How different cultures look at faces depends on the interpersonal context.

Culture can influence how we see and experience the world, and recent research shows that it even determines how we look at each other. Yet, most of these laboratory studies use images of faces that are deprived of any social context. In the real world, we not only look at people's faces to perceive who they are, but also to signal information back to them. It is unknown, therefore, within which interpersonal contexts cultural differences in looking at faces emerge. In the current study, we manipulated one aspect of the interpersonal context of faces: whether the target face either established mutual gaze looking directly into the camera as if talking to the viewer or averted gaze slightly to the side as if talking to another person. East Asian and Western participants viewed target face videos while their eye movements were recorded. If cultural differences are exclusively related to encoding information from others, interpersonal context should not matter. However, if cultural differences are also the result of culturally specific expectations about how to appropriately interact with another person, then cultural differences should be modulated by whether the speaker seemingly addresses the viewer or another person. In support of the second hypothesis, we only find cultural differences in looking at faces in the mutual gaze condition. We speculate that cultural norms surrounding the use of gaze as a social signal may underlie previous findings of cultural differences in face perception. (PsycINFO Database Record

Evaluation of the effects of dietary supplementation with fish oil omega-3 fatty acids on weight bearing in dogs with osteoarthritis.

OBJECTIVE: To evaluate the effects of a food supplemented with fish oil omega-3 fatty acids on weight bearing in dogs with osteoarthritis. DESIGN: Randomized, double-blinded, controlled clinical trial. ANIMALS: 38 client-owned dogs with osteoarthritis examined at 2 university veterinary clinics. PROCEDURES: Dogs were randomly assigned to receive a typical commercial food (n = 16) or a test food (22) containing 3.5% fish oil omega-3 fatty acids. On day 0 (before the trial began) and days 45 and 90 after the trial began, investigators conducted orthopedic evaluations and force-plate analyses of the most severely affected limb of each dog, and owners completed questionnaires to characterize their dogs' arthritis signs. RESULTS: The change in mean peak vertical force between days 90 and 0 was significant for the test-food group (5.6%) but not for the control-food group (0.4%). Improvement in peak vertical force values was evident in 82% of the dogs in the test-food group, compared with 38% of the dogs in the control-food group. In addition, according to investigators' subjective evaluations, dogs fed the test food had significant improvements in lameness and weight bearing on day 90, compared with measurements obtained on day 0. CONCLUSIONS AND CLINICAL RELEVANCE: At least in the short term, dietary supplementation with fish oil omega-3 fatty acids resulted in an improvement in weight bearing in dogs with osteoarthritis.

Markers of bone metabolism in dog breeds of different size.

Serum and urinary markers of bone turnover may be of value in animals as noninvasive tools for determining the response of the skeleton to disease and injury. Although normal values for bone markers have been reported for the Beagle, concerns remain that breed to breed differences will complicate the interpretation of bone marker data in dogs. To explore this, we examined serum bone markers in two breeds of vastly different size, Pomeranians and Irish Wolfhounds. Our hypothesis was that serum concentrations of bone markers are similar in toy and giant dog breeds and fall within the same range as those reported for Beagles. Bone alkaline phosphatase (BALP) and carboxy-terminal telopeptide of type I collagen (ICTP), respectively markers of bone formation and bone resorption, were measured in age matched Pomeranians (n=14) and Irish Wolfhounds (n=14). No statistically significant differences between the mean BALP and mean ICTP serum concentrations from Pomeranians and Irish Wolfhounds were found. All BALP and ICTP concentrations were within the reference range reported for Beagles. The results of this study suggest that serum BALP and ICTP concentrations in giant and toy breeds are the same as in Beagles and that these assays may be used for dogs of all sizes.