Expert in ‘emotional communication’ says 1-year-olds can pick up ‘emotional signals’ and base decisions on them
What do infants learn as they watch people talk or act in a certain manner? If a television is on in a room, how much do infants pay attention to it?
These are questions Donna Mumme, assistant professor of psychology at Tufts University, answers in her study, “The Infant as Onlooker: Learning from Emotional Reactions Observed in a Television Scenario.” Co-authored
Howard Bowman and Colin Johnson of the Computing Laboratory at the University of Kent at Canterbury (UKC) have been awarded a grant of £150,000 from the Engineering and Physical Sciences Research Council to construct computational models of human attention. The research will be undertaken in collaboration with the Medical Research Council’s Cognition and Brain Sciences Unit in Cambridge, one of the UK’s leading centres for research into human attention.
We live in environments in w
Chancellors and central bankers face a perennial headache: booms typically cause inflation, while recessions mainly reduce output without reducing prices or inflation. New ESRC-funded research by Professor V. Bhaskar of the University of Essex explains how this problem emerges through the phenomenon of ’asymmetric price adjustment’ – the fact that firms are far quicker to increase prices than to cut them.
This work has important implications for inflation targeting by the Bank of
It’s an all-too-common experience – the perfect photograph ruined by the demonic glow of the “red-eye” effect. Now, a researcher at the University of Toronto has developed a method that can automatically remove those unsightly scarlet spots from digital images.
“The technique will offer consumers a convenient, automatic tool for eliminating red-eye in digital photographs,” says Professor Konstantinos Plataniotis of the Edward S. Rogers Sr. Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering.
A project between academia and industry is aiming to spark a world electronics revolution by producing faster, cheaper and more reliable microchips.
The University of Newcastle upon Tyne, UK, has joined forces with Amtel, on North Tyneside in the North East of England, to create ‘strained silicon’ microchips, which involves adding a material called germanium to the traditional silicon used in semiconductor manufacturing.
Atmel, whose silicon chips find applications in such diverse
Ground-breaking research at the University of Leicester into the division of chloroplasts holds out hope of a safer way of genetically modifying crops, with implications for agriculture particularly in the developing world.
Using three plant types – Arabidopsis, tomato and rice – Dr Simon Geir Møller has been working with colleagues in the University of Leicester Department of Biology and at the Laboratory of Plant Molecular Biology at the Rockefeller University in New York to examine how ch
Promising cancer-fighting candidates emerge from tropical ocean ‘mud’
Although the oceans cover 70 percent of the planet’s surface, much of their biomedical potential has gone largely unexplored. Until now.
A group of researchers at Scripps Institution of Oceanography at the University of California, San Diego, have for the first time shown that sediments in the deep ocean are a significant biomedical resource for microbes that produce antibiotic molecules.
In a seri
Fungus-growing ants practice agriculture and have been doing so for the past 50 million years according to research published in the Jan. 17 issue of Science. These ants not only grow fungus gardens underground for food but also have adapted to handling parasitic “weeds” that infect their crops.
The team of scientists who collaborated on this analysis includes Ted Schultz of the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History, Bess Wong of the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Came
Information could help identify at-risk individuals and estimate
Researchers at Rush-Presbyterian-St. Luke’s Medical Center have found evidence supporting a relationship between SIDS and the 5-HTT gene in both African-Americans and Caucasians. They found a significant positive association between SIDS and the L/L genotype, and between SIDS and the 5-HTT L allele, and a negative association between SIDS and the S/S genotype. This information might eventually lead to the identification
Exposing rats to low levels of carbon monoxide prevents arteriosclerosis and chronic organ rejection
Exposing rats to low levels of carbon monoxide (CO) prior to aorta transplantation prevents arteriosclerosis associated with chronic organ rejection and can also suppress stenosis after balloon-angioplasty-induced carotid artery injury, according to a study published in the Feb. 1 edition of Nature Medicine. The article is published online today.
“These findings demonstrate a
RNA interference (RNAi) has emerged as an extremely versatile and powerful tool in biomedical research. A new study published in the February issue of Nature Structural Biology reports the creation of transgenic mice in which inherited RNAi lowers or silences the expression of a target gene, producing a stable “gene knockdown.” This finding extends the power of RNAi to genetic studies in live animals, and has far-reaching implications for the study and treatment of many human diseases.
To a
By using mouse models, the EU-funded DEPROHEALTH-project has demonstrated that some lactobacilli can have a beneficial effect on intestinal inflammation and infections. The major target disease in these mouse studies has been inflammation of the bowel. For this purpose, engineered lactobacilli were constructed. The modified strains that are most promising produce fair levels of an effective compound (an interleukine) that helps preventing the inflammation caused by bacteria. Four of the most promi
Physicists from the St. Petersburg State Institute of Technology have invented an unusual method for improving concrete. The researchers believe that the concrete structure will become more uniform, and concrete products will obtain unprecedented durability and water-resistance if, while hardening, concrete is exposed to the influence of electromagnetic field of a strictly determined frequency.
The actual process is as follows: the concrete blocks while they are still in the mould ar
Currently there is great talk of renewable energies and, amongst these solar energy is highly important. In order to harness and utilise this form of energy there are many technologies available of which one is solar panels. These panels are made up of photoelectric cells (the 80-100 little square units in any one panel).
Photoelectric cells are classified according to the power they produce, given that total power production of any panel can be limited by just one photoelectric cell of lowe
GAIKER is a participant in a project at a multinational level which is financed by the European Union Competitive and Sustainable Growth Project. The project is to develop innovative technology which will have two aspects or stages: firstly the separation and recovery of components capable of being reused and, subsequently, the recycling of materials used in electronic printed circuit boards (from telephones, T.V.’s, and so on). The great quantity of small parts, different components, solder and oth
Scientists studying the earliest mammals have been stumped for centuries about the function of two pelvic bones found in the fossil record that most mammals don’t have today. A study published in this week’s issue of the journal Science suggests those bones were involved in locomotion and helped the animals become more mobile, a find that could help researchers pinpoint a key moment in the evolution of mammals.
Biologists at Ohio University and Buffalo State College studied modern
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