Number processing outside awareness? Systematically testing sensitivities of direct and indirect measures of consciousness

In priming research, it is often argued that humans can discriminate stimuli outside consciousness. For example, the semantic meaning of numbers can be processed even when the numbers are so strongly masked that participants are not aware of them. These claims are typically based on a certain pattern of results: Direct measures indicate no conscious awareness of the masked stimuli, while indirect measures show clear priming effects of the same stimuli on reaction times or neurophysiological measures. From this pattern, preserved (unconscious) processing in the indirect task is concluded. However, this widely used standard reasoning is problematic and leads to spurious claims of unconscious processing. Such problems can be avoided by comparing sensitivities of direct and indirect measures. Many studies are affected by these problems, such that a reassessment of the literature is needed. Here, we investigated whether numbers can be processed unconsciously. In three experiments, we replicated and extended well-established effects of number priming over a wide range of stimulus visibilities. We then compared the standard reasoning to a sensitivity analysis, where direct and indirect effects are compared using the same metric. Results show that the sensitivities of indirect measures did not exceed those of direct measures, thereby indicating no evidence for preserved unconscious processing when awareness of the stimuli is low. Instead, it seems that at low visibility there is residual processing that affects direct and indirect measures to a similar degree. This suggests that similar processing modes cause those effects in direct and indirect measures.

The Difference Characteristicsof Collagen from Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) Bone, Skin, and Scales

Tilapia (Oreochromis niloticus) is one of the main commodities of freshwater fish in Indonesia. Mostly, tilapia is exported in the form of fillets which produce residual processing including bobe, skin, and scales which can reach 50 to 70% of the total weight of fish. The aimed of this study was to extract and characterize collagen from bone, skin, and scales of tilapia. The research method used a Completely Randomized Design (CRD) by treating the different types of collagen raw materials, namely bone, skin, and scales of tilapia. The results showed that the type of raw material affected the yield, water content, color, and pH (p<0.05). The collagen yield in this study was 0.53% (bone), 0.63% (scales) and 0.94% (skin). The small amount of amendment was caused by the concentration of acetic acid being too low. the smallest water content in tilapia fish collagen 2.17%; the best brightness of collagen in fish bones 76.91%; the value of the largest degree of white on fish scales 75.95%; pH content close to neutral fish collagen scales 6.49; Morphological results of collagen produced using SEM, the presence of pores seen in the collagen of tilapia fish due to the space between the collagen fibers while. Collagen from the skin and scales has the same morphology, which is shaped in small squares and smooth surface without pores

Motion-Induced Blindness

Motion-induced blindness (MIB) is a phenomenon characterized by “visual disappearance” in which relatively small but salient visual objects may disappear from one’s awareness intermittently for several seconds when embedded within a moving pattern. It is a compelling example of multistable perception in which physically invariant stimulation leads to fluctuations in perception. The interest in MIB stems from its potential use in studying visual processing outside the locus of awareness and the neural correlates of consciousness. Current studies of MIB provide evidence against low-level suppression of the visual signal and demonstrate residual processing of the invisible. This chapter explores these and related concepts.

A Review of Supercritical Fluid Extraction Technology and Application

The supercritical fluid extraction (SFE) technology was firstly documented on 1822. In this review paper, the authors contemplated the inhibiting factors that resulted in limited industrial application and analysis using SFE. The driving trend nowadays is to apply what have been discovered almost 200 years ago is in an escalating fashion. The major application of the supercritical state of a common gas (carbon dioxide) is an extremely important technology, since at the critical pressure and temperature carbon dioxide is not a solid, not a liquid neither a gas and it has a no surface tension, which qualifies to be an extremely good ‘non polar solvent’ and therefore applicable for extraction of essential oils, caffeine and several other applications. The major advantages on the SFE are over the lower operating energy cost and the extracted compound remains intact as there is not thermal decomposition and the final concentrate is free of any residual processing solvent due to carbon dioxide’s natural tendency being a gas which however, is volatile in ambient temperature and pressure. The process of purification does not require any distillation to purify the extracted compound, just the pressure is released and the carbon dioxide as a solvent will leave the concentrate liquid at the bottom of the vessel, as a gas, and will not have any binding or forming azeotrope mixture that are difficult to separate to high purity. The supercritical condition of a gas or liquid is not fully being exploited and there is a great opportunity for more industrial application as to be elaborated in this paper.

ASYMPTOTIC PROPERTIES OF SOJOURN TIMES IN MULTICLASS TIME-SHARED SYSTEMS

We consider two multiclass discriminatory process sharing (DPS)-like time-shared M/G/1 queuing systems in which the weight assigned to a customer is a function of its class as well as (1) the attained service of the customer in the first system and (2) the residual processing time of the customer in the second system. We study the asymptotic slowdown, the ratio of expected sojourn time to the service requirement, of customers with very large service requirements. We also provide various results dealing with ordering of conditional mean sojourn times of any two given classes. We also show that the sojourn time of an arbitrary customer of a particular class in the standard DPS system (static weights) with heavy-tailed service requirements has a tail behavior similar to that of a customer from the same class that starts a busy period.

Testing Memory for Unseen Visual Stimuli in Patients with Extinction and Spatial Neglect

Visual extinction after right parietal damage involves a loss of awareness for stimuli in the contralesional field when presented concurrently with ipsilesional stimuli, although contralesional stimuli are still perceived if presented alone. However, extinguished stimuli can still receive some residual on-line processing, without awareness. Here we examined whether such residual processing of extinguished stimuli can produce implicit and/or explicit memory traces lasting many minutes. We tested four patients with right parietal damage and left extinction on two sessions, each including distinct study and subsequent test phases. At study, pictures of objects were shown briefly in the right, left, or both fields. Patients were asked to name them without memory instructions (Session 1) or to make an indoor/outdoor categorization and memorize them (Session 2). They extinguished most left stimuli on bilateral presentation. During the test (up to 48 min later), fragmented pictures of the previously exposed objects (or novel objects) were presented alone in either field. Patients had to identify each object and then judge whether it had previously been exposed. Identification of fragmented pictures was better for previously exposed objects that had been consciously seen and critically also for objects that had been extinguished (as compared with novel objects), with no influence of the depth of processing during study. By contrast, explicit recollection occurred only for stimuli that were consciously seen at study and increased with depth of processing. These results suggest implicit but not explicit memory for extinguished visual stimuli in parietal patients.