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

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

Select methicillin-susceptibl

Genetic influences on response to novel objects and dimensions of personality in Papio baboons

Behavioral variation within and between populations and species of the genus Papio has been studied extensively, but little is known about the genetic causes of individual- or population-level differences. This study investigates the influence of genetic variation on personality (sometimes referred to as temperament) in baboons and identifies a candidate gene partially responsible for the variation in that phenotype. To accomplish these goals, we examined individual variation in response to both novel objects and an apparent novel social partner (using a mirror test) among pedigreed baboons (n = 578) from the Southwest National Primate Research Center. We investigated the frequency and duration of individual behaviors in response to novel objects and used multivariate factor analysis to identify trait-like dimensions of personality. Exploratory factor analysis identified two distinct dimensions of personality within this population. Factor 1 accounts for 46.8 % of the variance within the behavioral matrix, and consists primarily of behaviors related to the boldness of the subject. Factor 2 accounts for 18.8 % of the variation, and contains several anxiety like behaviors. Several specific behaviors, and the two personality factors, were significantly heritable, with the factors showing higher heritability than most individual behaviors. Subsequent analyses show that the behavioral reactions observed in the test protocol are associated with animals\u27 social behavior observed later in their home social groups. Finally we used linkage analysis to map quantitative trait loci for the measured phenotypes. Single nucleotide polymorphisms in a positional candidate gene (SNAP25) are associated with variation in one of the personality factors, and CSF levels of homovanillic acid and 3-methoxy-4-hydroxyphenylglycol. This study documents heritable variation in personality among baboons and suggests that sequence variation in SNAP25 may influence differences in behavior and neurochemistry in these nonhuman primates