Search

Two experiments were conducted to investigate the automatic processing of emotional facial expressions while performing low or high demand cognitive tasks under unattended conditions. In Experiment 1, 35 subjects performed low (judging the structure of Chinese words) and high (judging the tone of Chinese words) cognitive load tasks while exposed to unattended pictures of fearful, neutral, or happy faces. The results revealed that the reaction time was slower and the performance accuracy was higher while performing the low cognitive load task than while performing the high cognitive load task. Exposure to fearful faces resulted in significantly longer reaction times and lower accuracy than exposure to neutral faces on the low cognitive load task. In Experiment 2, 26 subjects performed the same word judgment tasks and their brain event-related potentials (ERPs) were measured for a period of 800 ms after the onset of the task stimulus. The amplitudes of the early component of ERP around 176 ms (P2) elicited by unattended fearful faces over frontal-central-parietal recording sites was significantly larger than those elicited by unattended neutral faces while performing the word structure judgment task. Together, the findings of the two experiments indicated that unattended fearful faces captured significantly more attention resources than unattended neutral faces on a low cognitive load task, but not on a high cognitive load task. It was concluded that fearful faces could automatically capture attention if residues of attention resources were available under the unattended condition.

Objective: To determine the correlation, precision, mean percentage difference and agreement between cardiac indices (stroke volume [SV], cardiac output [CO], SV index [SVI], and cardiac index [CI]) measured by noninvasive cardiac output monitor (NICOM®, Cheetah Medical, Boston, MA, USA) and 2-dimensional transthoracic echocardiography (2D-TTE) across gestations in Chinese pregnant women. Methods: This was a prospective longitudinal study performed in women with singleton pregnancy at 11–14+6 (n = 152), 19–24+6 (n = 152), 30–34+6 (n = 141), and 35–37+6 (n = 103). Cardiac indices, including CO and SV, were obtained by NICOM®, which uses thoracic bioreactance, and 2D-TTE. CI and SVI were calculated from CO and SV adjusted for body surface area. The measurements of cardiac indices obtained using NICOM® were assessed relative to that of 2D-TTE by calculating correlation coefficient, bias, precision, mean percentage difference, and 95% limits of agreement, adjusted for repeated measurements. Results: Comparison of the SV and SVI measurements by the two approaches showed significant moderate correlation in the first trimester (r = 0.2–0.3; p =.01). Overall, the SV and SVI measurements obtained using NICOM® relative to that obtained by 2D-TTE revealed a bias of −12.1 mL and −6.1 mL/m2 (95% confidence interval [CI]: −44.5 to 20.2 and −24.8 to 12.5), respectively. Comparison of the CO and CI measurements by the two approaches showed significant moderate correlation in the first trimester (r∼0.2; p =.01). Overall, the CO and CI measurements obtained using NICOM® relative to that obtained by 2D-TTE revealed a bias of −0.50 L/min and −0.18 L/min/m2 (95% CI: 2.26–3.27 and −1.79 to 1.39), respectively. Mean percentage difference for all cardiac parameters in all three trimesters were more than 30%. Conclusions: In Chinese pregnant women, NICOM® has underestimated cardiac indices (SV, CO, SVI, and CI) compared to that measured by 2D-TTE. The mean percentage differences for all cardiac indices are more than 30%, which are higher than the clinically acceptable limit. Future research is needed to determine whether adjustment factors should be applied to the proprietary algorithms used by the NICOM® for the estimation of SV and CO in the Chinese pregnant population. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

To address the support difficulties caused by the dynamic pressure from the adjacent working face in gob-side entry driving, this study, taking the 8103 working face of the Jinhuagong Coal Mine in Shanxi Province as an example, adopted methods such as theoretical analysis, physical experiments, numerical simulations, and field practices to explore roof-cutting and pressure-relieving techniques to control the surrounding rocks in gob-side entry driving with small coal pillars under dynamic pressure. Fractures of the lateral roof, stresses on the surrounding rock, and deformations with different cutting-roof parameters were analyzed to determine the reasonable parameters for applications. The following results have been obtained. The longer the lateral cantilever length of the roof, the greater the load borne by the surrounding rock. Therefore, the key to reducing the confining pressure in a roadway is reducing the lateral cantilever length of the roof. After roof cutting, the roof of the gob area collapsed more completely. The stress on both sides of the coal pillar and that on the ribs of the solid coal dropped by 7.72 MPa and 4.16 MPa, respectively. The key roof-cutting parameters were analyzed by the UDEC numerical software, and the reasonable roof-cutting angle and height were determined to be 12° and 14 m. A support scheme combining "steel strip + bolt + anchor cable + roof cutting" was proposed. With the scheme applied, the displacement of both sides of the coal pillar was 61 mm shorter than that in the non-test section, and the duration in which the roadway was affected by mining was 11 days shorter. Therefore, the rationality of the selected roof-cutting and support parameters in this study is verified. The proposed scheme can effectively control the stability of surrounding rocks in gob-side entry driving with small coal pillars under dynamic pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]