Social contingency modulates the perceived distance between self and other.

Although social contingency, namely contingent reactions of other to one's own actions, critically affects attachment formation, can it also modulate the perceived distance between self and other? Previous studies have suggested a positive answer. However, these studies are criticized for not showing true top-down effects on perception because of pitfalls such as task demands. We show that social contingency reduced the perceived distance between self and other while avoiding pitfalls. According to Emmert's law, the perceived size of an afterimage increases with perceived distance. Thus, if social contingency modulates the perceived distance, the perceived size of afterimage should inevitably reflect it. The results showed that the size of the afterimages of a face that contingently responded to participants' actions was perceived as smaller than those of non-contingent and unresponsive faces. This effect was more salient with increasing viewing distances. Thus, prior knowledge of interaction with environment modulates online perceptual processing in size constancy, probably through its influence on perceived distance.

Enhancement of immobilized lipase activity by design of polymer brushes on a hollow fiber membrane.

A polymer brush possessing aminoethanol (AE) functional groups for lipase immobilization was grafted onto a hollow fiber membrane by radiation-induced graft polymerization. Almost the AE groups-grafted polymer brushes unfold through positive charge repulsion between the AE groups, enabling multi-layer immobilization of lipase. The hydroxyl groups in AE can also retain water molecules around hydrophilic part of the lipase. In this study, we controlled the length and density of the polymer brushes consisting of the glycidyl methacrylate (GMA) by changing the concentration of GMA monomer during radiation-induced graft polymerization. Immobilized lipase showed the highest activity on the grafted membrane when 5 wt% of glycidyl methacrylate as monomer for the radiation-induced graft polymerization was used. Consequently high efficiency esterification (approximately 1600 mmol/h/g-membrane) was achieved in five-layer lipase on AE polymer brush than that in monolayer lipase on the polymer brush possessing only hydroxyl groups. Moreover, the polymer brush possessing AE functional groups for lipase immobilization maintained high activity on the reuse for several times.