Valles Marineris tectonism: Questions and suggestions

Much has been learned about the Valles Marineris, and stratigraphic relations inside the troughs have been reasonably well established. However, many questions remain, especially questions pertaining to tectonism and origin. The following issues are briefly considered: the age of the troughs; the evidence for tectonic origin; the relation of Valles Marineris to the Tharsis rise; and the additional factors which may have influenced the origin of the Valles Marineris

Digital solar system geology

All available synoptic maps of the solid-surface bodies of the Solar System were digitized for presentation in the planned Atlas of the Solar System by Greeley and Batson. Since the last report (Batson et al., 1990), preliminary Uranian satellite maps were replaced with improved versions, Galilean satellite geology was simplified and digitized, structure was added to many maps, and the maps were converted to a standard format, with corresponding standing colors for the mapped units. Following these changes, the maps were re-reviewed by their authors and are now undergoing final editing before preparation for publication. In some cases (for Mercury, Venus, and Mars), more detailed maps were digitized and then simplified for the Atlas. Other detailed maps are planned to be digitized in the coming year for the Moon and the Galilean satellites. For most of the remaining bodies such as the Uranian satellites, the current digitized versions contain virtually all the detail that can be mapped given the available data; those versions will be unchanged for the Atlas. These digital geologic maps are archived at the digital scale of 1/16 degree/ pixel, in sinusoidal format. The availability of geology of the Solar System in a digital database will facilitate comparisons and integration with other data: digitized lunar geologic maps have already been used in a comparison with Galileo SSI observations of the Moon

Retelling a model story improves the narratives of Polish-English bilingual children

Reading and telling stories to children improves their narrative skills, which is well-documented for monolinguals, but not for bilinguals. We investigated whether bilingual narratives improve when the child is provided with a model story. We studied the narratives of Polish-English bilingual children (n = 75, mean age 5;7 years; months) raised in the UK. We elicited narratives through picture stories in two modes: told spontaneously and retold after a model provided by an adult experimenter. The bilinguals told and retold stories in Polish and English. The study combined a within-subject design, comparing the bilinguals’ two languages, and a between-subject design, comparing the stories told and retold in Polish by the bilinguals and by Polish age-matched monolinguals (n = 75). We investigated whether retelling might improve bilingual and monolingual storytelling to the same extent. In the stories, we assessed both the macrostructure (e.g. story structure and answered comprehension questions) and microstructure (e.g. type-token ratio). We found a positive effect of retelling for the macrostructure in both monolinguals and bilinguals (regardless of the language). As for the microstructure, when retelling, children told longer stories, regardless of the language (Polish, English) and group (bilingual, monolingual). We argue that retelling stories improves the narrative skills of bilinguals