Dynamic Quantification of Migrainous Thermal Facial Patterns - A Pilot Study.

This article documents thermophysiological patterns associated with migraine episodes, where the inner canthi and supraorbital temperatures drop significantly compared to normal conditions. These temperature drops are likely due to vasoconstriction of the ophthalmic arteries under the inner canthi and sympathetic activation of the eccrine glands in the supraorbital region, respectively. The thermal patterns were observed on eight migraine patients and meticulously quantified using advance computational methods, capable of delineating small anatomical structures in thermal imagery and tracking them automatically over time. These methods open the way for monitoring migraine episodes in nonclinical environments, where the patient maintains directional attention, such as his/her computer at home or at work. This development has the potential to significantly expand the operational envelope of migraine studies.

A multimodal dataset for various forms of distracted driving.

We describe a multimodal dataset acquired in a controlled experiment on a driving simulator. The set includes data for n=68 volunteers that drove the same highway under four different conditions: No distraction, cognitive distraction, emotional distraction, and sensorimotor distraction. The experiment closed with a special driving session, where all subjects experienced a startle stimulus in the form of unintended acceleration-half of them under a mixed distraction, and the other half in the absence of a distraction. During the experimental drives key response variables and several explanatory variables were continuously recorded. The response variables included speed, acceleration, brake force, steering, and lane position signals, while the explanatory variables included perinasal electrodermal activity (EDA), palm EDA, heart rate, breathing rate, and facial expression signals; biographical and psychometric covariates as well as eye tracking data were also obtained. This dataset enables research into driving behaviors under neatly abstracted distracting stressors, which account for many car crashes. The set can also be used in physiological channel benchmarking and multispectral face recognition.

Connecting Past with Present: A Mixed-Methods Science Ethics Course and its Evaluation.

We present a graduate science ethics course that connects cases from the historical record to present realities and practices in the areas of social responsibility, authorship, and human/animal experimentation. This content is delivered with mixed methods, including films, debates, blogging, and practicum; even the instructional team is mixed, including a historian of science and a research scientist. What really unites all of the course's components is the experiential aspect: from acting in historical debates to participating in the current scientific enterprise. The course aims to change the students' culture into one deeply devoted to the science ethics cause. To measure the sought after cultural change, we developed and validated a relevant questionnaire. Results of this questionnaire from students who took the course, demonstrate that the course had the intended effect on them. Furthermore, results of this questionnaire from controls indicate the need for cultural change in that cohort. All these quantitative results are reinforced by qualitative outcomes.