25 research outputs found
Restoring Vision through “Project Prakash”: The Opportunities for Merging Science and Service
No full text“So how does this help society?” is a question we are often asked as scientists. The lack of immediate and tangible results cannot be held against a scientific project but statements of future promise in broad and inchoate terms can sometimes pass the benefit-buck indefinitely. There is no incentive against over-stating the benefits, especially when they are hypothetical and lie in the distant future. Few scientists will say their science is not designed to serve society. Yet the proliferation of “potential benefits” in grant proposals and the Discussion sections of research papers, in the absence of tangible translations, can make the service element of science seem like a cliched ritual. Its repetition hollows out its meaning, breeding cynicism about the idea that basic science can be of service
Capturing specific abilities as a window into human individuality: The example of face recognition
No full textProper characterization of each individual's unique pattern of strengths and weaknesses requires good measures of diverse abilities. Here, we advocate combining our growing understanding of neural and cognitive mechanisms with modern psychometric methods in a renewed effort to capture human individuality through a consideration of specific abilities. We articulate five criteria for the isolation and measurement of specific abilities, then apply these criteria to face recognition. We cleanly dissociate face recognition from more general visual and verbal recognition. This dissociation stretches across ability as well as disability, suggesting that specific developmental face recognition deficits are a special case of a broader specificity that spans the entire spectrum of human face recognition performance. Item-by-item results from 1,471 web-tested participants, included as supplementary information, fuel item analyses, validation, norming, and item response theory (IRT) analyses of our three tests: (a) the widely used Cambridge Face Memory Test (CFMT); (b) an Abstract Art Memory Test (AAMT), and (c) a Verbal Paired-Associates Memory Test (VPMT). The availability of this data set provides a solid foundation for interpreting future scores on these tests. We argue that the allied fields of experimental psychology, cognitive neuroscience, and vision science could fuel the discovery of additional specific abilities to add to face recognition, thereby providing new perspectives on human individuality
Results of late surgical intervention in children with early-onset bilateral cataracts
No full textBackground Cataracts are a major cause of childhood blindness globally. Although surgically treatable, it is unclear whether children would benefit from such interventions beyond the first few years of life, which are believed to constitute ‘critical’ periods for visual development.
Aims To study visual acuity outcomes after late treatment of early-onset cataracts and also to determine whether there are longitudinal changes in postoperative acuity.
Methods We identified 53 children with dense cataracts with an onset within the first half-year after birth through a survey of over 20 000 rural children in India. All had accompanying nystagmus and were older than 8 years of age at the time of treatment. They underwent bilateral cataract surgery and intraocular lens implantation. We then assessed their best-corrected visual acuity 6 weeks and 6 months after surgery.
Results 48 children from the pool of 53 showed improvement in their visual acuity after surgery. Our longitudinal assessments demonstrated further improvements in visual acuity for the majority of these children proceeding from the 6-week to 6-month assessment. Interestingly, older children in our subject pool did not differ significantly from the younger ones in the extent of improvement they exhibit.
Conclusions and relevance Our results demonstrate that not only can significant vision be acquired until late in childhood, but that neural processes underlying even basic aspects of vision like resolution acuity remain malleable until at least adolescence. These data argue for the provision of cataract treatment to all children, irrespective of their age.National Eye Institute (Grant R01EY020517)James S. McDonnell Foundatio
Development of pattern vision following early and extended blindness
No full textVisual plasticity peaks during early critical periods of normal visual development. Studies in animals and humans provide converging evidence that gains in visual function are minimal and deficits are most severe when visual deprivation persists beyond the critical period. Here we demonstrate visual development in a unique sample of patients who experienced extended early-onset blindness (beginning before 1 y of age and lasting 8–17 y) before removal of bilateral cataracts. These patients show surprising improvements in contrast sensitivity, an assay of basic spatial vision. We find that contrast sensitivity development is independent of the age of sight onset and that individual rates of improvement can exceed those exhibited by normally developing infants. These results reveal that the visual system can retain considerable plasticity, even after early blindness that extends beyond critical periods.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01EY020517
The evolution of religious belief in humans: a brief review with a focus on cognition
No full textReligion has been a widely present feature of human beings. This review explores developments in the evolutionary cognitive psychology of religion and provides critical evaluation of the different theoretical positions. Generally scholars have either believed religion is adaptive, a by-product of adaptive psychological features or maladaptive and varying amounts of empirical evidence supports each position. The adaptive position has generated the costly signalling theory of religious ritual and the group selection theory. The by-product position has identified psychological machinery that has been co-opted by religion. The maladaptive position has generated the meme theory of religion. The review concludes that the by-product camp enjoys the most support in the scientific community and suggests ways forward for an evolutionarily significant study of religion
The world of lie detection: a study into state of lie detection usage by state and society in Asia, Africa and Europe
No full textThought privacy, that is, the right to control who has access to one’s thoughts, is a bedrock of human civilization as we know it today. Lie detection technologies, with their severe limitations, have proliferated in use all over the world. Such unsupervised proliferation of technology that claims to infer human psychological states has huge implications for the future of human existence and rights. We collate data about usage of lie detection technologies for six categories of use in all sovereign countries of Asia, Africa and Europe. The collected data, being category specific, also provides insight into what kind of uses are more prevalent. The present paper provides an idea about the enormity and spread of the problem of lie detection technology proliferation. We also provide observations about legal control mechanisms of such issues. This data provides a baseline for further observation and monitoring of the field of lie detection technology proliferation
Parenting Behavior and Juvenile Delinquency Among Low-Income Families
No full textIt is widely known that parenting behavior has an impact on the development of delinquent behavior among adolescents. However, there is paucity of studies focusing on parenting behavior and its relation to juvenile delinquency among low-income families from India. The authors examined a wide range of parenting behavior and its relationship to juvenile delinquency in low-income families among Indians. Data were collected from 27 juvenile delinquent boys who were residing temporarily in an observation home in Kolkata (West Bengal, India) and 100 matched control (with respect to their socioeconomic status) juvenile boys, 11–18 years old, also from the same city. The overall findings revealed that there were higher levels of permissive parenting in the families of delinquent adolescents. It may be because low-income families have many family members that initiated the adolescents to take up some jobs to increase the family income, and this in turn affected their parents’ parenting behavior
SEPHIS e-Magazine Global South, Volume 3: No.4: April 2008
No full textDebolina Dutta and Oishik Sircar: From Sex Worker to Entertainment Worker: Strategic Politics of DMSC Madhurima Mukhopadhyay: Virginity Lost and Regained: Hymenoplastic Honour in Urban India Nandita Dhawan: The Princess and the Pauper Michiel Baud & Shamil Jeppie: Expert Meeting on Histories of Sexualities and Modernities in the Global South Anirban Ghosh: Some Conversations within a City: With Hindutva and JNU on Top Garga Chatterjee: Growing Up in Red Kolkata , Where Kollontai was Whore and Lenin was King Marc Epprecht: Resources for Uncovering the History of Same-Sex Sexualities in Africa South Of the Sahara Jishnu Dasgupta: Trans(cending) Gender? Wangui Kimari: Interview, Andrea Allan Doctoral Student and Researcher in Bahia, Brazilsex workers, hymenoplasty, sexualities, Hindutva, Calcutta, Marxism, marxism, Left, West Bengal, JNU, New Delhi, Culture, History
Developmental Prosopagnosia and Super-Recognition: No Special Role for Surface Reflectance Processing
No full textFace recognition by normal subjects depends in roughly equal proportions on shape and surface reflectance cues, while object recognition depends predominantly on shape cues. It is possible that developmental prosopagnosics are deficient not in their ability to recognize faces per se, but rather in their ability to use reflectance cues. Similarly, super-recognizers\u27 exceptional ability with face recognition may be a result of superior surface reflectance perception and memory. We tested this possibility by administering tests of face perception and face recognition in which only shape or reflectance cues are available to developmental prosopagnosics, super-recognizers, and control subjects. Face recognition ability and the relative use of shape and pigmentation were unrelated in all the tests. Subjects who were better at using shape or reflectance cues were also better at using the other type of cue. These results do not support the proposal that variation in surface reflectance perception ability is the underlying cause of variation in face recognition ability. Instead, these findings support the idea that face recognition ability is related to neural circuits using representations that integrate shape and pigmentation information
A block-spring model for jointed rocks.
No full textA numerical method called the Block-Spring Model for analyzing heavily jointed rocks has been developed from first principles. The model simulates the jointed rock mass by an assemblage of rigid blocks interacted through contacts. The contact forces between blocks are determined in terms of the relative displacements between the blocks. By introducing the contact forces and the boundary conditions into the equilibrium equations of the blocks, a wet of stiffness equations are obtained in which the unknown variables are the displacements of the blocks. The displacements of the blocks can therefore be determined by solving the stiffness equations. The contact forces between blocks are calculated after the displacements are obtained. The discontinuities of the jointed rock mass are automatically modelled as the interfaces between the blocks. The deformation behaviour of the joints are governed by a non-tension rule in normal direction. Patton's bi-linear criterion is used to describe the shear failure behaviour of the rock joints. An interaction procedure is applied to describe the progressive failure along the joints. The positions of the blocks are continuously updated based on the displacements obtained after each step of iteration. Therefore, the large scale displacements of the blocks are modelled incrementally with the iteration procedure. During evolution of the block movement, the blocks are allowed to rearrange. The block system may become statically stable or unstable after undergoing large scale displacements. The proposed model therefore identifies unstable blocks by considering the rearrangement of the blocks. A numerical procedure for simulating the rock bolts has been proposed. The rockbolts are modelled by a series of one dimensional elements interacted with the rock blocks through nodal points. The effect of the rockbolts on the rock masses is evaluated by relating the bolt forces to the displacements of the blocks and by introducing the bolt forces into the equilibrium equations of the blocks. The model can be used to analyze both the end-anchored rock bolts and the fully grouted rock bolts either pre-tensioned or untensioned. A procedure for modelling the groundwater pressure has also been developed. It has been considered that groundwater may affect the stability of the jointed rock masses by reducing the effective stresses between the rock blocks. In simulating the groundwater effect on the rock masses, the water pressures imposed on the surfaces of the rock blocks are calculated. These water pressures are introduced into the equilibrium equations of the blocks. The contact forces between blocks determined after solving the equations are the effective forces across the rock joints. A FORTRAN program, BLOSMER, has been entirely written by the Author based on the procedures of the Block-Spring Model developed during this study. The program can be used to analyze the stability of the surrounding rock masses of either open pits or underground excavations at the shallow depth. It has been applied to several examples to demonstrate the capability of the proposed model. Two case histories have been analyzed in detail with the Block-Spring Model. The numerical results have been compared with the field instrumentation data. Good agreement has been observed between the results from the back analyses with the proposed model and the field measurements in both cases. The proposed model can be applied for analysis of rock excavations by practicing civil and mining engineers
