Search

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2010.05.003 Byline: Xiaoqing Gao, Daphne Maurer Keywords: Facial expression; Development; Intensity; Threshold; Misidentification; Morphing Abstract: Using 20 levels of intensity, we measured children's thresholds to discriminate the six basic emotional expressions from neutral and their misidentification rates. Combined with the results of a previous study using the same method (Journal of Experimental Child Psychology, 102 (2009) 503-521), the results indicate that by 5years of age, children are adult-like, or nearly adult-like, for happy expressions on all measures. Children's sensitivity to other expressions continues to improve between 5 and 10years of age (e.g., surprise, disgust, fear) or even after 10years of age (e.g., anger, sad). The results indicate that there is a slow development of sensitivity to the expression of all basic emotions except happy. This slow development may impact children's social and cognitive development by limiting their sensitivity to subtle expressions of disapproval or disappointment. Author Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ontario, Canada L8S 4K1 Article History: Received 2 January 2010; Revised 4 May 2010

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2009.09.001 Byline: Xiaoqing Gao (a), Daphne Maurer (a), Mayu Nishimura (a)(b) Keywords: Facial expression; Development; Multidimensional scaling; Cluster analysis; Perceptual structure; Intensity Abstract: We explored the perceptual structure of facial expressions of six basic emotions, varying systematically in intensity, in adults and children aged 7 and 14years. Multidimensional scaling suggested that three- or four-dimensional structures were optimal for all groups. Two groups of adults demonstrated nearly identical structure, which had dimensions representing pleasure, potency, arousal, and intensity, despite the fact that one group was tested with a child-friendly 'odd-man-out' paradigm and the other group was tested with a conventional similarity-rating paradigm. When tested with the odd-man-out paradigm, the 7-year-olds showed systematic structure, which differed from that of adults in both the meaning of some dimensions and the proximities among some of the expression categories. When tested with similarity judgments, the 14-year-olds showed an adult-like pattern on all measures except that their similarity judgments were more influenced by physical differences than were those of adults. We conclude that an adult-like representation of facial expressions develops slowly during childhood. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont., Canada L8S 4K1 (b) Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA Article History: Received 21 January 2009; Revised 5 September 2009

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2009.02.005 Byline: Mayu Nishimura (a)(b), Daphne Maurer (b), Xiaoqing Gao (b) Keywords: Face processing; Face recognition; Visual memory; Multidimensional scaling; Similarity judgments; Face-space Abstract: We explored differences in the mental representation of facial identity between 8-year-olds and adults. The 8-year-olds and adults made similarity judgments of a homogeneous set of faces (individual hair cues removed) using an 'odd-man-out' paradigm. Multidimensional scaling (MDS) analyses were performed to represent perceived similarity of faces in a multidimensional space. Five dimensions accounted optimally for the judgments of both children and adults, with similar local clustering of faces. However, the fit of the MDS solutions was better for adults, in part because children's responses were more variable. More children relied predominantly on a single dimension, namely eye color, whereas adults appeared to use multiple dimensions for each judgment. The pattern of findings suggests that children's mental representation of faces has a structure similar to that of adults but that children's judgments are influenced less consistently by that overall structure. Author Affiliation: (a) Department of Psychology, Carnegie Mellon University, Pittsburgh, PA 15213, USA (b) Department of Psychology, Neuroscience & Behaviour, McMaster University, Hamilton, Ont., Canada L8S 4K1 Article History: Received 28 October 2008; Revised 12 February 2009

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jecp.2008.11.002 Byline: Xiaoqing Gao, Daphne Maurer Keywords: Facial expressions; Development; Children; Intensity; Happy; Sad; Fearful Abstract: Most previous studies investigating children's ability to recognize facial expressions used only intense exemplars. Here we compared the sensitivity of 5-, 7-, and 10-year-olds with that of adults (n =24 per age group) for less intense expressions of happiness, sadness, and fear. The developmental patterns differed across expressions. For happiness, by 5 years of age, children were as sensitive as adults even to low intensities. For sadness, by 5 years of age, children were as accurate as adults in judging that the face was expressive (i.e., not neutral), but even at 10 years of age, children were more likely to misjudge it as fearful. For fear, children's thresholds were not adult-like until 10 years of age, and children often confused it with sadness at 5 years of age. For all expressions, including even happy expressions, 5- and 7-year-olds were less accurate than adults in judging which of two expressions was more intense. Together, the results indicate that there is slow development of accurate decoding of subtle facial expressions. Author Affiliation: Department of Psychology, Neuroscience, and Behavior, McMaster University, 1280 Main Street West, Hamilton, Ont., Canada L8S 4K1 Article History: Received 5 May 2008; Revised 5 November 2008

Solar energy plays an essential role in achieving carbon goals and mitigating climate change. Therefore, solar power plants are rapidly developing in the renewable energy sector. However, many reports of solar power plants are on land, and extremely limited observational research has been conducted on the impacts of fishery complementary photovoltaic power plants (FPVs) on near-surface meteorology and surface energy. This study selected two adjacent eddy covariance observational towers at the fishery complementary photovoltaic power plant (FPV) in Yangzhong, Jiangsu Province, China, to explore this topic. The results indicated that the percent frequency of east wind (<4 m s−1) at 2 m decreased by 25.3% in the FPV site compared with the reference site. The FPV array has not an obvious heating effect on the ambient environment. The average air temperature difference in the two sites at 2 m and 10 m was 0.3 K and 0.1 K, respectively, during the heating period. The net radiation increased by 47.8 W m−2 in the two sites. The sensible heat increased by 7.9 W m−2 due to the heating effect. The latent heat in the two sites is contrary to the sensible heat (−13.0 W m−2). The difference in the water storage heat is 32.18 W m−2, which implies that the water absorbs higher heat in the FPV site than in the reference site. This work illustrated the importance of observational experiments to animate process-based understanding combined with FPV systems and provides a scientific basis for establishing FPV energy balance models based on observations that may be used to reveal the impact of utility-scale FPV deployment on climatic effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The rapid development of photovoltaic plays an important role in achieving the carbon-neutral goal. How to improve the conversion efficiency and power generation of solar photovoltaic has always been a focus issue. However, more attention is paid to the impact of photovoltaic panel working temperature on the performance of photovoltaic power generation, and how air temperature affects photovoltaic power generation has been ignored. This paper compared and analyzed the impact of the difference in air temperature between lake and land on the revenue of photovoltaic power generation, and established the functional equation between photovoltaic power generation, air temperature and solar radiation, and revealed the relationship between air temperature, solar radiation, and photovoltaic power generation. [Display omitted] [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rapid progress of solar photovoltaic (PV) technology has caused growing interest in understanding interactions between large scale PV plants and near-surface atmosphere. However few attempts have been made to quantify the impact of PV modules on surface radiative forcing and energy partitioning process. Here, this issue is explored experimentally and analytically in the two adjacent sites located at the PV plant and the natural barren field respectively in Wujiaqu in Xinjiang of China. The results showed that the physical effect of PV panels is not symmetrical in the whole day. During the daytime, compared with the reference site, net shortwave radiative forcing increases 8%, a warming effect on the integrated underlying surface (0.1 K) and a cooling effect (∼-2.6 K) on the ground surface were found in the PV plant. 9.2% of the net radiation (NR) was converted into electric energy (PE), sensible heat flux (H) increased by 30.6% hence resulted in the convection heating effects of 0.64 K and 0.32 K on the near-surface air temperature at the height of 2 m and 10 m respectively, while latent heat flux (LE) and ground surface heat flux (GS) decreased by 49% and 3% respectively related to the reference site. At night, PV panels produce a cooling effect of −0.2 K and −2.3 K on the ground and integrated underlying surface respectively, and less GS is released in the PV plant which contribute to the cooling effects of −0.24 K and −0.08 K on the air temperature at the height of 2 m and 10 m respectively related to the reference site. In the whole day, in the PV plant, H increased by 27.6%, LE and GS decreased by 47.4% and 6.7% respectively, air temperature increased by 0.16 K and 0.1 K at 2 m and 10 m respectively. • The physical effect of PV modules is not symmetrical in the whole day. • Net shortwave radiative forcing induced by PV modules increases 7.2%. • Sensible heat increases 34.4% and latent heat decreased 20.9% in PV plant related to reference site. • Ground surface heat decreases 7.4%. • The reasons of physical effect of PV modules were explained. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been much debate on whether color categories affect how we perceive color. Recent theories have put emphasis on the role of top-down influence on color perception that the original continuous color space in the visual cortex may be transformed into categorical encoding due to top-down modulation. To test the influence of color categories on color perception, we adopted an RSVP paradigm, where color stimuli were presented at a fast speed of 100 ms per stimulus and were forward and backward masked by the preceding and following stimuli. Moreover, no explicit color naming or categorization was required. In theory, backward masking with such a short interval in a passive viewing task should constrain top-down influence from higher-level brain areas. To measure any potentially subtle differences in brain response elicited by different color categories, we embedded a sensitive frequency-tagging-based EEG paradigm within the RSVP stimuli stream where the oddball color stimuli were encoded with a different frequency from the base color stimuli. We showed that EEG responses to cross-category oddball colors at the frequency where the oddball stimuli were presented was significantly larger than the responses to within-category oddball colors. Our study suggested that the visual cortex can automatically and implicitly encode color categories when color stimuli are presented rapidly. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Objective: The present study aimed to investigate the effects of Mesenchymal stem cells/glial cell line derived neurotrophic factor (MSCs/GDNF) transplantation on nerve reconstruction in rats with intracerebral hemorrhage.Methods: GDNF transduction to MSCs was using adenovirus vector pAdEasy-1-pAdTrack-CMV prepared. Intracerebral hemorrhage (ICH) was induced by injection of collagenase and heparin into the caudate putamen. At the third day after a collagenase-induced ICH, adult male SD rats were randomly divided into saline group, MSCs group and MSCs/GDNF group. Immunofluorescence and RT-PCR were performed to detect the differentiation of MSCs or MSCs with an adenovirus vector encoding GDNF gene in vivo and in vitro.Result: After 6 hours of induction, both MSCs and MSCs/GDNF expressed neuro or glial specific markers and synaptic-associated proteins (SYN, GAP-43, PSD-95); additionally, they secreted bioactive compounds (BDNF, NGF-β). MSCs/GDNF transplantation, compared to MSCs and saline solution injection, significantly improved neurological functions after ICH. The grafted MSCs or MSCs/GDNF survived in the striatum after 2 weeks of transplantation and expressed the neural cell-specific biomarkers NSE, MAP2, and GFAP.Conclusion: These findings demonstrate that MSCs/GDNF transplantation contributes to improved neurological function in experimental ICH rats. The mechanisms are possibly due to neuronal replacement and enhanced neurotrophic factor secretion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• ERK/MSC transplantation improves neurological function of rats after stroke. • More grafted cells in ERK/MSCs-treated rats compared to MSCs-treated rats. • More nestin-positive and nestin/MAP2-positive cells in ERK/MSC-treated rats. • 4 Enhanced reactive astrocytes but suppressed microglia in ERK/MSC-treated rats. Although transplantation of bone marrow-derived mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) has shown beneficial effects on stroke, lower survival of MSCs limits effects. Extracellular regulating kinase 1/2 signaling (ERK1/2) is crucial for cell survival, differentiation, and proliferation. This study was designed to explore whether MSCs modified by over-expressing ERK1/2 may reinforce beneficial effects on stroke in rats. rat MSCs transfected with ERK1/2 and empty lentivirus to generate MSCs overexpressing ERK1/2 (ERK/MSCs) and MSCs (as a control), respectively. In vitro , ERK/MSCs were plated and exposed to glutamate-induced condition, and viability of ERK/MSCs was measured. Furthermore, neural induction of ERK/MSCs was investigated in vitro. Cerebral ischemic rats were induced by occluding middle cerebral artery, and then were stereotaxically injected into ipsilateral right lateral ventricle with ERK/MSCs or MSCs 3 days after stroke and survived for 7 or 14 days after injection. ERK/MSCs showed better viability in physiological and glutamate-induced neurotoxic conditions compared to MSCs. After neural induction, more neurons were be differentiated from ERK/MSCs than from MSCs. After transplantation, more numbers of grafted cells and improved functional recovery were observed in ERK/MSCs-treated rats compared with MSCs-treated rats. Compared with MSCs treatment, ERK/MSCs treatment significantly increased proliferation of neural stem cells in the subventricle zone (SVZ) and the MAP2/nestin double-labeled cells adjacent to the SVZ, enhanced the numbers of reactive astrocytes while suppressed microglial activation. Besides, TNF-α level was elevated in ERK/MSCs-treated rats. Conclusion: ERK/MSCs transplantation showed better functional recovery after stroke in rats, likely in part through enhancing survival of MSCs and possibly by modulating the proliferation, neuronal de-differentiation and neuroinflammation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Finding an approach for pretreatment of radionuclides from contaminated water are interesting topics of research. In present work, the ZSM-5 molecular sieve was characterized with different techniques such as zeta potential, SEM, FT-IR and XRD to clarify the surface properties of sample and applied as a sorbent to concentrate and recover Cs(I) from aqueous solution. The effect of environmental conditions such as contact time, ionic strength, content of sorbent and solution pH on Cs(I) uptake were optimized using batch techniques. Different kinetic and isotherm models were utilized to evaluate the experimental data and the correlation parameters were obtained. Based on the sorption/desorption experiment, it can be deduced that the ZSM-5 molecular sieve has potential application for the rapid and quantitative recovery of radiocesium from wastewater. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The effect of pH, contact time, temperature, ionic strength and initial U(VI) concentration on U(VI) sorption onto K-feldspar was investigated using batch techniques. The sorption kinetics was evaluated and the activation energy was obtained based on the rate constants at different temperature. Graphical correlations of sorption isotherm models have been evaluated and applied for U(VI) uptake by K-feldspar. Various thermodynamic parameters, such as, Gibb's free energy, entropy and enthalpy of the on-going sorption process have been calculated and the possible sorption mechanism of U(VI) was deduced. The results are expected to help better understand the migration of uranium in the host materials of granite. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Large-scale solar power plants are rapidly increasing in size and number across the world. However, the surface heat balance is altered when a photovoltaic (PV) power plant is operating. Modifications to the surface albedo through the deployment of photovoltaic arrays have the potential to change radiative forcing, surface temperatures and local weather patterns. In this work, the field observation data from a large solar farm and a region without PV array in Golmud are used to study the impact of large solar farms in desert areas on the local meteorology. The results show that the total daily values of upward shortwave radiation and net radiation in the two sites are significantly different. The mean daily albedo in the solar farm is 0.19, while it is 0.26 in the region without PV. The annual mean net radiation in the solar farm is evidently higher than that of the region without PV. The daily range of soil temperatures at a depth of 5–10 cm in the solar farm is lower than that in the region without a PV farm. The annual range of soil temperatures at a depth of 5–180 cm in the solar farm is higher than that in the region without PV. The soil temperatures at different depths in winter in the solar farm are clearly lower than those in the region without PV. The daily mean of soil temperatures at a depth of 5–80 cm from October 2012 to March 2013 is clearly lower than that in the region without a PV array. The 2-m daytime air temperature in the two sites is essentially the same during winter, while during the other seasons, the daytime air temperature in the PV farm is higher than that in the region without PV, with the maximum difference appearing during the summer. The nighttime air temperatures at a height of 2 m during the four seasons in the solar farm are higher than those in the region without PV. The monthly average 2-m air temperature in the solar farm is higher than that in the region without PV. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

WO 3 nanorod bundles were prepared via a facile hydrothermal method with Na 2 SO 4 as structure directing agent. Field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM) and transmission electronic microscopy (TEM) images indicate that the WO 3 nanorod bundles consist of hierarchically nanostructured bundles assembled with smaller nanorod subunits. Furthermore, the gas-sensing properties of the as-prepared WO 3 were tested to a series of organic gases. The WO 3 nanorod bundles display a significantly better sensing performance (100 ppm formic acid, R a / R g = 51.3) than commercial WO 3 (100 ppm formic acid, R a / R g = 1.8) for the detection of formic acid. The results demonstrated that the WO 3 nanorod bundles have a potential application in formic acid sensors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Highlights: [•] Addition of SiO2 to PtW/Zr greatly enhanced activity and 1,3-propanediol selectivity. [•] 54.3% conversion and 52.0% 1,3-propanediol selectivity were achieved over 5PtW/ZrSi. [•] A model scheme of WO x transformation due to SiO2 doping has been built. [•] Pt and polytungstate have been identified as the dominant active phases. [•] Glycerol hydrogenolysis conforms to the dehydration–hydrogenation mechanism. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Highlights: [•] Adults implicitly learn the prototype and first two eigenfaces of the studied faces. [•] The prototype and eigenfaces are learned more efficiently than the studied faces. [•] The learning of the eigenfaces is as strong as the prototype learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]