Keeping you at arm's length: modifying peripersonal space influences interpersonal distance.

Peripersonal space represents the area around the body where objects are coded in motor terms for the purpose of voluntary goal-directed actions. Previous studies have suggested that peripersonal space is also a safe space linked with our private area, influencing interpersonal space in social contexts. However, whether these two spaces rely on similar embodied processes remains an open issue. In the present study, participants observed a point-light walker (PLW) approaching them from different directions and passing near them at different distances from their right or left shoulder. While approaching, the PLW disappeared at a distance of 2 m and the task for the participants was to estimate if the interpersonal distance, at the time the PLW would have reached their level, was comfortable or not. Between two sessions of comfort judgments, the participants manipulated a 70 cm tool entailing an extension of peripersonal space, or a 10 cm tool entailing no extension of peripersonal space. The results revealed that the comfortable interpersonal distance was larger when the PLW crossed the mid-sagittal plane of the participants than when it approached them laterally, with a concomitant increase of response time. After participants manipulated the long tool, comfortable interpersonal distance increased, but predominantly when the PLW trajectory implied crossing the participants' mid-sagittal plane. This effect was not observed when participants manipulated the short tool. Two control tasks showed that using the long tool modified the reachability (control 1), but not the time to passage (control 2) estimates of PLW stimuli, suggesting that tool use extended peripersonal space without changing perceived visual distances. Overall, the data show that comfortable interpersonal distance is linked to the representation of peripersonal space. As a consequence, increasing peripersonal space through tool use has the immediate consequence that comfortable interpersonal distance from another person also increases, suggesting that interpersonal-comfort space and peripersonal-reaching space share a common motor nature.

Additive interfacial chiral interaction in multilayers for stabilization of small individual skyrmions at room temperature.

Facing the ever-growing demand for data storage will most probably require a new paradigm. Nanoscale magnetic skyrmions are anticipated to solve this issue as they are arguably the smallest spin textures in magnetic thin films in nature. We designed cobalt-based multilayered thin films in which the cobalt layer is sandwiched between two heavy metals and so provides additive interfacial Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interactions (DMIs), which reach a value close to 2 mJ m(-2) in the case of the Ir|Co|Pt asymmetric multilayers. Using a magnetization-sensitive scanning X-ray transmission microscopy technique, we imaged small magnetic domains at very low fields in these multilayers. The study of their behaviour in a perpendicular magnetic field allows us to conclude that they are actually magnetic skyrmions stabilized by the large DMI. This discovery of stable sub-100 nm individual skyrmions at room temperature in a technologically relevant material opens the way for device applications in the near future.

Uniquely abnormal intracavitary flow during late systole and relaxation in hypertrophic obstructive cardiomyopathy with midventricular obstruction.

We describe a patient with hypertrophic cardiomyopathy who had a uniquely abnormal jet from the base to the apex during late systole and the relaxation period. This 48-year-old woman was admitted with exertional dyspnea and palpitations. Two-dimensional echocardiography revealed asymmetric septal hypertrophy and a left midventricular obstruction at the level of the papillary muscles. A high-velocity ejectional jet (peak velocity 4.8 m/s) directed toward the base during systole and an abnormal jet (peak velocity 2.2 m/s) directed toward the apex during late systole and the relaxation period were demonstrated through the midventricular obstruction site using Doppler echocardiography. The peak systolic pressure gradient between the apical and the basal chamber was 91 mmHg, and the peak systole pressure was higher in the apical chamber than in the basal chamber. However, a reverse pressure gradient was revealed between the two chambers during late systole and the relaxation period when the abnormal jet was demonstrated.