Introduction.

If there is any brand of psychology which is peculiarly Canadian, it is the field of brain and behaviour, and especially that area of it which has become known as neuropsychology. Neuropsychology to most people means the coalescence of physiological brain mechanisms and complex behaviours, with an emphasis on those behaviours which are salient in human beings. Because in the early history of neuropsychology, the psychologist usually brought to the neurological setting not only a sophistication in psychological concepts but also some experimental and statistical expertise, neuropsychology rapidly expanded the bag of tricks which traditional neurology had already developed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Risk Governance of Emerging Technologies Demonstrated in Terms of its Applicability to Nanomaterials

Nanotechnologies have reached maturity and market penetration that require nano‐specific changes in legislation and harmonization among legislation domains, such as the amendments to REACH for nanomaterials (NMs) which came into force in 2020. Thus, an assessment of the components and regulatory boundaries of NMs risk governance is timely, alongside related methods and tools, as part of the global efforts to optimise nanosafety and integrate it into product design processes, via Safe(r)‐by‐Design (SbD) concepts. This paper provides an overview of the state‐of‐the‐art regarding risk governance of NMs and lays out the theoretical basis for the development and implementation of an effective, trustworthy and transparent risk governance framework for NMs. The proposed framework enables continuous integration of the evolving state of the science, leverages best practice from contiguous disciplines and facilitates responsive re‐thinking of nanosafety governance to meet future needs. To achieve and operationalise such framework, a science‐based Risk Governance Council (RGC) for NMs is being developed. The framework will provide a toolkit for independent NMs' risk governance and integrates needs and views of stakeholders. An extension of this framework to relevant advanced materials and emerging technologies is also envisaged, in view of future foundations of risk research in Europe and globally.     

The Photostability of Fluorescent Whitening Agents on Wool

The stabilities, both on wool and in solution, of several commercial fluorescent whitening agents (FWAs) were examined. Stability in solution was found to vary considerably. However, the photoye/lowing rates of wool whitened with these compounds were found to be similar, suggesting that the photodegradation pathway in solution is probably different to that on wool. The stabilities of two pyrazolines were also examined, and in accordance with previous results it was found that the stabilities of these compounds in solution did not relate to the photoye/lowing rates of wool whitened with them. The photoye/lowing of whitened wool was also followed by diffuse reflectance spectroscopy. The sample was illuminated by monochromatic light and the presence of FWAs on the fabric detected by an increase in transmission. This apparent increase is due to the fluorescence contributing to the reflected light. Using such a method the presence of an FWA can be easily verified and its photodegradation followed.     

Subsolidus Phase Relationships in the Ga2O3–Al2O3–TiO2 System

Subsolidus phase relationships in the Ga₂O₃–Al₂O₃–TiO₂ system at 1400°C were studied using X-ray diffraction. Phases present in the pseudoternary system include TiO₂ (rutile), Ga_{2−2 x} Al_{2 x} O₃ ( x ≤0.78 β-gallia structure), Al_{2−2 y} Ga_{2 y} O₃ ( y ≤0.12 corundum structure), Ga_{2−2 x} Al_{2 x} TiO₅ (0≤ x ≤1 pseudobrookite structure), and several β-gallia rutile intergrowths that can be expressed as Ga_{4−4 x} Al_{4 x} Ti _{n −4}O_{2 n −2} ( x ≤0.3, 15≤ n ≤33). This study showed no evidence to confirm that aluminum substitution of gallium stabilizes the n =7 β-gallia–rutile intergrowth as has been mentioned in previous work.     

Recollections of an accidental contrarian.

This is a narrative about the author's life and research from an award speech given in 2005 at the Canadian Society for Brain, Behavior and Cognitive Science. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cognitive and life stress predictors of relapse in remitted unipolar depressed patients: Test of the congruency hypothesis.

Longitudinally followed remitted depressed Ss (N?=?59) to determine whether dependent or self-critical persons are more vulnerable to relapse after exposure to life events that have a bearing on interpersonal or achievement concerns. Regression analyses indicated that congruency effects, as measured by the occurrence of achievement-related adversity in the lives of self-critical Ss, accounted for a significant increment in relapse variance over each variable entered singly. When data from the 2 mo just before relapse were analyzed, some evidence of congruency effects in dependent Ss experiencing interpersonal-related adversity was obtained. Findings highlight the dimensional qualities of life event impact and call for greater differentiation in modeling the activation of a diathesis and precipitation of depression after life stress. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cost Optimisation for Underground Mining Networks

In this paper we consider the problem of optimising the construction and haulage costs of underground mining networks. We focus on a model of underground mine networks consisting of ramps in which each ramp has a bounded maximum gradient. The cost depends on the lengths of the ramps, the tonnages hauled through them and their gradients. We model such an underground mine network as an edge-weighted network and show that the problem of optimising the cost of the network can be described as an unconstrained non-linear optimisation problem. We show that, under a mild condition which is satisfied in practice, the cost function is convex. Finally we briefly discuss how the model can be generalised to those underground mine networks that are composed not only of ramps but also vertical shafts, and show that the total cost in the generalised model is still convex under the same condition. The convexity of the cost function ensures that any local minimum is a global minimum for the given network topology, and theoretically any descent algorithms for finding local minima can be applied to the design of minimum cost mining networks.This work was supported by the Australian Research Council     

Affirmative action policies are demeaning to women in academia.

Preferential hiring policies are often based on the erroneous assumption that if a designated group is not represented in an occupation or profession in the same proportion as it is represented in the population, then negative discrimination has taken place. In the school of discrimination-logic, no alternative explanations are considered. Not only is it asserted that the white male majority keeps women out by deliberate exclusion, but also by creating a climate in which women are uncomfortable. This explanation is emphasized particularly for the smaller numbers of women in science and engineering. Although there may have been a bias in favour of males in the past, a look at the evidence suggests that, currently, women in Canada are being hired in academic institutions at rates higher than would be expected from the number of qualified applicants. Moreover, their persisting low representation in some fields may be a matter largely of self-selection, reflecting different talents, values, and preferences. It is suggested that hiring women over better-qualified men will inevitably lead to the downgrading of women in academia, to a reduced respect for the professoriate, to poorer education for students, and to a deterioration of collegial relations between men and women. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reactivity in infants: A cross-national comparison.

433 4-mo-old infants from Boston, Dublin, and Beijing were administered the same battery of visual, auditory, and olfactory stimuli to evaluate differences in levels of reactivity. The Chinese Ss were significantly less active, irritable, and vocal than the Boston and Dublin samples, with Boston Ss showing the highest level of reactivity. Data suggest the possibility of temperamental differences between Caucasian and Asian infants in reactivity to stimulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Asymmmetry of forehead temperature and cardiac activity.

Measures of heart rate and forehead temperature on 238, 21-month-old children exposed to mild laboratory stressors revealed 2 provocative results. More children were cooler on the left side of the forehead than on the right side of the forehead, and those with a cooler left side of the forehead had lower heart rates. These data suggest that some aspects of cerebral asymmetry and cardiovascular reactivity may be mediated by a common set of processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)