bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Projected climate change in Australian marine and freshwater environments
Authors: Hobday Alistair J. , Lough Janice M.
Published: September 2011

Changes in the physical environment of aquatic systems consistent with climate change have been reported across Australia, with impacts on many marine and freshwater species. The future state of aquatic environments can be estimated by extrapolation of historical trends. However, because the climate is a complex non-linear system, a more process-based approach is probably required, in particular the use of dynamical projections using climate models. Because global climate models operate on spatial scales that typically are too coarse for aquatic biologists, statistical or dynamical downscaling of model output is proposed. Challenges in using climate projections exist; however, projections for some marine and freshwater systems are possible. Higher oceanic temperatures are projected around Australia, particularly for south-eastern Australia. The East Australia Current is projected to transport greater volumes of water southward, whereas the Leeuwin Current on the western coast may weaken. On land, projections suggest that air temperatures will rise and rainfall will decline across much of Australia in coming decades. Together, these changes will result in reduced runoff and hence reduced stream flow and lake storage. Present climate models are particularly limited with regard to coastal and freshwater systems, making the models challenging to use for biological-impact and adaptation studies.
Climate-change threats to native fish in degraded rivers and floodplains of the Murray–Darling Basin, Australia
Authors: Balcombe Stephen R. , Sheldon Fran , Capon Samantha J. , Bond Nick R. , Hadwen Wade L. , Marsh Nick , Bernays Sofie J.
Published: September 2011

Many aquatic ecosystems have been severely degraded by water-resource development affecting flow regimes and biological connectivity. Freshwater fish have been particularly affected by these changes and climate change will place further stress on them. The Murray–Darling Basin (MDB), Australia, represents a highly affected aquatic system with dramatically modified flow regimes. This has impaired the health of its rivers, and potentially limited the adaptive capacity of its biota to respond to a changing climate. Here, we present our predictions of the potential impacts of climate change on 18 native fish species across their distributional ranges against the back-drop of past and continuing water-resource development (WRD). Because most of these species are found across a wide range of geographical and hydrological settings, we classified the MDB into 10 regions to account for likely variation in climate-change effects, on the basis of latitude, elevation and WRD. Cold water-tolerant species will be under greater stress than are warm water-tolerant species. In some regions, the negative impacts on exotic fish such as trout are likely to improve current conditions for native species. Because the impacts of climate change on any given species are likely to vary from region to region, regional fish assemblages will also be differentially affected. The most affected region is likely to occur in the highly disturbed Lower Murray River region, whereas the dryland rivers that are less affected in the northern MDB are likely to remain largely unchanged. Although climate change is a current and future threat to the MDB fish fauna, the continued over-regulation of water resources will place as much, if not more, stress on the remnant fish species.
Climate change and Australian marine and freshwater environments, fishes and fisheries: synthesis and options for adaptation
Authors: Koehn John D. , Hobday Alistair J. , Pratchett Morgan S. , Gillanders Bronwyn M.
Published: September 2011

Anthropogenic climate change is already apparent and will have significant, ongoing impacts on Australian fishes and their habitats. Even with immediate actions to reduce greenhouse gases, there will be sustained environmental changes. Therefore, it is necessary to consider appropriate adaptations to minimise detrimental impacts for both fishes and the human populations that utilise them. Climate change will have a range of direct effects on the physiology, fitness, and survivorship of Australia’s marine, estuarine and freshwater fishes, but also indirect effects via habitat degradation and changes to ecosystems. Effects will differ across populations, species and ecosystems, with some impacts being complex and causing unexpected outcomes. The range of adaptation options and necessary levels of intervention to maintain populations and ecosystem function will largely depend on the vulnerability of species and habitats. Climate change will also have an impact on people who depend on fishes for food or livelihoods; adapting to a new climate regime will mean trade-offs between biological assets and socioeconomic drivers. Models can be used to help predict trends and set priorities; however, they must be based on the best available science and data, and include fisheries, environmental, socioeconomic and political layers to support management actions for adaptation.
Integrated NY-ESO-1 antibody and CD8+T-cell responses correlate with clinical benefit in advanced melanoma patients treated with ipilimumab
Authors: Yuan Jianda , Adamow Matthew , Ginsberg Brian A. , Rasalan Teresa S. , Ritter Erika , Gallardo Humilidad F. , Xu Yinyan , Pogoriler Evelina , Terzulli Stephanie L. , Kuk Deborah , Panageas Katherine S. , Ritter Gerd , Sznol Mario , Halaban Ruth , Jungbluth Achim A. , Allison James P. , Old Lloyd J. , Wolchok Jedd D. , Gnjatic Sacha
Published: September 2011

Ipilimumab, a monoclonal antibody against cytotoxic T lymphocyte antigen 4 (CTLA-4), has been shown to improve survival in patients with advanced metastatic melanoma. It also enhances immunity to NY-ESO-1, a cancer/testis antigen expressed in a subset of patients with melanoma. To characterize the association between immune response and clinical outcome, we first analyzed NY-ESO-1 serum antibody by ELISA in 144 ipilimumab-treated patients with melanoma and found 22 of 140 (16%) seropositive at baseline and 31 of 144 (22%) seropositive following treatment. These NY-ESO-1–seropositive patients had a greater likelihood of experiencing clinical benefit 24 wk after ipilimumab treatment than NY-ESO-1–seronegative patients (P= 0.02, relative risk = 1.8, two-tailed Fisher test). To understand why some patients with NY-ESO-1 antibody failed to experience clinical benefit, we analyzed NY-ESO-1–specific CD4+and CD8+T-cell responses by intracellular multicytokine staining in 20 NY-ESO-1–seropositive patients and found a surprising dissociation between NY-ESO-1 antibody and CD8 responses in some patients. NY-ESO-1–seropositive patients with associated CD8+T cells experienced more frequent clinical benefit (10 of 13; 77%) than those with undetectable CD8+T-cell response (one of seven; 14%;P= 0.02; relative risk = 5.4, two-tailed Fisher test), as well as a significant survival advantage (P= 0.01; hazard ratio = 0.2, time-dependent Cox model). Together, our data suggest that integrated NY-ESO-1 immune responses may have predictive value for ipilimumab treatment and argue for prospective studies in patients with established NY-ESO-1 immunity. The current findings provide a strong rationale for the clinical use of modulators of immunosuppression with concurrent approaches to favor tumor antigen-specific immune responses, such as vaccines or adoptive transfer, in patients with cancer.
Hepatocyte entry leads to degradation of autoreactive CD8 T cells
Authors: Benseler Volker , Warren Alessandra , Vo Michelle , Holz Lauren E. , Tay Szun S. , Le Couteur David G. , Breen Eamon , Allison Anthony C. , van Rooijen Nico , McGuffog Claire , Schlitt Hans J. , Bowen David G. , McCaughan Geoffrey W. , Bertolino Patrick
Published: September 2011

Although most self-reactive T cells are eliminated in the thymus, mechanisms to inactivate or control T cells specific for extrathymic antigens are required and exist in the periphery. By investigating the site in which autoreactive T cells are tolerized, we identify a unique mechanism of peripheral deletion in which naïve autoreactive CD8 T cells are rapidly eliminated in the liver after intrahepatic activation. T cells actively invade hepatocytes, enter endosomal/lysosomal compartments, and are degraded. Blockade of this process leads to accumulation of autoreactive CD8 T cells in the liver and breach of tolerance, with the development of autoimmune hepatitis. Cell into cell invasion, or emperipolesis, is a long-observed phenomenon for which a physiological role has not been previously demonstrated. We propose that this “suicidal emperipolesis” is a unique mechanism of autoreactive T-cell deletion, a process critical for the maintenance of tolerance.
Thermodynamics of phase formation in the quantum critical metal Sr
3
Ru
2
O
7
Authors: Rost A. W. , Grigera S. A. , Bruin J. A. N. , Perry R. S. , Tian D. , Raghu S. , Kivelson Steven Allan , Mackenzie A. P.
Published: September 2011

The behavior of matter near zero temperature continuous phase transitions, or “quantum critical points” is a central topic of study in condensed matter physics. In fermionic systems, fundamental questions remain unanswered: the nature of the quantum critical regime is unclear because of the apparent breakdown of the concept of the quasiparticle, a cornerstone of existing theories of strongly interacting metals. Even less is known experimentally about the formation of ordered phases from such a quantum critical “soup.” Here, we report a study of the specific heat across the phase diagram of the model system Sr
3
Ru
2
O
7
, which features an anomalous phase whose transport properties are consistent with those of an electronic nematic. We show that this phase, which exists at low temperatures in a narrow range of magnetic fields, forms directly from a quantum critical state, and contains more entropy than mean-field calculations predict. Our results suggest that this extra entropy is due to remnant degrees of freedom from the highly entropic state above
T

c

. The associated quantum critical point, which is “concealed” by the nematic phase, separates two Fermi liquids, neither of which has an identifiable spontaneously broken symmetry, but which likely differ in the topology of their Fermi surfaces.
Border Disputes and Disputed Borders: Border Disputes and Disputed Borders in the Soviet Federal System
Authors: Birch Julian
Published: September 2011

While the national question in the USSR has received much attention in terms both of the regime's ideological approach to it and the nationalist response to that approach, the issue of the actual minority territories created in the period from the 1920s to the 1940s has attracted little attention in recent times. Disputes over the external frontier aspects of some of these territories have certainly become familiar, as in the case of the Baltic states and Moldavia, but it is less widely appreciated that disputed borders were created, and continue to exist, within the USSR itself. A number of factors may account for this. In the first place, frequent disdain has been shown in Western emigre writings toward the very relevance of the Soviet federal system and its division of the country into units based either on ethnic composition or on administratively convenient populations. So readily have these divisions been bypassed by the Communist Party's own organization, the KGB, the military, the economic planning organs, major industrial enterprises and combines, and, increasingly, the legal apparatus, that it seemed legitimate to accord the system little import. Then again, with the passage of time, it has come to be taken almost for granted that such boundaries as have been established are correctly and irrevocably drawn to delineate the peoples therein. Finally, it has often been assumed, not least by Soviet officialdom itself, that the borders are destined to prove more and more irrelevant in an era of increasing personal mobility, urbanization, industralization, mass communications, and, most especially, of progress toward the goal of full communism. Nevertheless, despite the opportunities afforded by the change of constitution in 1977 to eradicate them, the territorial units remain, along with the problems they create, many now of longstanding.
National Sentiment and Migration in Soviet Central Asia
Authors: Gleason Gregory
Published: September 2011

The Program of the CPSU adopted at the 27th Party Congress (1986) included a guarded reference to the nationality question. It observed that the “nationality question, as it has been inheritedfrom the past, has been successfully solved.” This reference to nationality problems as a remnant of the fading capitalist past was not designed to suggest that problems of a national character have ceased to exist in the Soviet Union today. Gorbachev made this point to the Congress delegates noting: “Our achievements should not create the impression that there are no complications in nationality processes. The contradictions characteristic of all development are unavoidable in this sphere as well.” The violent outbursts of a national character in Kazakhstan in December 1986 provide fresh evidence that ethnic tensions lurk just beneath the surface. These tensions have been held in check largely by the threat of reprisals from central authorities who have regarded meaningful expressions of nationalism as treasonous.
The Controversy over Former Uniate Property in Interwar Poland
Authors: Chojnowski Andrej
Published: September 2011

National relations in the Second Republic contained a number of problems which throughout the entire interwar period did not find an appropriate solution. Among those was the question of the Orthodox Church in Poland. Although its believers comprised over 11 percent of the country's population, up to 1938 the Polish authorities did not legally regulate the organizational and material situation of the Orthodox Church in Poland, which was founded as a unit independent of the Russian Orthodox Church after the proclamation of an autocephalous status in 1922.
Pragmatic Schemas and Conditional Reasoning in Children
Authors: Girotto Vittorio , Light Paul , Colbourn Christopher
Published: September 2011

Solving problems involving conditional relationships has been postulated to play a central role in the development of deductive reasoning, which itself underpins much cognitive developmental theory. The traditional Piagetian and “natural logic” approaches to this topic have more recently been challenged by findings that are more readily explained in terms of the concept of pragmatic schemas. On this basis it was predicted that even young “pre-formal” children would be able to succeed in a Reduced Array Selection Task if the test statement (referring to a previously told story about bees living in a hive) was couched in such a way as to evoke an authorization or permission schema. This proved to be the case in the present study involving 54 nine- and ten-year-old children: The permission condition elicited 70% globally correct solutions, compared to the 11% elicited by the formal control condition. Moreover, this facilitatory effect of the permission condition carried over to a second trial conducted in a standard way across all the conditions.
Conditional Reasoning, Representation, and Empirical Evidence on a Concrete Task
Authors: Markovits Henry
Published: September 2011

This study examined interactions between empirical data, internal representations, and reasoning performance on a conditional reasoning task using a concrete apparatus. Subjects were asked an initial series of questions in order to determine the pattern of inferences they made after simple exposure to the apparatus. They were subsequently shown two different experimental manipulations designed to provide data about the internal structure of the apparatus without giving information about specific inferences. Some subjects did change their reasoning in response to the new data, although most remained stable throughout the experiment. These results are consistent with the idea that reasoning may require generation of an internal representation of a problem space. It was also concluded that the relation between reasoning and empirical evidence cannot be understood without supposing that evidence is often interpreted by subjects according to their reasoning patterns.
Biscriptal Interference: A Study of English and Japanese
Authors: Briggs Pamela , Goryo Ken
Published: September 2011

It was once assumed that alphabetic, syllabic, and logographic scripts could be clearly differentiated in terms of their respective processing demands, but recent evidence suggests that, as visual stimuli, they all draw upon common “configurational” processing resources. Two experiments are reported which address this issue. Both employ cross-lingual interference paradigms, with the rationale that competition for limited processing resources will be reflected in the degree of interference generated when two scripts are presented simultaneously. The experiments differ in terms of task requirements, the first being a word-naming task, biased towards reliance upon the more rule-based decoding skills; whereas the second is a colour naming task, with a more configurational bias. In the first study, the locus of the interference effect was clearly pre-lexical, and interference was only generated by those scripts that could feasibly draw upon grapheme-phoneme correspondence rules. No interference was generated by logographs that could be accessed “directly” without recourse to any prelexical phonological code. In the second study, the locus of interference was twofold: early in processing, as a result of competition for configurational processes, and later, phonological output competition prior to articulation. These results clearly demonstrate major differences in the ways in which logographic, syllabic, and alphabetic scripts are processed.
The Role of Colour in Categorial Judgements
Authors: Davidoff J. B. , Ostergaard A. L.
Published: September 2011

Two experiments are reported that extend the findings of Ostergaard and Davidoff (1985) on the role of colour in object processing. Two types of categorial judgements were investigated from pictorial stimuli: size judgement and living/non-living classifications. The effect of real size on size judgements (Paivio, 1975) was replicated. It was found that colour did not affect either of the categorial judgements, but the facilitation occurring in object naming tasks was confirmed. It is argued that semantic judgements can precede name retrieval, that physical colour input does not enter the semantic system, and that the representation of object colour information in the semantic system may be largely verbal.
Fractionated Reaction Time and the Rate of Force Development
Authors: Siegel Donald
Published: September 2011

The relationship between the rate of force development and components of fractionated reaction time were investigated in the present study. Subjects ( N=9) were administered extensive practice before being required to produce 98N of isometric force on a hand dynamometer at a maximal rate, at 20% slower than maximal, and at 40% slower than maximal. Repeated measures analysis of variance followed by non-orthogonal Dunn planned comparisons demonstrated that pre-motor time and reaction time increased as similar peak forces were produced over longer durations. No significant differences in motor times were revealed. These data suggested that the manner in which force is expressed relates to the complexity of motor programming. The increased requirement of coordinating alpha-gamma coactivation, as well as the increased need for rate coding as a process underlying force development at slower contraction rates, are discussed in relation to programming complexity.
Cross-Domain Semantic Priming in Normal Subjects and a Prosopagnosic Patient
Authors: Young Andrew W. , Hellawell Deborah , De Haan Edward H. F.
Published: September 2011

Cross-domain semantic priming of person recognition (from face primes to name targets at 500msecs SOA) is investigated in normal subjects and a brain-injured patient (PH) with a very severe impairment of overt face recognition ability. Experiment 1 demonstrates equivalent semantic priming effects for normal subjects from face primes to name targets (cross-domain priming) and from name primes to name targets (within-domain priming). Experiment 2 demonstrates cross-domain semantic priming effects from face primes that PH cannot recognize overtly. Experiment 3 shows that cross-domain semantic priming effects can be found for normal subjects when target names are repeated across all conditions. This (repeated targets) method is then used in Experiment 4 to establish that PH shows equivalent semantic priming to normal subjects from face primes which he is very poor at identifying overtly and from name primes which he can identify overtly. These findings demonstrate that automatic aspects of face recognition can remain intact even when all sense of overt recognition has been lost.
Evidence against a Predictive Role for Rhythm in Speech Perception
Authors: Mens Lucas H. , Povel Dirk-Jan
Published: September 2011

Some languages create the impression of being stress timed. Claims have been made that this timing of stressed syllables enables the listener to predict the future locations of informative parts later in a sentence. The fact that phoneme monitoring is delayed when targets in a spoken sentence are displaced has been taken as supporting this claim (Meltzer, Martin, Bergfeld Mills, Imhoff and Zohar, 1976). In the present study temporal displacement was induced without introducing phonetic discontinuities. In Dutch sentences a word just in advance of a target-bearing word was replaced by another one differing in length. Results show that the temporal displacement per se did not have any effect on phoneme-monitoring reaction times. Implications for a theory of speech processing are discussed.
Access to Spoken Language and the Acquisition of Orthographic Structure: Evidence from Deaf Readers
Authors: Hanson Vicki L.
Published: September 2011

Sensitivity to two types of orthographic structure was investigated: linguistically based orthographic regularity and summed single letter positional frequency. Deaf college students were found to make use of positional frequency information no less than hearing college students; however, the extent to which they made use of orthographic regularities in word recognition was related to their speech production skills. In one task, subjects were presented nonword letter strings for short durations, each followed by a masking stimulus and a target letter. They were asked to indicate whether or not the target had been present in the letter string. It was found that the accuracy of deaf subjects with good speech, like that of hearing subjects, was considerably greater for orthographically regular than irregular strings. In contrast, the accuracy of deaf subjects with poor speech was much less related to orthographic regularity. In a second task, in which subjects made judgements about how word-like various letter strings appeared, the judgements of the hearing subjects were more influenced by regularity than those of deaf subjects with poor speech. These results are discussed in terms of how expertise in speech relates to appreciation of orthographic regularity.
Joint Effects of Semantic Priming and Repetition in a Lexical Decision Task: Implications for a Model of Lexical Access
Authors: Wilding John
Published: September 2011

An experiment is reported which showed that in a lexical decision task semantic priming by a related preceding word and repetition of target words produce additive effects on decision latency. Previous models of lexical access and modifications of them are discussed, and it is argued that some such models predict an interaction of priming and repetition, while others are insufficiently precise to make a prediction. It is suggested that the generality of effects across tasks requiring lexical access must be established and the components of complex effects must be separated before an adequate model can be devised to account for the data.
Visuo-Spatial Processing in Working Memory
Authors: Logie Robert H.
Published: September 2011

This paper reports four experiments designed to develop a simple technique for the study of visuo-spatial processing within the working memory framework (Baddeley and Hitch, 1974). Experiment 1 involved the matching of successively presented random matrix patterns, as a secondary visual suppression task. This was coupled with rote rehearsal or a visual imagery mnemonic for learning lists of concrete words presented auditorily. Although memory performance with matching dropped overall, the visual mnemonic was differentially affected. Experiment 2 removed the matching decision, with visual presentation of unattended patterns. There was no overall effect of the unattended material, but use of the visual mnemonic was significantly affected. Experiment 3 replicated this result with simpler plain coloured squares as the unattended material.

In Experiment 4, for one group, the unattended material consisted of line drawings of common objects. For a second group, the lists of words for recall were presented visually, with or without unattended speech. The results suggested that unattended pictures disrupt use of a visual mnemonic, while unattended speech disrupts rote rehearsal.

These results suggest that unattended visual material has privileged access to the mechanism(s) involved in short-term visuo-spatial processing and storage. They also suggest that use of a concurrent visual matching task or of unattended visual material may provide tractable techniques for investigating this aspect of cognitive function within the context of working memory.
Some Observed Differences in Degree of Concentration and Their Effects on Shadowing
Authors: Barr Robin A. , Kapadnis Chandrashekhar D.
Published: September 2011

Three shadowing experiments investigated the hypothesis that difficulties in concentration are caused by internal factors as well as by the novelty, intensity or salience of background events. On the last trial of each experiment, a background message, which subjects had been instructed to ignore, changed unexpectedly. Most subjects noticed these changes and were disrupted by them (Experiments 1, 2 and 3). A smaller number of “concentrators” reported that they were unaware the changes had taken place. These concentrators were less disrupted by the background message than the non-concentrators both on the last trial and on earlier dichotic trials (Experiments 1 and 3). However, even concentrators were momentarily disrupted by the background changes (Experiment 3). Increased attended task difficulty increases the likelihood that subjects will fail to notice the changes (Experiment 2). The results support the view that good concentration consists in the ability to keep distracting events from consciousness.
Naming and Categorizing Faces and Written Names
Authors: Young Andrew W. , McWeeny Kathryn H. , Ellis Andrew W. , Hay Dennis C.
Published: September 2011

In naming and categorization tasks, subjects were able to name aloud written names faster than photographs of faces, but were usually able to classify faces on familiarity (Experiment 1) or occupation (Experiments 2, 3 and 4) faster than written names. Faces were categorized faster than they were named, but written names were named faster than they could be categorized. Experiment 5 showed that familiar names were named more quickly than “rearranged” names made by exchanging the first and second names of familiar people.

This pattern of findings is consistent with the view that faces can only access name (phonological) codes via an intervening semantic representation, whereas written names can access semantic and name codes in parallel. In this respect, faces show properties similar to those of other visual objects, despite a priori reasons why this might not have been expected to be the case.
Visual and Auditory Recognition of Prefixed Words
Authors: Taft Marcus , Hambly Gail , Kinoshita Sachiko
Published: September 2011

The involvement of stem storage and prefix stripping in the recognition of spoken and printed prefixed words was examined. In both an auditory and a visual lexical decision experiment, it was found that prefixed nonwords were more difficult to classify as nonwords than were non-prefixed nonwords. This difference was larger, though, when the “stem” of the nonword was a genuine stem in English (e.g., dejoice versus tejoice) than when it was not (e.g., dejouse versus tejouse). The results suggest that prefixed words are recognized via a representation of their stem after the prefix has been removed, and this is true regardless of the modality of presentation of the word. Implications are considered for the Cohort model of spoken word recognition.
Bilingual Lexical Representation: The Status of Spanish-English Cognates
Authors: Cristoffanini Paula , Kirsner Kim , Milech Dan
Published: September 2011

Two experiments were conducted to determine the functional status of cognates. Two hypotheses were considered. According to the first hypothesis, language is a critical feature governing lexical organization, and cognates may therefore be equated with morphologically unrelated translations. According to a second hypothesis, however, language is not a critical feature governing lexical organization. Instead, the boundaries between perceptual categories are determined by morphological considerations, and cognates may therefore be equated with intra-lingual variations such as inflections and derivations. If the first hypothesis is correct, cognate performance should follow that observed for translations, but if the second hypothesis is correct, cognate performance should follow that observed for inflections and derivations.

The experiments used different procedures in order to discount taskspecific explanations. The first experiment involved repetition priming in a lexical decision task, and emphasis was placed on relative priming; that is, on the amount of facilitation which occurs when, for example, OBEDIENCIA primes OBEDIENCE, expressed as a fraction of the amount of facilitation that occurs when the same word is presented on each occasion (i.e., when OBEDIENCE is used to prime OBEDIENCE). The second experiment tested memory for language. Four types of cognates were tested. These were: orthographically identical cognates, regular cognates with cion/tion substitution, regular cognates with dad/ty substitution, and irregularly derived cognates.

The results were unequivocal. The priming values observed previously for cognates were qualitatively and quantitatively similar to those observed for inflections and derivations, and this classification was confirmed in the second experiment, involving memory for language. The results are consistent with the general proposition that morphology rather than language governs the boundaries between perceptual categories, and a number of specific explanations are reviewed.
Effects of Time of Day and Information Importance on Adults’ Memory for a Short Story
Authors: Oakhill Jane
Published: September 2011

An experiment is reported that tested subjects’ memory for information in a short story, either immediately after hearing the story or after a delay of one week. The story was presented, and the subjects tested, either in the morning or in the afternoon. The results showed that, although there was no overall effect of time of day of presentation on recall, relatively more important information from the story was recalled after a delay following presentation in the late afternoon, and more unimportant information following original presentation in the morning. The time of day of the delayed recall test did not have any effect on performance.
Short-Term Storage and the Processing of Cohesion during Reading
Authors: Fischer Beth , Glanzer Murray
Published: September 2011

Four studies examine the role of short-term storage in the processing of grammatical cohesion devices (reference and conjunction) during reading. They demonstrate that short-term storage carries specific information that resolves reference and conjunction relations demanded by text. They also show that during reading, if short-term storage is unimpaired, these linkages produce smooth, efficient performance. If, however, short-term storage is cleared of its contents with a distractor task, reading is disrupted. The extent of the disruption is determined, in part, by the linkage demands of the text. It is theorized that this occurs because resolution of linkage takes place in short-term storage. Both indirect and direct evidence is also obtained that short-term storage is carrying higher-order thematic information. The first three studies demonstrate that a range of distractor tasks produces the basic results. The fourth study compares the effects of different distractor tasks and permits the specification of different types of information held in short-term storage during reading. A linear model of the process is fitted to the data. It assigns time values to four factors that determine the rate of reading.
The Modality Effect and Articulation
Authors: Gathercole Susan E.
Published: September 2011

The two experiments reported in this paper investigate the influences of irrelevant articulation on the modality effect in serial recall. Subjects performed a post-list distractor task, which involved generating a well-learned alphabetic sequence for five seconds. The modality effect was impaired when subjects vocalized the letters aloud, but was unaffected by whether the sequence was silently mouthed or silently written. These results show that the modality effect does not arise from the contribution of an articulatory code to recall of the most recent auditory items. They also question the functional equivalence of recency effects for auditory, mouthed and lipread stimuli. On the basis of these and other findings, a multi-component approach to recency effects is proposed.
The Memory Deficits in Alzheimer-Type Dementia: A Review
Authors: Morris Robin G. , Kopelman Michael D.
Published: September 2011

This review is an account of recent experimental studies of memory deficits at the early stages of Alzheimer-type dementia, evaluating these studies in relation to current theories of memory functioning in humans. Whilst memory deficits are found to be widespread, some aspects are more resilient to impairment than others. For example, the processes associated with articulatory rehearsal in working memory are unimpaired despite a reduction in performance on most tests of primary memory. The “implicit” aspects of secondary memory appear to remain unimpaired, in contrast to a marked decline in “explicit” or “episodic” memory. In addition, there is evidence that the rate of forgetting from secondary memory is normal. Some aspects of episodic and semantic memory are found to be impaired as a consequence of a decline in the efficient organisation and processing of verbal material at encoding or retrieval. It is concluded that the deficits share particular features found in organic amnesia, but with additional deficits which relate to impairments in other domains of functioning.
Dementia and Working Memory
Authors: Baddeley A. , Logie R. , Bressi S. , Sala S. Della , Spinnler H.
Published: September 2011

This study explored the hypothesis that patients suffering from dementia of the Alzheimer type (DAT) are particularly impaired in the functioning of the Central Executive component of working memory, and that this will be reflected in the capacity of patients to perform simultaneously two concurrent tasks. DAT patients, age-matched controls and young controls were required to combine performance on a tracking task with each of three concurrent tasks, articulatory suppression, simple reaction time to a tone and auditory digit span. The difficulty of the tracking task and length of digit sequence were both adjusted so as to equate performance across the three groups when the tasks were performed alone. When digit span or concurrent RT were combined with tracking, the deterioration in performance shown by the DAT patients was particularly marked.
Priming Effects in Amnesia: Evidence for a Dissociable Memory Function
Authors: Shimamura Arthur P.
Published: September 2011

Amnesic patients are impaired on tests of recall and recognition memory, yet they exhibit intact priming effects. That is, their performance can be facilitated or biased by recently encountered information. This paper reviews the phenomenon of preserved priming effects in amnesia, describes relationships between priming and other memory functions, and comments on what this spared memory function tells us about the organization of memory.
Activation and Elaboration Effects in Recognition and Word Priming
Authors: Mandler George , Graf Peter , Kraft Dolores
Published: September 2011

Two experiments investigated the effect of direct and indirect activation on subsequent accessibility to individual items. In the first experiment, words were semantically processed in the context of either phonologically (rhyming) or conceptually (categorical) related words and tested subsequently for recognition and word completion. On the completion test the initial three letters of a word are presented for completion. The previously presented target word is one of several possible completions. The presence of different contexts had no differential effect either on recognition memory—which persisted at high levels for two days—or on completion—which decayed in the course of about 15 min.

In the second experiment, the contexts were presented but the target words were not. Thus the rhyming and categorical contexts were directly activated but not the actual words that were scored on the subsequent tests. Prior activation of phonologically similar items affected both recognition and completion performance on immediate testing, but not after 10 min. Conceptual activation affected only recognition—an effect that lasted for a period of days. Completion performance demonstrates access to the integration component of recognition. The results were compared with attempts to demonstrate independence of recognition and completion.
Word Stems as Cues in Recall and Completion Tasks
Authors: Greene Robert L.
Published: September 2011

Subjects tend to complete word stems to form words to which they have recently been exposed. These priming effects in word-stem completion are compared to cued recall, where subjects are asked to recall list items and are given word stems as cues. Intentionality of learning and duration of rehearsal affected recall performance but not the magnitude of priming in word-stem completion. However, cued recall and word-stem tasks did not exhibit stochastic independence: performance on one task was strongly related to performance on the other. These results are inconsistent with extreme accounts that would attribute performance on these tasks either to entirely separate systems or to an identical set of processes.
Evidence for a Visuo-Spatial Scratch-Pad in Working Memory
Authors: Farmer Eric W. , Berman Jonathan V. F. , Fletcher Yvonne L.
Published: September 2011

Experiments are reported which address the nature of the working memory system. Articulatory suppression (continuous recital of the digits 1 to 4) disrupted concurrent performance of a verbal reasoning task, but had no effect upon performance of a spatial reasoning task. In contrast, spatial suppression (continuous sequential tapping) produced reliable interference only with spatial reasoning. These findings are taken as consistent with Baddeley's argument for two slave systems in working memory: the articulatory loop and the more controversial visuo-spatial scratch-pad.
Movement and Attention in Visual Working Memory
Authors: Quinn J. G. , Ralston G. E.
Published: September 2011

Three experiments that adopt an interference technique to investigate the involvement of movement in the production of a spatial code are described. Arm movements rather than the more commonly employed eye movements are used to provide initial information about the sorts of movements relevant to the code and to allow an empirical separation of the contributions of movement and attention. The results confirm the interference effects of incompatible movement on the generation of the spatial code and show that movement per se rather than attention to the movement can cause a performance decrement.
The Uses of Short-Term Memory: A Case Study
Authors: Butterworth Brian , Campbell Ruth , Howard David
Published: September 2011

It has been widely claimed that the systems employed in tasks of immediate memory have a function in the comprehension of speech; these systems, it has been proposed, are used to hold a representation of the speech until a syntactic analysis and interpretation have been completed. Such a holding function is meant to be especially important where the sentences heard are long or complex. It has thus been predicted that subjects with impaired short-term memory performance would show deficits in comprehension of such materials.

In this study, one subject with impaired phonological processing and a severely reduced digit span was tested on a range of tasks requiring the syntactic analysis, memory and comprehension of long and complex material. She was found to be unimpaired on syntactic analysis and comprehension, but not on sentence repetition. The implications for models of short-term memory are discussed.
Effects of Encoding Strategy on Long-Term Memory for Odours
Authors: Lyman Brian J. , McDaniel Mark A.
Published: September 2011

The effects of various encoding tasks on long-term recognition of odours were examined. Different groups of subjects were instructed (a) to form visual images of the source of the odour, (b) to generate the name of the odour and provide a dictionary-like definition, or (c) to describe a life episode of which the odour reminded them. A no-strategy control was simply told to try to remember the odours for a subsequent recognition test. One week later, subjects performed a yes–no recognition test for the odours. The second and third groups displayed significantly higher recognition than the controls. The visual imagery group did not differ significantly from the control group. The results seem to be accounted for best by dual coding theory.
Clinical and genetic spectrum of mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy
Authors: Garone Caterina , Tadesse Saba , Hirano Michio
Published: September 2011

Mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy is a rare multisystemic autosomic recessive disorder characterized by: onset typically before the age of 30 years; ptosis; progressive external ophthalmoplegia; gastrointestinal dysmotility; cachexia; peripheral neuropathy; and leucoencephalopathy. The disease is caused by mutations in the TYMP gene encoding thymidine phosphorylasethymine phosphorylase. Anecdotal reports suggest that allogeneic haematopoetic stem cell transplantation may be beneficial for mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy, but is associated with a high mortality. After selecting patients who fulfilled the clinical criteria for mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy and had severe thymidine phosphorylase deficiency in the buffy coat (<10% of normal activity), we reviewed their medical records and laboratory studies. We identified 102 patients (50 females) with mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy and an average age of 32.4 years (range 11–59 years). We found 20 novel TYMP mutations. The average age-at-onset was 17.9 years (range 5 months to 35 years); however, the majority of patients reported the first symptoms before the age of 12 years. The patient distribution suggests a relatively high prevalence in Europeans, while the mutation distribution suggests founder effects for a few mutations, such as c.866A>G in Europe and c.518T>G in the Dominican Republic, that could guide genetic screening in each location. Although the sequence of clinical manifestations in the disease varied, half of the patients initially had gastrointestinal symptoms. We confirmed anecdotal reports of intra- and inter-familial clinical variability and absence of genotype–phenotype correlation in the disease, suggesting genetic modifiers, environmental factors or both contribute to disease manifestations. Acute medical events such as infections often provoked worsening of symptoms, suggesting that careful monitoring and early treatment of intercurrent illnesses may be beneficial. We observed endocrine/exocrine pancreatic insufficiency, which had not previously been reported. Kaplan–Meier analysis revealed significant mortality between the ages of 20 and 40 years due to infectious or metabolic complications. Despite increasing awareness of this illness, a high proportion of patients had been misdiagnosed. Early and accurate diagnosis of mitochondrial neurogastrointestinal encephalomyopathy, together with timely treatment of acute intercurrent illnesses, may retard disease progression and increase the number of patients eligible for allogeneic haematopoetic stem cell transplantation.
A not‐so‐rare form of heart failure in urban black Africans: pathways to right heart failure in the Heart of Soweto Study cohort
Authors: Stewart Simon , Mocumbi Ana O. , Carrington Melinda J. , Pretorius Sandra , Burton Rosie , Sliwa Karen
Published: September 2011

Aims

Preliminary data suggest that right heart failure (RHF) may be more common in urban Africans than first suspected. We examined the characteristics and pathways to RHF in the Heart of Soweto cohort.

Methods and results

A clinical registry captured data from 5328 de novo presentations of heart disease to the Cardiology Unit, Chris Hani Baragwanath Hospital in Soweto, South Africa during 2006–08. Of 2505 cases of HF (47% of total cohort), 697 (28%) were diagnosed with RHF (50% primary diagnosis). Despite more females than males (379 vs. 318 cases), proportionately more men presented with RHF [15 vs. 12% of cases; odds ratios (OR) 1.27, 95% confidence intervals (CI) 1.08–1.49] and Africans predominated overall (n= 642, 92%). Apart from concurrent left‐sided heart disease (213 cases, 31%) there were many pathways to RHF including chronic lung disease (179 cases, 26% including COPD and tuberculosis) and 141 cases (20%) of pulmonary arterial hypertension (PAH). On an adjusted basis, women were almost two‐fold more likely to present with PAH (OR 1.72, 95% CI 1.17–2.55; P= 0.006) while those with low levels of education (OR 0.69, 95% CI 0.47–1.01; P= 0.054) and originating from Soweto (OR 0.64, 95% CI 0.42–0.96; P= 0.029) were less likely to present with PAH compared with the rest of the cohort.

Conclusion

These data suggest cases of RHF and related PAH are relatively common among urban Africans presenting with de novo heart disease.