Brain dynamics in spider-phobic individuals exposed to phobia-relevant and other emotional stimuli.

[Correction Notice: An erratum for this article was reported in Vol 9(4) of Emotion (see record 2009-11528-006). This article contained an incorrect DOI for the supplemental materials. The correct DOI is as follows: http://dx.doi.org/10.1037/a0015550.supp.] Dense sensor event-related brain potentials were measured in participants with spider phobia and nonfearful controls during viewing of phobia-relevant spider and standard emotional (pleasant, unpleasant, neutral) pictures. Irrespective of the picture content, spider phobia participants responded with larger P1 amplitudes than controls, suggesting increased vigilance in this group. Furthermore, spider phobia participants showed a significantly enlarged early posterior negativity (EPN) and late positive potential (LPP) during the encoding of phobia-relevant pictures compared to nonfearful controls. No group differences were observed for standard emotional materials indicating that these effects were specific to phobia-relevant material. Within group comparisons of the spider phobia group, though, revealed comparable EPN and LPP evoked by spider pictures and emotional (unpleasant and pleasant) picture contents. These results demonstrate a temporal unfolding in perceptual processing from unspecific vigilance (P1) to preferential responding (EPN and LPP) to phobia-relevant materials in the spider phobia group. However, at the level of early stimulus processing, these effects of increased attention seem to be related to emotional relevance of the stimulus cues rather than reflecting a fear-specific response. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Computing Historical Consciousness. A Quantitative Inquiry into the Presence of the Past in Newspaper Texts

In this paper, some electronically gathered data arepresented and analyzed about the presence of the pastin newspaper texts. In ten large text corpora of sixdifferent languages, all dates in the form of yearsbetween 1930 and 1990 were counted. For six of thesecorpora this was done for all the years between 1200and 1993. Depicting these frequencies on the timeline,we find an underlying regularly declining curve,deviations at regular places and culturally determinedpeaks at irregular points. These three phenomena areanalyzed.Mathematically spoken, all the underlying curves havethe same form. Whether a newspaper gives much orlittle attention to the past, the distribution of thisattention over time turns out to be inverselyproportional to the distance between past and present.It is shown that this distribution is largelyindependent of the total number of years in a corpus,the culture in which it is published, the language andthe date of origin of the corpus. The phenomenon isexplained as a kind of forgetting: the larger thedistance between past and present, the more difficultit is to connect something of the past to an item inthe present day. A more detailed analysis of the datashows a breakpoint in the frequency vs. distance fromthe publication date of the texts. References toevents older than approximately 50 years are theresult of a forgetting process that is distinctivelydifferent from the forgetting speed of more recentevents.Pandel's classification of the dimensions ofhistorical consciousness is used to answer thequestion how these investigations elucidate thehistorical consciousness of the cultures in which thenewspapers are written and read.     

原油减压渣油馏分的油-水界面性质：Ⅷ．减渣馏分分子参数与其模拟乳状液的稳定性

采用相对分子质量测定、元素分析、紫外光谱和红外光谱等手段，确定了大庆减压渣油与伊朗重质减压渣油的分子参数，并考察了两个系列减压渣油馏分的模拟乳状液的稳定性。在此基础上，采用复合变量分析探讨了减压渣油馏分的各分子参数之间的关系，以及这些分子参数与模拟乳状液稳定性的关系。结果表明，减压渣油馏分不同的分子参数对其模拟乳状液稳定性的影响不同，其中馏分的相对分子质量、稠环芳香结构的含量、脂肪烃相对含量、羰基相对含量对模拟乳状液的稳定性影响最明显。一般情况下，馏分的相对分子质量越大、稠环芳香结构和羰基含量越高，则乳状液越稳定。     

Suboptimal Markovian smoothing estimates based on continuous curves of solutions of the algebraic Riccati inequality

Based on a result on continuous dependence of solutions of an algebraic Riccati equation on the data matrices, we construct continuous curves of solutions of an algebraic Riccati inequality, and derive suboptimal Markovian estimates for the steady-state smoothing problem.     

Nonesterified fatty acids in normal and diabetic rat sciatic nerve

Alloxan-induced diabetes in rats results in elevated levels of nonesterified fatty acids (NEFA) in whole sciatic nerve and its endoneurium. Increases in NEFA levels are more pronounced in whole diabetic nerve (40% over control) than in its endoneurial portion (20–30%). Alterations in the composition of phospholipid fatty acids are observed as well, including an increase in linoleate (18∶2n−6) in endoneurial phosphatidylethanolamine and a decrease in arachidonate (20∶4n−6) in both phosphatidylethanolamine and phosphatidylinositol of diabetic nerve.