Tasting experiences on local apple cultivars with blind and sighted consumers

Consumers increasingly address their attention to healthy fruits produced under organic agricultural managements. However, such produce may be less appealing in appearance influencing the purchase decisions of consumers. This research had the purpose to determine on three Italian local apple cultivars (Casciana, Rosa, Ruggine) the sensory appreciation of fruit through experiments conducted with blind (BC) and sighted (SC) consumers. The appreciation of apples differed between consumers with different visual ability. This aspect mainly concerned cvs Casciana and Rosa with contrasting fruit appearance traits. The BCs were inclined to better evaluate Casciana apples characterised by less attractive fruits. Conversely, the visual factor could have influenced the SCs’ judgment, as they appreciated Rosa more by the best outer traits of fruits. Intriguing responses were obtained when SCs were blindfolded.

General Visual Ability as a Moderator in the Relationship RAN –Fluency in a Regular Orthography

Visual skills play a controversial role in the literacy process. The predictive part of RAN on fluency is known, especially in transparent spelling. In this research, we wanted to explore the influence of visual abilities on literacy for primary school students; for this purpose, we evaluated 209 students. We tested both the Reading and decoding efficiency, rapid naming, and visual abilities. The interaction of rapid naming (RAN) and visual ability (VA) significantly determined fluency. This association is discussed concerning other findings that have demonstrated the visuospatial abilities influence literacy.

Vision-specific risk factors impacting self-rated health among older men in urban China: a population-based cross-sectional study

BackgroundSelf-rated health (SRH) has been well documented as an important assessment of health status among the older adults. Interestingly, visual ability has been reported to have a considerable impact on the quality of life of the older adults. This study clarified vision-specific risk factors impacting SRH among older men without cognitive impairment in order to optimise healthcare for the older adults.MethodsA population-based cross-sectional study was conducted in urban areas of Liaoning Province. A stratified sampling method was used and all men aged ≥65 years and living in sampled communities without dementia were interviewed between March and November 2012. SRH, visual ability and factors including demographic characteristics, physical conditions, lifestyle factors, social psychological factors and social activities, were measured. 1884 effective responses were received (effective response rate, 84.8%) and 1724 individuals were enrolled after further cognitive screening.ResultsThe mean age was 72.9±5.9 (mean±SD). Of individuals with good and poor visual ability, 38.3% and 33.0% reported good SRH, respectively. The characteristics between different visual ability groups were significantly different. Interactions between visual ability and four items had significant effects on SRH. In good visual ability group, chronic disease had the strongest association with good SRH followed by participating in entertainment, taking a walk, filial piety and alcohol consumption. In poor visual ability group, taking a walk had the strongest association with good SRH followed by participating in entertainment, hearing ability, smoking, quality of sleep, going out alone to distant places and alcohol consumption.ConclusionsA good SRH status, even among the individuals with good visual ability, had a low prevalence among older men in urban areas. The risk factors impacting SRH was vision-specific. Physical conditions were crucial for SRH among those with good visual ability. In contrast, lifestyle factors were prominent for those with poor visual ability.

Host eyes, brains and their brood parasites

1. Brood parasites interact with their hosts for exploitation of host parental abilities and the associated resources. This results in coevolutionary interactions of hosts and parasites. 2. A prime example of such a common specialist brood parasite is the common cuckoo Cuculus canorus and its host races. Hosts use their cognitive abilities to identify parasites and vice versa for their ability to discriminate among potential hosts. 3. We predicted that parasites with relatively large brains for their body size should be more successful at avoiding their hosts, and that hosts with small brains for their body size should more often be exploited by parasites. We also predicted that hosts with relatively large eyes for their body size would have superior discriminatory abilities allowing for superior discrimination against brood parasites. Finally, we predicted that visual ability of specific cuckoo hosts would have evolved exaggerated visual ability as estimated from the relative size of their optic tectum would have resulted in such hosts being more successful as reflected by their higher rate of parasitism. 4. Interspecific variation in size of brain, eye, optic tectum, telencephalon and cerebellum were consistent with these predictions.

DEVELOPMENT OF A SMARTPHONE DEVICE FOR READING AIMED AT LOW-VISION PEOPLE

Many people with total or partial visual impairment can use assistive technology (AT) to facilitate daily living activities. Smartphones and, especially, their applications, can be a tool of easy access and applicability as AT. The aim of this study was to develop an application for use on a smartphone or tablet to improve the visual ability of people with low visual acuity. The software, called Oftcam, was developed using the ANDROID operating system, written in Java Android under the Java version JDK 1.7, supporting the minimum version of Android 2.2. Its operating mechanism includes capturing and adjusting the image of interest to the users according to their needs: expansion, change of background and decentralization of the image of interest. The development of this free, easy-to-handle application will provide the possibility of integration between the user and the auxiliary professional, being, in practice, a mobile resource of health. Considering that most people have an increasing access to phones and tablets, we believe the use of this application is a good alternative to integrate the need and practicality in the daily lives of the visually impaired people.

The Effects of Driving Experience on the P300 Event-Related Potential during the Perception of Traffic Scenes

The incidence of human-error-related traffic collisions is markedly reduced among drivers who have few years of driving experience compared with those with little driving experience or fewer driving opportunities, even if they have a driver’s license. This study analyzes the effect of driving experience on the perception of the traffic scenes through electroencephalograms (EEGs). Primarily, we focused on visual attention during driving, the essential visual function in the visual search and human gaze, and evaluated the P300, which is involved in attention, to explore the effect of driving experience on the visual attention of traffic scenes, not for improving visual ability. In the results, the P300 response was observed in both experienced and beginner drivers when they paid visual attention to the visual target. Furthermore, the latency for the peak amplitude of the P300 response among experienced drivers was markedly faster than that in beginner drivers, suggesting that the P300 latency is a piece of crucial information for driving experience on visual attention.

Rinegan: A Scalable Image Processing Architecture for Large Scale Surveillance Applications

Image processing is widely used in intelligent robots, significantly improving the surveillance capabilities of smart buildings, industrial parks, and border ports. However, relying on the camera installed in a single robot is not enough since it only provides a narrow field of view as well as limited processing performance. Specially, a target person such as the suspect may appear anywhere and tracking the suspect in such a large-scale scene requires cooperation between fixed cameras and patrol robots. This induces a significant surge in demand for data, computing resources, as well as networking infrastructures. In this work, we develop a scalable architecture to optimize image processing efficacy and response rate for visual ability. In this architecture, the lightweight pre-process and object detection functions are deployed on the gateway-side to minimize the bandwidth consumption. Cloud-side servers receive solely the recognized data rather than entire image or video streams to identify specific suspect. Then the cloud-side sends the information to the robot, and the robot completes the corresponding tracking task. All these functions are implemented and orchestrated based on micro-service architecture to improve the flexibility. We implement a prototype system, called Rinegan, and evaluate it in an in-lab testing environment. The result shows that Rinegan is able to improve the effectiveness and efficacy of image processing.

The Incoherent Fluctuation of Folate Pools and Differential Regulation of Folate Enzymes Prioritize Nucleotide Supply in the Zebrafish Model Displaying Folate Deficiency-Induced Microphthalmia and Visual Defects

Graphical AbstractFolate deficiency lowered intracellular 10-CHO-THF and 5-CH3-THF levels, interfered nucleotide formation, impaired cell proliferation, induced apoptosis and impeded vitamin A supply, leading to microphthalmia and obstructed visual ability.