Maine History Bibliographical Guide Series

Maine History Bibliographical Guide Serie

Working memory constellations

Evidence is presented that supports the view that most models of short-term memory cannot account for the flexibility of the primary memory system. It is argued that the working memory model outlined by Baddeley and Hitch (1974) is, however, a potentially adequate model. Working memory, in this thesis, is depicted as a system that assembles 'constellations' consisting of the central executive and one or more sub-systems. This view suggests a formulation that is considerably more complex than the 1974 model. The empirical studies examine the role of the visuo-spatial scratch pad in the formation and maintenance of working memory constellations. It is concluded from these studies that the scratch pad is independent of the articulatory loop but is usually coupled to the central executive except during maintenance rehearsal. Furthermore, it can be used concurrently with the articulatory loop to process spatial aspects of highly verbal tasks. However a constellation consisting of the executive, the loop and the scratch pad is vulnerable to a wider range of interference effects than a simpler constellation. Paivio (1971) suggested that 'dual coding' leads to better memory performance, however, this is only the case when no distractors are present. The final two chapters present some speculations on how working memory research might proceed in the future. It is concluded that the current trend towards collecting convergent evidence and the emphasis on testing theory in applied situations should give us insights into memory that were not available to Ebbinghaus and other early memory researchers

Preface

The Preface provides an overview of the contents of the issue

The Chaos of Katrina: A Nonlinear Analysis of Federal Logistics Support during Hurricane Katrina Relief Operations

This thesis presents a case study of federal logistics support during Hurricane Katrina disaster relief operations. Data from federal contracts covering the first 10 weeks of Katrina are used to measure federal logistics activity. The study investigates whether chaos theory, part of complexity science, can extract information from Katrina contracting data to help managers make better logistics decisions during disaster relief operations. The study uses three analytical techniques: embedding, fitting the data to a logistic equation, and plotting the limit-cycle. Embedding and fitting a logistic equation to the data were used to test for deterministic chaos. The logistic equation and two versions of the limit-cycle model developed by Priesmeyer, Baik, and Cole were also tested as potential management tools. The study found that deterministic chaos was present during the first week of disaster relief, but that results for subsequent weeks were inconclusive, possibly due to internal changes to the relief dynamics. The thesis concludes that initial conditions and early actions will have a significant affect on disaster relief outcomes. Furthermore, many events that appear to be uncontrollable and random may actually be controllable. Therefore, managers play a critical role in preparing for and providing guidance in the early stages of disaster relief

Gerald Alter, Professor Emeritus, Biochemistry and Molecular Biology

Kathy Morris interviewed Gerald Alter on August 25, 2022 about his time as a Professor in Biochemistry and Molecular Biology at Wright State University. Alter discusses his early life, education, and his work at Wright State University

Computational purification of individual tumor gene expression profiles leads to significant improvements in prognostic prediction.

Tumor heterogeneity is a limiting factor in cancer treatment and in the discovery of biomarkers to personalize it. We describe a computational purification tool, ISOpure, to directly address the effects of variable normal tissue contamination in clinical tumor specimens. ISOpure uses a set of tumor expression profiles and a panel of healthy tissue expression profiles to generate a purified cancer profile for each tumor sample and an estimate of the proportion of RNA originating from cancerous cells. Applying ISOpure before identifying gene signatures leads to significant improvements in the prediction of prognosis and other clinical variables in lung and prostate cancer