Recognition of facial emotions across the lifespan: 8-year-olds resemble older adults.

On standard emotion recognition tasks with relatively long or unlimited stimuli durations, recognition improves as children grow older, whereas older adults are worse than young adults. Crucially, it was unknown (a) how older adults compare to age groups below young adulthood and (b) whether children can recognize emotions at shorter durations, with short durations likely common in real life. We compared emotion recognition in 5-year-olds, 8-year-olds, young adults and older adults at very brief durations (50 ms, 250 ms) as well as standard unlimited durations. Eight-year-olds were better than 5-year-olds, young adults than all groups, and there was a striking similarity between 8-year-olds and older adults, providing the first clear indication that older adults' recognition abilities are equivalent to that of an 8-year-old at all durations. Emotion recognition was above chance on all emotions and durations among the three older age groups and on most stimuli for 5-year-olds.

Carboxylated acrylonitrile butadiene-natural rubber latex blends with methyl methacrylate grafted natural rubber latex: mechanical properties and morphology.

Commercially available carboxylated acrylonitrile butadiene latex (XNBR) was physically blended with natural rubber latex (NR) at varying blend ratios to investigate its effect on the mechanical properties and morphology. Methyl methacrylate grafted natural rubber latex (MG) was added to the latex blends as a third polymer to study whether it could enhance the mechanical properties of the latex blend films. It was found that the tensile strength of the blend films irrespective of composition decreased when the two latexes were blended as compared to the virgin latex films. The modulus 300 decreased while the elongation at break and tear strength of the blend films increased gradually as the ratio of NR increased in the blend films. It was found that the MG did not enhance the mechanical properties of the XNBR/NR blend films under the current experimental condition. AFM phase imaging analysis revealed enhanced polymer distribution and evidence of NR-MG-XNBR interactions.