The nomenclatural history of Fritillaria eduardii and the correct names of its varieties

Material of a new fritillary was mentioned in four publications by Eduard Regel in 1884, but he used different names for this material. In the first publication it was named Fritillaria eduardii, but in the following publications the material was described as two varieties of F. imperialis L., both odourless, one with purplish flowers and one with yellow or yellow-red flowers. Both colour varieties, but especially the latter, have been taken into cultivation. Morphological observations and crossing experiments have established that both varieties do not belong to F. imperialis and should be accommodated in F. eduardii. New names for these varieties are proposed, following E. Regel's intention as closely as possibl

The nomenclatural history of Fritillaria eduardii and the correct names of its varieties

Material of a new fritillary was mentioned in four publications by Eduard Regel in 1884, but he used different names for this material. In the first publication it was named Fritillaria eduardii, but in the following publications the material was described as two varieties of F. imperialis L., both odourless, one with purplish flowers and one with yellow or yellow-red flowers. Both colour varieties, but especially the latter, have been taken into cultivation. Morphological observations and crossing experiments have established that both varieties do not belong to F. imperialis and should be accommodated in F. eduardii. New names for these varieties are proposed, following E. Regel's intention as closely as possibl

The influence of hearing loss on cognitive control in an auditory conflict task: Behavioral and pupillometry findings

Purpose: The pupil dilation response is sensitive not only to auditory task demand but also to cognitive conflict. Conflict is induced by incompatible trials in auditory Stroop tasks in which participants have to identify the presentation location (left or right ear) of the words “left” or “right.” Previous studies demonstrated that the compatibility effect is reduced if the trial is preceded by another incompatible trial (conflict adaptation). Here, we investigated the influence of hearing status on cognitive conflict and conflict adaptation in an auditory Stroop task. Method: Two age-matched groups consisting of 32 normalhearing participants (Mage = 52 years, age range: 25–67 years) and 28 participants with hearing impairment (Mage = 52 years, age range: 23–64 years) performed an auditory Stroop task. We assessed the effects of hearing status and stimulus compatibility on reaction times (RTs) and pupil dilation responses. We furthermore analyzed the Pearson correlation coefficients between age, degree of hearing loss, and the compatibility effects on the RT and pupil response data across all participants. Results: As expected, the RTs were longer and pupil dilation was larger for incompatible relative to compatible trials. Furthermore, these effects were reduced for trials following incompatible (as compared to compatible) trials (conflict adaptation). No general effect of hearing status was observed, but the correlations suggested that higher age and a larger degree of hearing loss were associated with more interference of current incompatibility on RTs. Conclusions: Conflict processing and adaptation effects were observed on the RTs and pupil dilation responses in an auditory Stroop task. No general effects of hearing status were observed, but the correlations suggested that higher age and a greater degree of hearing loss were related to reduced conflict processing ability. The current study underlines the relevance of taking into account cognitive control and conflict adaptation processes

Effect of signal acquisition method on the fetal heart rate analysis with phase rectified signal averaging

Phase rectified signal averaging (PRSA) is increasingly used for fetal heart rate monitoring, both with traces acquired with external Doppler cardiotocography (D-FHR), and with transabdominal fetal electrocardiography (ta-FHR). However, it is unclear to what extend the acquisition method influences the PRSA analysis, whether results from using one acquisition method are comparable to those based on FHR acquired by the other method, and if not, which should be the preferred method. To address these questions, we applied PRSA analysis to 28 antepartum synchronous recordings of the fetal heart rate using simultaneously D-FHR and ta-FHR. The data included late-onset intrauterine growth restricted (IUGR) fetuses (n=20) and non-IUGR fetuses (n=8), all of them at gestation ≥34weeks. PRSA analysis depends on two parameters intrinsic to the algorithm, T and S. We analyzed the data using parameters that included all values adopted by other researchers previously (derived from a literature search in PubMed and Google Scholar). T and S were adjusted for the difference in acquisition techniques. We found that the correlation between PRSA analysis based on D-FHR and taFHR decreased with decreasing values of the PRSA parameters T and S. Therefore, the acquisition technique affects PRSA values for high resolution PRSA (low values of T and S). In conclusion, for low resolution PRSA, the results from both acquisition methods are comparable. Because ta-FHR signals provide beat to beat data and thus capture more subtle differences in the heart rate variation than D-FHR signals (pre-processed by commercial monitors), we assumed that ta-FHR may provide potentially valuable extra information compared to D-FHR. However, no parameter settings or acquisition method seemed to have diagnostic value for identifying the late-onset IUGR babies in our dataset