Composition and distinctive volatile flavour characteristics of the essential oil from Australian-grown ginger (Zingiber officinale)

Gas chromatographic analysis revealed the qualitative composition of the essential oil from Australiangrown ginger to be similar to that of oils from other areas. The major constituents are a group of sesquiterpene hydrocarbons based on the bisabolene carbon skeleton. These compounds are accompanied by a number of monoterpene hydrocarbons and other substances. However, of particular interest, is the presence of a relatively high proportion of geranial and neral. These compounds are believed to invest Australian-grown ginger oil with a distinctive ‘citrus-like’ aroma.     

Spontaneous mirror-writing in children.

Writing which appears rotated 180° about its normal horizontal axis and is legible when viewed in a mirror is called mirror writing. The occurrence of spontaneous mirror writing of whole words, rather than individual letter reversals, was tested in a large sample of children ranging in age from less than 3 to nearly 14 years. Spontaneous mirror-writing occurred in the majority of children between the ages of 3 and 7. It was concluded that spontaneous mirror writing occurs in all children at some time early in their experience of learning to print and write. It is suggested that this phenomenon is a normal component of development and does not imply dysfunction, as commonly assumed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Intellectual development: Birth to adulthood.

Reviews the book, Intellectual development: Birth to adulthood by Robbie Case (1985). One method for making tractable the complexities of human cognitive growth is to impose organization via a bold and expansive theory. Piaget's theory is exemplary. Robbie Case, in Intellectual Development: Birth to Adulthood, has improved and extended the approach. In Case's work, stages of cognitive development are revealed by the integration of structural and process analyses. Structural analysis is the use of a formalism or interpretive grid to describe the organization of intellectual operations required by a task. The formalism is Case's theory is the executive control structure, consisting of three lists: a representation of the problem situation, a representation of desired objectives, and cognitive and behavioural strategies. The process analysis provides an account of the integration of executive control structures and information processing capacities that are unique to each of four stages from birth to adulthood. The book succeeds as macrotheory. The issues that must be addressed by a complete account of human cognitive development are clearly summarized. Throughout the book there is considered review of advances in cognitive developmental inquiry. Workable tenets are borrowed, inadequacies are highlighted, and alternatives are put forward. There is a deliberate resolve to repair and continue to build stage theory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Distribution and Composition of the Lipids in Starch Fractions from Wheat Flour

The fine granule starch fraction of a commercially milled, bleached, wheat flour was richer in nitrogen, extractable lipid, and polar lipids (glycolipids and phospholipids) compared with the coarse granule starch, which was richer in triglycerides and its hydrolysis products. The intermediate size starch fraction fell between fine and coarse starch in the level of these components while the “pentosan” fraction was very high in lipid and nitrogen, although it was of similar phosphorus content to the starch fractions. The total fatty acid content of the fine starch was over 50% higher than that of the coarse starch and both results were higher than the extractable lipid contents of the respective fractions. The results are explained in terms of higher protein and phospholipid content of the fine starch, which may be related to its higher specific surface area.     

Phonon Mediated Microwave Kinetic Inductance Detectors

We are developing athermal-phonon mediated particle detectors using microwave kinetic inductance detectors (MKIDs) as the phonon sensing elements. Since MKIDs are easily multiplexed, hundreds of sensors patterned on a single dielectric substrate can be read out simultaneously, leading to a precise, time-resolved measurement of the phonon flux at each point on the detector surface. In addition to providing a high-resolution measurement of the location of the interaction, the energy deposited by the particle can be reconstructed with an expected baseline resolution of tens of eV. The complexity of the cryogenic readout electronics is significantly reduced relative to designs based on multiplexed transition edge sensors (TES). Initial proof-of-principle devices demonstrate energy resolutions as good as 0.7?keV at 30?keV, dominated by the position dependence of the phonon signal. New designs are aimed at improving this resolution by more than an order of magnitude. Such high-resolution phonon mediated detectors would have applications including direct detection of dark matter, hard X-ray/soft gamma-ray astrophysics, neutrinoless double beta decay, and coherent neutrino-nucleus scattering.     

Statistical Methods (7th ed.)

In this article we propose to use different single-index models for observations in different regions of the sample space. This approach inherits the estimation efficiency of the single-index model in each region, and at the same time allows the global model to have multidimensionality in the sense of conventional dimension reduction. On the other hand, the model can be seen as an extension of CART and a piecewise linear model proposed. Modeling procedures, including identifying the region for every single-index model and estimation of the single-index models, are developed. Simulation studies and real data analysis are employed to demonstrate the usefulness of the approach. Computer code and technical details of the method are provided as supplementary material online.     

Some Comments on Designs for Cox's Mixture Polynomial

Designs are suggested for estimating the restricted parameters in Cox's mixture polynomial. The variances of the restricted estimates of the parameters are minimum when using the simplex-lattice designs suggested by Scheffé The precision of the estimates, in terms of their variances, as affected by the location of the design points as well as the location of the standard mixture s is also discussed. It is shown for the vertex design centered at s that if s is positioned on the axis of an individual component, the closer s lies to the vertex of the simplex representing the individual component, the more precise will be the parameter estimates associated with the individual component relative to the other components. A numerical example is presented to illustrate the difference in the interpretations given to the parameter estimates associated with the Cox polynomial and the Scheffé polynomial.