat AMR. There is little information on the views among Pakistani physicians regarding AMR and the benefits of hospital antimicrobial stewardship implementation. This study was designed to explore the physicians’ views about ASP. Methods: Qualitative face-to-face and telephonic interviews were conducted by using purposive sampling method with 22 physicians working in seven tertiary care public hospitals of Punjab, Pakistan. All interviews were audio recorded and transcribed verbatim. Qualitative software was used, and a thematic analysis was conducted. Results: Three broad themes were identified: (1) the growing concern of antimicrobial resistance in Pakistan, (2) the role(s) of healthcare professionals in antibiotic prescribing, and (3) managing antibiotic resistance in hospitals. Inadequate resources, poor healthcare facilities, and insufficiently trained medical staff were the major hurdles in ASP implementation in Pakistan. Conclusions: Our study found a poor familiarity of hospital ASP among physicians working in public sector tertiary care teaching hospitals, and a number of distinct themes emerged during this study that could be helpful in establishing the concept of hospital ASP in Pakistan. Overall, physicians showed a positive attitude towards the enforcement of ASP in all healthcare settings, including teaching hospitals

Invasive community-onset gram-positive infections from July 2018 through December 2022 at 2 children\u27s hospitals

BACKGROUND: Invasive infections caused by METHODS: Cases of iGAS, IPD, and I-CO-SA infections were identified prospectively and retrospectively at 2 large US children\u27s hospitals by positive cultures from July 2018 through December 2022. Admission data were used to estimate frequency. For comparison, rates of respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), influenza, and SARS-CoV-2 were estimated by the number of positive viral test results at each institution. RESULTS: I-CO-SA infections showed little variation in the study period. Rates of iGAS infection and IPD decreased by 46% and 44%, respectively, from 2019 to 2020, coinciding with a substantial decrease in RSV and influenza. In 2022, RSV and influenza infection rates increased to prepandemic winter season rates, coinciding with a return to prepandemic rates of IPD (225% increase from 2021 to 2022) and a surge above prepandemic rates of iGAS infections (543% increase from 2021 to 2022). CONCLUSIONS: The COVID-19 pandemic had an unexpected influence on IPD and iGAS infections that was temporally related to changes in rates of viral infections