Old and young adults' recall of events.

In two experiments, old and young adults participated in a standardized, hierarchically organized event that involved making clay. Hierarchical structure was created by establishing a set of superordinate categories that organized and were defined by a series of subordinate actions. Immediately following participation in the event, we interviewed subjects for their memory of it. Despite our expectations that old and young would perform similarly when memory for action-based information was tested, the old reported fewer event actions than the young. Old and young performed equally well, however, when instructions were clarified in a second experiment. In both experiments memory of old and young was influenced similarly by the hierarchical structure of the event. These results suggest that the old may encounter less difficulty remembering events, at least as defined and assessed here, than other types of materials. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Changes in adults' prose recall: Aging or cognitive demands?

When memory performance of old and young is tested, young participants are almost always students, whereas older adults are rarely enrolled in school. Thus, the two groups differ not only in age but also in current demands to remember. In order to assess the contributions of each group, older adults' text recall and study strategies were compared with those of two groups of young adults. One group was enrolled in college classes, and the other group was not. Verbal ability was equivalent for the two groups. The college students outperformed both out-of-school groups; the out-of-school groups performed similarly to one another. These findings suggest that memory differences between old and young may result as much from cultural factors as from the inevitable consequences of biological deterioration. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lexical and sentence context effects in word recognition.

Three experiments examined lexical and sentence-level contributions to contextual facilitation effects in word recognition. Subjects named target words preceded by normal or scrambled sentence contexts that contained lexical associates of the target. In Experiment 1, normal sentences showed facilitation for related targets and inhibition for unrelated targets. Experiment 2 eliminated syntactically anomalous targets among unrelated items and showed only facilitation for related targets. In neither experiment was there any effect of relatedness for scrambled stimuli. Experiment 3 included syntactically normal but semantically anomalous sentences to test whether the failure of scrambled sentences to show priming was due to their syntactic incoherence. Normal sentences again showed contextual facilitation, but neither scrambled nor anomalous sentences showed such effects. The results indicate that there are sentence-context effects that do not arise solely from intralexical spreading activation and suggest that context facilitates the identification of a lexical candidate. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Unix and ADA - local area networks Helping users use Unix

When it comes time to write some computer code the hardware of choice today is a workstation running the Unix operating system. This paper considers the problem of new users faced with Unix. It presents a number of possible solutions and elaborates on one which provides a graphical help system. This latter help system may be accessed via a pointing device which leads initially to a picture of a help structure, nodes in the structure may be selected to display the associated help text. The texts are structure to address the needs of differing users, ‘new’ through to ‘competent’.     

The management of complex orthopedic injuries

As advancements are made in the prevention of automobile fatalities, an increase in the incidence of pelvic and lower extremity injuries has occurred. These remain the leading causes of impairment and loss of years of productive life. Pelvic trauma has a high initial mortality rate when severe. However, with early resuscitation and transport, more survivors arrive in our trauma centers harboring these injuries. Owing to early stabilization and mobilization of the traumatized patient, a decrease in complications in these patients has been noted. Both the trauma surgeon and the orthopedic trauma surgeon should work as a team and remain in continuous communication during the treatment of these patients. Open fractures are among the most difficult problems to manage; early and aggressive decisions can prevent a lifetime of complications and physical impairment. As previously stated, to obtain good outcomes, open fractures must be treated initially at the accident scene followed by timely transport to the trauma center for definitive care. It must be remembered that the golden time to prevent major complications is 6 hours. Intra-articular fractures of the lower extremity involve a major weight bearing joint. Post-traumatic arthritis and impairment develop in joints where joint congruity is not achieved. To preserve normal function, there should be articular congruity, stable fixation, axial alignment with the rest of the extremity, and restoration of full range of motion. Immediate stabilization of long bone fractures has many advantages in the multiply injured patient, such as improved long-term function, prevention of deep venous thrombosis and decubitus ulcer, decreased need for analgesia, and reduction in the incidence of adult respiratory distress syndrome and fat emboli. Patients with femoral shaft fractures should undergo immediate stabilization of the fracture within 24 hours of injury. We have presented a series of orthopedic injuries that have high mortality and high morbidity which, if not treated expediently, yield a high degree of impairment.     

PDM: A versatile digital transmission system for video

This report discusses a pulse density modulation (PDM) video transmission system. PDM is a one-bit digital coding scheme with advantages of transparency due to an inherently extended signal bandwidth and relatively simple decoding; these make it ideal for a variety of applications. The system outlined is designed to carry a single analogue video channel, together with several sound channels, over a 140 or 280 Mbit/s digital transmission-link. An alternative option to the sound channels will be to carry a 2.048 Mbit/s data channel. Since the analogue video input will be PDM coded, this will enable the system to carry video formats which have a flat base-band frequency response requirement of in excess of 20 MHz (such as HDTV), allowing a large degree of flexibility in use.     

Changing relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading as children develop from beginning to skilled readers: A 5-year longitudinal study.

Relations between phonological processing abilities and word-level reading skills were examined in a longitudinal correlational study of 216 children. Phonological processing abilities, word-level reading skills, and vocabulary were assessed annually from kindergarten through 4th grade, as the children developed from beginning to skilled readers. Individual differences in phonological awareness were related to subsequent individual differences in word-level reading for every time period examined. Individual differences in serial naming and vocabulary were related to subsequent individual differences in word-level reading initially, but these relations faded with development. Individual differences in letter-name knowledge were related to subsequent individual differences in phonological awareness and serial naming, but there were no relations between individual differences in word level reading and any subsequent phonological processing ability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Endoscopic removal of a complex foreign body from the bladder

Metastatic lesions of the umbilicus are more common than primary malignancies and are commonly referred to as Sister Mary Joseph nodules. Most arise from the stomach or the female genital tract. We describe an unusual case of renal cell carcinoma with peritoneal implants producing a Sister Mary Joseph nodule diagnosed by CT. To our knowledge, no report of a urinary tract malignancy with umbilical involvement has been described in the radiological literature.