Feeling good, approaching the positive.

Introduction: Approach and avoidance behaviors have been extensively studied in cognitive science as a fundamental aspect of human motivation and decision-making. The Approach-Avoidance Bias (AAB) refers to the tendency to approach positive stimuli faster than negative stimuli and to avoid negative stimuli faster than positive ones. Affect and arousal in involved individuals are assumed to play a crucial role in the AAB but many questions in that regard remain open.

Exploring the Experiences of Times Without Care and Encounters in Persons With Dementia in the Swiss and German Nursing Home and Domiciliary Care Settings: Protocol for an Ethnographic Multimethods Study.

Background: Persons with dementia spend a large part of the day without care and encounters, often without activity, as confirmed by numerous studies. However, no scientific analysis has examined how persons with dementia experience these periods. Such knowledge would be highly relevant for health care professionals and relatives to develop adequate strategies for dealing with times without care.

Just-in-time: Gaze guidance in natural behavior.

Natural eye movements have primarily been studied for over-learned activities such as tea-making, sandwich-making, and hand-washing, which have a fixed sequence of associated actions. These studies demonstrate a sequential activation of low-level cognitive schemas facilitating task completion. However, whether these action schemas are activated in the same pattern when a task is novel and a sequence of actions must be planned in the moment is unclear.

SONOICE! a Sonar-Voice dynamic user interface for assisting individuals with blindness and visual impairment in pinpointing elements in 2D tactile readers.

Pinpointing elements on large tactile surfaces is challenging for individuals with blindness and visual impairment (BVI) seeking to access two-dimensional (2D) information. This is particularly evident when using 2D tactile readers, devices designed to provide 2D information using static tactile representations with audio explanations. Traditional pinpointing methods, such as sighted assistance and trial-and-error, are limited and inefficient, while alternative pinpointing user interfaces (UI) are still emerging and need advancement.

Combining EEG and eye-tracking in virtual reality: Obtaining fixation-onset event-related potentials and event-related spectral perturbations.

Extensive research conducted in controlled laboratory settings has prompted an inquiry into how results can be generalized to real-world situations influenced by the subjects' actions. Virtual reality lends itself ideally to investigating complex situations but requires accurate classification of eye movements, especially when combining it with time-sensitive data such as EEG. We recorded eye-tracking data in virtual reality and classified it into gazes and saccades using a velocity-based classification algorithm, and we cut the continuous data into smaller segments to deal with varying noise levels, as introduced in the REMoDNav algorithm.

Helping Blind People Grasp: Evaluating a Tactile Bracelet for Remotely Guiding Grasping Movements.

The problem of supporting visually impaired and blind people in meaningful interactions with objects is often neglected. To address this issue, we adapted a tactile belt for enhanced spatial navigation into a bracelet worn on the wrist that allows visually impaired people to grasp target objects. Participants' performance in locating and grasping target items when guided using the bracelet, which provides direction commands via vibrotactile signals, was compared to their performance when receiving auditory instructions.

A streamlined approach to structure elucidation using in cellulo crystallized recombinant proteins, InCellCryst.

With the advent of serial X-ray crystallography on microfocus beamlines at free-electron laser and synchrotron facilities, the demand for protein microcrystals has significantly risen in recent years. However, by in vitro crystallization extensive efforts are usually required to purify proteins and produce sufficiently homogeneous microcrystals. Here, we present InCellCryst, an advanced pipeline for producing homogeneous microcrystals directly within living insect cells.

Webcam eye tracking close to laboratory standards: Comparing a new webcam-based system and the EyeLink 1000.

This paper aims to compare a new webcam-based eye-tracking system, integrated into the Labvanced platform for online experiments, to a "gold standard" lab-based eye tracker (EyeLink 1000 - SR Research). Specifically, we simultaneously recorded data with both eye trackers in five different tasks, analyzing their real-time performance. These tasks were a subset of a standardized test battery for eye trackers, including a Large Grid task, Smooth Pursuit eye movements, viewing natural images, and two Head Movements tasks (roll, yaw).

Development of Few-Shot Learning Capabilities in Artificial Neural Networks When Learning Through Self-Supervised Interaction.

Most artificial neural networks used for object recognition are trained in a fully supervised setup. This is not only resource consuming as it requires large data sets of labeled examples but also quite different from how humans learn. We use a setup in which an artificial agent first learns in a simulated world through self-supervised, curiosity-driven exploration.

Predicting group benefits in joint multiple object tracking : Predicting group benefits.

In everyday life, people often work together to accomplish a joint goal. Working together is often beneficial as it can result in a higher performance compared to working alone - a so-called "group benefit". While several factors influencing group benefits have been investigated in a range of tasks, to date, they have not been examined collectively with an integrative statistical approach such as linear modeling.

My hands are running away - learning a complex nursing skill via virtual reality simulation: a randomised mixed methods study.

Background: Clinical skills training is an essential component of nursing education. However, sometimes education does not sufficiently prepare nurses for the real world. Virtual reality (VR) is an innovative method to complement existing learning strategies, yet few studies investigate its effectiveness.

NO-sensitive guanylyl cyclase discriminates pericyte-derived interstitial from intra-alveolar myofibroblasts in murine pulmonary fibrosis.

Background: The origin of αSMA-positive myofibroblasts, key players within organ fibrosis, is still not fully elucidated. Pericytes have been discussed as myofibroblast progenitors in several organs including the lung.

Methods: Using tamoxifen-inducible PDGFRβ-tdTomato mice (PDGFRβ-CreER; R26tdTomato) lineage of lung pericytes was traced.

Improved Spatial Knowledge Acquisition through Sensory Augmentation.

Sensory augmentation provides novel opportunities to broaden our knowledge of human perception through external sensors that record and transmit information beyond natural perception. To assess whether such augmented senses affect the acquisition of spatial knowledge during navigation, we trained a group of 27 participants for six weeks with an augmented sense for cardinal directions called the feelSpace belt. Then, we recruited a control group that did not receive the augmented sense and the corresponding training.

Action affordance affects proximal and distal goal-oriented planning.

Visual attention is mainly goal directed and allocated based on the upcoming action. However, it is unclear how far this feature of gaze behaviour generalizes in more naturalistic settings. The present study investigates the influence of action affordances on active inference processes revealed by eye movements during interaction with familiar and novel tools.

C5aR1 activation in mice controls inflammatory eosinophil recruitment and functions in allergic asthma.

Background: Pulmonary eosinophils comprise at least two distinct populations of resident eosinophils (rEOS) and inflammatory eosinophils (iEOS), the latter recruited in response to pulmonary inflammation. Here, we determined the impact of complement activation on rEOS and iEOS trafficking and function in two models of pulmonary inflammation.

Methods: BALB/c wild-type and C5ar1 mice were exposed to different allergens or IL-33.

Delayed Microbial Maturation Durably Exacerbates Th17-driven Asthma in Mice.

Microbial maturation disrupted by early-life dysbiosis has been linked with increased asthma risk and severity; however, the immunological mechanisms underpinning this connection are poorly understood. We sought to understand how delaying microbial maturation drives worsened asthma outcomes later in life and its long-term durability. Drinking water was supplemented with antibiotics on Postnatal Days 10-20.

Mutual influence between language and perception in multi-agent communication games.

Language interfaces with many other cognitive domains. This paper explores how interactions at these interfaces can be studied with deep learning methods, focusing on the relation between language emergence and visual perception. To model the emergence of language, a sender and a receiver agent are trained on a reference game.

Therapeutic effects of Fc gamma RIV inhibition are mediated by selectively blocking immune complex-induced neutrophil activation in epidermolysis bullosa acquisita.

Epidermolysis bullosa acquisita (EBA) is a subepidermal autoimmune bullous disease caused by autoantibodies targeting type VII collagen (COL7). It is characterized by inflammation and subepidermal blistering mainly through immune complex (IC)-mediated activation of neutrophils. In experimental EBA, binding of neutrophils to ICs in the skin and induction of clinical disease depends on the expression of the Fc gamma receptor (FcγR) IV.

Evidence for the embodiment of the automatic approach bias.

Tendencies of approach and avoidance seem to be a universal characteristic of humans. Specifically, individuals are faster in avoiding than in approaching negative stimuli and they are faster in approaching than in avoiding positive stimuli. The existence of this automatic approach-avoidance bias has been demonstrated in many studies.

WildLab: A naturalistic free viewing experiment reveals previously unknown electroencephalography signatures of face processing.

Neural mechanisms of face perception are predominantly studied in well-controlled experimental settings that involve random stimulus sequences and fixed eye positions. Although powerful, the employed paradigms are far from what constitutes natural vision. Here, we demonstrate the feasibility of ecologically more valid experimental paradigms using natural viewing behaviour, by combining a free viewing paradigm on natural scenes, free of photographer bias, with advanced data processing techniques that correct for overlap effects and co-varying non-linear dependencies of multiple eye movement parameters.

Prenatal antibiotics exposure does not influence experimental allergic asthma in mice.

Changes in microbiome (dysbiosis) contribute to severity of allergic asthma. Preexisting epidemiological studies in humans correlate perinatal dysbiosis with increased long-term asthma severity. However, these studies cannot discriminate between prenatal and postnatal effects of dysbiosis and suffer from a high variability of dysbiotic causes ranging from antibiotic treatment, delivery by caesarian section to early-life breastfeeding practices.

Competencies and needs of nurse educators and clinical mentors for teaching in the digital age - a multi-institutional, cross-sectional study.

Background: The impact of technology and digitalization on health care systems will transform the nursing profession worldwide. Nurses need digital competencies to integrate new technology in their professional activities. Nurse educators play a crucial role in promoting the acquisition of digital competences and therefore need to be digitally competent themselves.

Intravital imaging of mucus transport in asthmatic mice using microscopic optical coherence tomography.

Asthma is one of the most common chronic diseases. Mucus overproduction is consistently linked to asthma morbidity and mortality. Despite the knowledge of the importance of mucus, little data exist on how mucus is transported in asthma and the immediate effects of therapeutic intervention.