Introduction: Services and the Green Economy

Services and the Green Economy addresses a significant gap in the knowledge and understanding of sustainable economic development. Bringing together a range of expert contributions the book analyses the role of services and service industries in the transition to a greener economy. Framed by an approach within environmental economic geography, chapters written by leading researchers from a range of disciplines explore how service industries, service firms and service activities are at heart of green economic processes. Adopting a global perspective, it includes research from the US, Europe, South America and Japan, providing a detailed insight into how the crucial role of service industry activity has often been ignored in current understandings of a green economic transition.</p

Episodic but not semantic order memory difficulties in autism spectrum disorder: Evidence from the Historical Figures Task

Considerable evidence suggests that the episodic memory system operates abnormally in autism spectrum disorder (ASD) whereas the functions of the semantic memory system are relatively preserved. Here we show that the same dissociation also applies to the domain of order memory. We asked adult participants to order the names of famous historical figures either according to their chronological order in history (probing semantic memory) or according to a random sequence shown once on a screen (probing episodic memory). As predicted, adults with ASD performed less well than age- and IQ-matched comparison individuals only on the episodic task. This observation is of considerable importance in the context of developmental theory because semantic and episodic order memory abilities can be dissociated in typically developing infants before they reach the age at which the behavioural markers associated with ASD are first apparent. This raises the possibility that early emerging memory abnormalities play a role in shaping the developmental trajectory of the disorder. We discuss the broader implications of this possibility and highlight the urgent need for greater scrutiny of memory competences in ASD early in development

Free Recall Learning of Hierarchically Organised Lists by Adults with Asperger's Syndrome: Additional Evidence for Diminished Relational Processing

The Task Support Hypothesis (TSH, Bowler et al. Neuropsychologia 35:65–70 1997) states that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) show better memory when test procedures provide support for retrieval. The present study aimed to see whether this principle also applied at encoding. Twenty participants with high-functioning ASD and 20 matched comparison participants studied arrays of 112 words over four trials. Words were arranged either under hierarchically embedded category headings (e.g. Instruments—String—Plucked—Violin) or randomly. Both groups showed similar overall recall and better recall for the hierarchically organised words. However, the ASD participants made less use of information about relations between words and more use of item-specific information in their recall, confirming earlier reports of relational difficulties in this population

Single electron quantum tomography in quantum Hall edge channels

We propose a quantum tomography protocol to measure single electron coherence in quantum Hall edge channels and therefore access for the first time the wave function of single electron excitations propagating in ballistic quantum conductors. Its implementation would open the way to quantitative studies of single electron decoherence and would provide a quantitative tool for analyzing single to few electron sources. We show how this protocol could be implemented using ultrahigh sensitivity noise measurement schemes.Comment: Version 3: long version (7 figures): corrections performed and references have been added. Figures reprocessed for better readabilit

Quantum Acoustics with Surface Acoustic Waves

It has recently been demonstrated that surface acoustic waves (SAWs) can interact with superconducting qubits at the quantum level. SAW resonators in the GHz frequency range have also been found to have low loss at temperatures compatible with superconducting quantum circuits. These advances open up new possibilities to use the phonon degree of freedom to carry quantum information. In this paper, we give a description of the basic SAW components needed to develop quantum circuits, where propagating or localized SAW-phonons are used both to study basic physics and to manipulate quantum information. Using phonons instead of photons offers new possibilities which make these quantum acoustic circuits very interesting. We discuss general considerations for SAW experiments at the quantum level and describe experiments both with SAW resonators and with interaction between SAWs and a qubit. We also discuss several potential future developments.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figure

Creativity in savant artists with autism

Background: Individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) often display impairments in creativity, yet savant artists with ASD can produce highly novel and original artistic outputs. To date, there have been no systematic attempts to explore creativity in savant artists with ASD. Methods: Nine savant artists with ASD were compared with nine talented artists, nine non-artistically talented individuals with ASD, and nine individuals with moderate learning difficulties (MLD), on tasks in and out of their domain of expertise. This was to ascertain whether the performance of the savant artists was related to their artistic ability, their diagnosis of ASD or their level of intellectual functioning. Results: On a drawing task (the Torrance Test of Creative Thinking; Torrance, 1974), the responses of the art students were more creative (scoring higher on measures of fluency, originality, elaboration and flexibility) than the savant, ASD and MLD groups. However, the savants did produce more elaborative responses than the ASD and MLD groups. On a non-drawing construction task (figural synthesis; Finke & Slayton, 1988), the savants produced more original outputs than the ASD and MLD groups (scoring similarly to the art students). No group differences were found regarding fluency on this task. Conclusions: On standardised creativity tasks, savant artists with ASD display high levels of elaboration (on drawing tasks) and originality (on non-drawing construction tasks), relative to groups with ASD or MLD. High elaboration and originality may result from a local processing bias, coupled with artistic talent, in this group

Allocentric versus egocentric spatial memory in autism spectrum disorder

Individuals with Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) present difficulties in forming relations among items and context. This capacity for relational binding is also involved in spatial navigation and research on this topic in ASD is scarce and inconclusive. Using a computerised version of the Morris Water Maze task, ASD participants showed particular difficulties in performing viewpoint independent (allocentric) navigation, leaving viewpoint dependent navigation (egocentric) intact. Further analyses showed that navigation deficits were not related to poor visual short-term memory or mental rotation in the ASD group. The results further confirm the need of autistic individuals for support at retrieval and have important implications for the design of signposts and maps

The influence of task demands, verbal ability and executive functions on item and source memory in Autism Spectrum Disorder

Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD) is generally associated with difficulties in contextual source memory but not single item memory. There are surprising inconsistencies in the literature, however, that the current study seeks to address by examining item and source memory in age and ability matched groups of 22 ASD and 21 comparison adults. Results show that group differences in source memory are moderated by task demands but not by individual differences in verbal ability, executive function or item memory. By contrast, unexpected group differences in item memory could largely be explained by individual differences in source memory. These observations shed light on the factors underlying inconsistent findings in the memory literature in ASD, which has important implications for theory and practice

Free recall and forgetting of emotionally arousing words in autism spectrum disorder

Since the earliest descriptions of individuals with autism spectrum disorders (ASDs) abnormalities in affective behaviours have been considered a prominent feature in their clinical manifestations. What remains unclear, however, is whether these altered emotional behaviours are a mere facet of abnormalities in socio-cognitive processes or whether they constitute a primary feature of the condition. A number of studies now indicate that emotional processing atypicalities in ASD extend to domains outside the broader context of social cognition leading us to suggest that the disorder may be characterised by basic abnormalities in how psychophysiological and cognitive emotional responses modulate one another [Gaigg, S. B. & Bowler, D. M. (2007). Differential fear conditioning in Asperger's syndrome: Implications for an amygdala theory of autism. Neuropsychologia, 45, 2125–2134]. In the current study, we show that although individuals with ASD, like typical individuals, exhibit a free recall advantage for emotionally arousing and semantically related neutral as compared to unrelated neutral words, they do not show reduced forgetting rates for arousing stimuli as do typical individuals. These observations provide further support for the view that psychophysiological emotional responses do not modulate cognitive processes normally in ASD and further implicate abnormalities of amygdala connectivity (in particular with the hippocampus) in the neuropathology underlying this disorder