Forbidden fruit (and vegies)

I am interested in macro-photography, particularly in the ways that natural objects or substances, when viewed at close range, are transformed into intriguing abstract patterns or conjure unfamiliar worlds. My favourite subjects for this are bark, sand, rock and snow, and, to a lesser degree, flowers and fruit. The colours, textures and shapes of the everyday things we take for granted or simply pass without noticing can become fascinatingly alive

Choice Response Time Differences between Recently Recovered Concussed and Healthy Student-Athletes

Some 1.6 to 3.8 million sports-related concussions occur annually in the United States. Utilization of test batteries and exercise protocols are recommended to ensure athletes recover completely. Many batteries involve response time (RT) tests, which show response time increases post concussion. A major limitation of RT tests is that all are done in static position. Additionally, many studies show a lingering effect on RT. The addition of RT tests to check for lingering symptoms could be beneficial. The purpose of this study was to see if significant differences could be found in RT tests involving dynamic movement between healthy studentathletes and those recently recovered from a concussion. Sixteen student athletes from a major southeastern university were recruited; half were healthy studentathletes (HSA), and half were recently recovered student-athletes (RRSA) from a concussion. Both groups were tested on two random choice response time tasks with dynamic movement using Quickboard (LLC, Memphis, TN). The first task, a delayed choice response time task was done with a 3-5 s delay after each stimulus; the second task was a continuous choice response time task. There were no significant differences between the two groups for either test. In the delayed choice response time task, (U=31, p=0.916), RRSA mean time was 0.68 ± 0.067 s; HSA mean time was 0.70 ± 0.068 s. In the continuous choice response time task (U=25, p=0.401), RRSA mean time was 21.63 ± 2.46 s and HSA mean time was 20.86 ± 2.92 s. There were no errors in the delayed choice response time task. Errors were made in the continuous choice response time task, but with no significant differences (U=27, p=0.765). RRSA mean error rate was 0.75 + 1.43 s; HSA mean error rate was 0.875 ± 0.99 s. This study tested RRSA when deemed fully recovered. One reason RT may be similar is that university officials didn’t allow RRSA to be tested until recovered, therefore response times could have recovered. Previous studies were done within a week of their concussions. Another reason was the low statistical power. It’s possible a larger sample size could lead to a statistical difference

Finkelstein Report: Volume of media vitriol in inverse proportion to amount of evidence

Commentary: After all the overheated rhetoric over the Finkelstein Report, it may be an anti-climax to know that the key issue is the right of reply, or the right of redress, to those who feel they have been misrepresented in the news. Such processes are now done through self-regulation by the Australian Press Council, while the Finkelstein Report sees this as insufficiently effective and recommends a government-funded statutory agency

The intelligibility of Nigerian English.

The aim of this investigation was to measure the intelligibility of educated Nigerian speakers of English to British listeners and to analyse the main causes of intelligibility failure. The test material consisted of the following: I- Connected Speech, II - Reading Passage, III - Phonemes, IVA - Stress, IVB - Intonation. The speech of 24 Nigerian first-year university students - 12 Yoruba and 12 Hausa speakers - was recorded. An RP speaker was also recorded. The-recordings were played to 240 British listeners, each Nigerian speaker being assessed by 10 British listeners. A scoring system was devised for the tests of Connected Speech. The intelligibility scores ranged from 92.7% to 29.9%, with a mean score of 64.4%. The RP speaker's score (based on all 240 listeners) was 99.4%. Listeners' impressionistic judgements of the speakers' intelligibility correlated closely with the scores obtained on Test I. The most intelligible Nigerian speaker was 93% as efficient as the RP speaker, the mean Nigerian speaker was 65% as efficient, and the least intelligible Nigerian speaker 30% as efficient as the RP speaker. Test I- Connected Speech - was taken as the criterion of fundamental importance in assessing intelligibility. The other tests were regarded as subsidiary. - It was found that Connected Speech was significantly correlated with Reading and Stress, but not with the tests of Phonemes and Intonation. Partial correlation analyses showed that stress is the major component of all aspects of intelligibility. The errors leading to intelligibility failure were categorised into four groupings: - rhythmic/stress, segmental, phonotactic, lexical/syntactic. Rhythmic/stress errors (38.2% for all speakers) were the major cause of intelligibility failure. This was closely followed by segmental errors (33.0%). Phonotactic errors (20.00) were of lesser importance, while lexical/syntactic errors (8.8%) were of minor importance. Details of the actual phonetic errors are summarised in Chapters 11-13. The study concludes with some observations on the testing and teaching of oral English in the light of these findings

Imagerie des affections infectieuses inflammatoires vertébrales des chevaux

L’anatomie de la colonne vertébrale des chevaux et les grands principes des différentes modalités d’imagerie médicale sont présentés dans les deux premières parties de cette étude bibliographique afin de mieux comprendre et interpréter les lésions provoquées par les affections infectieuses inflammatoires vertébrales des chevaux. La troisième partie correspond à une synthèse des rares cas de discospondylites et d’ostéomyélites vertébrales rapportés dans la littérature scientifique. Ces affections sont dues à une dissémination sanguine d’un germe suite à une infection systémique ou à une inoculation directe de germe suite à un traumatisme. Les signes cliniques relevés sont souvent peu spécifiques et dépendent généralement du germe responsable (Streptococcus sp. Staphylococcus sp., Rhodococcus equi, Eikenella corrodens, ...). Le recours aux techniques d’imagerie médicale se révèle donc primordial pour le diagnostic de ces affections vertébrales. La technique la plus utilisée est la radiographie, elle permet de mettre en évidence des lésions osseuses telles que des zones d’ostéolyse, de sclérose et éventuellement d’ostéoprolifération. Leur localisation au niveau des disques intervertébraux ou des processus épineux est souvent pathognomonique. Toutefois ces signes apparaissent tardivement, une quinzaine de jours après le début des signes cliniques, et ne permettent pas d’évaluer toutes les lésions. Il est donc intéressant d’associer la radiographie à d’autres techniques d’imagerie. La scintigraphie est rarement disponible dans les cliniques équines ; elle est pourtant très utile pour dénombrer et localiser les lésions par l’apparition de zones d’hyperfixation du produit radioactif préalablement injecté. L’utilisation de l’échographie permet d’examiner les surfaces osseuses et les tissus mous, et notamment d’objectiver la présence d’abcès ou de collections liquidiennes. Enfin, lors de l’apparition de signes nerveux, il peut être intéressant de réaliser une myélographie afin de localiser d’éventuelles zones de compression de la moelle spinale

NMR in rapidly rotated metals

Although this thesis is concerned solely with nuclear magnetic resonance, it may be divided into two parts. One part deals with a series of measurements on the NMR parameters of several pure metal powders, namely aluminium, cadmium, niobium and vanadium, and in particular the effect on their resonance spectra of rapid macroscopic sample rotation at the 'magic angle'. The other part relates measurements of spin-lattice relaxation time as a function of temperature for the three solid cuprous halides. By spinning at high speeds a significant narrowing of the resonance lineshape has been achieved in the case of cadium and aluminium. This has enabled precise determinations of their isotropic Knight shifts to be made. For cadmium the width of the residual symmetric central spectrum has been used to obtain an estimate of the magnitude of the indirect electron coupled exchange interaction. Complete narrowing of the aluminium resonance line requires rotation rates in excess of 8 kHz. To this end it has been necessary to develop a new rotor system capable of carrying small metal samples at extremely high spinning rates. In connection with the work on aluminium, pure powder specimens have been prepared which exhibit values of second moment and dipolar relaxation time that agree well with theory. This is in contradiction to the results obtained from filed powders and those recorded by all other workers. Below room temperature the form of the T1 results obtained from the cuprous halides is in accord with the theory of Raman quadrupole relaxation. However theoretical T1 values, as derived from the simple Raman two-phonon mechanism in an ionic crystal lattice, fail to give quantitative agreement with experiment