Visual perception: Sunny side up

Visual perception: Sunny side up

Illumination, both natural and artificial, typically comes from above. Neurons in visual area V4--part of the object-processing pathway in the primate brain--may rely on this anisotropy to infer three-dimensional structure from shading cues.

The Sunny Side of p53

Skin, the largest organ of our body, is often plagued by cancer because of exposure to ultraviolet radiation from the sun. A report by Cui et al. (2007) in this issue of Cell explains how the tumor suppressor p53 protects the skin by stimulating the suntan response.

The sunny side of chemistry: green synthesis by solar light.

The storage of solar energy is one of the main challenges in the near future. A rather unexploited way to fulfil this goal is the solar light induced formation of new chemical bonds, i.e. the synthesis of chemicals. Solar photons can be considered the ideal green reagents since they are costless and leave no residue in the reaction mixture. In many cases the solar radiation could be successfull...

“ a Step towards the Sunny Side of Life ”

Visual recalibration and selective adaptation in auditory-visual speech perception: Contrasting build-up courses.

Exposure to incongruent auditory and visual speech produces both visual recalibration and selective adaptation of auditory speech identification. In an earlier study, exposure to an ambiguous auditory utterance (intermediate between /aba/ and /ada/) dubbed onto the video of a face articulating either /aba/ or /ada/, recalibrated the perceived identity of auditory targets in the direction of the...