Atlantic Heat Conveyor (Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation)

The meridional overturning circulation (MOC) is part of a global ocean circulation that redistributes heat from Equatorial to Polar regions. In the Atlantic the MOC carries heat northward (the Atlantic Heat Conveyor) which is released to the atmosphere and maintains UK temperatures between 3 to 5°C higher than elsewhere at similar latitudes. However, the present strength and structure of the MOC may not continue. The 2007 IPCC assessment report (IPCC, 2007) suggests that there is less than 10% chance of abrupt changes during the 21st Century, but that there is greater than 90% chance that MOC will slow by an average of 25% compared to pre-industrial levels, offsetting some of the warming over the European sector of the North Atlantic, and contributing to the rate of sea-level-rise. Daily observations using the RAPID MOC mooring array at 26.5°N are providing a continuous and growing time-series of the MOC strength and structure, but the five year record is at present too short to establish trends in the annual mean MOC. Other observations do not at present provide a coherent Atlantic wide picture of MOC variability, and there is little evidence of any long-term slowing. Ocean assimilation models suggest a slowing over the past decade of around 10%. However, models still have many problems in representing ocean circulation and conclusions of change are very uncertain.

Inhibitory control in memory: evidence for negative priming in free recall

Cognitive control mechanisms—such as inhibition—decrease the likelihood that goal-directed activity is ceded to irrelevant events. Here, we use the action of auditory distraction to show how retrieval from episodic long-term memory is affected by competitor inhibition. Typically, a sequence of to-be-ignored spoken distracters drawn from the same semantic category as a list of visually-presented to-be-recalled items impairs free recall performance. In line with competitor inhibition theory (Anderson, 2003), free recall was worse for items on a probe trial if they were a repeat of distracter items presented during the previous, prime, trial (Experiment 1). This effect was only produced when the distracters were dominant members of the same category as the to-be-recalled items on the prime. For prime trials in which distracters were low-dominant members of the to-be-remembered item category or were unrelated to that category—and hence not strong competitors for retrieval—positive priming was found (Experiments 2 & 3). These results are discussed in terms of inhibitory approaches to negative priming and memory retrieval.

Innovation clusters: key concepts

Innovation is easier to describe than it is to systematically analyse, and easier to analyse than it is to effectively promote. Part of the problem, of course, is the imprecise way in which the activity of innovation itself is conceptualised. To achieve more precision, the logic of analysis suggests that innovation should be should be systematically analysed and then divided into rough categories to produce a working taxonomy based on a number of key dimensions. A major part of the purpose of this paper is to develop such a working taxonomy.

Calciferols and bait shyness in the laboratory rat

Rodenticides with delayed action are generally more effective than fast-acting compounds because of the phenomenon of bait shyness. Calciferols have a stop-feed effect quite soon after dosing, and physiological effects are measurable within one day of dosing. We investigated whether bait shyness might result from these fairly rapid effects in the laboratory rat. We found evidence of bait shyness following recovery from sub-lethal dosing with two forms of calciferol. Use of intubation as well as feeding showed that the response was to the bait carrier rather than to detection of calciferols per se.

Evaluation of empirical mode decomposition for event-related potential analysis

Current methods for estimating event-related potentials (ERPs) assume stationarity of the signal. Empirical Mode Decomposition (EMD) is a data-driven decomposition technique that does not assume stationarity. We evaluated an EMD-based method for estimating the ERP. On simulated data, EMD substantially reduced background EEG while retaining the ERP. EMD-denoised single trials also estimated shape, amplitude, and latency of the ERP better than raw single trials. On experimental data, EMD-denoised trials revealed event-related differences between two conditions (condition A and B) more effectively than trials lowpass filtered at 40 Hz. EMD also revealed event-related differences on both condition A and condition B that were clearer and of longer duration than those revealed by low-pass filtering at 40 Hz. Thus, EMD-based denoising is a promising data-driven, nonstationary method for estimating ERPs and should be investigated further.

Production and comprehension of English and Hindi in multilingual transcortical aphasia

This study investigates the two later-acquired but proficient languages, English and Hindi, of two multilingual individuals with transcortical aphasia (right basal ganglia lesion in GN and brain stem lesion in GS). Dissociation between lexical and syntactic profiles in both the languages with a uniform performance across the languages at the lexical level and an uneven performance across the languages at the syntactic level was observed. Their performances are discussed in relation to the implicit/explicit language processes (Paradis, 1994 and Paradis, 2004) and the declarative/procedural model (Ullman, 2001b and Ullman, 2005) of bilingual language processing. Additionally, their syntactic performance is interpreted in relation to the salient grammatical contrasts between English and Hindi.

Analyzing the meaning of background speech is obligatory, distraction by meaning is not

The effects of background English and Welsh speech on memory for visually-presented English words were contrasted amongst monolingual English speakers and bilingual Welsh-English speakers. Equivalent disruption to the English language task was observed amongst Welsh-speaking bilinguals from both English and Welsh speech, but English-speaking monolinguals displayed less disruption from the Welsh speech. An effect of the meaning of the background speech was therefore apparent amongst bilinguals even when the focal memory task was presented in a different language from the distracting speech. A second experiment tested only English-speaking monolinguals, using English as background speech, but varied the demands of the focal task. Participants were asked either to count the number of vowels in words visually presented for future recall, or to rate them for pleasantness, before subsequently being asked to recall the words. Greater disruption to recall was observed from meaningful background speech when participants initially rated the words for pleasantness than when they initially counted the vowels within the words. These results show that background speech is automatically analyzed for meaning, but whether the meaning of the background speech causes distraction is critically dependent upon the nature of the focal task. The data underscore the need to consider not only the nature of office noise, but also the demands and content of the work task when assessing the effects of office noise on work performance.

Real-time multi-model decadal climate predictions

We present the first climate prediction of the coming decade made with multiple models, initialized with prior observations. This prediction accrues from an international activity to exchange decadal predictions in near real-time, in order to assess differences and similarities, provide a consensus view to prevent over-confidence in forecasts from any single model, and establish current collective capability. We stress that the forecast is experimental, since the skill of the multi-model system is as yet unknown. Nevertheless, the forecast systems used here are based on models that have undergone rigorous evaluation and individually have been evaluated for forecast skill. Moreover, it is important to publish forecasts to enable open evaluation, and to provide a focus on climate change in the coming decade. Initialized forecasts of the year 2011 agree well with observations, with a pattern correlation of 0.62 compared to 0.31 for uninitialized projections. In particular, the forecast correctly predicted La Niña in the Pacific, and warm conditions in the north Atlantic and USA. A similar pattern is predicted for 2012 but with a weaker La Niña. Indices of Atlantic multi-decadal variability and Pacific decadal variability show no signal beyond climatology after 2015, while temperature in the Niño3 region is predicted to warm slightly by about 0.5 °C over the coming decade. However, uncertainties are large for individual years and initialization has little impact beyond the first 4 years in most regions. Relative to uninitialized forecasts, initialized forecasts are significantly warmer in the north Atlantic sub-polar gyre and cooler in the north Pacific throughout the decade. They are also significantly cooler in the global average and over most land and ocean regions out to several years ahead. However, in the absence of volcanic eruptions, global temperature is predicted to continue to rise, with each year from 2013 onwards having a 50 % chance of exceeding the current observed record. Verification of these forecasts will provide an important opportunity to test the performance of models and our understanding and knowledge of the drivers of climate change.

Playing with history: negotiating subjectivity in contemporary lens based work

Contemporary artists exploring Jewish identity in the UK are caught between two exclusions, broadly speaking: an art community that that sees itself as ‘post –identity’ and a ‘black’ art scene that revolves around the organizations that emerged out of the Identity debates of the 1980s and 1990s, namely Iniva, Third Text, Autograph. These organizations and those debates, don’t usually include Jewish identity within their remit as Jewish artists are considered to be well represented in the British art scene and, in any case, white. Out of these assumptions, questions arise in relation to the position of Jews in Britain and what is at stake for an artist in exploring Jewish Identity in their work. There is considerable scholarship, relatively speaking on art and Jewish Identity in the US (such as Lisa Bloom; Norman Kleeblatt; Catherine Sousslouf), which inform the debates on visual culture and Jews. In this chapter, I will be drawing out some of the distinctions between the US and the UK debates within my analysis, building on my own writing over the last ten years as well as the work of Juliet Steyn, Jon Stratton and Griselda Pollock. In short, this chapter aims to explore the problematic of what Jewish Identity can offer the viewer as art; what place such art inhabits within a wider artistic context and how, if at all, it is received. There is a predominance of lens based work that explores Identity arising out of the provenance of feminist practices and the politics of documentary that will be important in the framing of the work. I do not aim to consider what constitutes a Jewish artist, that has been done elsewhere and is an inadequate and somewhat spurious conversation . I will also not be focusing on artists whose intention is to celebrate an unproblematised Jewishness (however that is constituted in any given work). Recent artworks and scholarship has in any case rendered the trumpeting of attachment to any singular identity anachronistic at best. I will focus on artists working in the UK who incorporate questions of Jewishness into a larger visual enquiry that build on Judith Butler’s notion of identity as process or performative as well as the more recent debates and artwork that consider the intersectionality of identifications that co-constitute provisional identities (Jones, Modood, Sara Ahmed, Braidotti/Nikki S Lee, Glenn Ligon). The case studies to think through these questions of identity, will be artworks by Susan Hiller, Doug Fishbone and Suzanne Triester. In thinking through works by these artists, I will also serve to contextualise them, situating them briefly within the history of the landmark exhibition in the UK, Rubies and Rebels and the work of Ruth Novaczek, Lily Markewitz, Oreet Ashery and myself.