Group membership and racial bias modulate the temporal estimation of in-group/out-group body movements

Social group categorization has been mainly studied in relation to ownership manipulations involving highly-salient multisensory cues. Here, we propose a novel paradigm that can implicitly activate the embodiment process in the presence of group affiliation information, whilst participants complete a task irrelevant to social categorization. Ethnically White participants watched videos of White- and Black-skinned models writing a proverb. The writing was interrupted 7, 4 or 1 s before completion. Participants were tasked with estimating the residual duration following interruption. A video showing only hand kinematic traces acted as a control condition. Residual duration estimates for out-group and control videos were significantly lower than those for in-group videos only for the longest duration. Moreover, stronger implicit racial bias was negatively correlated to estimates of residual duration for out-group videos. The underestimation bias for the out-group condition might be mediated by implicit embodiment, affective and attentional processes, and finalized to a rapid out-group categorization

A novel attention training paradigm based on operant conditioning of eye gaze: preliminary findings

Inability to engage with positive stimuli is a widespread problem associated with negative mood states across many conditions, from low self-esteem to anhedonic depression. Though attention retraining procedures have shown promise as interventions in some clinical populations, novel procedures may be necessary to reliably attenuate chronic negative mood in refractory clinical populations (e.g., clinical depression) through, for example, more active, adaptive learning processes. In addition, a focus on individual difference variables predicting intervention outcome may improve the ability to provide such targeted interventions efficiently. To provide preliminary proof-of-principle, we tested a novel paradigm using operant conditioning to train eye gaze patterns toward happy faces. Thirty-two healthy undergraduates were randomized to receive operant conditioning of eye gaze toward happy faces (train-happy) or neutral faces (train-neutral). At the group level, the train-happy condition attenuated sad mood increases following a stressful task, in comparison to train-neutral. In individual differences analysis, greater physiological reactivity (pupil dilation) in response to happy faces (during an emotional face-search task at baseline) predicted decreased mood reactivity after stress. These Preliminary results suggest that operant conditioning of eye gaze toward happy faces buffers against stress-induced effects on mood, particularly in individuals who show sufficient baseline neural engagement with happy faces. Eye gaze patterns to emotional face arrays may have a causal relationship with mood reactivity. Personalized medicine research in depression may benefit from novel cognitive training paradigms that shape eye gaze patterns through feedback. Baseline neural function (pupil dilation) may be a key mechanism, aiding in iterative refinement of this approach

Food of tardigrades: a case study to understand food choice, intake and digestion

Mosses are an excellent habitat for tardigrades because of their ability to ensure a high humidity and to provide a rich food supply for both carnivorous and herbivorous species. Food choice can be correlated with the morphology of the buccal apparatus, and consequentially, their distribution is sometimes linked to food availability (nematodes, rotifers, plant cells, algae, yeast and bacteria). In many species, material containing chlorophyll is often observed in the midgut. However, little information has been available until now on the actual food preference of tardigrades. Since trophic interactions within soil food webs are difficult to study, here we use a polymerase chain reaction–based approach as a highly sensitive detection method. The study was carried out to investigate the presence of chlorophyll matter in the gut of active specimens, based on sequence analyses of the chloroplast ribulose 1,5-bisphosphate carboxylase/oxygenase large subunit (rbcL) gene from mosses and algae. The sequences found inthe gut of Macrobiotus sapiens were derived from the moss families Pottiaceae and Erpodiaceae, in Macrobiotus persimilis and Echiniscus granulatus from the moss family Grimmiaceae, and in Richtersius coronifer from the green algae genus Trebouxia. Furthermore, we show the emission of green autofluorescence from the chloroplasts in the algae within the gut of tardigrades and followed the progress of digestion over a 48-h period. The autofluorescent emission level declined significantly, and after 2 days, the signal level was similar to the level of the starved control

Time-space analysis of the cluster-formation in interacting diffusions

A countable system of linearly interacting diffusions on the interval [0,1], indexed by a hierarchical goup is investigated. A particular choice of the interactions guarantees that we are in the diffusive clustering regime, that is clusters of components with values all close to 0 or all close to 1 grow in various different scales. The latter phenomenon we studied, while in the present paper we analyze the evolution of single components and of clusters over time. First we focus on the time picture of a single component and find that components close to 0 or close to 1 at a late time have had this property for a large time of random order of magnitude, which nevertheless is small compared with the age of the system. The asymptotic distribution of the suitably scaled duration a component was close to a boundary point is calculated. Second we study the history of spatial 0- or 1-clusters by means of time scaled block averages and time-space-thinning procedures. The scaled age of a cluster is again of a random order of magnitude. Thirdly, we construct an object we call a transformed Fisher-Wright tree, which (in the long-time limit) describes the structure of the space-time process associated with our system. All described phenomena are independent of the diffusion coefficient and occur for a large class of initial configurations (universality). (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: RR 5549(122)+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman

Three interaction energy scales in the single-layer high- Tc cuprate HgBa2Cu O4+δ

The lamellar cuprate superconductors exhibit the highest ambient-pressure superconducting transition temperatures (Tc), and after more than three decades of extraordinary research activity, continue to pose formidable scientific challenges. A major experimental obstacle has been to distinguish universal phenomena from materials- or technique-dependent ones. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measures momentum-dependent single-particle electronic excitations and has been invaluable in the endeavor to determine the anisotropic momentum-space properties of the cuprates. HgBa2CuO4+δ (Hg1201) is a single-CuO2-layer cuprate with a particularly high optimal Tc and a simple crystal structure, yet there exists little information from ARPES about the electronic properties of this model system. Here we present an ARPES study of doping-, temperature-, and momentum-dependent systematics of near-nodal dispersion anomalies in Hg1201. The data reveal a hierarchy of three distinct energy scales: a subgap low-energy kink, an intermediate-energy kink near 55 meV, and a peak-dip-hump structure. The first two features are attributed to the coupling of electrons to Ba-derived optical phonons and in-plane bond-stretching phonons, respectively. The nodal peak-dip-hump structure appears to have a common doping dependence in several single-layer cuprates and is interpreted as a manifestation of pseudogap physics at the node. These results establish several universal phenomena, both in terms of connecting multiple experimental techniques for a single material and in terms of connecting comparable spectral features in multiple structurally similar cuprates

Three interaction energy scales in the single-layer high- Tc cuprate HgBa2Cu O4+δ

The lamellar cuprate superconductors exhibit the highest ambient-pressure superconducting transition temperatures (Tc), and after more than three decades of extraordinary research activity, continue to pose formidable scientific challenges. A major experimental obstacle has been to distinguish universal phenomena from materials- or technique-dependent ones. Angle-resolved photoemission spectroscopy (ARPES) measures momentum-dependent single-particle electronic excitations and has been invaluable in the endeavor to determine the anisotropic momentum-space properties of the cuprates. HgBa2CuO4+δ (Hg1201) is a single-CuO2-layer cuprate with a particularly high optimal Tc and a simple crystal structure, yet there exists little information from ARPES about the electronic properties of this model system. Here we present an ARPES study of doping-, temperature-, and momentum-dependent systematics of near-nodal dispersion anomalies in Hg1201. The data reveal a hierarchy of three distinct energy scales: a subgap low-energy kink, an intermediate-energy kink near 55 meV, and a peak-dip-hump structure. The first two features are attributed to the coupling of electrons to Ba-derived optical phonons and in-plane bond-stretching phonons, respectively. The nodal peak-dip-hump structure appears to have a common doping dependence in several single-layer cuprates and is interpreted as a manifestation of pseudogap physics at the node. These results establish several universal phenomena, both in terms of connecting multiple experimental techniques for a single material and in terms of connecting comparable spectral features in multiple structurally similar cuprates

Comparison of interacting diffusions and an application to their ergodic theory

A general comparison argument for expectations of certain multi-time functionals of infinite systems of linearly interacting diffusions differing in the diffusion coefficient is derived. As an application we prove clustering occurs in the case when the symmetrized interaction kernel is recurrent, and the components take values in an one-sided bounded interval. The technique gives also an alternative proof in the case of compact intervals. (orig.)Available from TIB Hannover: RR 5549(135)+a / FIZ - Fachinformationszzentrum Karlsruhe / TIB - Technische InformationsbibliothekSIGLEDEGerman