The Mesozoic Evolution of the Lake Bistineau Structural Bridge, Bienville Parish, Louisiana.

The Lake Bistineau Structural Bridge, an anticlinal subsurface feature extends between the Monroe and Sabine uplifts, trends east-west through Bienville Parish flanked north and south by the Minden and Winnfield basins, respectively. The bridge separates the basins, and probably reflects the presence of a deep basement arch. This arch influenced the thickness of overlying strata, such as the Louann Salt. Salt thickness and flow greatly influence bridge structure through time. Salt deformation was less on the bridge crest than the flanking basins because the salt is thinner on the crest. The bridge crest may reflect the basement arch crest. The basement arch may resemble the Triassic grabens of the southern Appalachians, bounded by similar graben faulting. The earliest documentation of the bridge is upper Jurassic. Mesozoic rocks show the bridge to be topographically higher than the basins, with lesser subsidence rates. This pattern persists from upper Jurassic through Cretaceous Taylor beds, although reduced in Taylor and Navarro time. The structural configuration of the bridge in Bienville Parish can be divided into the stable portion, in the central western third of the parish, and the deformed portion to the east of the stable bridge. The stable bridge joins the Sabine uplift immediately west of the parish and is less modified by salt flow. Bridge modification during its evolution were caused by salt flow beneath its flanks into piercement domes of the basins. Domal salt supply areas are synclinal arms , extending from the basins onto the bridge flanks. These linear synclinal areas reveal the basin and bridge growth method. The bridge is a complex anticline dipping north into the Minden basin and south into the Winnfield basin. The basins are not structurally connected across the bridge demonstrating an independent growth history for each. Independent growth histories indicate the North Louisiana Syncline is not an adequate description of the area between the Sabine and Monroe uplifts. This report suggests that the term North Louisiana Syncline should be replaced by Minden basin, Lake Bistineau Structural Bridge, and Winnfield basin, which form the most important geological features between the Sabine and Monroe uplifts

Speech Facilitates the Categorization of Motions in 9-Month-Old Infants

Two experiments were used to investigate the influence of both native and non-native speech on the categorization of a set of an object’s motions by 9-month-olds. In Experiment 1, infants were habituated to a set of three object motions and tested with familiar and novel motions. Results of Experiment 1 show that infants were more likely to categorize the motion stimuli if they listened to either the native or non-native speech during the categorization process than if they listened to music or heard nothing at all. Results of Experiment 2 show that discrimination of the motions was not impaired by the presence of the labeling phrases. These results are consistent with a number of findings that report a unique influence of labels on categorization of static objects in infancy and extend those findings to categorization of motions

Mothers of Soldiers in Wartime: A National News Narrative

National news media represent mothers of US combat soldiers in the Iraq War as archetypal good mothers, that is, mothers who continue their maternal work even after their children are deployed. However, not all mothers are depicted as the archetypal patriotic mother, i.e., a good mother who is also stoic and silent about the war and her child\u27s role in it. Mothers of soldiers are portrayed as good mothers who sometimes also voice their attitudes about the war effort. The maternal attitudes ranged from complete support for the war to opposition to the war but support for the soldiers. The findings suggest a picture of wartime motherhood that is more nuanced than the historical image of the patriotic mother suggests

Use of knowledge-based restraints in phenix.refine to improve macromolecular refinement at low resolution

Recent developments in PHENIX are reported that allow the use of reference-model torsion restraints, secondary-structure hydrogen-bond restraints and Ramachandran restraints for improved macromolecular refinement in phenix.refine at low resolution

A prosodically controlled word and nonword repetition task for 2- to 4- year-olds: Evidence from typically developing children

An association has been found between nonword repetition and language skills in school-aged children with both typical and atypical language development (Dollaghan & Campbell, 1998; Ellis Weismer et al., 2000; Gathercole & Baddeley, 1990; Montgomery, 2002). This raises the possibility that younger children’s repetition performance may be predictive of later language deficits. In order to investigate this possibility, it is important to establish that elicited repetition with very young children is both feasible and informative. To this end, a repetition task was designed and carried out with 66 children aged 2-4. The task consisted of 18 words and 18 matched nonwords that were systematically manipulated for length and prosodic structure. In addition, an assessment of receptive vocabulary was administered. The repetition task elicited high levels of response. Total scores as well as word and nonword scores were sensitive to age. Lexical status and item length affected performance regardless of age: words were repeated more accurately than nonwords, and one-syllable items were repeated more accurately than two-syllable items, which were in turn repeated more accurately than three-syllable items. The effect of prosodic structure was also significant. Whole syllable errors were almost exclusive to unstressed syllables, with those preceding stress being most vulnerable. Performance on the repetition task was significantly correlated with performance on the receptive vocabulary test. Since this repetition task was effective in eliciting responses from most of the 2 to 4-year-old participants, tapped developmental change in their repetition skills, and revealed patterns in their performance, it has the potential to identify deficits in very early repetition skills that may be indicative of wider language difficulties

Graphical tools for macromolecular crystallography in PHENIX.

A new Python-based graphical user interface for the PHENIX suite of crystallography software is described. This interface unifies the command-line programs and their graphical displays, simplifying the development of new interfaces and avoiding duplication of function. With careful design, graphical interfaces can be displayed automatically, instead of being manually constructed. The resulting package is easily maintained and extended as new programs are added or modified