The threat of comparison to intellectual superiors evokes a stress response, which, evidence suggests, depletes working memory capacity . Expectation of social comparison has been shown to increase physiological and perceived stress in individuals, especially in upward comparisons 7 & . Upward comparison is comparing oneself to someone the individual deems superior to themselves. In the present...

L. W. Schultheis and D. A. Robinson showed that the axis of the rotational vestibuloocular reflex (RVOR) cannot be altered by visual-vestibular mismatch ("cross-axis adaptation") when the vestibulocerebellum is lesioned. This suggests that the cerebellum may calibrate the axis of eye velocity of the RVOR under natural conditions. Thus we asked whether patients with cerebellar disease have alter...

Various problems in AI and multiagent systems can be tackled by finding the “most desirable” elements of a set given some binary relation. Examples can be found in areas as diverse as voting theory, game theory, and argumentation theory. Some particularly attractive solution sets are defined in terms of a covering relation—a transitive subrelation of the original relation. We consider three dif...

Can simple motor actions affect how efficiently people retrieve emotional memories, and influence what they choose to remember? In Experiment 1, participants were prompted to retell autobiographical memories with either positive or negative valence, while moving marbles either upward or downward. They retrieved memories faster when the direction of movement was congruent with the valence of the...

Little research has addressed the heterogeneity and mortality risk in body mass index (BMI) trajectories among older populations. Applying latent class trajectory models to 9,538 adults aged 51 to 77 years from the US Health and Retirement Study (1992-2008), we defined 6 latent BMI trajectories: normal weight downward, normal weight upward, overweight stable, overweight obesity, class I obese u...

Little research has addressed the heterogeneity and mortality risk in body mass index (BMI) trajectories among older populations. Applying latent class trajectory models to 9,538 adults aged 51 to 77 years from the US Health and Retirement Study (1992–2008), we defined 6 latent BMI trajectories: normal weight downward, normal weight upward, overweight stable, overweight obesity, class I obese u...

Acupuncture needle manipulation has been previously shown to result in measurable changes in connective tissue architecture in animal experiments. In this study, we used a novel in vivo ultrasound (US)-based technique to quantify tissue displacement during acupuncture manipulation in humans. B-scan ultrasonic imaging was performed on the thighs of 12 human subjects at different stages of needle...

A new apparatus has been constructed to investigate the quenching of laminar hydrocarbon-air flames, at elevated initial pressures. The pressure-tight quenching channel is of trapezoidal form, with very smooth decrease of the channel width along its one meter length that is almost equivalent to a parallel-plate flame arrester. Propane-air mixture has been tested on the entire flammability domai...

Hallux rigidus is a “stiff big toe joint”. Patients with this condition, which is a form of arthritis, often report that it feels as if they have to force their big toe to bend at the joint when “toeing off” from the ground while walking. Often times, hallux rigidus results in the joint becoming completely rigid. Movement of the big toe joint occurs typically in an up and down plane only. The u...

Downward collapse (a.k.a. upward separation) refers to cases where the equality of two larger classes implies the equality of two smaller classes. We provide an unqualified downward collapse result completely within the polynomial hierarchy. In particular, we prove that, for k > 2, if P p