Memory experts: Visual Learning, wine tasting, orienteering and speech-reading.

In a large scale memory survey of people's belief about human memory one of the question asked was whether memory capacity could be improved by training like the strengthening of muscles by physical exercise. More than 90% of the respondents believed that memory can be trained. What does memory research tell us? In this chapter we discuss some areas of research relevant to the question of memory expertise that have not been widely discussed within this context. The research selected reflect the interest of the authors, and illustrates that expertise involves modifications at several levels of information processing, from the very specific superiority of basic perceptual discriminations to higher level visuospatial expertise of a more general nature, or permanent perceptual cognitive skills that involve language semantic knowledge. This will give us a broader perspective on expertise and enable us both to examine how different domain expertise produce specific outcomes and to answer some general questions

Energy information engagement among the poor: Predicting participation in a free workshop

© 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.Although one option for increasing low-income consumer knowledge regarding household energy use is the development of free or low-cost educational workshops, exactly how to promote attendance for such workshops remains an open question. Here we briefly outline results from a set of in-depth interviews with applicants to the Low-Income Energy Assistance Program in Durham County, NC, USA. Models predicting intended attendance at workshops or community meetings suggested that factors such as utility costs, social norms, perceived ability to plan ahead, and perceived accessibility of energy information all matter more than one's general attitude toward energy workshop attendance. Many respondents expressed interest in energy education materials and faced challenging utility costs, but meeting attendance appears to be constrained by the everyday life obstacles of the poor

Penicillin biosynthesis: active substrates derived by methoxy substitution in the valinyl residue of the natural substrate

The structure-reactivity profile of tripeptides modified by methoxy substitution in the valinyl moiety of M-(α-aminoadipoyl)-L-cysteinyl-D-valine with the enzyme isopenicillin N synthase has been examined; substrate bulk and absolute configuration at the oxygen-substituted carbon were found to play crucial roles in determining substrate reactivity