Explore the vast range of titles available.

In this fun and funny celebration of literacy, kids of all ages will discover that the act of reading is a daring adventure that can take you anywhere! You can read at the playground, under the sea, at the opera and even in outer space! It turns out you can read everywhere! And when you do, you open yourself to a universe of adventure. Presented in light-hearted, rib-tickling verse that's perfect for reading aloud, You Can Read sings it loud and proud: Books are awesome. And so are the people who read them. -- Amazon.com.

Interactions between self-medicating consumers and over-the-counter medication (OTC) influence the quality of information processed and, hence, the appropriateness of medication-use decisions. Previous work has shown that information deemed necessary for the safe and effective use of an OTC, information that is required to be present in the Drug Facts Label (DFLs), is often overlooked, and that decision-making related to OTC use could be improved. We proposed the concept of “personalized labeling” to address these shortcomings. This strategy uses an augmented reality interface which presents users with recommendations related to an OTC’s appropriateness for that individual’s use They receive the recommendations via a smart phone app that allows them to point their camera at packages on the store shelf that they are considering purchasing. Specifically, a virtual green check mark or a red stop sign is imposed over the interrogated product after the theoretical app recognizes the OTC and compares product specific warnings with the individual’s health history and medication usage. To develop proof of concept evidence for this strategy, we utilized a computer-based absolute judgement task . Seventy-two participants were randomly assigned to either a concept-educated group (educated on how personalized labeling would work) or a control group (uninformed about the personalized labeling strategy). Both groups viewed stimulus which included both standard and personalized labels to make binary decisions (yes/ no) related to a drug’s appropriateness for use by a theoretical patient considering single-ingredient OTC products. Decision accuracy and decision time were measured as indicators of labeling effectiveness and efficiency, respectively. Results showed that within the concept-educated group, participants made significantly more accurate (ME = 0.977, SE = 0.007) and faster (ME = 9.584s, SE = 0.854) decisions with the personalized label when compared to the standard label (accuracy: ME = 0.933, SE = 0.017; p = 0.002; time: ME = 19.052s, SE = 2.322; p < 0.001). In contrast, the control group showed no significant difference in accuracy or decision time between the two label types. Additionally, participants across both groups took longer to correctly answer “Yes” (appropriate for use) compared to “No” (not appropriate for use), reflecting that decision time are faster for target-present conditions than target-absent conditions. While educating consumers about the tool seems important, it overlooks that they must install the app and share their health and medication information to use it. As such, we interpret this finding as evidence that personalized labeling could significantly improve consumer decision-making related to the identification of appropriate products. However, future studies are needed with a broader range of populations, package types, use contexts, and real-world conditions.

Models of visual search posit that target absent responses occur when the quitting threshold for the trial is reached before a target is detected, and that feedback about missed targets allows the quitting threshold to be adaptively set to the difficulty of the search task. While these models may effectively capture processes in lab-based tasks, in real-world searches feedback is often impossible to provide. Instead, observers have little information about their errors, and may only be aware of when they successfully detect the target. We posit that in the absence of feedback the time required to find a target might influence quitting thresholds. In three experiments, we investigate how manipulating the mean time and the standard deviation of time to detect a target influence quitting thresholds in target absent trials. To vary target detection times while holding the search stimuli constant, we used an eye-movement contingent change to surreptitiously introduce a target near fixation at a particular time. Results show that decreasing the mean time to find a target also decreases the number of items inspected and reaction time in target absent trials, the hallmark of a shift in the quitting threshold. By contrast, varying the standard deviation around a fixed mean had no impact on target absent search times. These findings suggest that people are sensitive to the typical time required to find a target in a given task and use that information to flexibly adjust target absent quitting thresholds, but people are not sensitive to the variability.

SARS-CoV-2 initiates infection in the conducting airways, where mucociliary clearance inhibits pathogen penetration. However, it is unclear how mucociliary clearance impacts SARS-CoV-2 spread after infection is established. To investigate viral spread at this site, we perform live imaging of SARS-CoV-2 infected differentiated primary human bronchial epithelium cultures for up to 12 days. Using a fluorescent reporter virus and markers for cilia and mucus, we longitudinally monitor mucus motion, ciliary motion, and infection. Infected cell numbers peak at 4 days post infection, forming characteristic foci that tracked mucus movement. Inhibition of MCC using physical and genetic perturbations limits foci. Later in infection, mucociliary clearance deteriorates. Increased mucus secretion accompanies ciliary motion defects, but mucociliary clearance and vectorial infection spread resume after mucus removal, suggesting that mucus secretion may mediate MCC deterioration. Our work shows that while MCC can facilitate SARS-CoV-2 spread after initial infection, subsequent MCC decreases inhibit spread, revealing a complex interplay between SARS-CoV-2 and MCC. Becker et al. use live imaging of SARS-CoV-2 infected airway epithelium cultures to demonstrate a dual role for mucociliary clearance in viral spread. Initially, virus goes with the mucus flow, facilitating local spread; later, increased mucus secretion and ciliary motion defects limit spread.

Alcohol concentration has traditionally been labeled in the form of alcohol by volume (ABV). This format can cause difficulty in evaluating accuracy of a pour because it doesn't directly connect with recommendations related to \"standard drinks,\" the approach used by the US CDC and others organizations which intend to facilitate responsible drinking behaviors. Strategies which more directly connect guidelines related to healthy drinking behaviors to alcohol labeling are needed. Assess how a label identifying the number of standard drinks per container impacts the ability of undergraduate students to accurately pour a standard drink. This study employed a 3 x 2 x 2 experimental design. Undergraduates were asked to pour a standard drink from mock products from three alcohol categories (beer, wine and liquor); products were presented in two types of label (traditional ABV vs. standard drinks/container) at two concentrations of alcohol content (high and low). We calculated standardized pour errors (pour errors in standard drink units). Analysis of these standardized pour errors suggested that 1) people tended to underpour beverages of low concentration across product categories and overpour those high in concentration. 2) When the standard drink label was present, pour accuracy was improved, when compared with pours from containers affixed with ABV labels in low alcohol concentrations across all product categories (beer, wine and liquor). 3) For treatments that comprised high concentrations of alcohol, the standard drink label significantly increased accuracy only for beer. However, it is worth noting that beer with an ABV label was the condition with the most dramatic overpours, and these problematic overpours were dramatically reduced by the addition of a standard drink label. Our work empirically supports the notion that Undergraduate students are better able to accurately assess and pour a standard drink of alcohol from bottles incorporating a label which includes standard drinks/container vs. those with traditional ABV labeling. That said, the effect is quite different for each alcohol category: beer, wine, and liquor and depends on whether the product is high or low in concentration of alcohol for its category; as such, policy makers should consider alcohol categories and concentrations from a public health perspective when recommending changes to labeling.

Collagen VI links the cell surface to the extracellular matrix to provide mechanical strength to most mammalian tissues, and is linked to human diseases including muscular dystrophy, fibrosis, cardiovascular disease and osteoarthritis. Collagen VI assembles from heterotrimers of three different α-chains into microfibrils, but there are many gaps in our knowledge of the molecular assembly process. Here, we determine the structures of both heterotrimeric mini-collagen VI constructs and collagen VI microfibrils, from mammalian tissue, using cryogenic-electron microscopy. These structures reveal a cysteine-rich coiled coil region involved in trimerisation as well as microfibril assembly. Furthermore, our structures show that pathogenic mutations are located at interaction sites involved in different steps of collagen VI assembly, from the trimeric-coiled coil region that mediates heterotrimerisation, to clusters of mutations in the triple-helical region involved in microfibril formation. Our microfibril structure provides a template for understanding supramolecular assembly, and offers a platform for rationale design of therapeutics for collagen VI pathologies. Collagen VI microfibril cryo-EM structure resolves a cysteine-rich coiled-coil important for heterotrimerization and microfibril assembly, reveals a hotspot of collagen VI muscular dystrophy mutations and provides a template for therapeutic design.

Visual search can be guided by biasing one’s attention towards features associated with a target. Prior work has shown that high-fidelity, picture-based cues are more beneficial to search than text-based cues. However, typically picture cues provide both detailed form information and color information that is absent from text-based cues. Given that visual resolution deteriorates with eccentricity, it is not clear that high-fidelity form information would benefit guidance to peripheral objects – much of the picture benefit could be due to color information alone. To address this, we conducted a search task with eye-tracking that had four types of cues that comprised a 2 (text/pictorial cue) × 2 (no color/color) design. We hypothesized that color information would be important for efficient search guidance while high-fidelity form information would be important for efficient verification times. In Experiment 1 cues were a colored picture of the target, a gray-scaled picture of the target, a text-based cue that included color (e.g., “blue shoe”), or a text-based cue without color (e.g., “shoe”). Experiment 2 was a replication of Experiment 1, except that the color word in the text-based cue was presented in the precise color that was the dominant color in the target. Our results show that high-fidelity form information is important for efficient verifications times (with color playing less of a role) and color is important for efficient guidance, but form information also benefits guidance. These results suggest that different features of the cue independently contribute to different aspects of the search process.

Front of pack (FOP) nutrition labels are concise labels located on the front of food packages that provide truncated nutrition information. These labels are rapidly gaining prominence worldwide, presumably because they attract attention and their simplified formats enable rapid comparisons of nutritional value. Eye tracking was conducted as US consumers interacted with actual packages with and without FOP labels to (1) assess if the presence of an FOP label increases attention to nutrition information when viewers are not specifically tasked with nutrition-related goals; and (2) study the effect of FOP presence on consumer use of more comprehensive, traditional nutrition information presented in the Nutritional Facts Panel (NFP), a mandatory label for most packaged foods in the US. Our results indicate that colored FOP labels enhanced the probability that any nutrition information was attended, and resulted in faster detection and longer viewing of nutrition information. However, for cereal packages, these benefits were at the expense of attention to the more comprehensive NFP. Our results are consistent with a potential short cut effect of FOP labels, such that if an FOP was present, participants spent less time attending the more comprehensive NFP. For crackers, FOP labels increased time spent attending to nutrition information, but we found no evidence that their presence reduced the time spent on the nutrition information in the NFP. The finding that FOP labels increased attention to overall nutrition information by people who did not have an explicit nutritional goal suggests that these labels may have an advantage in conveying nutrition information to a wide segment of the population. However, for some food types this benefit may come with a short-cut effect; that is, decreased attention to more comprehensive nutrition information. These results have implications for policy and warrant further research into the mechanisms by which FOP labels impact use of nutrition information by consumers for different foods.