Eye-hand coordination: memory-guided grasping during obstacle avoidance.

When reaching to grasp previously seen, now out-of-view objects, we rely on stored perceptual representations to guide our actions, likely encoded by the ventral visual stream. So-called memory-guided actions are numerous in daily life, for instance, as we reach to grasp a coffee cup hidden behind our morning newspaper. Little research has examined obstacle avoidance during memory-guided grasping, though it is possible obstacles with increased perceptual salience will provoke exacerbated avoidance maneuvers, like exaggerated deviations in eye and hand position away from obtrusive obstacles. We examined the obstacle avoidance strategies adopted as subjects reached to grasp a 3D target object under visually-guided (closed loop or open loop with full vision prior to movement onset) and memory-guided (short- or long-delay) conditions. On any given trial, subjects reached between a pair of flanker obstacles to grasp a target object. The positions and widths of the obstacles were manipulated, though their inner edges remained a constant distance apart. While reach and grasp behavior was consistent with the obstacle avoidance literature, in that reach, grasp, and gaze positions were biased away from obstacles most obtrusive to the reaching hand, our results reveal distinctive avoidance approaches undertaken depend on the availability of visual feedback. Contrary to expectation, we found subjects reaching to grasp after a long delay in the absence of visual feedback failed to modify their final fixation and grasp positions to accommodate the different positions of obstacles, demonstrating a more moderate, rather than exaggerative, obstacle avoidance strategy.

Eye-hand coordination in reaching and grasping vertically moving targets.

Previous investigations have uncovered a strong visual bias toward the index finger when reaching and grasping stationary or horizontally moving targets. The present research sought to explore whether the index finger or thumb would serve as a significant focus for gaze in tasks involving vertically translating targets. Participants executed right-handed reach-to-grasp movements towards upward or downward moving 2-D targets on a computer screen. When the target first appeared, participants made anticipatory fixations in the direction of the eventual movement path (i.e. well above upwardly moving targets or well below downwardly moving targets) and upon movement onset, fixations shifted toward the leading edge of the target. For upward moving targets, fixations remained toward the leading edge upon reach onset, whereas for downward moving targets, fixations shifted toward the centre of the target. The same central fixation location was observed at the time of grasp for all targets. Furthermore, for downwardly moving targets, the placement of the thumb appears to have influenced fixation location in conjunction with, not replacement of, the influence of the index finger. These findings are indicative of the increasingly relevant role of the thumb in mediating reaching and grasping downwardly moving targets.

Evidence for a common mechanism of spatial attention and visual awareness: Towards construct validity of pseudoneglect.

Present knowledge of attention and awareness centres on deficits in patients with right brain damage who show severe forms of inattention to the left, called spatial neglect. Yet the functions that are lost in neglect are poorly understood. In healthy people, they might produce "pseudoneglect"-subtle biases to the left found in various tests that could complement the leftward deficits in neglect. But pseudoneglect measures are poorly correlated. Thus, it is unclear whether they reflect anything but distinct surface features of the tests. To probe for a common mechanism, here we asked whether visual noise, known to increase leftward biases in the grating-scales task, has comparable effects on other measures of pseudoneglect. We measured biases using three perceptual tasks that require judgments about size (landmark task), luminance (greyscales task) and spatial frequency (grating-scales task), as well as two visual search tasks that permitted serial and parallel search or parallel search alone. In each task, we randomly selected pixels of the stimuli and set them to random luminance values, much like a poor TV signal. We found that participants biased their perceptual judgments more to the left with increasing levels of noise, regardless of task. Also, noise amplified the difference between long and short lines in the landmark task. In contrast, biases during visual searches were not influenced by noise. Our data provide crucial evidence that different measures of perceptual pseudoneglect, but not exploratory pseudoneglect, share a common mechanism. It can be speculated that this common mechanism feeds into specific, right-dominant processes of global awareness involved in the integration of visual information across the two hemispheres.

Chromatographic methods for analysis of triazine herbicides.

Gas chromatography (GC) and high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) coupled to different detectors, and in combination with different sample extraction methods, are most widely used for analysis of triazine herbicides in different environmental samples. Nowadays, many variations and modifications of extraction and sample preparation methods such as solid-phase microextraction (SPME), hollow fiber-liquid phase microextraction (HF-LPME), stir bar sportive extraction (SBSE), headspace-solid phase microextraction (HS-SPME), dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction (DLLME), dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction based on solidification of floating organic droplet (DLLME-SFO), ultrasound-assisted emulsification microextraction (USAEME), and others have been introduced and developed to obtain sensitive and accurate methods for the analysis of these hazardous compounds. In this review, several analytical properties such as linearity, sensitivity, repeatability, and accuracy for each developed method are discussed, and excellent results were obtained for the most of developed methods combined with GC and HPLC techniques for the analysis of triazine herbicides. This review gives an overview of recent publications of the application of GC and HPLC for analysis of triazine herbicides residues in various samples.

Schistosoma haematobium infections among schoolchildren in central Sudan one year after treatment with praziquantel.

BACKGROUND: Chemotherapy with praziquantel (PZQ) is the mainstay of schistosomiasis control. However, there are recent concerns about tolerance or resistance to PZQ, so that monitoring its efficacy in different settings is required. METHODS: A longitudinal study was conducted to evaluate the impact of PZQ for the treatment of Schistosoma haematobium infection among schoolchildren at Al Salamania, Central Sudan. Parasitological examinations for S. haematobium were performed in a cohort of schoolchildren (6-15 years of age) before and 1 year after treatment with a single dose of PZQ 40 mg/kg. RESULTS: Out of 562 (309 boys and 253 girls) schoolchildren recruited from three elementary schools, 420 completed one longitudinal dataset that comprised of data from two time points; baseline, and follow-up 1 year after treatment with a single dose of PZQ 40 mg/kg for S. haematobium infection. A single dose of PZQ significantly reduced the prevalence of S. haematobium infection by 83.3% (from 51.4% to 8.6%) and the geometric mean intensity of infection of positive individuals by 17.0% (from 87.7 to 72.8 eggs/10 ml of urine) 1 year after treatment. While there was no significant difference in the reduction of the prevalence of S. haematobium infection between the gender or age groups, there was a significantly higher reduction of intensity of S. haematobium infection among girls in comparison with boys. CONCLUSION: There was a significant reduction of S. haematobium infection 1 year after PZQ treatment in this setting.

Dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction method based on solidification of floating organic droplet for the determination of triazine herbicides in water and sugarcane samples.

Dispersive liquid-liquid microextraction method based on solidification of floating organic droplet (DLLME-SFO) was developed for the analysis of triazines. As model compounds four selected triazine herbicides namely, simazine, atrazine, secbumeton and cyanazine were employed to estimate the extraction efficiency. The experimental conditions were comprehensively studied for the DLLME-SFO method. Under the use of 10 µL of 1-undecanol as extraction solvent, 100 µL of acetonitrile as disperser solvent and 5% (w/v) NaCl for 3 min the results demonstrated that the repeatability (RSD%) of the optimised DLLME-SFO method ranged from 0.03% to 5.1% and the linearity in the range of 0.01-100 ppb. Low limits of detection (0.037-0.008 ppb), and good enrichment factors (195-322) were obtained. The DLLME-SFO method applied in water and sugarcane samples showed excellent relative recoveries (95.7-116.9%) with RSDs <8.6% (n=3) for all samples.