THE PRIMING OF VISUAL FEATURE INTEGRATION AND ILLUSORY CONJUNCTIONS

Whether non-spatial previewing can interact with the process of integrating visual features and thereby affect the formation of illusory conjunctions was studied. A series of ten experiments were undertaken that employed methods borrowed from the illusory conjunction and visual previewing paradigms. Participants reported the identities of two briefly presented target objects. Preview stimuli were presented prior to the to-be-reported target stimuli. The preview objects and target objects were colour-filled geometric shapes. The effects of two types of non-spatial previewing were investigated; feature previewing and conjunction previewing. In feature previewing the preview stimuli were congruent or incongruent with one of the target stimuli on a single stimulus dimension. The results suggest that feature previewing does not affect the production of illusory conjunctions. In conjunction previewing the preview display contains an object composed of two features that also appear in the subsequent target display. A congruent conjunction preview display contains an object that is identical to one of the target objects. An incongruent conjunction preview display contains an object composed of a colour and a shape that appear in different target objects. The results suggest that incongruent conjunction previews cause more illusory conjunctions than congruent conjunction previews do. Conjunction previews appear to priming of the process of visual feature integration. Alternative explanations of the results were ruled out by subsequent experiments. The finding of the conjunction preview effect has implications for the current theories of visual feature integration and illusory conjunctions; e.g., feature integration theory (Treisman 1990; Treisman & Gelade) and location uncertainty theory (Ashby, Prinzmetal, Ivry & Maddox, 1996; Prinzmetal &. Keysar, 1989)

Prospects for Citizenship

This book is available as open access through the Bloomsbury Open Access programme and is available on www.bloomsburycollections.com. Is citizenship in decline due to globalisation and an erosion of civic participation and democratic representation? Or is it merely transformed and extended to new levels and larger scales? Should we assess these challenges and changes primarily from a perspective of global justice, or consider also membership in a democratic polity as itself a basic good? Prospects for Citizenship addresses these broad questions in a unique collaborative effort. The result is an impressive book that looks at the future of citizenship from multiple research perspectives while remaining coherent in its overall purpose. Rainer Bauböck, European University Institute, Florence This book offers a perspicuous overview of the prospects for citizenship in our contemporary political context. The authorial team draw on a wide range of empirical and normative research in order to offer an incisive analysis of the problems and pressures of citizenship in the twenty-first century. The authors focus in particular on the apparent decline of traditional forms of civic engagement, the emergence of new forms of participation and the relationship between citizenship and globalization

Gastrointestinal Stents: Materials and Designs

Over the last 25 years stents have developed into an established way of restoring luminal patency throughout the gastrointestinal tract. Materials used as well as the construction of these devices have become more and more sophisticated in order to comply better with the complex environment they are inserted. The requirements vary greatly from organ to organ and stent behavior differs significantly between stent constructions. However this is not necessarily understood by many operators, as the choice of devices is now vast and in many cases decisions are made on availability and cost. An increasing challenge in malignant conditions is the improving survival of incurable patients, which now exceeds the traditional life expectancy of a stent by a factor of 2 to 3. Consequently more patients experience failure of their stent and require repeat interventions. This has a poor impact on patients’ quality of life and potentially on their survival. Re-intervention is often more difficult, carries the risk of additional complications and presents an additional economic burden to the health systems. This article illustrates current stent designs, their different behavior and their limitations

Additive manufacture of three dimensional nanocomposite based objects through multiphoton fabrication

Three dimensional structures prepared from a gold-polymer composite formulation have been fabricated using multiphoton lithography. In this process, gold nanoparticles were simultaneously formed through photoreduction whilst polymerisation of two possible monomers was promoted. The monomers, trimethylopropane triacrylate (TMPTA) and pentaerythritol triacrylate (PETA) were mixed with a gold salt, but it was found that the addition of a Ruthenium (II) complex enhanced both the geometrical uniformity and integrity of the polymerized / reduced material, enabling the first production of 3D gold-polymer structures by single step multiphoton lithography

Author Correction: Additive manufacture of complex 3D Au-containing nanocomposites by simultaneous two-photon polymerisation and photoreduction

A correction to this article has been published and is linked from the HTML and PDF versions of this paper. The error has not been fixed in the paper

Variation in the SLC23A1 gene does not influence cardiometabolic outcomes to the extent expected given its association with L-ascorbic acid

Background: Observational studies showed that circulating l-ascorbic acid (vitamin C) is inversely associated with cardiometabolic traits. However, these studies were susceptible to confounding and reverse causation. Objectives:We assessed the relation between l-ascorbic acid and 10 cardiometabolic traits by using a single nucleotide polymorphism in the solute carrier family 23 member 1 (SLC23A1) gene (rs33972313) associated with circulating l-ascorbic acid concentrations. The observed association between rs33972313 and cardiometabolic outcomes was compared with that expected given the rs33972313-l-ascorbic acid and l-ascorbic acid–outcome associations. Design: A meta-analysis was performed in the following 5 independent studies: the British Women's Heart and Health Study (n = 1833), the MIDSPAN study (n = 1138), the Ten Towns study (n = 1324), the British Regional Heart Study (n = 2521), and the European Prospective Investigation into Cancer (n = 3737). Results: With the use of a meta-analysis of observational estimates, inverse associations were shown between l-ascorbic acid and systolic blood pressure, triglycerides, and the waist-hip ratio [the strongest of which was the waist-hip ratio (−0.13-SD change; 95% CI: −0.20-, −0.07-SD change; P = 0.0001) per SD increase in l-ascorbic acid], and a positive association was shown with high-density lipoprotein (HDL) cholesterol. The variation at rs33972313 was associated with a 0.18-SD (95% CI: 0.10-, 0.25-SD; P = 3.34 × 10−6) increase in l-ascorbic acid per effect allele. There was no evidence of a relation between the variation at rs33972313 and any cardiometabolic outcome. Although observed estimates were not statistically different from expected associations between rs33972313 and cardiometabolic outcomes, estimates for low-density lipoprotein cholesterol, HDL cholesterol, triglycerides, glucose, and body mass index were in the opposite direction to those expected. Conclusions: The nature of the genetic association exploited in this study led to limited statistical application, but despite this, when all cardiometabolic traits were assessed, there was no evidence of any trend supporting a protective role of l-ascorbic acid. In the context of existing work, these results add to the suggestion that observational relations between l-ascorbic acid and cardiometabolic health may be attributable to confounding and reverse causation

The HST/ACS Coma Cluster Survey. II. Data Description and Source Catalogs

The Coma cluster was the target of a HST-ACS Treasury program designed for deep imaging in the F475W and F814W passbands. Although our survey was interrupted by the ACS instrument failure in 2007, the partially completed survey still covers ~50% of the core high-density region in Coma. Observations were performed for 25 fields that extend over a wide range of cluster-centric radii (~1.75 Mpc) with a total coverage area of 274 arcmin^2. The majority of the fields are located near the core region of Coma (19/25 pointings) with six additional fields in the south-west region of the cluster. In this paper we present reprocessed images and SExtractor source catalogs for our survey fields, including a detailed description of the methodology used for object detection and photometry, the subtraction of bright galaxies to measure faint underlying objects, and the use of simulations to assess the photometric accuracy and completeness of our catalogs. We also use simulations to perform aperture corrections for the SExtractor Kron magnitudes based only on the measured source flux and half-light radius. We have performed photometry for ~73,000 unique objects; one-half of our detections are brighter than the 10-sigma point-source detection limit at F814W=25.8 mag (AB). The slight majority of objects (60%) are unresolved or only marginally resolved by ACS. We estimate that Coma members are 5-10% of all source detections, which consist of a large population of unresolved objects (primarily GCs but also UCDs) and a wide variety of extended galaxies from a cD galaxy to dwarf LSB galaxies. The red sequence of Coma member galaxies has a constant slope and dispersion across 9 magnitudes (-21<M_F814W<-13). The initial data release for the HST-ACS Coma Treasury program was made available to the public in 2008 August. The images and catalogs described in this study relate to our second data release.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJS. A high-resolution version is available at http://archdev.stsci.edu/pub/hlsp/coma/release2/PaperII.pd

European Bat Lyssavirus in Scottish Bats

Daubenton bats may roost infrequently in human dwellings, so risk for human contact is low

The HST/ACS Coma Cluster Survey. II. Data Description and Source Catalogs

The Coma cluster, Abell 1656, was the target of a HST-ACS Treasury program designed for deep imaging in the F475W and F814W passbands. Although our survey was interrupted by the ACS instrument failure in early 2007, the partially-completed survey still covers approximately 50% of the core high density region in Coma. Observations were performed for twenty-five fields with a total coverage area of 274 aremin(sup 2), and extend over a wide range of cluster-centric radii (approximately 1.75 Mpe or 1 deg). The majority of the fields are located near the core region of Coma (19/25 pointings) with six additional fields in the south-west region of the cluster. In this paper we present SEXTRACTOR source catalogs generated from the processed images, including a detailed description of the methodology used for object detection and photometry, the subtraction of bright galaxies to measure faint underlying objects, and the use of simulations to assess the photometric accuracy and completeness of our catalogs. We also use simulations to perform aperture corrections for the SEXTRACTOR Kron magnitudes based only on the measured source flux and its half-light radius. We have performed photometry for 76,000 objects that consist of roughly equal numbers of extended galaxies and unresolved objects. Approximately two-thirds of all detections are brighter than F814W=26.5 mag (AB), which corresponds to the 10sigma, point-source detection limit. We estimate that Coma members are 5-10% of the source detections, including a large population of compact objects (primarily GCs, but also cEs and UCDs), and a wide variety of extended galaxies from cD galaxies to dwarf low surface brightness galaxies. The initial data release for the HST-ACS Coma Treasury program was made available to the public in August 2008. The images and catalogs described in this study relate to our second data release

Additive manufacture of complex 3D Au-containing nanocomposites by simultaneous two-photon polymerisation and photoreduction

The fabrication of complex three-dimensional gold-containing nanocomposite structures by simultaneous two-photon polymerisation and photoreduction is demonstrated. Increased salt delivers reduced feature sizes down to line widths as small as 78nm, a level of structural intricacy that represents a significant advance in fabrication complexity. The development of a general methodology to efficiently mix pentaerythritol triacrylate (PETA) with gold chloride hydrate (HAuCl4∙3H2O) is reported, where the gold salt concentration is adjustable on demand from zero to 20wt%. For the frst-time 7-Diethylamino-3-thenoylcoumarin (DETC) is used as the photoinitiator. Only 0.5wt% of DETC was required to promote both polymerisation and photoreduction of up to 20wt% of gold salt. This efficiency is the highest reported for Au-containing composite fabrication by two-photon lithography. Transmission Electron Microscopy (TEM) analysis confirmed the presence of small metallic nanoparticles (5.4±1.4nm for long axis / 3.7±0.9nm for short axis) embedded within the polymer matrix, whilst X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS) confirmed that they exist in the zero valent oxidation state. UV-vis spectroscopy defined that they exhibit the property of localised surface plasmon resonance (LSPR). The capability demonstrated in this study opens up new avenues for a range of applications, including plasmonics, metamaterials, flexible electronics and biosensors