Innovative Solutions for Patients Who Undergo Craniectomy: Protocol for a Scoping Review

BACKGROUND

Decompressive craniectomy (DC) is a widely used procedure to alleviate high intracranial pressure. Multidisciplinary teams have designed and implemented external medical prototypes to improve patient life quality and avoid complications following DC in patients awaiting cranioplasty (CP), including 3D printing and plaster prototypes when available.

OBJECTIVE

This scoping review aims to understand the extent and type of evidence about innovative external prototypes for patients who undergo DC while awaiting CP.

METHODS

This scoping review will use the Joanna Briggs Institute methodology for scoping reviews. This scoping review will include noninvasive medical devices for adult patients who undergo DC while waiting for CP. The search strategy will be implemented in MEDLINE, Embase, Web of Science, Scielo, Scopus, and the World Health Organization (WHO) Global Health Index Medicus. Patent documents were also allocated in Espacenet, Google Patents, and the World Intellectual Property Organization (WIPO) database.

RESULTS

This scoping review is not subject to ethical approval as there will be no involvement of patients. The dissemination plan includes publishing the review findings in a peer-reviewed journal and presenting results at conferences that engage the most pertinent stakeholders in innovation and neurosurgery.

CONCLUSIONS

This scoping review will serve as a baseline to provide evidence for multidisciplinary teams currently designing these noninvasive innovations to reduce the risk of associated complications after DC, hoping that more cost-effective models can be implemented, especially in low- and middle-income countries.

INTERNATIONAL REGISTERED REPORT IDENTIFIER (IRRID)

DERR1-10.2196/50647.

Investigating the impact of 'dark nudges' on drinking intentions: A between groups, randomized and online experimental study

OBJECTIVES

This study explored how 'dark nudges' (tactics used in alcohol industry-funded responsible drinking campaigns) affect drinking intentions, perceived source credibility and whether individual differences in perceptions of prototypical drinkers moderated these effects.

DESIGN

Two 2 × 2 between-groups online experimental studies.

METHODS

Study 1 (N = 164) presented three alcohol health messages per condition, comprising social norm (healthy/unhealthy ("dark nudge")) by frame (loss/gain). Study 2 (N = 229) presented one message per condition, comprising cancer causality (single cause/multiple causes (dark nudge)) by funding disclosure (disclosure/non-disclosure (dark nudge)). Outcomes were drinking intentions and perceived source credibility. Exploratory analyses considered prototype perceptions as a between-subjects moderator.

RESULTS

No significant effects of message frame, social norm, fundi or multiple cancer causality arguments on drinking intentions were found. In Study 2, in the dark nudge multiple cancer causality conditions, perceived source credibility was high when funding was undisclosed, but significantly lower when it was disclosed. Exploratory analyses suggested effects were moderated by prototype similarity. In Study 1, higher perceived similarity to a heavy drinker and lower perceived similarity to a responsible drinker were associated with higher drinking intentions in the unhealthy norm/gain frame condition, but lower drinking intentions in the other conditions.

CONCLUSIONS

Framing, social norm, funding disclosure and multiple causality manipulations as tested in this study did not exert a dark nudge effect on drinking intentions. However, the exploratory analyses suggest it could be hypothesised that the types of messages used in alcohol industry-funded responsible drinking campaigns may result in greater drinking intentions among those who identify more as heavy drinkers and less as responsible drinkers. Perceived prototype similarity may be an important moderator of the impact of alcohol health messages that warrants further research. Study 2 suggests disclosure of industry funding guides judgements of the credibility of sources of misleading messages about alcohol and cancer.

Prototypes of People With Depression

This article investigates the content and the consequences of the prototypes of people with depression in a multimethod fashion. Fourteen preregistered studies (total N = 5,023, with U.S. American, British, and French adult participants) show that laypeople consider people with depression as having specific psychological, social, and physical features (e.g., unattractive, overweight, unsuccessful, introverted). Target prototypicality influences how much laypeople believe others have depression, how much observers believe that depression-like symptoms cause someone to experience psychological pain, and how much professional mental health care is appropriate for others. This effect was not reduced by instructing people to focus on the symptoms and ignore the target features yet was weakly reduced by informing them of the effect. We discuss theoretical implications for the understanding of prototypes of people with depression and practical implications for alleviating the impact of prototypes.

The interpretability of the activity signal detection model for wood-boring pests Semanotus bifasciatus in the larval stage

BACKGROUND

The acoustic detection model of activity signals based on deep learning could detect wood-boring pests accurately and reliably. However, the black-box characteristics of the deep learning model have limited the credibility of the results and hindered its application. Aiming to address the reliability and interpretability of the model, this paper designed an active interpretable model called Dynamic Acoustic Larvae Prototype Network (DalPNet), which used the prototype to assist model decisions and achieve more flexible model explanation through dynamic feature patch computation.

RESULTS

In the experiments, the average recognition accuracy of the DalPNet on the simple test set and anti-noise test set for Semanotus bifasciatus larval activity signals reached 99.3% and 98.5%, respectively. The quantitative evaluation of interpretability was measured by the relative area under the curve (RAUC) and the cumulative slope (CS) of the accuracy change curve in this paper. In the experiments, the RAUC and the CS of DalPNet were 0.2923 and -2.0105, respectively. Additionally, according to the visualization results, the explanation results of DalPNet were more accurate in locating the bite pulses of the larvae and could better focus on multiple bite pulses in one signal, which showed better performance compared to the baseline model.

CONCLUSION

The experimental results demonstrated that the proposed DalPNet had better explanation while ensuring recognition accuracy. In view of that, it could improve the trust of forestry custodians in the activity signals detection model and aid in the practical application of the model in the forestry field. © 2023 Society of Chemical Industry.

Towards Adversarial Robustness for Multi-Mode Data through Metric Learning

Adversarial attacks have become one of the most serious security issues in widely used deep neural networks. Even though real-world datasets usually have large intra-variations or multiple modes, most adversarial defense methods, such as adversarial training, which is currently one of the most effective defense methods, mainly focus on the single-mode setting and thus fail to capture the full data representation to defend against adversarial attacks. To confront this challenge, we propose a novel multi-prototype metric learning regularization for adversarial training which can effectively enhance the defense capability of adversarial training by preventing the latent representation of the adversarial example changing a lot from its clean one. With extensive experiments on CIFAR10, CIFAR100, MNIST, and Tiny ImageNet, the evaluation results show the proposed method improves the performance of different state-of-the-art adversarial training methods without additional computational cost. Furthermore, besides Tiny ImageNet, in the multi-prototype CIFAR10 and CIFAR100 where we reorganize the whole datasets of CIFAR10 and CIFAR100 into two and ten classes, respectively, the proposed method outperforms the state-of-the-art approach by 2.22% and 1.65%, respectively. Furthermore, the proposed multi-prototype method also outperforms its single-prototype version and other commonly used deep metric learning approaches as regularization for adversarial training and thus further demonstrates its effectiveness.

Prototypicality at the intersection of gender and sexual orientation

The intersectional invisibility hypothesis (IIH) states that members of multiply marginalized groups experience intersectional invisibility by not being seen as prototypical for either of their constitutive groups due to the influence of heterocentrism and androcentrism. That is, a lesbian woman may not be represented in relation to either the category 'woman' or the category 'homosexual people'. Two online experiments conducted in Sweden and the United Kingdom (N = 1923) tested predictions from the IIH at different intersections of specific genders (woman and man) and sexual orientations (heterosexuality, homosexuality and bisexuality) using an attribute generation task and direct similarity ratings. Results show strong support for the influence of heterocentrism: Only prototypes for heterosexual women/men match general prototypes for women/men. Androcentrism influenced the prototype for 'homosexual people', which had a stronger match with the prototype for gay men compared with lesbian women. In contrast, bisexual women were seen as more prototypical 'bisexual people' than bisexual men were. Psychological research conducted on general gender groups may therefore only be applicable to heterosexual individuals, while research on homosexual people in general may be applicable mainly to gay men.

Complete Digital Workflow for Prosthesis Prototype Fabrication with the Double Digital Scanning (DDS) Technique: A Prospective Study on 16 Edentulous Maxillae

PURPOSE

To assess the accuracy of fit of milled prosthesis prototypes for completely edentulous patients using a digital workflow.

MATERIALS AND METHODS

Sixteen patients received intraoral full-arch digital scans with the double digital scanning (DDS) technique and the generated standard tessellation language (STL) files were superimposed and imported into computer-aided design software (Exocad DentalCAD, exocad GmbH, Darmstadt, Germany) for design. After the design, each master STL file was used for computer-aided manufacturing of the prosthesis prototypes through a complete digital workflow. The primary outcome was the accuracy of fit assessment of the digitally fabricated prototypes on verified patient master stone casts. Two blinded clinicians tested the accuracy of fit of the milled prosthesis prototypes on the verified master stone casts utilizing the screw-resistance test and direct observation.

RESULTS

Out of the 16 digitally fabricated prototypes from intraoral full-arch digital scans, all 16 presented with an accurate fit on verified master stone casts.

CONCLUSIONS

Digitally fabricated full-arch prosthesis prototypes can be generated with a complete digital workflow leading to clinically acceptable fit.

Stereotypes as prototypes in children's gender concepts

How do gender stereotypes shape prototypes across development? In the current pre-registered study with children ages 3- to 10-years-old and adults (N = 257), participants made judgements about which members of gender categories (boys and girls) and animal categories (for comparison) were the most representative and informative about their kinds, using simplified scales of five category members varying on a stereotypical feature (e.g., girls wearing more or less pink). Young children chose boys and girls with extreme stereotypical features (e.g., the girl in head-to-toe pink) as both representative and informative of their categories and this tendency declined with age, similar to developmental patterns in prototypes of animal categories. Controlling for age, children whose parents reported more conservative social-political views also held more extreme gender (but not animal) prototypes. Thus, stereotypes play a central role in children's gender prototypes, especially young children and those living in socially-conservative households. RESEARCH HIGHLIGHTS: Stereotypes play a central role in children's gender prototypes, especially young children and those in socially-conservative households. Children ages 3-10 and adults chose which girls, boys, and animals were most representative and informative. Younger children chose category members with more extreme stereotypical features (e.g., the girl in head-to-toe pink) than older children and adults. Children with more conservative parents also held more extreme gender prototypes.

User-Centered Design Methodologies for the Prototype Development of a Smart Harness and Related System to Provide Haptic Cues to Persons with Parkinson's Disease

This paper describes the second part of the PASSO (Parkinson smart sensory cues for older users) project, which designs and tests an innovative haptic biofeedback system based on a wireless body sensor network using a smartphone and different smartwatches specifically designed to rehabilitate postural disturbances in persons with Parkinson's disease. According to the scientific literature on the use of smart devices to transmit sensory cues, vibrotactile feedback (particularly on the trunk) seems promising for improving people's gait and posture performance; they have been used in different environments and are well accepted by users. In the PASSO project, we designed and developed a wearable device and a related system to transmit vibrations to a person's body to improve posture and combat impairments like Pisa syndrome and camptocormia. Specifically, this paper describes the methodologies and strategies used to design, develop, and test wearable prototypes and the mHealth system. The results allowed a multidisciplinary comparison among the solutions, which led to prototypes with a high degree of usability, wearability, accessibility, and effectiveness. This mHealth system is now being used in pilot trials with subjects with Parkinson's disease to verify its feasibility among patients.

Am I a responsible drinker? The impact of message frame and drinker prototypes on perceptions of alcohol product information labels

BACKGROUND

Current alcohol product labelling tends to include ambiguous messages such as 'drink responsibly'. Consumers who identify as responsible drinkers may not pay heed to health warning messages, believing that they are not the intended target.

AIMS

We aimed to determine how responses to responsible drinking labels would differ from responses to positively and negatively framed health messages. We also explored if prototype perceptions would moderate the message impact.

METHODS

A between groups, three arm (ambiguous, positive or negative messages) experiment recruited 465 participants. Outcomes were drinking intentions and label acceptability (novelty, believability, personal relevance, and potential to change behaviour). Measures of heavy and responsible drinker prototype perceptions were included for exploratory moderation analyses.

RESULTS

Positive and negative messages were rated significantly more likely to change behaviour than ambiguous messages. There was also a moderation effect: participants with stronger favourability and similarity to the responsible drinker prototype intended to drink more alcohol in the future after exposure to negatively framed labels, but not after exposure to ambiguous or positively framed labels.

DISCUSSION

Drink responsibly' messages are unlikely to lead to behaviour change. Incorporating theoretical moderators may have value in developing our understanding of the impact of alcohol product labelling.

The hallmarks of autism

I suggest that the current study of autism is problematic, due to: (1) its failure to pursue a medical model of disease causation, with protocols for differential diagnoses of causes; (2) a notable incidence of unrecognized false positive diagnoses in children; (3) the conceptual equating of autism with sets of traits that have been shown to be genetically and phenotypically unrelated to one another; and (4) the expansion of use of the terms "autism" and "autism traits" to psychiatric conditions that have no substantive etiological or symptomatic overlap with autism. These problems can be alleviated by, like Kanner, considering autism as a syndrome, a constellation of traits, conceptualized as differences rather than deficits, some set of which is found in each affected individual to some degree. The original, prototypical form of autism can be delineated based on the "hallmarks" of autism: a set of core traits, originally explicated by Kanner, that defines a relatively-homogeneous group, and that connects with the larger set of autism symptoms. The hallmarks of autism provide a touchstone for research that is unambiguous, historically continuous to the present, and linked with major theories for explaining the causes and symptoms of autism. Use of the hallmarks of autism does not impact recognition and treatment of individuals with DSM diagnosed autism, or individuals with the many disorders that involve social deficits. This perspective is compatible with the research domain criteria approach to studying autism, via analyses of autism's constituent traits and the differential diagnosis of its individual-specific causes.

On the Varieties of Diversity: Ideological Variations in Attitudes Toward, and Understandings of Diversity

Three studies explore the possibility that attitudes toward "diversity" are multidimensional rather than unidimensional and that ideological differences in diversity attitudes vary as a function of diversity subtype. Study 1 (n = 1,001) revealed that the factor structure of attitudes toward 23 diverse community features was bidimensional. Factors involving demographic and viewpoint diversity emerged. Conservatives reported more positive attitudes toward viewpoint diversity, and liberals more positive attitudes toward demographic diversity. Study 2 (n = 1,012) replicated Study 1 findings, and extended Study 1 results by showing attitudes toward the general concept of diversity predicted attitudes toward demographic diversity but not viewpoint diversity. In Study 3, 386 participants rated how relevant a set of features was to their prototypical understanding of diversity. A confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) revealed people discriminate between viewpoint, demographic, and consumer diversity. Conservatives perceived viewpoint features as more relevant to "diversity," whereas liberals perceived demographic features as more relevant.

Neurophysiological Correlates of Asymmetries in Vowel Perception: An English-French Cross-Linguistic Event-Related Potential Study

Behavioral studies examining vowel perception in infancy indicate that, for many vowel contrasts, the ease of discrimination changes depending on the order of stimulus presentation, regardless of the language from which the contrast is drawn and the ambient language that infants have experienced. By adulthood, linguistic experience has altered vowel perception; analogous asymmetries are observed for non-native contrasts but are mitigated for native contrasts. Although these directional effects are well documented behaviorally, the brain mechanisms underlying them are poorly understood. In the present study we begin to address this gap. We first review recent behavioral work which shows that vowel perception asymmetries derive from phonetic encoding strategies, rather than general auditory processes. Two existing theoretical models-the Natural Referent Vowel framework and the Native Language Magnet model-are invoked as a means of interpreting these findings. Then we present the results of a neurophysiological study which builds on this prior work. Using event-related brain potentials, we first measured and assessed the mismatch negativity response (MMN, a passive neurophysiological index of auditory change detection) in English and French native-speaking adults to synthetic vowels that either spanned two different phonetic categories (/y/vs./u/) or fell within the same category (/u/). Stimulus presentation was organized such that each vowel was presented as standard and as deviant in different blocks. The vowels were presented with a long (1,600-ms) inter-stimulus interval to restrict access to short-term memory traces and tap into a "phonetic mode" of processing. MMN analyses revealed weak asymmetry effects regardless of the (i) vowel contrast, (ii) language group, and (iii) MMN time window. Then, we conducted time-frequency analyses of the standard epochs for each vowel. In contrast to the MMN analysis, time-frequency analysis revealed significant differences in brain oscillations in the theta band (4-8 Hz), which have been linked to attention and processing efficiency. Collectively, these findings suggest that early-latency (pre-attentive) mismatch responses may not be a strong neurophysiological correlate of asymmetric behavioral vowel discrimination. Rather, asymmetries may reflect differences in neural processing efficiency for vowels with certain inherent acoustic-phonetic properties, as revealed by theta oscillatory activity.

The relationship between prototype ratings of personality and self and interpersonal functioning with an adolescent inpatient sample

Personality pathology is conceptualized, in part, as impairments in self and interpersonal functioning. Although most of the research has focused on adult samples, fewer have looked at this relationship in adolescent samples. This paper investigates the relationship between clinician-rated personality prototypes, the Shedler-Westen Assessment Procedure-Prototype Matching Adolescent Version (SWAP-A-P) derived from the SWAP-II-A, and a measure of self and interpersonal functioning, the Social Cognition and Object Relation Scale-Global Rating (SCORS-G). Clinicians rated 66 adolescents hospitalized at a safety net teaching hospital in the northeast. The patient's individual and group therapist rated the patients at discharge using the SWAP-A-P and the SCORS-G at discharge blind to each other's ratings. Results showed that more severe personality pathology was linked with more impairments in self and interpersonal functioning.

Love is heterosexual-by-default: Cultural heterosexism in default prototypes of romantic love

Cultural heterosexist ideologies assume heterosexuality to be the default norm. Four studies investigated when concepts of romantic love are heterosexual-by-default (N = 685). In Studies 1-2, participants generated features of romantic love, in general (i.e., the default prototype) or among one of three sexual orientation-specific couples (lesbian, gay, or heterosexual). Heterosexual-identified participants' default prototypes were more similar to heterosexual than same-gender prototypes (Study 1). Lesbian- and gay-identified participants' default prototypes were more similar to both heterosexual and gay male than lesbian prototypes, whereas bisexual-identified participants' sexual orientation-specific prototypes were equivalently similar to the default (Study 2). However, heterosexual-identified participants rated presented features of love similarly across sexual orientation-specific conditions (Study 3). In a timed feature-verification task (Study 4), participants categorized fewer peripheral features of romantic love as relevant to same-gender than mixed-gender couples. Activating sexual orientation-specific representations affected subsequent default concepts of romantic love. We discuss implications for heterosexism theories and intervention.

The Prototypes of Tobacco Users Scale (POTUS) for Cigarette Smoking and E-Cigarette Use: Development and Validation

Endorsing prototypes of cigarette smokers predicts cigarette smoking, but less is known about prototypes of users of other tobacco products. Our study sought to establish the reliability and validity of a measure of prototypes of smokers and e-cigarette users. Participants were from a national survey of smokers and non-smokers (n = 1414), a randomized clinical trial (RCT) of adult smokers (n = 2149), and adolescent children of adults in the trial (n = 112). The Prototypes of Tobacco Users Scale (POTUS) has four positive adjectives (cool, sexy, smart, and healthy) and four negative adjectives (disgusting, unattractive, immature, and inconsiderate) describing cigarette smokers and e-cigarette users. Confirmatory factor analyses identified a two-factor solution. The POTUS demonstrated strong internal consistency reliability in all three samples (median α = 0.85) and good test-retest reliability among adults in the RCT (median r = 0.61, 1-4 weeks follow-up). In the RCT, smokers more often agreed with negative prototypes for smokers than for e-cigarette users (mean = 2.03 vs. 1.67, p < 0.05); negative prototypes at baseline were also associated with more forgoing of cigarettes and making a quit attempt at the end of the trial (Week 4 follow-up). The POTUS may be useful to public health researchers seeking to design interventions that reduce tobacco initiation or cessation through the manipulation of tobacco user prototypes.

Natural Products: Key Prototypes to Drug Discovery Against Neglected Diseases Caused by Trypanosomatids

BACKGROUND

Neglected tropical diseases are a group of infections caused by microorganisms and viruses that affect mainly poor regions of the world. In addition, most available drugs are associated with long periods of treatment and high toxicity which limits the application and patient compliance. Investment in research and development is not seen as an attractive deal by the pharmaceutical industry since the final product must ideally be cheap, not returning the amount invested. Natural products have always been an important source for bioactive compounds and are advantageous over synthetic compounds when considering the unique structural variety and biological activities. On the other hand, isolation difficulties and low yields, environmental impact and high cost usually limit their application as drug per se.

OBJECTIVE

In this review, the use of natural products as prototypes for the semi-synthesis or total synthesis, as well as natural products as promising hits is covered, specifically regarding compounds with activities against trypanosomatids such as Trypanosoma spp. and Leishmania spp.

METHODS

Selected reports from literature with this approach were retrieved.

CONCLUSION

As summary, it can be concluded that natural products are an underestimated source for designing novel agents against these parasites.

The Development of Intersectional Social Prototypes

Race and gender information overlap to shape adults’ representations of social categories. This overlap may contribute to the psychological “invisibility” of people whose race and gender identities are perceived to have conflicting stereotypes. The present research (N = 249) examined when race begins to bias representations of gender across development. Children and adults engaged in a speeded task in which they categorized photographs of faces of women and men from three racial categories: Asian, Black, and White (four photographs per gender and racial group). In Study 1, participants were slower to categorize photographs of Black women as women than photographs of White and Asian women as women and Black men as men. They also were more likely to miscategorize photographs of Black women as men and less likely to stereotype Black women as feminine. Study 2 replicated these findings and provided evidence of a developmental shift in categorization speed. An omnibus analysis provided a high-powered test of this developmental hypothesis, revealing that target race begins biasing children’s gender categorization around age 5. Implications for the development of social-category representation are discussed.

Strategies for determining the bioactive ingredients of honey-processed Astragalus by serum pharmacochemistry integrated with multivariate statistical analysis

Honey-processed Astragalus is a widely used traditional Chinese medicine that has a better effect on reinforcing "Qi" (vital energy) than the raw one. A comparative study of metabolites analysis between them in rat serum for finding the bioactive ingredients was carried out using serum pharmacochemistry and multivariate statistical analysis. The blood collection methods and time were optimized first. Then the prototypes and metabolites in serum samples after oral administration were investigated by ultra-high-performance liquid chromatography coupled with electrospray ionization quadrupole time-of-flight mass spectrometry integrated with principal component analysis and orthogonal partial least squares discriminant analysis. The contents of metabolites were also analyzed to evaluate the metabolic profile differences. As a result, nine prototypes and 36 metabolites were identified. Only two prototypes and 15 metabolites were different between raw and honey-processed Astragalus. Their biotransformation reactions contained the process of oxidation, demethylation, and hydrolysis in phase I and glucuronide conjugation or sulfate conjugation in phase II. Most of the detected metabolites were transformed from isoflavones and isoflavanes. Our results expand the knowledge about the influence of honey-processing on Astragalus and suggest the different curative effects between raw and honey-processed Astragalus might due to their therapeutic material discrepancy.

Evaluating Mobile Health Apps for Customized Dietary Recording for Young Adults and Seniors: Randomized Controlled Trial

BACKGROUND

The role of individual-tailored dietary recording in mobile phone health apps has become increasingly important in management of self-health care and population-based preventive service. The development of such mobile apps for user-centered designing is still challengeable and requires further scientific evidence.

OBJECTIVE

This study aims to conduct a randomized trial to assess the accuracy and time efficiency of two prototypes for dietary recoding utilization related to the input method of food intake.

METHODS

We first present an innovative combinatorial concept for dietary recording to account for dish variation. One prototype was a self-chosen tab app that featured choosing each food ingredient to synthesize an individual dish, whereas the other was an autonomous exhaustive list app that provided one selection from a comprehensive list of dish items. The concept included commercially available choices that allowed users to more accurately account for their individual food selection. The two mobile apps were compared in a head-to-head parallel randomized trial evaluation. Young adults (n=70, aged 18-29) and older adults (n=35, aged 55-73) were recruited and randomized into two groups for accuracy and response time evaluation based on 12 types of food items in use of the developed self-chosen tab and autonomous exhaustive list apps, respectively.

RESULTS

For the trials based on the self-chosen tab (53 participants) and autonomous exhaustive list groups (52 participants), the two prototypes were found to be highly accurate (>98%). The self-chosen tab app was found to be more efficient, requiring significantly less time for input of 11 of 12 items (P<.05). The self-chosen tab users occasionally neglected to select food attributes, an issue which did not occur in the autonomous exhaustive list group.

CONCLUSIONS

Our study contributes through the scientific evaluation of the transformation step into prototype development to demonstrate that a self-chosen tab app has potentially better opportunity in effectiveness and efficiency. The combinatorial concept offers potential for dietary recording and planning which can account for high food item variability. Our findings on prototype development of diversified dietary recordings provide design consideration and user interaction for related further app development and improvement.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

ISRCTN Registry ISRCTN86142301; http://www.isrctn.com/ ISRCTN86142301 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/74YLEPYnS).

The Impact of Recreational Marijuana Legislation in Washington, DC on Marijuana Use Cognitions

BACKGROUND

There is little published research that tests the effect of recreational marijuana legislation on risk-related cognitions and how individuals respond immediately after legislative approval.

OBJECTIVES

The objective was to test whether learning about the passage of Initiative 71, a voter referendum that legalized recreational use of marijuana in the District of Columbia, would lead individuals to adopt more favorable marijuana cognitions than they had before the Initiative was passed.

METHODS

Undergraduate students (N = 402) completed two web-based questionnaires in 2014. The first questionnaire was completed prior to the referendum vote and the follow-up questionnaire was completed after voters approved Initiative 71. Attitudes, perceived norms, intentions, prototypes, and willingness were measured at time 1 and time 2. Study hypotheses were tested using repeated-measures analysis of covariance.

RESULTS

Results showed that attitudes, intentions, perceived norms, and willingness to use marijuana were more favorable after Initiative 71 was passed. However, the increase in attitudes and willingness was moderated by past experience with marijuana whereby the increases were statistically significant only among those with the least experience. The increase in perceived norms was also moderated by past experience whereby increases were statistically significant among those who were moderate or heavy users. The passage of Initiative 71 had no effect on favorable prototypes. Conclusion/Importance: Legalization may have the unintended outcome of leading to more favorable intentions to use marijuana and might lead abstainers or experimental users to become more frequent users of marijuana via more positive attitudes and willingness towards marijuana use.

Positive excessive drinker prototypes predict greater drinking and alcohol problems

OBJECTIVES

According to the prototype willingness model, risky behaviours such as heavy drinking may be influenced by images of others who engage in this behaviour. In this study, we examined whether college students' prototypes of an individual who frequently drinks "over the limit" were associated with their own alcohol consumption and experience of alcohol-related problems during their first 2 years in college.

METHODS

We assessed students' (N = 340) prototypes of excessive drinkers and their own alcohol consumption and problems at four time points, across their first 2 years in college. Along with examining the trajectory of prototypes, consumption, and problems, we tested whether prototypes significantly predicted consumption and problems across the 2 years. Additional analyses examined whether the predictive value of prototypes was unique from related variables including perceived descriptive norms, perceived injunctive norms, and peer pressure to drink alcohol.

RESULTS

Primary analyses indicated that more positive prototypes of an excessive drinker were significantly associated with greater alcohol consumption in both year 1 and year 2. More positive prototypes were also significantly associated with experiencing more alcohol-related problems in year 2. These findings held when controlling for perceived descriptive and injunctive norms, and peer pressure.

CONCLUSIONS

Findings further support the importance of drinker prototypes to one's own drinking behaviour. By examining prototypes over time and their relationship to alcohol-related problems, this study makes a novel contribution to the existing research. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Perceived norms (beliefs about how much others drink and what they approve of) are associated with own drinking. Individuals construct "risk prototypes," or images of people who engage in risky behaviours like drinking alcohol. Positive risk prototypes of drinkers have been associated with own willingness to drink and subsequent drinking. What does this study add? This study shows the trajectory of drinker prototypes across the first 2 years of college. Findings highlight consistent patterns of positive associations between drinker prototypes and own drinking. More positive drinker prototypes are associated with a greater number of problems with alcohol.

I Am Quite Mellow But I Wouldn't Say Everyone Else Is": How UK Students Compare Their Drinking Behavior to Their Peers'

BACKGROUND

Excessive drinking is commonplace at UK Universities. Individuals may misperceive how much they drink compared to others and are less likely to think that they will suffer adverse consequences. Young people often distance themselves and their friends from 'problem drinkers'.

OBJECTIVES

The aim of the study was to explore how student drinkers compared their own drinking behaviors to the drinking behaviors of others.

METHODS

An online survey was completed by 416 students aged 18-30 (68.5% female). They were asked 'how do you think your drinking compares with other people like you?' and 'how do you think your behavior when you drink compares with other people like you?' Answers were subjected to thematic analysis.

RESULTS

The first main theme was about 'identification as a 'good' drinker'. Participants suggested their own behavior when drinking was similar to their sober behavior. Further, they viewed themselves as more able to maintain a balance between staying in control and having fun while drinking. The second main theme was about 'distancing from being a 'bad' drinker. Participants distanced themselves from negative prototypical drinkers, such compulsive or anti-social drinkers. They also attributed their own drinking behaviors to situational factors, but described other people as intentionally violent or aggressive. Conclusions/Importance: These findings may explain the failure of some health messages to change drinking behaviors. If drinkers perceive that their behavior when they drink is better than other people's then they may discount intervention messages. Targeting these biases could be incorporated into future interventions.

Low Cost Photonic Sensor for in-Line Oil Quality Monitoring: Methodological Development Process towards Uncertainty Mitigation

Lubricant and hydraulic fluid ageing impacts the performance of the machines, gears, transmissions or automatisms where they are being used. This manuscript describes the work accomplished for bringing an innovative measurement concept for analysing the physical- chemical properties of these fluids, to a real industrial product ready to be integrated into different industrial equipment. The steps taken to deal with uncertainties and evolving requirements while progressing in the sensor development are described, covering the stages of theoretical formulation of the problem, optical and fluidic simulations, sensor prototype development and tests. The sensor working principle is based on a combination of transmittance and diffuse reflectance photonic inspection of the fluid sample that is collected in a micro-cavity through a standard hydraulic fitting. Photonics, electronics, micro-mechanics, fluidics, data processing and analysis has been merged with a deep knowledge in the lubricant degradation process to develop a sensor solution that is able to measure the Oil Degradation Index, Oil Oxidation, Acid Number, Ruler and Membrane Patch Colorimetry data from an in-service lubricating oil sample. The photonic micro sensor presented here offers a powerful tool that operates directly immersed in the fluid, at an economic cost and compacted size for in-line oil degradation monitoring.

Who Represents Our Group? The Effects of Prototype Content on Perceived Status Dispersion and Social Undermining

Group identity may be embodied in more typical or extreme member attributes. The present research suggests that individuals' perceptions of the group identity prototype predict their beliefs about the status hierarchy and, in turn, the prevalence of social undermining behavior. Across four studies using both experimental and field data, we find that perceiving that the group prototype is focused on the ideal rather than the central tendency is associated with greater levels of perceived status dispersion and social undermining, and that perceived status dispersion mediates the relationship between members' perception of the group prototype and social undermining behavior. We also find that social context-specifically, salient group achievement goals elicited by intergroup competition and common ingroup identity-attenuates the effect of ideal prototypes on perceived social undermining. Theoretical implications for the social identity, status, and social undermining literatures are discussed.

Prototypes and same-gender bias in perceptions of hiring discrimination

The present study investigated the relative importance of two explanations behind perceptions of gender discrimination in hiring: prototypes and same-gender bias. According to the prototype explanation, people perceive an event as discrimination to the extent that it fits their preconceptions of typical discrimination. In contrast, the same-gender bias explanation asserts that people more readily detect discrimination toward members of their own gender. In four experiments (n = 797), women and men made considerably stronger discrimination attributions, and were moderately more discouraged from seeking work, when the victim was female rather than male. Further, a series of regressions analyses showed beliefs in discrimination of women to be moderately correlated with discrimination attributions of female victims, but little added explanatory value of participant gender, stigma consciousness, or feminist identification. The results offer strong support for the prototype explanation.

Familiarity and Voice Representation: From Acoustic-Based Representation to Voice Averages

The ability to recognize an individual from their voice is a widespread ability with a long evolutionary history. Yet, the perceptual representation of familiar voices is ill-defined. In two experiments, we explored the neuropsychological processes involved in the perception of voice identity. We specifically explored the hypothesis that familiar voices (trained-to-familiar (Experiment 1), and famous voices (Experiment 2)) are represented as a whole complex pattern, well approximated by the average of multiple utterances produced by a single speaker. In experiment 1, participants learned three voices over several sessions, and performed a three-alternative forced-choice identification task on original voice samples and several “speaker averages,” created by morphing across varying numbers of different vowels (e.g., [a] and [i]) produced by the same speaker. In experiment 2, the same participants performed the same task on voice samples produced by familiar speakers. The two experiments showed that for famous voices, but not for trained-to-familiar voices, identification performance increased and response times decreased as a function of the number of utterances in the averages. This study sheds light on the perceptual representation of familiar voices, and demonstrates the power of average in recognizing familiar voices. The speaker average captures the unique characteristics of a speaker, and thus retains the information essential for recognition; it acts as a prototype of the speaker.

Project BREATHE - Prototype Respirator Evaluation Utilizing Newly Proposed Respirator Test Criteria

Machine and human subject testing of four prototype filtering facepiece respirators (FFR) and two commercial FFR was carried out utilizing recently proposed respirator test criteria that address healthcare worker-identified comfort and tolerance issues. Overall, two FFR (one prototype, one commercial model) were able to pass all eight criteria and three FFR (two prototypes, one commercial model) were able to pass seven of eight criteria. One prototype FFR was not tested against the criteria due to an inability to obtain satisfactory results on human subject quantitative respirator fit testing. Future studies, testing different models and styles of FFR against the proposed criteria, will be required to gauge the overall utility and effectiveness of the criteria in determining FFR comfort and tolerance issues that may impact user compliance and, by extension, protection.

Prototypes reflect normative perceptions: implications for the development of reasoned action theory

The reasoned action approach is one of the most successful behavioral theories in the history of social psychology. This study outlines the theoretical principles of reasoned action and considers when it is appropriate to augment it with a new variable. To demonstrate, we use survey data collected from a 4 to 17 year old U.S. adolescents to test how the 'prototype' variables fit into reasoned action approach. Through confirmatory factor analysis, we find that the prototype measures are normative pressure measures and when treated as a separate theoretical construct, prototype identity is not completely mediated by the proximal predictors of behavioral intention. We discuss the assumptions of the two theories and finally consider the distinction between augmenting a specific theory versus combining measures derived from different theoretical perspectives.

Emerging Prototype Sodium-Ion Full Cells with Nanostructured Electrode Materials

Due to steadily increasing energy consumption, the demand of renewable energy sources is more urgent than ever. Sodium-ion batteries (SIBs) have emerged as a cost-effective alternative because of the earth abundance of Na resources and their competitive electrochemical behaviors. Before practical application, it is essential to establish a bridge between the sodium half-cell and the commercial battery from a full cell perspective. An overview of the major challenges, most recent advances, and outlooks of non-aqueous and aqueous sodium-ion full cells (SIFCs) is presented. Considering the intimate relationship between SIFCs and electrode materials, including structure, composition and mutual matching principle, both the advance of various prototype SIFCs and the electrochemistry development of nanostructured electrode materials are reviewed. It is noted that a series of SIFCs combined with layered oxides and hard carbon are capable of providing a high specific gravimetric energy above 200 Wh kg^-1 , and an NaCrO₂ //hard carbon full cell is able to deliver a high rate capability over 100 C. To achieve industrialization of SIBs, more systematic work should focus on electrode construction, component compatibility, and battery technologies.

Upper limb vibration prototype with sports and rehabilitation applications: development, evaluation and preliminary study

Vibration stimulation as an exercise intervention has been studied increasingly for its potential benefits and applications in sports and rehabilitation. Vibratory exercise devices should be capable of generating highly precise and repeatable vibrations and should be capable of generating a range of vibration amplitudes and frequencies in order to provide different training protocols. Many devices used to exercise the upper body provide limited variations to exercise regimes mostly due to the fact that only vibration frequency can be controlled. The authors present an upper limb vibration exercise device with a novel actuator system and design which attempts to address these limitations. Preliminary results show that this device is capable of generating highly precise and repeatable vibrations with independent control over amplitude and frequency. Furthermore, the results also show that this solution provides a higher neuromuscular stimulation (i.e. electromyography activity) when compared with a control condition. The portability of this device is an advantage, and though in its current configuration it may not be suitable for applications requiring higher amplitude levels the technology is scalable.

Understanding the Association Between Relative Sociability Prototypes and University Students' Drinking Intention

BACKGROUND

Evaluations of "the prototypical nondrinker" and of "the prototypical regular drinker" have been demonstrated to hold associations with more harmful drinking behavior, yet the extent to which the relative evaluation of these prototypes is associated with drinking intention remains to be tested.

OBJECTIVES

To explore whether relatively unfavorable nondrinker prototypes are associated with increased drinking intention and whether this relationship is moderated by personality variables.

METHODS

Among a student sample (n = 543), alcohol-related sociability prototype measures were used to compute an index of the perceived sociability of regular drinkers relative to nondrinkers ("relative sociability prototypes"). Measures of drinking intention, conscientiousness, extraversion and sensation seeking impulsivity were also taken.

RESULTS

Most students perceived the prototypical nondrinker unfavorably relative to the prototypical regular drinker (91%, n = 493). Simple slopes analyses indicated that extraversion moderated the strength of the relationship between relative sociability prototypes and drinking intention such that relatively negative evaluations of nondrinkers were only associated with increased intention to get drunk among more extraverted students.

CONCLUSIONS/IMPORTANCE

Prospective data and behavioral measures are needed to substantiate these findings, which suggest links between relative evaluations of nondrinkers, harmful drinking intention and personality traits. Evidence suggests that by challenging prejudicial beliefs concerning nondrinkers (as "unsociable") and by targeting more extraverted students, safer drinking plans might be encouraged.

The social meaning of disability: a reflection on categorisation, stigma and identity

As disability becomes an ever more salient concept in international political and legal discourse, its social meaning must be better understood. Traditionally defined in medical terms and as an individual problem, it has for the last several decades increasingly become a socio-politically defined phenomenon. Disability pride has emerged as a social movement patterned after ethnic minority and sexual orientation movements. The one billion people who count as disabled nevertheless have illnesses and impairments that are largely understood as medical problems. Medicine continues to exert great influence on the social meaning of disability in general and the social valuation of various illnesses and impairments in particular. Whereas specific conditions may be socially valued, the overall category and label of disability connotes marginality and stigma. Under these conditions, disability policy, which ought to be a universal concern, risks being construed as a marginal and special-interest issue rather than a broadly relevant topic; this has potentially negative consequences for the majority of disabled people.

The Many Faces of Wisdom: An Investigation of Cultural-Historical Wisdom Exemplars Reveals Practical, Philosophical, and Benevolent Prototypes

Psychological research on wisdom has flourished in the last 30 years, much of it investigating laypeople's implicit theories of wisdom. In three studies, we took an exemplar and prototype approach to implicit wisdom theories by asking participants to nominate one or more cultural-historical figures of wisdom. Study 1 revealed that individuals draw from a wide range of wisdom exemplars, with substantial agreement on the most iconic figures. In Study 2, multidimensional scaling analysis of exemplars revealed practical, philosophical, and benevolent prototypes; follow-up analyses indicated that prototypes differed in familiarity, likability, and perceived wisdom. Study 3 showed that individuals nominated exemplars from the practical prototype more frequently than from the philosophical and benevolent prototypes and that prototype nomination depended in part on nominator characteristics. These studies suggest that exemplar- and prototype-based implicit wisdom theories are consistent with explicit psychological theories of wisdom.

Rapid prototyping and stereolithography in dentistry

The word rapid prototyping (RP) was first used in mechanical engineering field in the early 1980s to describe the act of producing a prototype, a unique product, the first product, or a reference model. In the past, prototypes were handmade by sculpting or casting, and their fabrication demanded a long time. Any and every prototype should undergo evaluation, correction of defects, and approval before the beginning of its mass or large scale production. Prototypes may also be used for specific or restricted purposes, in which case they are usually called a preseries model. With the development of information technology, three-dimensional models can be devised and built based on virtual prototypes. Computers can now be used to create accurately detailed projects that can be assessed from different perspectives in a process known as computer aided design (CAD). To materialize virtual objects using CAD, a computer aided manufacture (CAM) process has been developed. To transform a virtual file into a real object, CAM operates using a machine connected to a computer, similar to a printer or peripheral device. In 1987, Brix and Lambrecht used, for the first time, a prototype in health care. It was a three-dimensional model manufactured using a computer numerical control device, a type of machine that was the predecessor of RP. In 1991, human anatomy models produced with a technology called stereolithography were first used in a maxillofacial surgery clinic in Viena.

Drinker prototype alteration and cue reminders as strategies in a tailored web-based intervention reducing adults' alcohol consumption: randomized controlled trial

BACKGROUND

Excessive alcohol use is a prevalent and worldwide problem. Excessive drinking causes a significant burden of disease and is associated with both morbidity and excess mortality. Prototype alteration and provision of a cue reminder could be useful strategies to enhance the effectiveness of online tailored interventions for excessive drinking.

OBJECTIVE

Through a Web-based randomized controlled trial, 2 strategies (ie, prototype alteration and cue reminders) within an existing online personalized feedback intervention (Drinktest) aimed to reduce adults' excessive drinking. It was expected that both strategies would add to Drinktest and would result in reductions in alcohol consumption by intrinsic motivation and the seizure of opportunities to act.

METHODS

Participants were recruited online and through printed materials. Excessive drinking adults (N=2634) were randomly assigned to 4 conditions: original Drinktest, Drinktest plus prototype alteration, Drinktest plus cue reminder, and Drinktest plus prototype alteration and cue reminder. Evaluation took place at 1-month posttest and 6-month follow-up. Differences in drinking behavior, intentions, and behavioral willingness (ie, primary outcomes) were assessed by means of longitudinal multilevel analyses using a last observation carried forward method. Measures were based on self-reports.

RESULTS

All conditions showed reductions in drinking behavior and willingness to drink, and increased intentions to reduce drinking. Prototype alteration (B=-0.15, P<.05) and cue reminder usage (B=-0.15, P<.05) were both more effective in reducing alcohol consumption than when these strategies were not provided. Combining the strategies did not produce a synergistic effect. No differences across conditions were found regarding intentions or willingness.

CONCLUSIONS

Although individuals' awareness of their cue was reasonable, their reported alcohol consumption was nevertheless reduced. Individuals appeared to distance their self-image from heavier drinking prototypes. Thus, prototype alteration and cue reminder usage may be feasible and simple intervention strategies to promote reductions in alcohol consumption among adults, with an effect up to 6 months.

TRIAL REGISTRATION

Nederlands Trial Register (NTR): 4169; http://www.trialregister.nl/trialreg/admin/rctview.asp?TC=4169 (Archived by WebCite at http://www.webcitation.org/6VD2jnxmB).

A face for all seasons: Searching for context-specific leadership traits and discovering a general preference for perceived health

Previous research indicates that followers tend to contingently match particular leader qualities to evolutionarily consistent situations requiring collective action (i.e., context-specific cognitive leadership prototypes) and information processing undergoes categorization which ranks certain qualities as first-order context-general and others as second-order context-specific. To further investigate this contingent categorization phenomenon we examined the "attractiveness halo"-a first-order facial cue which significantly biases leadership preferences. While controlling for facial attractiveness, we independently manipulated the underlying facial cues of health and intelligence and then primed participants with four distinct organizational dynamics requiring leadership (i.e., competition vs. cooperation between groups and exploratory change vs. stable exploitation). It was expected that the differing requirements of the four dynamics would contingently select for relatively healthier- or intelligent-looking leaders. We found perceived facial intelligence to be a second-order context-specific trait-for instance, in times requiring a leader to address between-group cooperation-whereas perceived health is significantly preferred across all contexts (i.e., a first-order trait). The results also indicate that facial health positively affects perceived masculinity while facial intelligence negatively affects perceived masculinity, which may partially explain leader choice in some of the environmental contexts. The limitations and a number of implications regarding leadership biases are discussed.

Explaining young adults' drinking behaviour within an augmented Theory of Planned Behaviour: temporal stability of drinker prototypes

OBJECTIVES

Prototypes (i.e., social images) predict health-related behaviours and intentions within the context of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). This study tested the moderating role of temporal stability of drinker prototype perceptions on prototype-intentions and prototype-behaviour relationships, within an augmented TPB. The study examined abstainer, moderate drinker, heavy drinker, tipsy, and drunk prototypes.

DESIGN AND METHODS

An online prospective study with 1-month follow-up was conducted among 410 young adults (18-25 years old, Mage = 21.0, SD = 2.14, 21.7% male). Assessed were prototype perceptions (favourability and similarity, T1, T2), stability of prototype perceptions, TPB variables (T1), intentions (T2), and drinking behaviour (T2). Intention analyses were corrected for baseline behaviour; drinking behaviour analyses were corrected for intentions and baseline behaviour.

RESULTS

Hierarchical regressions showed that prototype stability moderated the relationships of drunk and abstainer prototype similarity with intentions. Similarity to the abstainer prototype explained intentions to drink sensibly more strongly among individuals with stable perceptions than among those with unstable perceptions. Conversely, intentions were explained stronger among individuals with stable perceptions of dissimilarity to the drunk prototype than among those with unstable perceptions. No moderation effects were found for stability of favourability or for relationships with behaviour.

CONCLUSIONS

Stable prototype similarity perceptions were more predictive of intentions than unstable perceptions. These perceptions were most relevant in enhancing the explanation of young adults' intended drinking behaviour. Specifically, young adults' health intentions seem to be guided by the dissociation from the drunk prototype and association with the abstainer prototype. Statement of contribution What is already known on this subject? Prototypes have augmented the Theory of Planned Behaviour in explaining risk behaviour. Temporal stability has been shown to successfully extend the TPB in explaining intentions. Temporal stability of TPB variables can moderate the relationships with behaviour and intentions. What does this study add? Stability of prototype perceptions moderates the prototype-intentions relationship. Stability of abstainer and drunk prototype similarity enhances the explanation of (intentional) drinking. Stable prototype perceptions are more explanatory than unstable perceptions.

Prototypes, exemplars, and the natural history of categorization

The article explores-from a utility/adaptation perspective-the role of prototype and exemplar processes in categorization. The author surveys important category tasks within the categorization literature from the perspective of the optimality of applying prototype and exemplar processes. Formal simulations reveal that organisms will often (not always!) receive more useful signals about category belongingness if they average their exemplar experience into a prototype and use this as the comparative standard for categorization. This survey then provides the theoretical context for considering the evolution of cognitive systems for categorization. In the article's final sections, the author reviews recent research on the performance of nonhuman primates and humans in the tasks analyzed in the article. Diverse species share operating principles, default commitments, and processing weaknesses in categorization. From these commonalities, it may be possible to infer some properties of the categorization ecology these species generally experienced during cognitive evolution.

Adaptation to faces and voices: unimodal, cross-modal, and sex-specific effects

Exposure, or adaptation, to faces or voices biases perceptions of subsequent stimuli, for example, causing faces to appear more normal than they would be otherwise if they are similar to the previously presented stimuli. Studies also suggest that there may be cross-modal adaptation between sound and vision, although the evidence is inconsistent. We examined adaptation effects within and across voices and faces and also tested whether adaptation crosses between male and female stimuli. We exposed participants to sex-typical or sex-atypical stimuli and measured the perceived normality of subsequent stimuli. Exposure to female faces or voices altered perceptions of subsequent female stimuli, and these adaptation effects crossed modality; exposure to voices influenced judgments of faces, and vice versa. We also found that exposure to female stimuli did not influence perception of subsequent male stimuli. Our data demonstrate that recent experience of faces and voices changes subsequent perception and that mental representations of faces and voices may not be modality dependent. Both unimodal and cross-modal adaptation effects appear to be relatively sex-specific.

Five-factor model personality disorder prototypes in a community sample: self- and informant-reports predicting interview-based DSM diagnoses

The need for an empirically validated, dimensional system of personality disorders is becoming increasingly apparent. While a number of systems have been investigated in this regard, the five-factor model of personality has demonstrated the ability to adequately capture personality pathology. In particular, the personality disorder prototypes developed by Lynam and Widiger (2001) have been tested in a number of samples. The goal of the present study is to extend this literature by validating the prototypes in a large, representative community sample of later middle-aged adults using both self and informant reports. We found that the prototypes largely work well in this age group. Schizoid, Borderline, Histrionic, Narcissistic, and Avoidant personality disorders demonstrate good convergent validity, with a particularly strong pattern of discriminant validity for the latter four. Informant-reported prototypes show similar patterns to self reports for all analyses. This demonstrates that informants are not succumbing to halo representations of the participants, but are rather describing participants in nuanced ways. It is important that informant reports add significant predictive validity for Schizoid, Antisocial, Borderline, Histrionic, and Narcissistic personality disorders. Implications of our results and directions for future research are discussed.

Normal aging and the dissociable prototype learning systems

Dissociable prototype learning systems have been demonstrated behaviorally and with neuroimaging in younger adults as well as with patient populations. In A/not-A (AN) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or are not in category A. Research suggests that AN learning is mediated by a perceptual learning system. In A/B (AB) prototype learning, participants are shown members of category A and B during training, and during test are asked to decide whether novel items are in category A or category B. In contrast to AN, research suggests that AB learning is mediated by a declarative memory system. The current study examined the effects of normal aging on AN and AB prototype learning. We observed an age-related deficit in AB learning, but an age-related advantage in AN learning. Computational modeling supports one possible interpretation based on narrower selective attentional focus in older adults in the AB task and broader selective attention in the AN task. Neuropsychological testing in older participants suggested that executive functioning and attentional control were associated with better performance in both tasks. However, nonverbal memory was associated with better AN performance, while visual attention was associated with worse AB performance. The results support an interactive memory systems approach and suggest that age-related declines in one memory system can lead to deficits in some tasks, but to enhanced performance in others.

Adaptation to antifaces and the perception of correct famous identity in an average face

Previous experiments have examined exposure to anti-identities (faces that possess traits opposite to an identity through a population average), finding that exposure to antifaces enhances recognition of the plus-identity images. Here we examine adaptation to antifaces using famous female celebrities. We demonstrate: that exposure to a color and shape transformed antiface of a celebrity increases the likelihood of perceiving the identity from which the antiface was manufactured in a composite face and that the effect shows size invariance (experiment 1), equivalent effects are seen in internet and laboratory-based studies (experiment 2), adaptation to shape-only antifaces has stronger effects on identity recognition than adaptation to color-only antifaces (experiment 3), and exposure to male versions of the antifaces does not influence the perception of female faces (experiment 4). Across these studies we found an effect of order where aftereffects were more pronounced in early than later trials. Overall, our studies delineate several aspects of identity aftereffects and support the proposal that identity is coded relative to other faces with special reference to a relatively sex-specific mean face representation.

Refining the visual-cortical hypothesis in category learning

Participants produce steep typicality gradients and large prototype-enhancement effects in dot-distortion category tasks, showing that in these tasks to-be-categorized items are compared to a prototypical representation that is the central tendency of the participant's exemplar experience. These prototype-abstraction processes have been ascribed to low-level mechanisms in primary visual cortex. Here we asked whether higher-level mechanisms in visual cortex can also sometimes support prototype abstraction. To do so, we compared dot-distortion performance when the stimuli were size constant (allowing some low-level repetition-familiarity to develop for similar shapes) or size variable (defeating repetition-familiarity effects). If prototype formation is only mediated by low-level mechanisms, stimulus-size variability should lessen prototype effects and flatten typicality gradients. Yet prototype effects and typicality gradients were the same under both conditions, whether participants learned the categories explicitly or implicitly and whether they received trial-by-trial reinforcement during transfer tests. These results broaden out the visual-cortical hypothesis because low-level visual areas, featuring retinotopic perceptual representations, would not support robust category learning or prototype-enhancement effects in an environment of pronounced variability in stimulus size. Therefore, higher-level cortical mechanisms evidently can also support prototype formation during categorization.

Is there a shift to "active nanostructures"?

It has been suggested that an important transition in the long-run trajectory of nanotechnology development is a shift from passive to active nanostructures. Such a shift could present different or increased societal impacts and require new approaches for risk assessment. An active nanostructure "changes or evolves its state during its operation," according to the National Science Foundation's (2006) Active Nanostructures and Nanosystems grant solicitation. Active nanostructure examples include nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS), nanomachines, self-healing materials, targeted drugs and chemicals, energy storage devices, and sensors. This article considers two questions: (a) Is there a "shift" to active nanostructures? (b) How can we characterize the prototypical areas into which active nanostructures may emerge? We build upon the NSF definition of active nanostructures to develop a research publication search strategy, with a particular intent to distinguish between passive and active nanotechnologies. We perform bibliometric analyses and describe the main publication trends from 1995 to 2008. We then describe the prototypes of research that emerge based on reading the abstracts and review papers encountered in our search. Preliminary results suggest that there is a sharp rise in active nanostructures publications in 2006, and this rise is maintained in 2007 and through to early 2008. We present a typology that can be used to describe the kind of active nanostructures that may be commercialized and regulated in the future.