Time manages interference in visual short-term memory

Emerging evidence suggests that age-related declines in memory may reflect a failure in pattern separation, a process that is believed to reduce the encoding overlap between similar stimulus representations during memory encoding. Indeed, behavioural pattern separation may be indexed by a visual continuous recognition task in which items are presented in sequence and observers report for each whether it is novel, previously viewed (old), or whether it shares features with a previously viewed item (similar). In comparison to young adults, older adults show a decreased pattern separation when the number of items between “old” and “similar” items is increased. Yet the mechanisms of forgetting underpinning this type of recognition task are yet to be explored in a cognitively homogenous group, with careful control over the parameters of the task, including elapsing time (a critical variable in models of forgetting). By extending the inter-item intervals, number of intervening items and overall decay interval, we observed in a young adult sample (N = 35, Mage = 19.56 years) that the critical factor governing performance was inter-item interval. We argue that tasks using behavioural continuous recognition to index pattern separation in immediate memory will benefit from generous inter-item spacing, offering protection from inter-item interference

Population density controls on microbial pollution across the Ganga catchment

For millions of people worldwide, sewage-polluted surface waters threaten water security, food security and human health. Yet the extent of the problem and its causes are poorly understood. Given rapid widespread global urbanisation, the impact of urban versus rural populations is particularly important but unknown. Exploiting previously unpublished archival data for the Ganga (Ganges) catchment, we find a strong non-linear relationship between upstream population density and microbial pollution, and predict that these river systems would fail faecal coliform standards for irrigation waters available to 79% of the catchment’s 500 million inhabitants. Overall, this work shows that microbial pollution is conditioned by the continental-scale network structure of rivers, compounded by the location of cities whose growing populations contribute c. 100 times more microbial pollutants per capita than their rural counterparts

How effective is eccentric viewing training? A systematic literature review

Purpose: The global prevalence of age-related macular degeneration (AMD) and associated central vision loss (CVL) is rising. CVL hinders the performance of many activities of daily living (ADLs). Adaptive strategies such as eccentric viewing (EV) and steady eye strategy (SES) may be used to compensate for CVL. In order to establish the potential of these rehabilitation strategies, this systematic review evaluates current literature regarding the effectiveness of EV and SES training in people with CVL. Recent Findings: The search strategies identified 2605 publications, 36 of which met the inclusion criteria for the review, but only three of which were randomised controlled trials. This literature shows that EV and SES training can improve near visual acuity, reading speed, and performance of ADLs in people with CVL. However, there was insufficient literature to establish a relationship between training and distance visual acuity or quality-of-life. There is no conclusive evidence to show that a particular model of EV training is superior to another, little clear evidence of a relationship between participant characteristics and training outcomes and no data regarding the cost effectiveness of training. Summary: This report highlights the need for further robust research to establish the true potential and cost effectiveness of EV and SES training as a rehabilitation strategy for individuals with CVL

Comprehensive analysis of preeclampsia-associated DNA methylation in the placenta

Background:A small number of recent reports have suggested that altered placental DNA methylation may be associated with early onset preeclampsia. It is important that further studies be undertaken to confirm and develop these findings. We therefore undertook a systematic analysis of DNA methylation patterns in placental tissue from 24 women with preeclampsia and 24 with uncomplicated pregnancy outcome

Core excitations across the neutron shell gap in ²⁰⁷Tl

The single closed-neutron-shell, one proton-hole nucleus 207Tl was populated in deep-inelastic collisions of a 208Pb beam with a 208Pb target. The yrast and near-yrast level scheme has been established up to high excitation energy, comprising an octupol

Measurement of the analyzing power of proton-carbon elastic scattering in the CNI region at RHIC

The single transverse spin asymmetry, A_N, of the p-carbon elastic scattering process in the Coulomb Nuclear Interference (CNI) region was measured using an ultra thin carbon target and polarized proton beam in the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). In 2004, data were collected to calibrate the p-carbon process at two RHIC energies (24 GeV, 100 GeV). A_N was obtained as a function of momentum transfer -t. The results were fit with theoretical models which allow us to assess the contribution from a hadronic spin flip amplitude.Comment: Contribution to the proceedings of the 16th International Spin Physics Symposium, spin2004 (Trieste

Addressing the effects of skin tone on photoacoustic imaging

Please click Additional Files below to see the full abstract

Gluonic effects in vector meson photoproduction at large momentum transfers

Non-perturbative QCD mechanisms are of fundamental importance in strong interaction physics. In particular, the flavor singlet axial anomaly leads to a gluonic pole mechanism which has been shown to explain the $\eta^{\prime}$ mass, violations of the OZI rule and more recently the proton spin. We show here that the interaction derived from the gluonic pole exchange explains the high momentum transfer behavior of the photoproduction cross sections of vector mesons at JLab energies.Comment: 10 pages, 6 figures, Latex; Completely rewritten versio