Searching and planning: Young children's reasoning about past and future event sequences

Six experiments examined children's ability to make inferences using temporal order information. Children completed versions of a task involving a toy zoo; one version required reasoning about past events (search task) and the other required reasoning about future events (planning task). Children younger than 5 years failed both the search and the planning tasks, whereas 5-year-olds passed both (Experiments 1 and 2). However, when the number of events in the sequence was reduced (Experiment 3), 4-year-olds were successful on the search task but not the planning task. Planning difficulties persisted even when relevant cues were provided (Experiments 4 and 5). Experiment 6 showed that improved performance on the search task found in Experiment 3 was not due to the removal of response ambiguity.

Increasing Returns and Competitive Equilibrium--The Content and Development of Marshall's Theory

This paper reviews Alfred Marshall's attempts to reconcile increasing returns and competition from the early economic writings to the later editions of his Principles. It is shown that while Marshall's final solution to the problem involved naming external economies the cause of increasing returns in a regime of competition , both the life cycle of the firm and internal economies remained necessary to his argument. Their function was to give some operation al content to the elusive concept of external economies.

Network formation under mutual consent and costly communication

We consider two different approaches to describe the formation of social networks under mutual consent and costly communication. First, we consider a network-based approach; in particular Jackson–Wolinsky’s concept of pairwise stability. Next, we discuss a non-cooperative game-theoretic approach, through a refinement of the Nash equilibria of Myerson’s consent game. This refinement, denoted as monadic stability, describes myopically forward looking behavior of the players. We show through an equivalence that the class of monadically stable networks is a strict subset of the class of pairwise stable networks that can be characterized fully by modifications of the properties defining pairwise stability.

On being a good nurse: reflections on the past and preparing for the future

On being a good nurse: reflections on the past and preparing for the future. The objectives of this paper include reflecting on the attributes of the ‘good’ nurse in the past, outlining thematically the essential attributes (virtues) required by the ‘good’ nurse today and presenting an original four- point framework for ethics in practice. While there is no doubt that nurses in the past were highly professional, the culture within which they practiced tended to stifle the emergence of autonomy, assertiveness, advocacy and accountability. An original table of contemporary attributes, which is congruent with a neo Aristotelian virtue ethical approach, is arranged in themes of Intellectual and Practical Attributes, Dispositional Attributes and Moral Attributes. A framework for professional practice, the ‘Four As’ is then extrapolated from these themes. These four key professional attributes, autonomy, advocacy, accountability and assertiveness, along with the virtues listed in the themes, exemplify the ‘good’ nurse and are identified as the linchpins of modern professional ethics and good conduct.

Comparison of ELISA and SPR biosensor technology for the detection of paralytic shellfish poisoning toxins

An enzyme labeled immunosorbent assay (ELISA) and surface plasmon resonance (SPR) biosensor assay for the detection of paralytic shellfish poisoning (PSP) toxins were developed and a comparative evaluation was performed. A polyclonal antibody (BC67) used in both assay formats was raised to saxitoxin–jeffamine–BSA in New Zealand white rabbits. Each assay format was designed as an inhibition assay. Shellfish samples (n = 54) were evaluated by each method using two simple rapid extraction procedures and compared to the AOAC high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC) and the mouse bioassay (MBA). The results of each assay format were comparable with the HPLC and MBA methods and demonstrate that an antibody with high sensitivity and broad specificity to PSP toxins can be applied to different immunological techniques. The method of choice will depend on the end-users needs. The reduced manual labor and simplicity of operation of the SPR biosensor compared to ELISA, ease of sample extraction and superior real time semi-quantitative analysis are key features that could make this technology applicable in a high-throughput monitoring unit.

Children’s Reasoning About the Temporal Order of Past and Future Events

Four- and five-year-olds completed two sets of tasks that involved reasoning about the temporal order in which events had occurred in the past or were to occur in the future. Four-year-olds succeeded on the tasks that involved reasoning about the order of past events but not those that involved reasoning about the order of future events, whereas 5-year-olds passed both types of tasks. Individual children who failed the past-event tasks were not particularly likely to fail the more difficult future-event tasks. However, children's performance on the reasoning tasks was predictive of their performance on a task assessing their comprehension of the terms “before” and “after.” Our results suggest that there may be a developmental change over this age range in the ability to flexibly represent and reason about the before-and-after relationships between events.

Using temporal analysis of products and flux response technology to determine diffusion coefficients in catalytic monoliths

The importance of accurately measuring gas diffusivity in porous materials has led to a number of methods being developed. In this study the Temporal Analysis of Products (TAP) reactor and Flux Response Technology (FRT) have been used to examine the diffusivity in the washcoat supported on cordierite monoliths. Herein, the molecular diffusion of propane within four monoliths with differently prepared alumina/CeZrOx washcoats was investigated as a function of temperature. Moment-based analysis of the observed TAP responses led to the calculation of the apparent intermediate gas constant, Kp, that characterises adsorption into the mesoporous network and apparent time delay, tapp, that characterises residence time in the mesoporous network. Additionally, FRT has been successfully adapted as an extensive in situ perturbation technique in measuring intraphase diffusion coefficients in the washcoats of the same four monolith samples. The diffusion coefficients obtained by moment-based analysis of TAP responses are larger than the coefficients determined by zero length column (ZLC) analysis of flux response profiles with measured values of the same monolith samples between 20 and 100 °C ranging from 2–5×10^-9 m² s^-1 to 4–8×10^-10 m² s^-1, respectively. The TAP and FRT data, therefore, provide a range of the lower and upper limits of diffusivity, respectively. The reported activation energies and diffusivities clearly correlate with the difference in the washcoat structure of different monolith samples.

The past never stands still ; negotiating the past and commemorating the Easter Rising in 1966 and 1976

This article looks at the role of commemoration in Northern Ireland before conflict -in the 1960's - and at the height of conflict in the 1970's. Through its comparative examination of Northern Ireland republican commemorations of the 1916 Easter Rising in 1966 and 1976 it is intended to contribute both to an historical and political understanding of commemoration practices in Ireland after partition and to current debates about commemoration and the past in the post-Troubles era.