In many situations people need to mentally adopt the (spatial) perspective of other persons, an ability that is referred to as "Level 2 perspective taking." Its underlying processes have been ascribed to mental self-rotation that can be dissociated from mental object-rotation. Recent findings suggest that perspective taking/self-rotation may not require central capacity. By using the psychologi...

The psychological refractory period (PRP) paradigm is a dominant research tool in the literature on dual-task performance. In this paradigm a first and second component task (i.e., Task 1 and Task 2) are presented with variable stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs) and priority to perform Task 1. The main indicator of dual-task impairment in PRP situations is an increasing Task 2-RT with decreasin...

Four reaction time experiments examined the mental rotation process using a psychological refractory period paradigm. On each trial, participants made speeded responses to both a tone (S1) and a rotated letter (S2), presented with varying stimulus onset asynchronies (SOAs). If mental rotation of the stimulus letter can proceed while central mechanisms are busy with S1, then the effect of orient...

We present a new methodology to derive faster composite operations of the form dP + Q, where d is a small integer ≥ 2, for generic ECC scalar multiplications over prime fields. In particular, we present an efficient Doubling-Addition (DA) operation that can be exploited to accelerate most scalar multiplication methods, including multiscalar variants. We also present a new precomputation scheme ...

OBJECTIVE To report the results obtained in three patients with diffuse pulmonary emphysema during the pre- and post-operative periods following a new surgical technique: collateral ventilation with lung parenchyma drainage. METHODS Patients suffering from pulmonary failure and disabling dyspnea, despite having received the gold standard treatment, including pulmonary rehabilitation, were sel...

AIMS To assess the level of pre-operative haemoglobin (HB) as a risk marker for morbidity and mortality in the early post-operative period of patients who underwent elective valve replacement. METHODS AND RESULTS Between January 1998 and March 2004, clinical and outcomes data were collected for the 201 patients who had elective valve replacement. For each gender, the criterion to choose the b...