Neural responses to ambiguity involve domain-general and domain-specific emotion processing systems

Extant research has examined the process of decision making under uncertainty, specifically in situations of ambiguity. However, much of this work has been conducted in the context of semantic and low-level visual processing. An open question is whether ambiguity in social signals (e.g., emotional facial expressions) is processed similarly or whether a unique set of processors come on-line to resolve ambiguity in a social context. Our work has examined ambiguity using surprised facial expressions, as they have predicted both positive and negative outcomes in the past. Specifically, whereas some people tended to interpret surprise as negatively valenced, others tended toward a more positive interpretation. Here, we examined neural responses to social ambiguity using faces (surprise) and nonface emotional scenes (International Affective Picture System). Moreover, we examined whether these effects are specific to ambiguity resolution (i.e., judgments about the ambiguity) or whether similar effects would be demonstrated for incidental judgments (e.g., nonvalence judgments about ambiguously valenced stimuli). We found that a distinct task control (i.e., cingulo-opercular) network was more active when resolving ambiguity. We also found that activity in the ventral amygdala was greater to faces and scenes that were rated explicitly along the dimension of valence, consistent with findings that the ventral amygdala tracks valence. Taken together, there is a complex neural architecture that supports decision making in the presence of ambiguity: (a) a core set of cortical structures engaged for explicit ambiguity processing across stimulus boundaries and (b) other dedicated circuits for biologically relevant learning situations involving faces

Invited Address - The Possible Role of the Coronary Flow in Determining Myocardial Oxygen Consumption

When Dr. Thielen first contacted me in connection with this talk, I thought I would discuss some factors that influence the strength of contraction of heart muscle, including human heart muscle. (By including data from humans I felt I could stay within the framework of the general topic of today\u27s seminar.) However, since that time I have been writing a paper on some of my work with isolated strips of heart muscle. This work concerns the relation of the oxygen consumption of the heart to the strength of its contraction, the frequency at which contraction occurs (the heart rate), and the length of the muscle. Out of the reflections over these results has come what is, to my knowledge, an original concept concerning the energy turnover in heart muscle. I would like to show you the path I took in arriving at the tentative conclusion put forth here regarding the relation of the oxygen consumption of the heart and the blood flow through the heart muscle

Studies on the Contact Sensitization of Man with Simple Chemicals

Dinitrochlorobenzene (DNCB) coupled to peripheral blood erythrocytes or leukocytes forms a particulate complex, DNCB-antigen. The addition of DNCB-antigen induced blastogenesis and DNA synthesis in leukocyte cultures from DNCB-sensitized human subjects and not in leukocyte cultures from nonsensitized controls. In general, sensitized subjects who displayed a higher degree of cutaneous reactivity to DNCB, as manifested by duration and intensity of dermatitis, also showed a greater blastogenic response to DNCB-antigen in vitro. This quantitative correlation, however, was not invariant. Certain soluble factor(s), or lymphokines are released following the addition of DNCB-antigen to leukocyte cultures prepared from some sensitive subjects who were rechallenged one or more times with DNCB. These lymphokines induce blastogenesis in secondary target leukocyte populations from nonsensitized subjects. Extended studies are presented which show little or no lymphokine activity in peripheral blood leukocyte cultures during a primary immune response, despite high degrees of blastogenic activity in response to DNCB-antigen. Significant lymphokine activity was observed only following additional rechallenge with DNCB.Blastogenesis and skin reactivity specific for DNCB have been shown to develop at about the same time during a primary immune response. This, along with the quantitative correlation shown in this communication, suggests that both processes probably reflect thymic-dependent cellular immunity. The appearance of lymphokine activity following rechallenge with DNCB suggests that DNCB-induced lymphokines may represent an amplifying mechanism of the cellular immune response that involves recruitment of previously uncommitted lymphocytes

William A. Wheeler Correspondence

Entries include a typed letter from the Maine State Library introducing Wheeler to the Maine Author Collection, a typed letter from Wheeler on personal stationery presenting his books Ma Sez and Brunswick Yesterdays, and a typed letter from the Maine State Library on receipt of these books for the Maine Author Collection with notice that his historical book about the Maine Central Railroad was already in the lending collection and a typed note concerning an article (missing from this file) appearing in the Portland Evening Express

I am a Candidate for President : A Functional Analysis of Presidential Announcement Speeches, 1960-2004

This study investigates the nature of presidential announcement speeches, messages that introduce the current crop of contenders for the White House to voters and the news media. Announcement speeches are typically voters‘ initial exposure to these politicians as candidates for the White House. Seventy-five presidential announcement speeches from 1960 through 2004 were analyzed with the Functional Theory of Campaign Discourse. Acclaims were over three times as common as attacks; defenses were quite rare. Republicans and winners were more positive than Democrats or losers. These speeches were evenly split between policy and character. Democrats discussed policy more, and character less, than Republicans. Candidates emphasized issues owned by their political party more than candidates from the opposing party

Formation of Compact Stellar Clusters by High-Redshift Galaxy Outflows II: Effect of Turbulence and Metal-Line Cooling

In the primordial universe, low mass structures with virial temperatures less than 10$^{4}$ K were unable to cool by atomic line transitions, leading to a strong suppression of star formation. On the other hand, these "minihalos" were highly prone to triggered star formation by interactions from nearby galaxy outflows. In Gray & Scannapieco (2010), we explored the impact of nonequilibrium chemistry on these interactions. Here we turn our attention to the role of metals, carrying out a series of high-resolution three-dimensional adaptive mesh refinement simulations that include both metal cooling and a subgrid turbulent mixing model. Despite the presence of an additional coolant, we again we find that outflow-minihalo interactions produce a distribution of dense, massive stellar clusters. We also find that these clusters are evenly enriched with metals to a final abundance of Z $\approx$ 10$^{-2}$ Z$_{\odot}$. As in our previous simulations, all of these properties suggest that these interactions may have given rise to present-day halo globular clusters.Comment: 14 pages, 8 figures, Accepted to Ap

Indoor Inertial Waypoint Navigation for the Blind

Indoor navigation technology is needed to support seamless mobility for the visually impaired. This paper describes the construction and evaluation of an inertial dead reckoning navigation system that provides real-time auditory guidance along mapped routes. Inertial dead reckoning is a navigation technique coupling step counting together with heading estimation to compute changes in position at each step. The research described here outlines the development and evaluation of a novel navigation system that utilizes information from the mapped route to limit the problematic error accumulation inherent in traditional dead reckoning approaches. The prototype system consists of a wireless inertial sensor unit, placed at the users’ hip, which streams readings to a smartphone processing a navigation algorithm. Pilot human trials were conducted assessing system efficacy by studying route-following performance with blind and sighted subjects using the navigation system with real-time guidance, versus offline verbal directions

Genomic prediction with whole-genome sequence data in intensely selected pig lines

Background Early simulations indicated that whole-genome sequence data (WGS) could improve the accuracy of genomic predictions within and across breeds. However, empirical results have been ambiguous so far. Large datasets that capture most of the genomic diversity in a population must be assembled so that allele substitution effects are estimated with high accuracy. The objectives of this study were to use a large pig dataset from seven intensely selected lines to assess the benefits of using WGS for genomic prediction compared to using commercial marker arrays and to identify scenarios in which WGS provides the largest advantage. Methods We sequenced 6931 individuals from seven commercial pig lines with different numerical sizes. Genotypes of 32.8 million variants were imputed for 396,100 individuals (17,224 to 104,661 per line). We used BayesR to perform genomic prediction for eight complex traits. Genomic predictions were performed using either data from a standard marker array or variants preselected from WGS based on association tests. Results The accuracies of genomic predictions based on preselected WGS variants were not robust across traits and lines and the improvements in prediction accuracy that we achieved so far with WGS compared to standard marker arrays were generally small. The most favourable results for WGS were obtained when the largest training sets were available and standard marker arrays were augmented with preselected variants with statistically significant associations to the trait. With this method and training sets of around 80k individuals, the accuracy of within-line genomic predictions was on average improved by 0.025. With multi-line training sets, improvements of 0.04 compared to marker arrays could be expected. Conclusions Our results showed that WGS has limited potential to improve the accuracy of genomic predictions compared to marker arrays in intensely selected pig lines. Thus, although we expect that larger improvements in accuracy from the use of WGS are possible with a combination of larger training sets and optimised pipelines for generating and analysing such datasets, the use of WGS in the current implementations of genomic prediction should be carefully evaluated against the cost of large-scale WGS data on a case-by-case basis

Beluga Vocalizations Decrease in Response to Vessel Traffic in the Mackenzie River Estuary

Vessel traffic negatively affects marine mammals by causing behavioural disturbance, acoustic masking, contamination (i.e., oil spills), and ship strikes. Few studies have examined the effects of vessels on marine mammals in the Arctic, but beluga whales appear to be especially sensitive to vessel traffic. We examine how the vocalizations of belugas are impacted by vessel traffic in the Tarium Niryutait Marine Protected Area in the Mackenzie River estuary of the western Canadian Arctic. Between one and four acoustic recorders were deployed between June and August each year between 2015 and 2018 near the only shipping channel at this site. We examined beluga vocalizations from acoustic recordings over four summers and assessed how the distance to the nearest vessel passing the acoustic recorder affected the number of vocalizations. Beluga vocalizations within the range of the acoustic recorder decreased significantly when vessels were within 5 km of the acoustic recorder. This result suggests either that belugas are avoiding the vessel or that they reduce their vocalization in response to vessel traffic. Future work is needed to assess exactly how belugas are reacting to vessel traffic in this area and what the long-term consequences of these reactions are. Management measures for reducing these impacts must be carefully considered, especially since these vessels are very restricted in where they can travel, and many of the vessels are necessary for the livelihoods of local communities.La circulation maritime a des effets négatifs sur les mammifères marins, car elle entraîne des perturbations comportementales, masque leurs signaux acoustiques et engendre de la contamination (comme des déversements de pétrole) et des collisions. Bien que peu d’études aient examiné les effets des bateaux sur les mammifères marins de l’Arctique, les bélugas semblent particulièrement sensibles à la circulation maritime. Dans cet article, nous examinons en quoi les vocalisations des bélugas sont touchées par la circulation maritime dans la zone de protection marine de Tarium Niryutait faisant partie de l’estuaire du fleuve Mackenzie, dans l’ouest de l’Arctique canadien. Entre un et quatre enregistreurs acoustiques ont été déployés de juin à août de chaque année entre 2015 et 2018, à proximité du seul chenal de navigation de l’endroit. Nous avons examiné les vocalisations des bélugas prélevées à l’aide des enregistreurs acoustiques au cours de quatre étés, et évalué en quoi la distance du bateau passant le plus près de l’enregistreur acoustique avait un effet sur le nombre de vocalisations. Les vocalisations des bélugas dans la zone de l’enregistreur acoustique diminuaient considérablement lorsque les bateaux se trouvaient à moins de cinq kilomètres de l’enregistreur. Ce résultat suggère soit que les bélugas évitent les bateaux, soit qu’ils réduisent leurs vocalisations en réponse à la circulation maritime. Il y a lieu de pousser cette étude plus loin pour évaluer exactement comment les bélugas réagissent à la circulation des bateaux dans cette région, et quelles sont les conséquences à long terme de ces réactions. Il y a lieu aussi de considérer avec soin des mesures de gestion pour réduire ces incidences, surtout parce que les déplacements de ces bateaux sont assujettis à de nombreuses restrictions et parce que grand nombre des bateaux qui passent par là sont nécessaires à la subsistance des collectivités de la région. &nbsp