The frequency of voluntary and involuntary autobiographical memories across the life span.

In the present study, ratings of the memory of an important event from the previous week on the frequency of voluntary and involuntary retrieval, belief in its accuracy, visual imagery, auditory imagery, setting, emotional intensity, valence, narrative coherence, and centrality to the life story were obtained from 988 adults whose ages ranged from 15 to over 90. Another 992 adults provided the same ratings for a memory from their confirmation day, when they were at about age 14. The frequencies of involuntary and voluntary retrieval were similar. Both frequencies were predicted by emotional intensity and centrality to the life story. The results from the present study-which is the first to measure the frequency of voluntary and involuntary retrieval for the same events-are counter to both cognitive and clinical theories, which consistently claim that involuntary memories are infrequent as compared with voluntary memories. Age and gender differences are noted.

Memory in posttraumatic stress disorder: properties of voluntary and involuntary, traumatic and nontraumatic autobiographical memories in people with and without posttraumatic stress disorder symptoms.

One hundred fifteen undergraduates rated 15 word-cued memories and their 3 most negatively stressful, 3 most positive, and 7 most important events and completed tests of personality and depression. Eighty-nine also recorded involuntary memories online for 1 week. In the first 3-way comparisons needed to test existing theories, comparisons were made of memories of stressful events versus control events and involuntary versus voluntary memories in people high versus low in posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) symptom severity. For all participants, stressful memories had more emotional intensity, more frequent voluntary and involuntary retrieval, but not more fragmentation. For all memories, participants with greater PTSD symptom severity showed the same differences. Involuntary memories had more emotional intensity and less centrality to the life story than voluntary memories. Meeting the diagnostic criteria for traumatic events had no effect, but the emotional responses to events did. In 533 undergraduates, correlations among measures were replicated and the Negative Intensity factor of the Affect Intensity Measure correlated with PTSD symptom severity. No special trauma mechanisms were needed to account for the results, which are summarized by the autobiographical memory theory of PTSD.

Encouraging clean energy investment in developing countries: what role for aid?

A large portion of foreign assistance for climate change mitigation in developing countries is directed to clean energy facilities. To support international mitigation goals, however, donors must make investments that have effects beyond individual facilities. They must reduce barriers to private-sector investment by generating information for developers, improving relevant infrastructure, or changing policies. We examine whether donor agencies target financing for commercial-scale wind and solar facilities to countries where private investment in clean energy is limited and whether donor investments lead to more private investments. On average, we find no positive evidence for these patterns of targeting and impact. Coupled with model results that show feed-in tariffs increase private investment, we argue that donor agencies should reallocate resources to improve policies that promote private investment in developing countries, rather than finance individual clean energy facilities.

Predictions of segregation of granular material with the aid of PHYSICA, a 3-D unstructured finite-volume modelling framework

In this paper a continuum model for the prediction of segregation in granular material is presented. The numerical framework, a 3-D, unstructured grid, finite-volume code is described, and the micro-physical parametrizations, which are used to describe the processes and interactions at the microscopic level that lead to segregation, are analysed. Numerical simulations and comparisons with experimental data are then presented and conclusions are drawn on the capability of the model to accurately simulate the behaviour of granular matter during flow.

Can density functional theory (DFT) be used as an aid to a deeper understanding of tandem mass spectrometric fragmentation pathways?

Prediction of tandem mass spectrometric (MS/MS) fragmentation for non-peptidic molecules based on structure is of immense interest to the mass spectrometrist. If a reliable approach to MS/MS prediction could be achieved its impact within the pharmaceutical industry could be immense. Many publications have stressed that the fragmentation of a molecular ion or protonated molecule is a complex process that depends on many parameters, making prediction difficult. Commercial prediction software relies on a collection of general heuristic rules of fragmentation, which involve cleaving every bond in the structure to produce a list of 'expected' masses which can be compared with the experimental data. These approaches do not take into account the thermodynamic or molecular orbital effects that impact on the molecule at the point of protonation which could influence the potential sites of bond cleavage based on the structural motif. A series of compounds have been studied by examining the experimentally derived high-resolution MS/MS data and comparing it with the in silico modelling of the neutral and protonated structures. The effect that protonation at specific sites can have on the bond lengths has also been determined. We have calculated the thermodynamically most stable protonated species and have observed how that information can help predict the cleavage site for that ion. The data have shown that this use of in silico techniques could be a possible way to predict MS/MS spectra. Copyright (C) 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Can Pickering emulsion formation aid the removal of creosote DNAPL from porous media?

The purpose of this investigation was to examine the proposition that creosote, emplaced in an initially water saturated porous system, can be removed from the system through Pickering emulsion formation. Pickering emulsions are dispersions of two immiscible fluids in which coalescence of the dispersed phase droplets is hindered by the presence of colloidal particles adsorbed at the interface between the two immiscible fluid phases. Particle trapping is strongly favoured when the wetting properties of the particles are intermediate between strong water wetting and strong oil wetting. In this investigation the necessary chemical conditions for the formation of physically stable creosote-in-water emulsions protected against coalescence by bentonite particles were examined. It was established that physically stable emulsions could be formed through the judicious addition of small amounts of sodium chloride and the surfactant cetyl-trimethylammonium bromide. The stability of the emulsions was initially established by visual inspection. However, experimental determinations of emulsion stability were also undertaken by use of oscillatory rheology. Measurements of the elastic and viscous responses to shear indicated that physically stable emulsions were obtained when the viscoelastic systems showed a predominantly elastic response to shearing. Once the conditions were established for the formation of physically stable emulsions a "proof-of-concept" chromatographic experiment was carried out which showed that creosote could be successfully removed from a saturated model porous system. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Simple shade plots aid better long-term choices of data pre-treatment in multivariate assemblage studies

Shade plots, simple visual representations of abundance matrices from multivariate species assemblage studies, are shown to be an effective aid in choosing an overall transformation (or other pre-treatment) of quantitative data for long-term use, striking an appropriate balance between dominant and less abundant taxa in ensuing resemblance-based multivariate analyses. Though the exposition is entirely general and applicable to all community studies, detailed illustrations of the comparative power and interpretative possibilities of shade plots are given in the case of two estuarine assemblage studies in south-western Australia: (a) macrobenthos in the upper Swan Estuary over a two-year period covering a highly significant precipitation event for the Perth area; and (b) a wide-scale spatial study of the nearshore fish fauna from five divergent estuaries. The utility of transformations of intermediate severity is again demonstrated and, with greater novelty, the potential importance seen of further mild transformation of all data after differential down-weighting (dispersion weighting) of spatially clumped' or schooled' species. Among the new techniques utilized is a two-way form of the RELATE test, which demonstrates linking of assemblage structure (fish) to continuous environmental variables (water quality), having removed a categorical factor (estuary differences). Re-orderings of sample and species axes in the associated shade plots are seen to provide transparent explanations at the species level for such continuous multivariate patterns.

Dynamics of air–sea CO2 fluxes in the northwestern European shelf based on voluntary observing ship and satellite observations

From January 2011 to December 2013, we constructed a comprehensive pCO2 data set based on voluntary observing ship (VOS) measurements in the western English Channel (WEC). We subsequently estimated surface pCO2 and air–sea CO2 fluxes in northwestern European continental shelf waters using multiple linear regressions (MLRs) from remotely sensed sea surface temperature (SST), chlorophyll a concentration (Chl a), wind speed (WND), photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) and modeled mixed layer depth (MLD). We developed specific MLRs for the seasonally stratified northern WEC (nWEC) and the permanently well-mixed southern WEC (sWEC) and calculated surface pCO2 with uncertainties of 17 and 16 μatm, respectively. We extrapolated the relationships obtained for the WEC based on the 2011–2013 data set (1) temporally over a decade and (2) spatially in the adjacent Celtic and Irish seas (CS and IS), two regions which exhibit hydrographical and biogeochemical characteristics similar to those of WEC waters. We validated these extrapolations with pCO2 data from the SOCAT and LDEO databases and obtained good agreement between modeled and observed data. On an annual scale, seasonally stratified systems acted as a sink of CO2 from the atmosphere of −0.6 ± 0.3, −0.9 ± 0.3 and −0.5 ± 0.3 mol C m−2 yr−1 in the northern Celtic Sea, southern Celtic sea and nWEC, respectively, whereas permanently well-mixed systems acted as source of CO2 to the atmosphere of 0.2 ± 0.2 and 0.3 ± 0.2 mol C m−2 yr−1 in the sWEC and IS, respectively. Air–sea CO2 fluxes showed important inter-annual variability resulting in significant differences in the intensity and/or direction of annual fluxes. We scaled the mean annual fluxes over these provinces for the last decade and obtained the first annual average uptake of −1.11 ± 0.32 Tg C yr−1 for this part of the northwestern European continental shelf. Our study showed that combining VOS data with satellite observations can be a powerful tool to estimate and extrapolate air–sea CO2 fluxes in sparsely sampled area.