Synergies between processing and memory in children's reading span.

Previous research has established the relevance of working memory for cognitive development. Yet the factors responsible for shaping performance in the complex span tasks used to assess working memory capacity are not fully understood. We report a study of reading span in 7- to 11-year old children that addresses several contemporary theoretical issues. We demonstrate that both the timing and the accuracy of recall are affected by the presence or absence of a semantic connection between the processing requirement and the memoranda. Evidence that there can be synergies between processing and memory argues against the view that complex span simply measures the competition between these activities. We also demonstrate a consistent relationship between the rate of completing processing operations (sentence reading) and recall accuracy. At the same time, the shape and strength of this function varies with the task configuration. Taken together, these results demonstrate the potential for reconstructive influences to shape working memory performance among children

Serial Position Effects in Short-term Visual Memory: A SIMPLE Explanation?

A version of Sternberg’s (1966) short-term, visual memory recognition paradigm with pictures of unfamiliar faces as stimuli was used in three experiments to assess the applicability of the distinctiveness based SIMPLE model proposed by Brown, Neath & Chater (2002). Initial simulations indicated that the amount of recency predicted increased as the parameter measuring the psychological distinctiveness of the stimulus material (c) increased, and that the amount of primacy was dependent on the extent of proactive interference from previously presented stimuli. The data from experiment 1, which used memory lists of four and five faces varying in visual similarity confirmed the predicted, extended recency effect. However, changes in visual similarity were not found to produce changes in c. In Experiments 2 and 3, the conditions that influence the magnitude of c were explored. These revealed that both the familiarity of the stimulus class before testing, and changes in familiarity due to perceptual learning, influenced distinctiveness as indexed by the parameter c. Overall the empirical data from all three experiments were well-fit by SIMPLE

Liberating data: how libraries and librarians can help researchers with text and data mining.

With advances in computational methods and the proliferation of data sources, text and data mining offers exciting new directions for research. Neil Stewart, Jane Secker, Chris Morrison and Laurence Horton look at the role of libraries in providing support to researchers for these projects, particularly to help with rights issues and to digitise material for scholarly re-use. Librarians should be bold about the advice they give to researchers and encourage them to use the new copyright exceptions

With development, list recall includes more chunks, not just larger ones.

The nature of the childhood development of immediate recall has been difficult to determine. There could be a developmental increase in either the number of chunks held in working memory or the use of grouping to make the most of a constant capacity. In 3 experiments with children in the early elementary school years and adults, we show that improvements in the immediate recall of word and picture lists come partly from increases in the number of chunks of items retained in memory. This finding was based on a distinction between access to a studied group of items (i.e., recall of at least 1 item from the group) and completion of the accessed group (i.e., the proportion of the items recalled from the group). Access rates increased with age, even with statistical controls for completion rates, implicating development of capacity in chunks. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved

Methoxy-phenyl groups reduce the cytotoxicity and increase the aqueous solubility of phosphonium zwitterions and salts

The ability of phosphonium cations to act as intracellular transport vectors is well-established. Previous research has demonstrated that phosphonioalkylthiosulfate zwitterions, and -thioacetylalkylphosphonium salts are useful precursors for the formation of phosphonium-functionalised gold nanoparticles and enable the nanoparticles to be transported into cells for diagnostic and therapeutic purposes. In this report we describe the synthesis and characterisation of a series of phosphonioalkylthiosulfate zwitterions, and-thioacetylalkylphosphonium salts derived from the methoxy-phenylphosphines tris(2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl)phosphine, tris(2,6-dimethoxyphenyl)phosphine and tri(4-methoxyphenyl)phosphine. The methoxyphenyl-substituted phosphonium compounds show greater solubility in aqueous systems than the corresponding phenyl derivatives and cytotoxicity studies reveal that the compounds are significantly less toxic than the related triphenylphosphonium derivatives. The solid-state structures of the tris(2,4,6-trimethoxyphenyl)- and tris(2,6-dimethoxyphenyl)-phosphoniopropylthiosulfate zwitterions have been investigated by single crystal X-ray crystallography. The differences in the molecular packing of the compounds may account for greater solubility of these zwitterions in aqueous solutions

Commercializing Children: Laws and Regulations Affecting Advertisements Directed at Children in France, Spain, and Sweden

From a financial perspective there may be no better investment, or more sensible target for advertising than one directed at the interests of children. This focus is perfectly understandable for a firm aiming to maintain a continually expanding and predictable source of profit. What children lack in spending power compared to other age groups, they make up for in potential longevity to consume, as well as their sheer amount of exposure to such advertising outlets, not only in hours spent, but in the various forms of technology to which they are regularly exposed. Children have an uncanny ability to mold the financial choices of their parents from the relatively minuscule purchase of a small toy or candy bar they had seen on television, to suggesting vacation destinations that can cost in the thousands. In many nations, including the United States, firms have interpreted the recognition of the growing influence of children on markets as justification to target them in their advertising campaigns

Greening the Grey: A Framework for Integrated Green Grey Infrastructure (IGGI)

This report presents innovations from academia and practice designed to green grey infrastructure assets such as bridges, street furniture and coastal engineering structures that need to remain primarily grey for their essential function. We call this integrated green grey infrastructure (IGGI). We collated material on these innovations and assessed them using a critical success factors (CSF) framework that we –co-developed with a team of practitioners in government agencies and companies to help better evaluate the potential benefits and limitations of using IGGI measures compared to traditional grey engineering solutions. The CSF framework is outlined and demonstrated by assessing the engineering performance and ecosystem services benefits of ecological enhancements used in specific operational scale case studies. The case studies presented in this report show that simple, inexpensive ecological enhancement and green engineering solutions can deliver more multifunctional benefits than business as usual solutions for similar or reduced costs. These ecological enhancements and green engineering options have been compiled and assessed for historic conservation areas, urban areas, estuaries and at the coast. This report is intended to support asset managers, engineers, conservation and biodiversity teams, decision-makers, and other end-users to help them better identify IGGI options and evaluate these against business as usual grey engineering approaches

Designing Procedural Mechanisms for the Governance of Solar Radiation Management Field Experiments: Workshop Report

The unexpected ocean fertilization experiment off the west coast of Canada in 2012 highlights the reality that non-governmental actors can already initiate small- to medium-scale environmental experiments and solar radiation management (SRM) field experiments with no government funding or approval. Without careful consideration and development of a governance framework for these types of experimentation, governments could be caught out having to respond ad hoc to situations driven by non-governmental actors. This two-day workshop considered and evaluated governance mechanisms that may be useful for managing proposed SRM field experiments. Two specific procedural mechanisms were under consideration: environmental impact assessments and research registries. To ensure discussions were as realistic as possible, participants used a set of recently published SRM field experiment proposals as hypothetical examples when considering and evaluating both mechanisms. The workshop operated under the Chatham House Rule, and no attempts were made to forge consensus positions or to generate policy recommendations. Rather, this workshop was exploratory in nature, with discussions ranging widely along with personal opinions on some topics

Charting the trajectory of forgetting:Insights from a working memory period paradigm

Working memory capacity is commonly measured in terms of its item span, and much less often in terms of its time span, or “period.” The former measures how many items can be stored in working memory when carrying out episodes of concurrent processing. The latter complements this by determining the duration of processing episodes that can be tolerated while successfully storing a fixed number of items. We investigated the generality of previous evidence that working memory period varies with the distribution of longer and shorter processing episodes within a trial, and that notwithstanding such differences, a global measure of period is a reliable predictor of children’s educational attainment. We describe data from 184 children, between 7 and 11 years of age, who completed variants of an operation period task with different distributions of processing episodes together with measures of scholastic attainment. Individual differences in period scores were consistent over two test sessions, and were predictive of reading and number skills. We replicated previous effects of the order of longer and shorter processing episodes, but found that they did not generalize fully to other manipulations of order. The results point to the contribution of subtle within-trial sequence configurations for working memory. We make the case for a broader view of what constrains working memory than exists in current models

A temporal sediment record of microplastics in an urban lake, London, UK

A radionuclide-dated (210Pb and 137Cs) sediment core collected from Hampstead Pond No. 1, a North London lake, was used to provide novel data on the historical accumulation of microplastic waste in the urban environment. Microplastics were extracted from sediments by sieving and dense-liquid separation. Fibres of anthropogenic origin dominated the assemblage. Microplastics were first identified by microscopy before Raman spectroscopy of selected particles was used to determine the composition of synthetic polymers and dyes. Polystyrene microplastic particles were identified, in addition to synthetic fibres of polyacrylonitrile, polyvinyl chloride and fibres containing synthetic dyes. Concentrations of total microplastics in the sediment samples ranged from detection level to 539 particles per kilogram of dried sediment. Proliferation of microplastics is evident in the core from the late 1950s to the present. Relatively low numbers of particles were found in older sediments, comparable to laboratory blanks, highlighting the difficulty of extending a plastic chronostratigraphy back to the early twentieth century. This study shows that, with optimisation, routine extraction of microplastics from radionuclide-dated lake sediments can add an important temporal perspective to our understanding of microplastics in aquatic systems