Tag Archive for 'Face'

Magnified perspective of the titanosaurian embryonic skull with the preorbital and orbital region in left lateral view. Image credit: Kundrat et al, doi: 10.1016/j.cub.2020.07.091.

Paleontologists Find Perfectly Preserved Embryo inside 80-Million-Year-Old Titanosaurian Egg

Aug 31, 2020 by News Staff

Paleontologists recently found well-preserved dinosaur eggs in an enormous nesting ground of titanosaurian sauropod dinosaurs that lived about 80 million...

NASA’s Viking 1 orbiter photographed the Cydonia region in the northern latitudes of Mars on July 25, 1976 while searching for a landing site for the Viking 2 lander. The speckled appearance of the image is due to missing data, called bit errors, caused by problems in transmission of the photographic data from Mars to Earth. Bit errors comprise part of one of the ‘eyes’ and ‘nostrils’ on the eroded rock that resembles a human face near the center of the image. Shadows in the rock formation give the illusion of a nose and mouth. Planetary geologists attribute the origin of the formation to purely natural processes. The feature is 1.5 km across, with the Sun angle at approximately 20 degrees. The picture was taken from a range of 1,873 km. Image credit: NASA / JPL.

Study: Face Pareidolia Reflects Activation of Same Visual Mechanisms that Process Real Human Faces

Aug 17, 2020 by News Staff

Face pareidolia is the phenomenon of seeing face-like structures in everyday objects. It is a very human condition that relates to how our brains are wired....

People can infer cats’ affective states from subtle aspects of their facial expressions -- although most find this challenging -- and some individuals are very good at doing so. Image credit: CaptainMeo.

Cats Have Facial Expressions and Some People Can Read Them, Scientists Say

Dec 3, 2019 by News Staff

A new study, published in the journal Animal Welfare, shows that some people are particularly good at identifying feline emotions from cats’ faces; women...

Heavy smoking has a damaging effect on facial aging. Image credit: Jui Magicman.

Heavy Smoking Has Causal Effect on Facial Aging

Nov 4, 2019 by News Staff

In a study published in the journal PLoS Genetics, researchers at the University of Bristol searched for the effects of heavy smoking using the UK Biobank...

Model of dynamic interactions between the skin immune system (SIS) and its microbial/chemical milieu in human facial skin: (A) infancy -- before the development of stabilized microbial communities, an early tolerogenic interaction between the maturing SIS and the microbiota is prevalent; (B) after this initial period, a homeostatic crosstalk evolves between the developed SIS and a childhood-type stable microbiota; (C) adolescence -- enhanced sebum secretion and shift in the microbiota composition (and probably other uncovered events, e.g., barrier breach) might contribute to a dynamic change in the communication between the SIS and the microbiota in the skin, leading to inflammatory interactions; cytokines associated with a homeostatic dialog may become highly increased in acne lesions (relative to non-lesions), promoting inflammation together with newly secreted proinflammatory mediators produced by keratinocytes, dendritic cells (DCs), and subsequently, infiltrating inflammatory T helper (Th)1 and Th17(23) (for IL-23) cells, neutrophils, and macrophages; these mediators initiate follicular hyperkeratinization, closure of the follicular infundibulum, comedone formation, and the development of acne papules, pustules, and nodules; the extent and time course of inflammation can vary across a wide spectrum among teenagers; (D) following the resolution of acne, in adult SGR skin, under steady-state, SIS and region-specific microbes carry on a homeostatic dialog with the microbiota again, mediated by the controlled production of innate immune-cell-derived factors, including complement components, AMPs, IL-1, TSLP, and IL-7; hair follicles may play a pivotal role in this crosstalk, supporting the residency and recruitment of LCs, Tregs, ILCs, as well as nonpathogenic Th17(β) cells to maintain homeostasis; upward arrows depict increases (expression, concentrations, and ratios). Propionibacterium acnes (Propionibacteriaceae) = Cutibacterium acnes. Other relevant bacterial genera are noted in the schematic. Abbreviations: AMP - antimicrobial peptide, IL – interleukin, ILC - innate lymphoid cell, LC - Langerhans cell, mDC - myeloid dendritic cell, RORγt - RAR-related orphan receptor γt, SGR - sebaceous gland rich, SIS - skin immune system, TGF - transforming growth factor, Th - T helper, Treg - regulatory T cell, TSLP - thymic stromal lymphopoietin. Image credit: Szegedi et al, doi: 10.1016/j.it.2019.08.006.

Adolescent Acne Vulgaris is Naturally Developing, Transient Inflammatory State, Researchers Say

Oct 1, 2019 by News Staff

Acne vulgaris, which occurs in 44-95% of teenagers of varying ethnicities, represents a natural, transient inflammatory interaction of adolescent facial...

Scientists Reconstruct Skeletal Anatomy of Denisovans

Sep 19, 2019 by News Staff

A team of researchers from Israel and Spain has produced reconstructions of Denisovans, an extinct sister group of Neanderthals, based on patterns of methylation...

You’re still the same person after a drink. Image credit: Rebcenter.

Scientists Say Alcohol is No Excuse for Antisocial Behavior, You are Still Same Person after Drink

Aug 27, 2019 by The Conversation

Many of us know that feeling of waking up, headache in tow, struggling to remember what we said and did after that extra drink the night before. And then...

Kaminski et al show that, in only 33,000 years, domestication transformed the facial muscle anatomy of dogs specifically for facial communication with humans; dogs with expressive eyebrows had a selection advantage and ‘puppy dog eyes’ are the result of selection based on humans’ preferences. Image credit: JacLou DL.

Dogs Evolved New Muscles around Eyes to Better Communicate with Humans, Study Says

Jun 18, 2019 by News Staff

Domestication shaped wolves (Canis lupus) into dogs (Canis familiaris) and transformed both their behavior and their anatomy. A new study, published in...

Coles et al provide the strongest evidence to date that facial expressions can influence our feelings. Image credit: Sasin Tipchai.

Smiling Can Make Us Feel Little Bit Happier, Review Says

Apr 15, 2019 by News Staff

According to a review of previous studies, published in the Psychological Bulletin, emotional facial expressions — such as smiling — can influence...

The sun bear (Helarctos malayanus) at Alma Park Zoo, Brisbane, Australia. Image credit: Andrew Napier / CC BY 2.0.

Sun Bears Can Mimic Facial Expressions of Their Playmates

Mar 22, 2019 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Scientific Reports provides evidence that sun bears (Helarctos malayanus), a typically solitary species, have the...

By combining separate measures of recall and recognition, Jenkins et al show that people know about 5,000 faces on average and that individual differences are large. Image credit: Gerd Altmann.

People Know 5,000 Faces on Average, Study Says

Oct 11, 2018 by News Staff

Over our species history, humans have typically lived in small groups of under a hundred individuals. But a new study, published in the journal Royal Society...

Nawroth et al show that goats can discriminate human facial expressions with different emotional valences and prefer to interact with positive ones. Image credit: Filinecek.

Goats Prefer Happy Human Faces, Study Says

Sep 4, 2018 by News Staff

A new study published in the journal Royal Society Open Science provides the first evidence of how goats (Capra aegagrus hircus) read human emotional expressions. Nawroth...

A face shown through a ‘bee eye’ camera. Image credit: A. Dyer & S. Williams, RMIT.

Miniature Brains of Bees and Wasps Recognize Faces

Aug 20, 2018 by News Staff

Humans have a remarkable ability to detect and visually identify conspecifics on the basis of their faces, which is a crucial capacity in social interactions....

According to Proops et al, some non-human animals can effectively eavesdrop on the emotional state cues that humans reveal on a moment-to-moment basis, using their memory of these to guide future interactions with particular individuals. Image credit: Alexandra / Alexas Fotos.

Study: Horses Can Read and Remember Human Emotional Expressions

Apr 27, 2018 by News Staff

According to a new study published in the journal Current Biology, domestic horses can read and then remember people’s emotional expressions, enabling...

Kaminski et al provide evidence that dogs are sensitive to the human’s attentional state when producing facial expressions, suggesting that facial expressions are not just inflexible and involuntary displays of emotional states, but rather potentially active attempts to communicate with others. Image credit: Fran F.

Dogs are More Expressive When Humans are Looking at Them

Oct 20, 2017 by News Staff

A team of researchers at the University of Portsmouth, UK, has found evidence that domestic dogs move their faces in direct response to human attention. Kaminski...

This micrograph depicts the gram-positive bacterium Propionibacterium acnes grown in thioglycollate medium at 48 hours. Propionibacterium acnes is a very common obligate anaerobic, non-spore forming rod, and the etiologic pathogen responsible for acne vulgaris, or pimples. It normally resides in the sebaceous glands of the skin. Image credit: Bobby Strong, CDC.

Unbalanced Skin Microbiome May Be Key to Acne Development, Study Finds

Apr 6, 2017 by News Staff

The overall balance of the bacteria on a person’s skin, rather than the presence or absence of a particular bacterial strain, appears to be an important...