The potential for bicultural communication in a dyadic situation.

Studied cross-cultural communication with Canadian university students who identified themselves as French-speaking or English-speaking. Ss were divided into 36 French-English pairs (18 of which were tested in a French setting and 18 in an English setting) and 36 same-ethnic pairs. The pairs performed an experimental task under 1 of 3 instructional sets in which Ss were forced to communicate, communication was optional, or no communication set was provided. Each condition was followed by an unstructured period where Ss were free to communicate. Following the communication task, Ss completed a questionnaire which assessed their attitudes about communicating with their partner. Results were analyzed in terms of patterns of communication, content of communication, and languages used for communication. Findings suggest that effective cross-cultural communication is possible and that, at least in a dyadic situation, members of 2 ethnic groups are motivated to communicate. (French summary) (21 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Kinetic study on the thermal and pressure degradation of anthocyanins in strawberries

The degradation of anthocyanins (pelargonidin-3-glucoside) in a strawberry paste during high-temperature/high-pressure treatments was investigated over a temperature range of 80–130 °C and a pressure range of 200–700 MPa, compared to 0.1 MPa. A first-order kinetic model fitted well to all data. At constant pressure, anthocyanin concentration decreased as a function of time and the degradation was accelerated at higher temperatures. At constant temperature, anthocyanins were more rapidly degraded as the pressure increased, but the effect of increasing pressure was smaller than the effect of increasing temperature. Temperature dependence of the degradation rate constants, described by the Arrhenius equation, was higher at atmospheric pressure than at elevated pressures, where all activation energies were comparable. Activation volumes, estimated by the Eyring equation, demonstrated a small pressure dependence of the reaction rate constants. Finally, a model to describe the combined temperature–pressure dependence of the degradation rate constants was proposed.     

Xyloglucan Oligosaccharides Hydrolysis by Exo-Acting Glycoside Hydrolases from Hyperthermophilic Microorganism Saccharolobus solfataricus

In the field of biocatalysis and the development of a bio-based economy, hemicellulases have attracted great interest for various applications in industrial processes. However, the study of the catalytic activity of the lignocellulose-degrading enzymes needs to be improved to achieve the efficient hydrolysis of plant biomasses. In this framework, hemicellulases from hyperthermophilic archaea show interesting features as biocatalysts and provide many advantages in industrial applications thanks to their stability in the harsh conditions encountered during the pretreatment process. However, the hemicellulases from archaea are less studied compared to their bacterial counterpart, and the activity of most of them has been barely tested on natural substrates. Here, we investigated the hydrolysis of xyloglucan oligosaccharides from two different plants by using, both synergistically and individually, three glycoside hydrolases from Saccharolobus solfataricus: a GH1 β-gluco-/β-galactosidase, a α-fucosidase belonging to GH29, and a α-xylosidase from GH31. The results showed that the three enzymes were able to release monosaccharides from xyloglucan oligosaccharides after incubation at 65 °C. The concerted actions of β-gluco-/β-galactosidase and the α-xylosidase on both xyloglucan oligosaccharides have been observed, while the α-fucosidase was capable of releasing all α-linked fucose units from xyloglucan from apple pomace, representing the first GH29 enzyme belonging to subfamily A that is active on xyloglucan.     

Enhancing the use of waste activated sludge as bio-fuel through selectively reducing its heavy metal content

Power plant or cement kiln co-incineration are important disposal routes for the large amounts of waste activated sludge (WAS) which are generated annually. The presence of significant amounts of heavy metals in the sludge however poses serious problems since they are partly emitted with the flue gases (and collected in the flue gas dedusting) and partly incorporated in the ashes of the incinerator: in both cases, the disposal or reuse of the fly ash and bottom ashes can be jeopardized since subsequent leaching in landfill disposal can occur, or their "pozzolanic" incorporation in cement cannot be applied. The present paper studies some physicochemical methods for reducing the heavy metal content of WAS. The used techniques include acid and alkaline thermal hydrolysis and Fenton's peroxidation. By degrading the extracellular polymeric substances, binding sites for a large amount of heavy metals, the latter are released into the sludge water. The behaviour of several heavy metals (Cd, Cr, Cu, Hg, Pb, Ni, Zn) was assessed in laboratory tests. Results of these show a significant reduction of most heavy metals.     

élaboration et validation d'un instrument de mesure de la conscience phonologique.

This study describes the steps in developing and validating a French-language instrument to measure phonological awareness. The selected task involves ranking from a list of 4 words presented orally. Ss must choose the word that begins differently than the others. To decrease the mnestic difficulty of the test, illustrations accompany the words. Two pre-experiments using a bank of 20 items led to preparation of a final version of the phonological awareness test, which consists of 10 items. The validity and reliability of this version were assessed using 57 pre-schoolers and 60 kindergartners. In terms of validity and reliability, the psychometric features of the test were deemed satisfactory for the kindergarten students but deficient for the pre-schoolers. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aging on the input versus output side: Theoretical implications of age-linked asymmetries between detecting versus retrieving orthographic information.

This experiment tested for age-linked asymmetries predicted under Node Structure theory (NST; D.G. MacKay & D. M. Burke, 1990) between detecting versus retrieving orthographic information. Older adults detected that briefly presented words were correctly spelled (e.g., endeavor) or misspelled (e.g., endeavuor) as readily as did young adults. However, they were less able than young adults to retrieve the correctly and incorrectly spelled words that they had seen. These age-linked asymmetries were not due to educational factors, stimulus characteristics, sensory-level factors, task complexity, floor or ceiling effects, general slowing, or cohort-related activities, but they were consistent with NST predictions and with similar asymmetries in a wide range of other studies. By contrast, repetition deficits in detecting and retrieving repeated- versus unrepeated-letter misspellings (e.g., elderdly vs. elderkly) were symmetrical or equivalent in magnitude for young and older adults. Implications for a wide range of theories of cognitive aging and of repetition deficits are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"Age-linked declines in retrieving orthographic knowledge: Empirical, practical, and theoretical implications": Correction to MacKay and Abrams (1998).

Reports an error in "Age-linked declines in retrieving orthographic knowledge: Empirical, practical, and theoretical implications" by Donald G. MacKay and Lise Abrams (Psychology and Aging, 1998[Dec], Vol 13[4], 647-662). The article contained an error. In Table 1 on page 652, the values for rated spelling ability at age 20 and at current age were reversed for older and oldest adults. The corrected table is included in the erratum, with values that have been changed in bold. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1998-11674-011.) This study developed and tested a Transmission Deficit hypothesis of how aging affects retrieval of orthographic knowledge. Young, older, and very old adults heard a tape-recorded series of difficult-to-spell words of high and low frequency, spoken slowly, clearly and repeatedly, and wrote down each word at their own pace. With perceptual errors and vocabulary differences factored out, misspellings increased with aging, especially for high-frequency words. In addition, data from a metamemory questionnaire indicated that the oldest adults were aware of their declining ability to spell. These findings were not due to general slowing, educational factors, hours per week spent reading, writing, or solving crossword puzzles, or age-linked declines in monitoring or detecting self-produced errors. However, the results fit Transmission Deficit predictions, and suggested an age-linked decline in retrieval of orthographic knowledge that resembles age-linked declines in spoken word retrieval observed in many other studies. Practical implications of this age-linked decline for conceptions of normal aging are noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Food sovereignty: shifting debates on democratic food governance

This article develops the concept of food sovereignty while it critically reflects on its present status and future trajectories. The concept of food sovereignty provides an alternative framework for solutions to the human and ecological consequences of industrial food systems. While the concept of food sovereignty gains traction at international levels, including at the United Nations, its lack of conceptual clarity contributes to a variety of often diverging interpretations. This frequently constrains practical implementation and weakens its potential as an alternative paradigm to food governance. At the same time, food sovereignty thought is shifting beyond its initial agrarian focus to embrace whole food systems, which includes the role of consumers and urban areas.     

Changes in rumen bacterial and archaeal communities over the transition period in primiparous Holstein dairy cows

In the present study, we hypothesized that the rumen bacterial and archaeal communities would change significantly over the transition period of dairy cows, mainly as an adaptation to the classical use of low-grain prepartum and high-grain postpartum diets. Bacterial 16S rRNA gene amplicon sequencing of rumen samples from 10 primiparous Holstein dairy cows revealed no changes over the transition period in relative abundance of genera such as Ruminococcus, Butyrivibrio, Clostridium, Coprococcus, and Pseudobutyrivibrio. However, other dominant genus-level taxa, such as Prevotella, unclassified Ruminococcaceae, and unclassified Succinivibrionaceae, showed distinct changes in relative abundance from the prepartum to the postpartum period. Overall, we observed individual fluctuation patterns over the transition period for a range of bacterial taxa that, in some cases, were correlated with observed changes in the rumen short-chain fatty acids profile. Combined results from clone library and terminal-restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) analyses, targeting the methyl-coenzyme M reductase α-subunit (mcrA) gene, revealed a methanogenic archaeal community dominated by the Methanobacteriales and Methanomassiliicoccales orders, particularly the genera Methanobrevibacter, Methanosphaera, and Methanomassiliicoccus. As observed for the bacterial community, the T-RFLP patterns showed significant shifts in methanogenic community composition over the transition period. Together, the composition of the rumen bacterial and archaeal communities exhibited changes in response to particularly the dietary changes of dairy cows over the transition period.