Published: Jan. 1, 2014

In the second year of life, infants are actively interested in objects used by adults, despite the number of experienced difficulties in achieving their goals while handling these objects. What causes the child attempt to handle an object for a designated purpose while watching the adult? One of the evident explanations concerns the effectiveness of the adults behavior and the child’s desire to achieve the same result. However, multiple studies have shown that a child is guided not exclusively by the hoped-for result, but also by the adults intention. In our study, we verified the reason guiding a child’s choice …

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Published: Jan. 1, 2022

This study was conducted to assess provider perceptions regarding value of tablet-based patient-reported outcome (PRO) assessments in routine care. Patients self-administered a brief PRO assessment of several clinical domains on-site prior to HIV clinic visits. Providers were given succinct summary results. 1:1 interviews were conducted with providers regarding PROs utility and their integration into care, and coded interview transcripts into thematic areas. Providers described how PROs helped prioritize topics for discussion during the visit, and facilitated their identification and ability to address sensitive issues, particularly depression/suicidality, sexual behavior, and intimate partner violence. PROs further facilitated comprehensive identification of other issues …

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Published: June 24, 2018

In emotional facial expressions, sequential effects can result in perceptual changes of a briefly presented test expression due to a preceding prolonged exposure to an adaptor expression. Most studies have shown contrastive (adaptation) aftereffects using static adaptors: a test is perceived as less similar to the adaptor. However, the existence and sign of sequential effects caused by dynamic information in the adaptors are controversial. In a behavioral experiment we tested the influence of realistic (recorded from an actors face) and artificial (linearly morphed) dynamic transitions between happy and disgusted facial expressions, and of static images of these expressions at their …

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Published: Aug. 23, 2019

If a well-known word is a part of an anagram stimulus, it may complicate the process of solving the anagram. This may happen because a word inside the anagram may serve as a semantic prime, or because such a word is a chunk that is difficult to decompose. We manipulated the structural features of word and nonword chunks in anagram stimuli to find out which features of a chunk, semantic or structural, are more influential in anagram solving. The results showed that the semantic but not the structural features of a chunk are more important for five-letter anagrams, while none …

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Published: Dec. 25, 2019

One of the main research questions related to creativity is the dilemma of specificity vs. non-specificity of the mechanisms underlying insight solutions as compared to analytical solutions of a problem. The first goal of our study was to verify insight solution specificity on solving anagram tasks. The second goal was to test a hypothesis about the existence of unconscious processing prior to insight solutions. We presented two types of stimuli to participants: anagrams and pseudowords. During the experiment, participants had to perform two successive tasks. First they had to judge whether they were being shown an anagram or a pseudoword, …

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Published: Jan. 31, 2018

Indices of codon usage pattern of human papillomavirus (HPV) were analyzed to understand the key determinants of synonymous codon usage in the HPV genome. The complete sequences of 39 HPV genomes were downloaded from the website of the National Center for Biotechnology Information. The relative synonymous codon usage values, effective number of codons, GC content, percentage of GCs at the third position of synonymous codons (GC3s), codon adaptation index, hydrophobicity, aromaticity of conceptually translated gene products were calculated using the Codon W 1.4.2 program. HPV preferentially used codons ending with A/U. By comparing relative synonymous codon usage of the HPV …

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Published: June 27, 2019

Many psychological theories attempt to explain the mechanisms that govern cognition in adults, and fewer theories attempt to explain also how cognitive mechanisms change across development. Even fewer theories provide a brain representation of mechanisms related to cognitive development. One such theory is the Theory of Constructive Operators. In this review, we present key components of this general theory and provide quantitative predictions for the development of core cognitive abilities such a mental-attentional capacity. Specifically, the model of endogenous mental attention presents a domain-free resource that increases in power during childhood and adolescence. Mental-attentional capacity grows concurrently with prefrontal brain …

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Published: Dec. 8, 2019

Individual variability in imagery experiences has long attracted the interest of philosophers, educators, and psychologists. Since Aristotle’s time, it was assumed that imagery is a universal ability, so everyone possesses it. Galton first measured the vividness of subjective imagery experiences, and discovered that some individuals reported zero imagination. Recent research has coined the term “aphantasia” — an inability to form mental imagery, or having a “blind mind’s eye” (Zeman, Dewar, & Della Sala, 2015). We argue that there maybe more than one type of aphantasia. Substantial behavioral and neuropsychological evidence has demonstrated a distinction between visual-object imagery (mental visualization of …

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Published: July 31, 2018

Bioinformatics is an emerging field, where information technology usage can significantly accelerate life science research. It is a relatively new field and the scope of exploring new tools and techniques seems immense. One major field where bioinformatics plays important role is next generation sequence analysis (NGS), in which an unknown genome is shuttered into pieces and tried to align it to a reference known genome to decipher its functions using sequence comparison. The first well known application of this technology is the human genome project which took nearly 10 years to finish. With advancements in central processing units (CPUs), the …

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Published: March 31, 2022

Many rural households do not have access to treated drinking water. However, some households may be in regions where a water treatment plant has excess capacity to supply some additional households. In such circumstances, small diameter low-pressure supply systems can be connected to major transmission lines to give these households access to water. These typically occur in locations that do not belong to recognized municipal or other local government. Such supply systems, commonly referred to as “trickle fill,” have been implemented in South America, Africa and Canada. This paper explains the concept of trickle fill supply systems. A user-friendly decision-making …

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