Recognition Accuracy and Response Bias to Happy and Sad Facial Expressions in Patients With Major Depression.

Impaired facial expression recognition has been associated with features of major depression, which could underlie some of the difficulties in social interactions in these patients. Patients with major depressive disorder and age- and gender-matched healthy volunteers judged the emotion of 100 facial stimuli displaying different intensities of sadness and happiness and neutral expressions presented for short (100 ms) and long (2,000 ms) durations. Compared with healthy volunteers, depressed patients demonstrated subtle impairments in discrimination accuracy and a predominant bias away from the identification as happy of mildly happy expressions. The authors suggest that, in depressed patients, the inability to accurately identify subtle changes in facial expression displayed by others in social situations may underlie the impaired interpersonal functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mathematical simulation and control of solidification of alloys in the process of suspension casting

Results of the development and testing of a method for controlling the macro-and microstructure of suspension-cast ingots are presented. The engineering solution suggested involves prediction of the variation of the actual rate of cooling of a liquid melt by mathematical simulation of the process of heating of metallic granules (macrocoolers) added into the ingot. In order to evaluate the efficiency of the method, prototype tests performed on conveyor casting machines of the Zestafoni Plant of Ferroalloys for commercial ferrosilicomanganese FeMnSi17 are described. __________ Translated from Metallovedenie i Termicheskaya Obrabotka Metallov, No. 4, pp. 16–19, April, 2007.