Forty-Five Years After Broadbent (1958): Still No Identification Without Attention.

According to D. E. Broadbent's (1958) selective filter theory, people do not process unattended stimuli beyond the analysis of basic physical properties. This theory was later rejected on the basis of numerous findings that people identify irrelevant (and supposedly unattended) stimuli. A careful review of this evidence, however, reveals strong reasons to doubt that these irrelevant stimuli were in fact unattended. This review exposed a clear need for new experiments with tight control over the locus of attention. The authors present 5 such experiments using a priming paradigm. When steps were taken to ensure that irrelevant stimuli were not attended, these stimuli produced no priming effects. Hence, the authors found no evidence that unattended stimuli can be identified. The results support a modern version of Broadbent's selective theory, updated to reflect recent research advances. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Insiders Behaving Badly

This column goes beyond previous insider analyses to identify a framework for a taxonomy of insider threats including both malicious and inadvertent actions by insiders that put organizations or their resources at some risk. The framework includes factors reflecting the organization, the individual, the information technology system, and the environment.     

The moderating impact of sex on the equity–satisfaction relationship: A field study.

Explored whether males' satisfaction with an exchange relationship is more dependent on the equity of that relationship, relative to females'. 26 male and 25 female members of 1 of 3 business lead and referral clubs (1 all female, 1 primarily male, and 1 approximately equal in males and females) rated their own and others' inputs and outcomes into the exchange relationship, as well as their satisfaction with the relationship. Results indicate that satisfaction was lower in a negatively inequitable than equitable relationship and slightly lower in an equitable than positively inequitable relationship. As predicted, the relationship of equity and satisfaction was considerably more pronounced for male than female club members. Further analyses revealed that the equity-satisfaction relationship was especially (a) pronounced for males in the primarily male group and (b) weak for females in an all-female group. The latter findings suggest that the salience of the equity norm may be a joint function of the sex of both members of an exchange relationship. (13 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

External and internal electrostatic potentials of cholinesterase models

The electrostatic potentials for the three-dimensional structures of cholinesterases from various species were calculated, using the Delphi algorithm, on the basis of the Poisson–Boltzmann equation. We used structures for Torpedo californica and mouse acetylcholinesterase, and built homology models of the human, Bungarus fasciatus, and Drosophila melanogaster acetylcholinesterases and human butyrylcholinesterase. All these structures reveal a negative external surface potential, in the area around the entrance to the active-site gorge, that becomes more negative as the rim of the gorge is approached. Moreover, in all cases, the potential becomes increasingly more negative along the central axis running down the gorge, and is largest at the base of the gorge, near the active site. Ten key acidic residues conserved in the sequence alignments of AChE from various species, both in the surface area near the entrance of the active-site gorge and at its base, appear to be primarily responsible for these potentials. The potentials are highly correlated among the structures examined, down to sequence identities as low as 35%. This indicates that they are a conserved property of the cholinesterase family, could serve to attract the positively charged substrate into and down the gorge to the active site, and may play other roles important for cholinesterase function.     

Networks for sorting multitonic sequences

Lee and Batcher have designed networks that efficiently merge k separately provided sorted sequences of known lengths totalling n. We show that the design is still possible, and in fact easier to describe, if we do not make use of the lengths, or even the directions of monotonicity, of the individual sequences—the sequences can be provided in a single undelimited concatenation of length n. The depth of the simplest resulting network to sort sequences that are “k-tonic” and of length n is , generalizing Batcher's 1968 results for the extreme values of k (k=2 corresponding to merging, and k=n/2 corresponding to general sorting).The exposition is self-contained and can serve even as an introduction to sorting networks and Batcher's results.     

New bounds on the number of frictionless fingers requied to immobilize

Using a novel second-order mobility theory that was recently developed by the authors, this article develops new lower bounds on the number of frictionless fingers required to immobilize generic planar objects. We show that any generic smooth or polygonal planar object can be immobilized with three convex fingers or fixtures that have sufficiently flat curvature. Further, if it is possible to specify the fingertip curvature, then any generic smooth or polygonal object can be immobilized with two, possibly concave, fingers. © 1995 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Percutaneous Absorption Enhancement by Nonionic Surfactants

The influence of nonionic surfactants (polysorbates) on hydrocortisone penetration through hairless mouse skin in vitro has been determined. Permeation was quite slow from purely aqueous media containing surfactants following finite dose application. However, if the vehicle contained high propylene glycol concentrations (40% or more), inclusion of a surfactant increased permeation rate significantly. Similar effects were noted following application of a large donor volume (infinite dose). Synergism was attributed to enhancement of surfactant absorption by the stratum corneum leading to changes in skin barrier resistance. With vehicles containing a surfactant, penetration was higher after finite dose application due to compositional changes within the vehicle.     

Interactive quadrangulation with Reeb atlases and connectivity textures

Creating high-quality quad meshes from triangulated surfaces is a highly nontrivial task that necessitates consideration of various application specific metrics of quality. In our work, we follow the premise that automatic reconstruction techniques may not generate outputs meeting all the subjective quality expectations of the user. Instead, we put the user at the center of the process by providing a flexible, interactive approach to quadrangulation design. By combining scalar field topology and combinatorial connectivity techniques, we present a new framework, following a coarse to fine design philosophy, which allows for explicit control of the subjective quality criteria on the output quad mesh, at interactive rates. Our quadrangulation framework uses the new notion of Reeb atlas editing, to define with a small amount of interactions a coarse quadrangulation of the model, capturing the main features of the shape, with user prescribed extraordinary vertices and alignment. Fine grain tuning is easily achieved with the notion of connectivity texturing, which allows for additional extraordinary vertices specification and explicit feature alignment, to capture the high-frequency geometries. Experiments demonstrate the interactivity and flexibility of our approach, as well as its ability to generate quad meshes of arbitrary resolution with high-quality statistics, while meeting the user’s own subjective requirements.