FACT Around 2.6 billion people worldwide lack access to adequate sanitation and hygiene.  WHY SHOULD WE CARE? Hand washing with soap shows the greatest reduction in diarrhea morbidity (over 40%), and can also reduce respiratory tract infection by about one third.  WHAT ARE WE WAITING FOR? Despite the cost effectiveness of hand washing with soap, and the fact that it is a relatively simple behavior, encouraging good hand washing practice remains a challenge. WHAT IS THE PURPOSE? This project aims to spread hand hygiene in rural Kenyan households by engaging local manufacturers. In this project, World Bank’s Water and Sanitation Program (WSP) supported preliminary consumer research and product design work for a new affordable hand washing station.

<p>The visual world is full of potentially important information, but only a subset of the world can be evaluated at any time. An essential function of the central nervous system is to rapidly and adaptively select which stimuli warrant attention. Much of the time, attention is directed towards stimuli that are relevant for current goals. However, things that have proven important in an organisms' personal or evolutionary past effectively compete with goal-relevant targets for attention. In humans, one example of this attentional superset is faces: faces attract attention even when they are in competition with immediate goals. Using a combination of behavioral, pharmacological, and electrophysiological techniques in the rhesus macaque, I investigated the physiological, neurobiological, and evolutionary determinants of the attentional capture of faces. First, I show that the prioritization of faces is evolutionarily conserved in primates. Face distractors also capture attention in rhesus macaques, a species of old world monkey, successfully competing with task goals for limited attentional resources. Importantly, the same classes of faces have the greatest attentional effects in both monkeys and humans. Further, I describe behavioral evidence that subcortical systems contribute to the attentional salience of faces in this species, proving an initial characterization of the neural mechanisms that may mediate this effect. Next, I examine the interaction between pupil size and vigilance for faces. A focal increase in luminance has long been known to provoke pupil constriction, but here I show that the pupil response to a flashed distractor is proportional to the allocation of attention to that image. Pupil constriction may provide a novel implicit metric of stimulus attention. In particular, face images provoked greater pupil constriction than non-face images. Moreover, I also find that baseline pupil size is a strong predictor of distractor interference, suggesting that arousal may modulate social vigilance. Therefore, I next examined the activity of single neurons within dorsal anterior cingulate cortex (dACC), a region implicated in task performance across a wide variety of tasks, but which also has strong connections to subcortical neuromodulatory centers responsible for regulating arousal. I find that the dACC discriminates between social and nonsocial distractors, scales with distractor attention, and predicts adjustments in arousal and vigilance state on upcoming trials. This is consistent with a model in which dACC supports task performance through regulating arousal. Finally, I turn to oxytocin (OT), a neuromodulatory hormone released during affiliative social interactions that is also implicated in regulating arousal. Though typically thought to generally enhance social attention, I report multiple circumstances in which OT suppresses, rather than enhances, vigilance for faces. This suggests a mechanism through which affiliative social interactions can reduce social vigilance, permitting more relaxed social interactions. Together, these results highlight an evolutionarily conserved neural circuit important for the adaptive, contextual modulation of reflexive face attention, a behavior that is compromised in both anxiety disorders and autism.</p> / Dissertation

Diamond and Carey (1986) identify sensitivity to second-order relational information (i.e., spatial relations among features such as the distance between eyes) as a vital part of achieving expertise with face processing. Previous research suggests that 5-month-olds are sensitive to second-order relational information when shown line drawings of faces in which this information has been manipulated to an exaggerated degree. The present series of experiments explored infants sensitivity to second-order relational information using photographs of real faces and with second-order manipulations that were within the normal range of human variability. A discrimination study conducted with adults provided additional evidence that the second-order manipulations were within the normal range. Five- and 7- month-olds exhibited sensitivity to changes in second-order relational information. Moreover, 5-months detected second-order changes in upright but not in inverted faces, thereby exhibiting an inversion effect that has been considered to be a hallmark of second-order relational processing in adulthood. These results suggest that infants as young as 5 months of age are sensitive to second-order relational changes that are within the normal range of human variability. They also indicate that at least rudimentary aspects of face-processing expertise are available early in life.

No description available.

ABSTRACT Organizations are working to establish and maintain relationships with their target publics using a wide variety of communication tools. How they work at developing this organization-public relationship (OPR) is open to the organization, but previous research suggests there are measurement scales that can indicate what factors an organization may be doing right and those they may need to improve on. This study examines relationship building efforts of the Tampa Bay Rays organization and the representation it has demonstrated through online content. Utilizing a content analysis, sample articles were collected and coded to examine if relationship components could be found through the organization's affiliated website and the target public's local newspaper. The structure and development of this study was created based on the relationship indicators that were established by Hon and Grunig (1999) and Huang (2001). Based on the analysis of the results, it was discovered that OPR indicators were being used by the Tampa Bay Rays. Examples of commitment, satisfaction, and control mutuality were the most frequent indicators throughout the online content. Trust and face and favor were the two remaining indicators that showed the lowest frequency of representation through the online content. From the study, the results revealed: (1) that differences in framing exist; (2) a representation of frequent OPR material and topics does occur; (3) there are thematic patterns on the part of the source; and finally, (4) the organization perspective of what may show up from online content may differ from the outside perspective.

With more and more images being uploaded to social networks each day, the resources for identifying a large portion of the world are available. However the tools to harness and utilize this information are not sufficient. This thesis presents a system, called PhacePhinder, which can build a face database from a social network and have it accessible from mobile devices. Through combining existing technologies, this is made possible. It also makes use of a fusion probabilistic latent semantic analysis to determine strong connections between users and content. Using this information we can determine the most meaningful social connection to a recognized person, allowing us to inform the user of how they know the person being recognized. We conduct a series of offline and user tests to verify our results and compare them to existing algorithms. We show, that through combining a user’s friendship information as well as picture occurrence information, we can make stronger recommendations than based on friendship alone. We demonstrate a working prototype that can identify a face from a picture taken from a mobile phone, using a database derived from images gathered directly from a social network, and return a meaningful social connection to the recognized face.

This paper discusses how a boundary-based surface fitting approach can be utilised to smoothly reconstruct a given human face where the scan data corresponding to the face is provided. In particular, the paper discusses how a solution to the Biharmonic equation can be used to set up the corresponding boundary value problem. We show how a compact explicit solution method can be utilised for efficiently solving the chosen Biharmonic equation. Thus, given the raw scan data of a 3D face, we extract a series of profile curves from the data which can then be utilised as boundary conditions to solve the Biharmonic equation. The resulting solution provides us a continuous single surface patch describing the original face.

Conditions that underlie contracts and cooperative agreements in business take different forms in different parts of the world. This research investigates the nature, structure and content of those informal relations that lie outside the formal contractual relations in the business community in contemporary China. Specifically, it addresses the role of gift giving in business relations, including the practical and cultural implications. This is a worldwide phenomenon, but my focus is on the relationships known in China as guanxi. Building and managing guanxi includes the exchange of gifts, therefore, discerning whether these exchanges are artefacts of the past or are rational and logical today is crucial. I argue that offering a gift symbolizes the desire to have cooperation within a close trusting relationship. Using an historical anthropological approach I present a systematic examination of pre collected data. The analysis looks for patterns to answer the following questions: What role, if any, does gift exchange play in creating guanxi relationships of trust that include reciprocal obligations? What role does guanxi play in China’s growing economy? I hypothesize that in the context of uncertainty in business it is important to be able to trust the person with whom one has business relationships. The research shows that gift exchanges create an atmosphere of trust that is time-and cost-efficient. Therefore, gift exchange has a rational motivation and facilitates advantageous business transactions within a guanxi relationship. Guanxi management is an important part of business strategy. This research will lead to a deeper understanding of the differences and similarities in contemporary business as it is practiced, both globally and locally, by people with different cultural backgrounds. / Graduate

The experiments in this thesis used behavioural measures and event-related potentials (ERPs) to investigate the influence of race on face processing in the brain. Previous behavioural research has highlighted an own-race effect in face processing, whereby individuals are more accurate at recognizing own-race compared to other-race faces. The current Thesis examined the own-race effect at perceptual and neural levels. Social influences on the own-race effect were also investigated, such as other-race experience, anxiety and implicit social bias, as these may account for differential own- versus other-race face processing. The main aim of the experiments contained in this thesis was to delve deeper into the examination of own and other-race face perception through a series of original experiments. Participants performed a variety of perceptual discrimination and identification tasks, and completed measures of explicit other-race experience and implicit racial bias to record their perceptions of other-race individuals. Chapters 2-4 saw the development of a new paradigm that tested the own-race effect in perception, in contrast to traditional recognition memory investigations. In Chapter 2 the own-race effect was investigated developmentally and found across three age-groups, and was larger in the two older age-groups. Chapters 3 and 4 found that the own-race effect differed across racial groups, and that social variables such as other-race experience influenced the strength of the own-race effect. In the latter experimental chapters, ERPs revealed that the behavioural own-race effect was evident at a neural level. Chapter 7 demonstrated that face-related stages of processing in the brain were sensitive to race of face. In Chapters 8 and 9, the sensitivity of face processing to own and other-race emotional expression processing was also examined. The additional social factor of emotional expression was explored in order to further the investigation of socially relevant information processing from the face. Findings from the last two experimental chapters demonstrated differential emotional face processing for own- versus other-race faces. Confirming the findings of the behavioural experiments, own- versus other-race emotion processing varied across racial groups and was subject to social influences such as other-race experience, intergroup anxiety and implicit racial bias. Overall, behavioural and neural investigations of the own-race effect demonstrated the influence of social variables such as other-race experience, intergroup anxiety and implicit racial bias on the way in which individuals processed own- versus other-race faces in the human brain.

We often think of stigmatized individuals as encountering only one stereotype set at a time. Yet, many individuals belong to multiple stigmatized groups, and stereotypes associated with these groups jointly influence how perceivers evaluate targets. Research suggests that perceivers integrate stereotypes about targets’ obvious identities during impression formation; however, no work has examined whether targets’ obvious (e.g., race) and ambiguous (e.g., sexual orientation) identities jointly influence impressions. Given that gay stereotypes are activated automatically, I expected the co-activation of contradictory Black (e.g., aggressive) and gay (e.g., warm) stereotypes to arouse conflict, weakening activation of negative stereotypes and improving evaluations of Black gay targets compared with Black straight targets. Participants in Study 1 rated faces of White straight men as more likable than White gay men, but rated Black gay men as more likable than Black straight men. Participants in Study 2 performed a race-categorization task designed to make race salient; nevertheless, sexual orientation still influenced impressions, producing a pattern similar to Study 1. Participants in Studies 3A (approach-avoidance task) and 3B (evaluative priming task) formed implicit impressions that converged with the explicit evaluations in Studies 1 and 2. In 3A, participants approaching Whites responded faster to straights than gays, whereas participants approaching Blacks responded faster to gays than straights. In 3B, participants recognized positive words somewhat (but not significantly) faster when primed with White straight (versus White gay) and Black gay (versus Black straight) faces. Studies 4A – C suggest that ambiguous categories modify the activation of obvious stereotypes, but do not make targets’ features look less prototypical of their obvious groups. In 4B, participants were slower to recognize Black-stereotypic words (piloted in 4A) when primed with Black gay (versus Black straight) faces. In 4C, participants rated Black straight and gay faces as similarly prototypical of Black phenotypes. Taken together, this work presents implications for stereotyping in the case of multiply-categorizable targets and for impression formation involving ambiguous categories.