An investigation of the genetic toxicology of irradiated foodstuffs using short-term test systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Phillips, B.J.; Kranz, E.; Elias, P.S.

1980-01-01

As part of a programme of short-term tests used to detect possible genetic toxicity in irradiated foodstuffs, cultured Chinese hamster ovary cells were exposed to extracts and digests of irradiated and unirradiated dates, fish and chicken and subjected to tests for cytotoxicity, sister chromatid exchange induction and mutation to thioguanine resistance. The results showed no evidence of genetic toxicity induced in food by irradiation. The general applicability of cell culture tests to the detection of mutagens in food is discussed. (author)

Short-term stability test for thorium soil candidate a reference material

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Clain, Almir F.; Fonseca, Adelaide M.G.; Dantas, Vanessa V.D.B.; Braganca, Maura J.C.; Souza, Poliana S., E-mail: almir@ird.gov.br, E-mail: adelaide@ird.gov.br, E-mail: vanessa@ird.gov.br, E-mail: maura@ird.gov.br, E-mail: poliana@bolsista.ird.gov.br [Instituto de Radioprotecao e Dosimetria (IRD/CNEN-RJ), Rio de Janeiro, RJ (Brazil)

2015-07-01

This work describes a methodology to determine the soil short-term stability after the steps of production in laboratory. The short-term stability of the soil is an essential property to be determined in order to producing a reference material. The soil is a candidate of reference material for chemical analysis of thorium with metrological traceability to be used in environmental analysis, equipment calibration, validation methods, and quality control. A material is considered stable in a certain temperature if the property of interest does not change with time, considering the analytical random fluctuations. Due to this, the angular coefficient from the graphic of Th concentration versus elapsed time must be near to zero. The analytical determinations of thorium concentration were performed by Instrumental Neutron activation Analysis. The slopes and their uncertainties were obtained from the regression lines at temperatures of 20 deg C and 60 deg C, with control temperature of -20 deg C. From the obtained data a t-test was applied. In both temperatures the calculated t-value was lower than the critical value, so we can conclude with 95% confidence level that no significant changes happened during the period studied concerning thorium concentration in soil at temperatures of 20 deg C and 60 deg C, showing stability at these temperatures. (author)

Short-term stability test for thorium soil candidate a reference material

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Clain, Almir F.; Fonseca, Adelaide M.G.; Dantas, Vanessa V.D.B.; Braganca, Maura J.C.; Souza, Poliana S.

2015-01-01

This work describes a methodology to determine the soil short-term stability after the steps of production in laboratory. The short-term stability of the soil is an essential property to be determined in order to producing a reference material. The soil is a candidate of reference material for chemical analysis of thorium with metrological traceability to be used in environmental analysis, equipment calibration, validation methods, and quality control. A material is considered stable in a certain temperature if the property of interest does not change with time, considering the analytical random fluctuations. Due to this, the angular coefficient from the graphic of Th concentration versus elapsed time must be near to zero. The analytical determinations of thorium concentration were performed by Instrumental Neutron activation Analysis. The slopes and their uncertainties were obtained from the regression lines at temperatures of 20 deg C and 60 deg C, with control temperature of -20 deg C. From the obtained data a t-test was applied. In both temperatures the calculated t-value was lower than the critical value, so we can conclude with 95% confidence level that no significant changes happened during the period studied concerning thorium concentration in soil at temperatures of 20 deg C and 60 deg C, showing stability at these temperatures. (author)

Short-term adhesion and long-term biofouling testing of polydopamine and poly(ethylene glycol) surface modifications of membranes and feed spacers for biofouling control

KAUST Repository

Miller, Daniel J.

2012-08-01

Ultrafiltration, nanofiltration membranes and feed spacers were hydrophilized with polydopamine and polydopamine- g-poly(ethylene glycol) surface coatings. The fouling propensity of modified and unmodified membranes was evaluated by short-term batch protein and bacterial adhesion tests. The fouling propensity of modified and unmodified membranes and spacers was evaluated by continuous biofouling experiments in a membrane fouling simulator. The goals of the study were: 1) to determine the effectiveness of polydopamine and polydopamine- g-poly(ethylene glycol) membrane coatings for biofouling control and 2) to compare techniques commonly used in assessment of membrane biofouling propensity with biofouling experiments under practical conditions. Short-term adhesion tests were carried out under static, no-flow conditions for 1 h using bovine serum albumin, a common model globular protein, and Pseudomonas aeruginosa, a common model Gram-negative bacterium. Biofouling tests were performed in a membrane fouling simulator (MFS) for several days under flow conditions similar to those encountered in industrial modules with the autochthonous drinking water population and acetate dosage as organic substrate. Polydopamine- and polydopamine- g-poly(ethylene glycol)-modified membranes showed significantly reduced adhesion of bovine serum albumin and P. aeruginosa in the short-term adhesion tests, but no reduction of biofouling was observed during longer biofouling experiments with modified membranes and spacers. These results demonstrate that short-term batch adhesion experiments using model proteins or bacteria under static conditions are not indicative of biofouling, while continuous biofouling experiments showed that membrane surface modification by polydopamine and polydopamine- g-poly(ethylene glycol) is not effective for biofouling control. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd.

Audit of long-term and short-term liabilities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Korinko M.D.

2017-03-01

Full Text Available The article determines the importance of long-term and short-term liabilities for the management of financial and material resources of an enterprise. It reviews the aim, objects and information generators for realization of audit of short-term and long-term obligations. The organizing and methodical providing of audit of long-term and short-term liabilities of an enterprise are generalized. The authors distinguish the stages of realization of audit of long-term and short-term liabilities, the aim of audit on each of the presented stages, and recommend methodical techniques. It is fixed that it is necessary to conduct the estimation of the systems of internal control and record-keeping of an enterprise by implementation of public accountant procedures for determination of volume and maintenance of selection realization. After estimating the indicated systems, a public accountant determines the methodology for realization of public accountant verification of long-term and short-term liabilities. The analytical procedures that public accountants are expedient to use for realization of audit of short-term and long-term obligations are determined. The authors suggest the classification of the educed defects on the results of the conducted public accountant verification of short-term and long-term obligations.

SHORT-TERM MEMORY IS INDEPENDENT OF BRAIN PROTEIN SYNTHESIS

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Davis, Hasker P.; Rosenzweig, Mark R.; Jones, Oliver W.

1980-09-01

Male Swiss albino CD-1 mice given a single injection of a cerebral protein synthesis inhibitor, anisomycin (ANI) (1 mg/animal), 20 min prior to single trial passive avoidance training demonstrated impaired retention at tests given 3 hr, 6 hr, 1 day, and 7 days after training. Retention was not significantly different from saline controls when tests were given 0.5 or 1.5 hr after training. Prolonging inhibition of brain protein synthesis by giving either 1 or 2 additional injections of ANI 2 or 2 and 4 hr after training did not prolong short-term retention performance. The temporal development of impaired retention in ANI treated mice could not be accounted for by drug dosage, duration of protein synthesis inhibition, or nonspecific sickness at test. In contrast to the suggestion that protein synthesis inhibition prolongs short-term memory (Quinton, 1978), the results of this experiment indicate that short-term memory is not prolonged by antibiotic drugs that inhibit cerebral protein synthesis. All evidence seems consistent with the hypothesis that short-term memory is protein synthesis independent and that the establishment of long-term memory depends upon protein synthesis during or shortly after training. Evidence for a role of protein synthesis in memory maintenance is discussed.

The interaction of short-term and long-term memory in phonetic category formation

Science.gov (United States)

Harnsberger, James D.

2002-05-01

This study examined the role that short-term memory capacity plays in the relationship between novel stimuli (e.g., non-native speech sounds, native nonsense words) and phonetic categories in long-term memory. Thirty native speakers of American English were administered five tests: categorial AXB discrimination using nasal consonants from Malayalam; categorial identification, also using Malayalam nasals, which measured the influence of phonetic categories in long-term memory; digit span; nonword span, a short-term memory measure mediated by phonetic categories in long-term memory; and paired-associate word learning (word-word and word-nonword pairs). The results showed that almost all measures were significantly correlated with one another. The strongest predictor for the discrimination and word-nonword learning results was nonword (r=+0.62) and digit span (r=+0.51), respectively. When the identification test results were partialed out, only nonword span significantly correlated with discrimination. The results show a strong influence of short-term memory capacity on the encoding of phonetic detail within phonetic categories and suggest that long-term memory representations regulate the capacity of short-term memory to preserve information for subsequent encoding. The results of this study will also be discussed with regards to resolving the tension between episodic and abstract models of phonetic category structure.

Short-term and long-term deflection of reinforced hollow core ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

This paper presents a study on different methods of analysis that are currently used by design codes to predict the short-term and long-term deflection of reinforced concrete slab systems and compares the predicted deflections with measured deflections. The experimental work to measure deflections involved the testing of ...

Evaluation of the E mu-pim-1 transgenic mouse model for short-term carcinogenicity testing

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

van Kreijl, C. F.; van Oordt, C. W. V.; Kroese, E. D.

1998-01-01

of T-cell lymphomas. Because of the low incidence of spontaneous tumors and the increased sensitivity to N-ethyl-N-nitrosourea-induced carcinogenesis, E mu-pim-1 mice were suggested to be one of the first potential and attractive candidates to be used in short-term carcinogenicity testing...

Verbal short-term memory and vocabulary learning in polyglots.

Science.gov (United States)

Papagno, C; Vallar, G

1995-02-01

Polyglot and non-polyglot Italian subjects were given tests assessing verbal (phonological) and visuo-spatial short-term and long-term memory, general intelligence, and vocabulary knowledge in their native language. Polyglots had a superior level of performance in verbal short-term memory tasks (auditory digit span and nonword repetition) and in a paired-associate learning test, which assessed the subjects' ability to acquire new (Russian) words. By contrast, the two groups had comparable performance levels in tasks assessing general intelligence, visuo-spatial short-term memory and learning, and paired-associate learning of Italian words. These findings, which are in line with neuropsychological and developmental evidence, as well as with data from normal subjects, suggest a close relationship between the capacity of phonological memory and the acquisition of foreign languages.

Ordered short-term memory differs in signers and speakers: Implications for models of short-term memory

OpenAIRE

Bavelier, Daphne; Newport, Elissa L.; Hall, Matt; Supalla, Ted; Boutla, Mrim

2008-01-01

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers (Boutla, Supalla, Newport, & Bavelier, 2004). Here, we test the hypothesis that this population difference reflects differences in the way speakers and signers maintain temporal order information in short-te...

A Short Term Analogue Memory

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Shah, Peter Jivan

1992-01-01

A short term analogue memory is described. It is based on a well-known sample-hold topology in which leakage currents have been minimized partly by circuit design and partly by layout techniques. Measurements on a test chip implemented in a standard 2.4 micron analogue CMOS process show a droop...

MK-801 and memantine act differently on short-term memory tested with different time-intervals in the Morris water maze test.

Science.gov (United States)

Duda, Weronika; Wesierska, Malgorzata; Ostaszewski, Pawel; Vales, Karel; Nekovarova, Tereza; Stuchlik, Ales

2016-09-15

N-methyl-d-aspartate receptors (NMDARs) play a crucial role in spatial memory formation. In neuropharmacological studies their functioning strongly depends on testing conditions and the dosage of NMDAR antagonists. The aim of this study was to assess the immediate effects of NMDAR block by (+)MK-801 or memantine on short-term allothetic memory. Memory was tested in a working memory version of the Morris water maze test. In our version of the test, rats underwent one day of training with 8 trials, and then three experimental days when rats were injected intraperitoneally with low- 5 (MeL), high - 20 (MeH) mg/kg memantine, 0.1mg/kg MK-801 or 1ml/kg saline (SAL) 30min before testing, for three consecutive days. On each experimental day there was just one acquisition and one test trial, with an inter-trial interval of 5 or 15min. During training the hidden platform was relocated after each trial and during the experiment after each day. The follow-up effect was assessed on day 9. Intact rats improved their spatial memory across the one training day. With a 5min interval MeH rats had longer latency then all rats during retrieval. With a 15min interval the MeH rats presented worse working memory measured as retrieval minus acquisition trial for path than SAL and MeL and for latency than MeL rats. MK-801 rats had longer latency than SAL during retrieval. Thus, the high dose of memantine, contrary to low dose of MK-801 disrupts short-term memory independent on the time interval between acquisition and retrieval. This shows that short-term memory tested in a working memory version of water maze is sensitive to several parameters: i.e., NMDA receptor antagonist type, dosage and the time interval between learning and testing. Copyright © 2016. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Impact of pre-equilibration and diffusion limited release kinetics on effluent concentration in column leaching tests: Insights from numerical simulations.

Science.gov (United States)

Finkel, Michael; Grathwohl, Peter

2017-05-01

Column leaching tests have become a standard method for assessing leaching of pollutants from materials used, e.g., for road and railway constructions and in landscaping measures. Column tests showed to be practical in laboratories yielding robust and reproducible results. However, considerable uncertainty still exists related particularly to the degree of equilibration of the pore water with the solids during preparation (pre-equilibration) and percolation of the column. We analyse equilibration time scales and sensitivity of concentrations in column leachate with respect to initial conditions in a series of numerical experiments covering a broad spectrum of material and solute properties. Slow release of pollutants from solid materials is described by a spherical diffusion model of kinetic sorption accounting for multiple grain size fractions and sorption capacities. Results show that the cumulative concentrations are rather independent of the pre-equilibration level for a broad spectrum of parameter settings, e.g. if intra-particle porosity is high, grain size is small, or if the sorption coefficient is large. Sensitivity increases with decreasing liquid solid ratios and contact time during percolation. Significant variations with initial column conditions are to be expected for material and compound properties leading to slow release kinetics. In these cases, sensitivity to initial conditions may have to be considered. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Improving creativity performance by short-term meditation

Science.gov (United States)

2014-01-01

Background One form of meditation intervention, the integrative body-mind training (IBMT) has been shown to improve attention, reduce stress and change self-reports of mood. In this paper we examine whether short-term IBMT can improve performance related to creativity and determine the role that mood may play in such improvement. Methods Forty Chinese undergraduates were randomly assigned to short-term IBMT group or a relaxation training (RT) control group. Mood and creativity performance were assessed by the Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) and Torrance Tests of Creative Thinking (TTCT) questionnaire respectively. Results As predicted, the results indicated that short-term (30 min per day for 7 days) IBMT improved creativity performance on the divergent thinking task, and yielded better emotional regulation than RT. In addition, cross-lagged analysis indicated that both positive and negative affect may influence creativity in IBMT group (not RT group). Conclusions Our results suggested that emotion-related creativity-promoting mechanism may be attributed to short-term meditation. PMID:24645871

Short-term and long-term earthquake occurrence models for Italy: ETES, ERS and LTST

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Maura Murru

2010-11-01

Full Text Available This study describes three earthquake occurrence models as applied to the whole Italian territory, to assess the occurrence probabilities of future (M ≥5.0 earthquakes: two as short-term (24 hour models, and one as long-term (5 and 10 years. The first model for short-term forecasts is a purely stochastic epidemic type earthquake sequence (ETES model. The second short-term model is an epidemic rate-state (ERS forecast based on a model that is physically constrained by the application to the earthquake clustering of the Dieterich rate-state constitutive law. The third forecast is based on a long-term stress transfer (LTST model that considers the perturbations of earthquake probability for interacting faults by static Coulomb stress changes. These models have been submitted to the Collaboratory for the Study of Earthquake Predictability (CSEP for forecast testing for Italy (ETH-Zurich, and they were locked down to test their validity on real data in a future setting starting from August 1, 2009.

Parent-Offspring Conflict over Short-Term Mating Strategies

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Spyroulla Georgiou

2011-12-01

Full Text Available Individuals engage in short-term mating strategies that enable them to obtain fitness benefits from casual relationships. These benefits, however, count for less and cost more to their parents. On this basis three hypotheses are tested. First, parents and offspring are likely to disagree over short-term mating strategies, with the former considering these as less acceptable than the latter. Second, parents are more likely to disapprove of the short-term mating strategies of their daughters than of their sons. Finally, mothers and fathers are expected to agree on how much they disagree over the short-term mating strategies of their children. Evidence from a sample of 148 Greek-Cypriot families (140 mothers, 105 fathers, 119 daughters, 77 sons provides support for the first two hypotheses and partial support for the third hypothesis. The implications of these findings for understanding family dynamics are further discussed.

Biophase equilibration times.

Science.gov (United States)

Veng-Pedersen, P; Mandema, J W; Danhof, M

1991-09-01

Various methods for describing how quickly a drug equilibrates at the biophase are proposed. The biophase equilibration time (BET) is the time it takes the biophase drug level to reach a given percentage (p) of its predicted steady state in a drug administration that leads to a steady-state condition. The time to reach biophase equilibrium may be defined as the BET value for p = 95, and the 50% biophase equilibration time is obtained when p = 50. Biophase equilibration profiles (BEPs), obtained by plotting p versus BET, give a dynamic representation of the approach to equilibrium and may serve as an indicator of the rate of drug delivery to the biophase. A pharmacodynamic system analysis method is proposed to determine BETs and BEPs from the biophase conduction function. The approach is demonstrated using pharmacodynamic data from the CNS effect of amobarbital evaluated by an aperiodic analysis of EEG recordings. The relevance of the BET and/or BEP principles in optimal computer-controlled drug infusion, drug design, and evaluation of targeted drug delivery is discussed. Both vascular and extravascular drug administrations are considered in the analysis.

Pigeon visual short-term memory directly compared to primates.

Science.gov (United States)

Wright, Anthony A; Elmore, L Caitlin

2016-02-01

Three pigeons were trained to remember arrays of 2-6 colored squares and detect which of two squares had changed color to test their visual short-term memory. Procedures (e.g., stimuli, displays, viewing times, delays) were similar to those used to test monkeys and humans. Following extensive training, pigeons performed slightly better than similarly trained monkeys, but both animal species were considerably less accurate than humans with the same array sizes (2, 4 and 6 items). Pigeons and monkeys showed calculated memory capacities of one item or less, whereas humans showed a memory capacity of 2.5 items. Despite the differences in calculated memory capacities, the pigeons' memory results, like those from monkeys and humans, were all well characterized by an inverse power-law function fit to d' values for the five display sizes. This characterization provides a simple, straightforward summary of the fundamental processing of visual short-term memory (how visual short-term memory declines with memory load) that emphasizes species similarities based upon similar functional relationships. By closely matching pigeon testing parameters to those of monkeys and humans, these similar functional relationships suggest similar underlying processes of visual short-term memory in pigeons, monkeys and humans. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Short-term and long-term effects of violent media on aggression in children and adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Bushman, Brad J; Huesmann, L Rowell

2006-04-01

To test whether the results of the accumulated studies on media violence and aggressive behavior are consistent with the theories that have evolved to explain the effects. We tested for the existence of both short-term and long-term effects for aggressive behavior. We also tested the theory-driven hypothesis that short-term effects should be greater for adults and long-term effects should be greater for children. Meta-analysis. Children younger than 18 years and adults. Violent media, including TV, movies, video games, music, and comic books. Measures of aggressive behavior, aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, physiological arousal (eg, heart rate, blood pressure), and helping behavior. Effect size estimates were combined using meta-analytic procedures. As expected, the short-term effects of violent media were greater for adults than for children whereas the long-term effects were greater for children than for adults. The results also showed that there were overall modest but significant effect sizes for exposure to media violence on aggressive behaviors, aggressive thoughts, angry feelings, arousal levels, and helping behavior. The results are consistent with the theory that short-term effects are mostly due to the priming of existing well-encoded scripts, schemas, or beliefs, which adults have had more time to encode. In contrast, long-term effects require the learning (encoding) of scripts, schemas, or beliefs. Children can encode new scripts, schemas, and beliefs via observational learning with less interference and effort than adults.

Pediatric polytrauma : Short-term and long-term outcomes

NARCIS (Netherlands)

vanderSluis, CK; Kingma, J; Eisma, WH; tenDuis, HJ

Objective: To assess the short-term and long-term outcomes of pediatric polytrauma patients and to analyze the extent to which short-term outcomes can predict long-term outcomes. Materials and Methods: Ail pediatric polytrauma patients (Injury Severity Score of greater than or equal to 16, less than

Decay uncovered in nonverbal short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Mercer, Tom; McKeown, Denis

2014-02-01

Decay theory posits that memory traces gradually fade away over the passage of time unless they are actively rehearsed. Much recent work exploring verbal short-term memory has challenged this theory, but there does appear to be evidence for trace decay in nonverbal auditory short-term memory. Numerous discrimination studies have reported a performance decline as the interval separating two tones is increased, consistent with a decay process. However, most of this tone comparison research can be explained in other ways, without reference to decay, and these alternative accounts were tested in the present study. In Experiment 1, signals were employed toward the end of extended retention intervals to ensure that listeners were alert to the presence and frequency content of the memoranda. In Experiment 2, a mask stimulus was employed in an attempt to distinguish between a highly detailed sensory trace and a longer-lasting short-term memory, and the distinctiveness of the stimuli was varied. Despite these precautions, slow-acting trace decay was observed. It therefore appears that the mere passage of time can lead to forgetting in some forms of short-term memory.

Short-term and long-term effects of violent media on aggression in children and adults

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Bushman, B.J.; Huesmann, L.R.

2006-01-01

Objectives: To test whether the results of the accumulated studies on media violence and aggressive behavior are consistent with the theories that have evolved to explain the effects. We tested for the existence of both short-term and long-term effects for aggressive behavior. We also tested the

Sorption, dissolution and pH determine the long-term equilibration and toxicity of coated and uncoated ZnO nanoparticles in soil.

Science.gov (United States)

Waalewijn-Kool, Pauline L; Diez Ortiz, Maria; van Straalen, Nico M; van Gestel, Cornelis A M

2013-07-01

To assess the effect of long-term dissolution on bioavailability and toxicity, triethoxyoctylsilane coated and uncoated zinc oxide nanoparticles (ZnO-NP), non-nano ZnO and ZnCl2 were equilibrated in natural soil for up to twelve months. Zn concentrations in pore water increased with time for all ZnO forms but peaked at intermediate concentrations of ZnO-NP and non-nano ZnO, while for coated ZnO-NP such a clear peak only was seen after 12 months. Dose-related increases in soil pH may explain decreased soluble Zn levels due to fixation of Zn released from ZnO at higher soil concentrations. At T = 0 uncoated ZnO-NP and non-nano ZnO were equally toxic to the springtail Folsomia candida, but not as toxic as coated ZnO-NP, and ZnCl2 being most toxic. After three months equilibration toxicity to F. candida was already reduced for all Zn forms, except for coated ZnO-NP which showed reduced toxicity only after 12 months equilibration. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Robust short-term memory without synaptic learning.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Samuel Johnson

Full Text Available Short-term memory in the brain cannot in general be explained the way long-term memory can--as a gradual modification of synaptic weights--since it takes place too quickly. Theories based on some form of cellular bistability, however, do not seem able to account for the fact that noisy neurons can collectively store information in a robust manner. We show how a sufficiently clustered network of simple model neurons can be instantly induced into metastable states capable of retaining information for a short time (a few seconds. The mechanism is robust to different network topologies and kinds of neural model. This could constitute a viable means available to the brain for sensory and/or short-term memory with no need of synaptic learning. Relevant phenomena described by neurobiology and psychology, such as local synchronization of synaptic inputs and power-law statistics of forgetting avalanches, emerge naturally from this mechanism, and we suggest possible experiments to test its viability in more biological settings.

Robust short-term memory without synaptic learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Samuel; Marro, J; Torres, Joaquín J

2013-01-01

Short-term memory in the brain cannot in general be explained the way long-term memory can--as a gradual modification of synaptic weights--since it takes place too quickly. Theories based on some form of cellular bistability, however, do not seem able to account for the fact that noisy neurons can collectively store information in a robust manner. We show how a sufficiently clustered network of simple model neurons can be instantly induced into metastable states capable of retaining information for a short time (a few seconds). The mechanism is robust to different network topologies and kinds of neural model. This could constitute a viable means available to the brain for sensory and/or short-term memory with no need of synaptic learning. Relevant phenomena described by neurobiology and psychology, such as local synchronization of synaptic inputs and power-law statistics of forgetting avalanches, emerge naturally from this mechanism, and we suggest possible experiments to test its viability in more biological settings.

Robust Short-Term Memory without Synaptic Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Johnson, Samuel; Marro, J.; Torres, Joaquín J.

2013-01-01

Short-term memory in the brain cannot in general be explained the way long-term memory can – as a gradual modification of synaptic weights – since it takes place too quickly. Theories based on some form of cellular bistability, however, do not seem able to account for the fact that noisy neurons can collectively store information in a robust manner. We show how a sufficiently clustered network of simple model neurons can be instantly induced into metastable states capable of retaining information for a short time (a few seconds). The mechanism is robust to different network topologies and kinds of neural model. This could constitute a viable means available to the brain for sensory and/or short-term memory with no need of synaptic learning. Relevant phenomena described by neurobiology and psychology, such as local synchronization of synaptic inputs and power-law statistics of forgetting avalanches, emerge naturally from this mechanism, and we suggest possible experiments to test its viability in more biological settings. PMID:23349664

Mercury Induced Biochemical Alterations As Oxidative Stress In Mugil Cephalus In Short Term Toxicity Test

OpenAIRE

J.S.I Rajkumar; Samuel Tennyson

2013-01-01

Mugil cephalus juveniles of size 2.5 ±0.6cm were exposed to mercury in short term chronic toxicity test through static renewal bioassay to detect the possible biochemical agent as biomarkers in aquatic pollution and in estuarine contamination as specific. Lipid peroxidation levels, glutathione S -transferase, catalase, reduced glutathione and acetylcholinesterase were studied as biochemical parameters. Increased thio-barbituric acid reactive substances levels were observed under exposur...

Balance Assessment in Sports-Related Concussion: Evaluating Test-Retest Reliability of the Equilibrate System.

Science.gov (United States)

Odom, Mitchell J; Lee, Young M; Zuckerman, Scott L; Apple, Rachel P; Germanos, Theodore; Solomon, Gary S; Sills, Allen K

2016-01-01

This study evaluated the test-retest reliability of a novel computer-based, portable balance assessment tool, the Equilibrate System (ES), used to diagnose sports-related concussion. Twenty-seven students participated in ES testing consisting of three sessions over 4 weeks. The modified Balance Error Scoring System was performed. For each participant, test-retest reliability was established using the intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC). The ES test-retest reliability from baseline to week 2 produced an ICC value of 0.495 (95% CI, 0.123-0.745). Week 2 testing produced ICC values of 0.602 (95% CI, 0.279-0.803) and 0.610 (95% CI, 0.299-0.804), respectively. All other single measures test-retest reliability values produced poor ICC values. Same-day ES testing showed fair to good test-retest reliability while interweek measures displayed poor to fair test-retest reliability. Testing conditions should be controlled when using computerized balance assessment methods. ES testing should only be used as a part of a comprehensive assessment.

Semantic and phonological contributions to short-term repetition and long-term cued sentence recall.

Science.gov (United States)

Meltzer, Jed A; Rose, Nathan S; Deschamps, Tiffany; Leigh, Rosie C; Panamsky, Lilia; Silberberg, Alexandra; Madani, Noushin; Links, Kira A

2016-02-01

The function of verbal short-term memory is supported not only by the phonological loop, but also by semantic resources that may operate on both short and long time scales. Elucidation of the neural underpinnings of these mechanisms requires effective behavioral manipulations that can selectively engage them. We developed a novel cued sentence recall paradigm to assess the effects of two factors on sentence recall accuracy at short-term and long-term stages. Participants initially repeated auditory sentences immediately following a 14-s retention period. After this task was complete, long-term memory for each sentence was probed by a two-word recall cue. The sentences were either concrete (high imageability) or abstract (low imageability), and the initial 14-s retention period was filled with either an undemanding finger-tapping task or a more engaging articulatory suppression task (Exp. 1, counting backward by threes; Exp. 2, repeating a four-syllable nonword). Recall was always better for the concrete sentences. Articulatory suppression reduced accuracy in short-term recall, especially for abstract sentences, but the sentences initially recalled following articulatory suppression were retained better at the subsequent cued-recall test, suggesting that the engagement of semantic mechanisms for short-term retention promoted encoding of the sentence meaning into long-term memory. These results provide a basis for using sentence imageability and subsequent memory performance as probes of semantic engagement in short-term memory for sentences.

Long- and short-term trends in vessel conditioning of TFTR [Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

LaMarche, P.H.; Dylla, H.F.; Bell, M.G.

1986-10-01

We have investigated trends in the conditioning of the Tokamak Fusion Test Reactor (TFTR) vacuum vessel during the May 1984 to April 1985 run period. The initial conditioning of the vessel, consisting of glow discharge cleaning (GDC) and pulse discharge cleaning (PDC) in concert with a 150 0 C vessel bakeout, is necessary to assure plasma operation after atmospheric venting. A long-term conditioning process, ascribed to limiter conditioning, effectively improves operational conditions during the course of the run. Over several thousand high power plasma discharges, the improvement was documented by using standard parameter (fiducial) plasma discharges. Several techniques demonstrated short-term improvements in vessel conditioning during this time period, including: Cr gettering and programming the plasma position relative to the limiter contact area

Relationship between short-term sexual strategies and sexual jealousy.

Science.gov (United States)

Mathes, Eugene W

2005-02-01

In a classic study, Buss, Larson, Westen, and Semmelroth reported that men were more distressed by the thought of a partner's sexual infidelity (sexual jealousy) and women were more distressed by the thought of a partner's emotional infidelity (emotional jealousy). Initially, Buss and his associates explained these results by suggesting that men are concerned about uncertainty of paternity, that is, the possibility of raising another man's child while believing the child is their own. However, later they explained the results in terms of men's preference for short-term sexual strategies. The purpose of this research was to test the explanation of short-term sexual strategies. Men and women subjects were instructed to imagine themselves in a relationship which was either short-term (primarily sexual) or long-term (involving commitment) and then respond to Buss's jealousy items. It was hypothesized that, when both men and women imagined a short-term relationship, they would be more threatened by a partner's sexual infidelity, and, when they imagined a long-term relationship, they would be more threatened by a partner's emotional infidelity. Support was found for this hypothesis.

Equilibration Influence on Jet Energy Loss

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Cheng Luan; Wang Enke

2010-01-01

With the initial conditions in the chemical non-equilibrated medium and Bjorken expanding medium at RHIC, we investigate the consequence for parton evolution. With considering the parton equilibration, we obtain the time dependence of the opacity when the jet propagates through the QGP medium. The parton equilibration affect the jet energy loss with detailed balance evidently. Both parton energy loss from stimulated emission in the chemical non-equilibrated expanding medium and in Bjorken expanding medium are linear dependent on the propagating distance rather than square dependent in the static medium. This will increase the energy and propagating distance dependence of the parton energy loss.

Testing for Short Memory in a VARMA Process

OpenAIRE

Oke, Timothy; Öller, Lars-Erik

1997-01-01

We generalize the short term memory test of an ARMA model, presented in Öller (1985), to the multivariate VARMA cases. In a study on Swedish exports and OECD demand we demonstrate how the multivariate setting extends the short memory.

Changes of peritoneal transport parameters with time on dialysis: assessment with sequential peritoneal equilibration test.

Science.gov (United States)

Waniewski, Jacek; Antosiewicz, Stefan; Baczynski, Daniel; Poleszczuk, Jan; Pietribiasi, Mauro; Lindholm, Bengt; Wankowicz, Zofia

2017-10-27

Sequential peritoneal equilibration test (sPET) is based on the consecutive performance of the peritoneal equilibration test (PET, 4-hour, glucose 2.27%) and the mini-PET (1-hour, glucose 3.86%), and the estimation of peritoneal transport parameters with the 2-pore model. It enables the assessment of the functional transport barrier for fluid and small solutes. The objective of this study was to check whether the estimated model parameters can serve as better and earlier indicators of the changes in the peritoneal transport characteristics than directly measured transport indices that depend on several transport processes. 17 patients were examined using sPET twice with the interval of about 8 months (230 ± 60 days). There was no difference between the observational parameters measured in the 2 examinations. The indices for solute transport, but not net UF, were well correlated between the examinations. Among the estimated parameters, a significant decrease between the 2 examinations was found only for hydraulic permeability LpS, and osmotic conductance for glucose, whereas the other parameters remained unchanged. These fluid transport parameters did not correlate with D/P for creatinine, although the decrease in LpS values between the examinations was observed mostly for patients with low D/P for creatinine. We conclude that changes in fluid transport parameters, hydraulic permeability and osmotic conductance for glucose, as assessed by the pore model, may precede the changes in small solute transport. The systematic assessment of fluid transport status needs specific clinical and mathematical tools beside the standard PET tests.

Insensitivity of visual short-term memory to irrelevant visual information.

Science.gov (United States)

Andrade, Jackie; Kemps, Eva; Werniers, Yves; May, Jon; Szmalec, Arnaud

2002-07-01

Several authors have hypothesized that visuo-spatial working memory is functionally analogous to verbal working memory. Irrelevant background speech impairs verbal short-term memory. We investigated whether irrelevant visual information has an analogous effect on visual short-term memory, using a dynamic visual noise (DVN) technique known to disrupt visual imagery (Quinn & McConnell, 1996b). Experiment I replicated the effect of DVN on pegword imagery. Experiments 2 and 3 showed no effect of DVN on recall of static matrix patterns, despite a significant effect of a concurrent spatial tapping task. Experiment 4 showed no effect of DVN on encoding or maintenance of arrays of matrix patterns, despite testing memory by a recognition procedure to encourage visual rather than spatial processing. Serial position curves showed a one-item recency effect typical of visual short-term memory. Experiment 5 showed no effect of DVN on short-term recognition of Chinese characters, despite effects of visual similarity and a concurrent colour memory task that confirmed visual processing of the characters. We conclude that irrelevant visual noise does not impair visual short-term memory. Visual working memory may not be functionally analogous to verbal working memory, and different cognitive processes may underlie visual short-term memory and visual imagery.

Comparison of Short Term with Long Term Catheterization after Anterior Colporrhaphy Surgery

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

F. Movahed

2010-07-01

Full Text Available Introduction & Objective: This belief that overfilling the bladder after anterior colporrhaphy might have a negative influence on surgical outcome, causes routine catheterization after operation. This study was done to compare short term (24h with long term (72h catheterization after anterior colporrhaphy.Materials & Methods: This randomized clinical trial was carried out at Kosar Hospital , Qazvin (Iran in 2005-2006. One hundred cases candidating for anterior colporrhaphy , were divided in two equal groups . In the first group foley catheter was removed 24 hours and in the second group 72 hours after the operation. Before removing catheter, urine sample was obtained for culture . After removal and urination, residual volume was determinded. If the volume exceeded 200 ml or retention occured, the catheter would be fixed for more 72 hours. Need for recatheterization, urinary retention, positive urine culture,and hospital stay were surveyed. The data was analyzed using T and Fisher tests.Results: Residual volume exceeding 200 ml and the need for recatheterization occurred in one case (2% in the short term group but in the long term group none of the subjects needed recatheterization (P=1. Retention was not seen. In the both groups, one case (2% had positive urine culture with no statistically significant difference (P=1. Mean hospital stay was short in the first group (P=0.00.Conclusion: Short term catheterization after anterior colporrhaphy does not cause urinary retention and decreases hospital stay.

Effects of Repeated Testing on Short- and Long-Term Memory Performance across Different Test Formats

Science.gov (United States)

Stenlund, Tova; Sundström, Anna; Jonsson, Bert

2016-01-01

This study examined whether practice testing with short-answer (SA) items benefits learning over time compared to practice testing with multiple-choice (MC) items, and rereading the material. More specifically, the aim was to test the hypotheses of "retrieval effort" and "transfer appropriate processing" by comparing retention…

The nature of short-term consolidation in visual working memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Ricker, Timothy J; Hardman, Kyle O

2017-11-01

Short-term consolidation is the process by which stable working memory representations are created. This process is fundamental to cognition yet poorly understood. The present work examines short-term consolidation using a Bayesian hierarchical model of visual working memory recall to determine the underlying processes at work. Our results show that consolidation functions largely through changing the proportion of memory items successfully maintained until test. Although there was some evidence that consolidation affects representational precision, this change was modest and could not account for the bulk of the consolidation effect on memory performance. The time course of the consolidation function and selective influence of consolidation on specific serial positions strongly indicates that short-term consolidation induces an attentional blink. The blink leads to deficits in memory for the immediately following item when time pressure is introduced. Temporal distinctiveness accounts of the consolidation process are tested and ruled out. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?

Science.gov (United States)

Cowan, Nelson

2008-01-01

In the recent literature there has been considerable confusion about the three types of memory: long-term, short-term, and working memory. This chapter strives to reduce that confusion and makes up-to-date assessments of these types of memory. Long- and short-term memory could differ in two fundamental ways, with only short-term memory demonstrating (1) temporal decay and (2) chunk capacity limits. Both properties of short-term memory are still controversial but the current literature is rather encouraging regarding the existence of both decay and capacity limits. Working memory has been conceived and defined in three different, slightly discrepant ways: as short-term memory applied to cognitive tasks, as a multi-component system that holds and manipulates information in short-term memory, and as the use of attention to manage short-term memory. Regardless of the definition, there are some measures of memory in the short term that seem routine and do not correlate well with cognitive aptitudes and other measures (those usually identified with the term "working memory") that seem more attention demanding and do correlate well with these aptitudes. The evidence is evaluated and placed within a theoretical framework depicted in Fig. 1.

LISA Pathfinder test-mass charging during galactic cosmic-ray flux short-term variations

Science.gov (United States)

Grimani, C.; Fabi, M.; Lobo, A.; Mateos, I.; Telloni, D.

2015-02-01

Metal free-floating test masses aboard the future interferometers devoted to gravitational wave detection in space are charged by galactic and solar cosmic rays with energies \\gt 100 MeV/n. This process represents one of the main sources of noise in the lowest frequency band (\\lt 10-3 Hz) of these experiments. We study here the charging of the LISA Pathfinder (LISA-PF) gold-platinum test masses due to galactic cosmic-ray (GCR) protons and helium nuclei with the Fluka Monte Carlo toolkit. Projections of the energy spectra of GCRs during the LISA-PF operations in 2015 are considered. This work was carried out on the basis of the solar activity level and solar polarity epoch expected for LISA-PF. The effects of GCR short-term variations are evaluated here for the first time. Classical Forbush decreases, GCR variations induced by the Sun rotation, and fluctuations in the LISA-PF frequency bandwidth are discussed.

Short-term and long-term memory in early temporal lobe dysfunction.

Science.gov (United States)

Hershey, T; Craft, S; Glauser, T A; Hale, S

1998-01-01

Following medial temporal damage, mature humans are impaired in retaining new information over long delays but not short delays. The question of whether a similar dissociation occurs in children was addressed by testing children (ages 7-16) with unilateral temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE) and controls on short- and long-term memory tasks, including a spatial delayed response task (SDR). Early-onset TLE did not affect performance on short delays on SDR, but it did impair performance at the longest delay (60 s), similar to adults with unilateral medial temporal damage. In addition, early-onset TLE affected performance on pattern recall, spatial span, and verbal span with rehearsal interference. No differences were found on story recall or on a response inhibition task.

The Demonstration of Short-Term Consolidation.

Science.gov (United States)

Jolicoeur, Pierre; Dell'Acqua, Roberto

1998-01-01

Results of seven experiments involving 112 college students or staff using a dual-task approach provide evidence that encoding information into short-term memory involves a distinct process termed short-term consolidation (STC). Results suggest that STC has limited capacity and that it requires central processing mechanisms. (SLD)

Benign tracheobronchial stenoses: changes in short-term and long-term pulmonary function testing after expandable metallic stent placement.

Science.gov (United States)

Gotway, Michael B; Golden, Jeffrey A; LaBerge, Jeanne M; Webb, W Richard; Reddy, Gautham P; Wilson, Mark W; Kerlan, Robert K; Gordon, Roy L

2002-01-01

To determine the short- and long-term improvement in airflow dynamics in patients undergoing tracheobronchial stent placement for benign airway stenoses. Twenty-two patients underwent 34 tracheal and/or bronchial stent placement procedures for benign airway stenoses and had the results of pulmonary function tests available. Stent placement indications included bronchomalacia after lung transplantation (n = 11), postintubation stenoses (n = 6), relapsing polychondritis (n = 2), and 1 each of tracheomalacia, tracheal compression, and histoplasmosis. Six patients underwent more than one stent placement procedure (range: 2-7 procedures). The mean forced expiratory volume in one second (FEV(1) ), forced expiratory flow rate in the midportion of the forced vital capacity curve (FEF(25-75) ), forced vital capacity, and peak flow (PF) rate obtained before stent placement were compared with those immediately after stent placement and with those measurements most remote from stent placement using the paired two-tailed test. All patients reported improved respiratory function immediately after stent placement. The mean FEV(1), FEF(25-75), and PF rate improved significantly (p stent placement. On long-term follow-up averaging 15 months after stent placement, these parameters declined despite patients' subjective sense of improvement. Segregating the population into transplant and nontransplant airway stenosis etiologies, however, FEF(25-75) and PF rate remained significantly improved (p = 0.045, p = 0.027, respectively), over the long term for the latter. FEV increased after subsequent stent placements for patients receiving multiple stents. Stent placement for benign tracheobronchial stenoses provides significant immediate improvement in airflow dynamics. Long-term improvement in airflow obstruction may be expected, and additional stent placements may further improve pulmonary function.

Anisomycin Injection in Area CA3 of the Hippocampus Impairs Both Short-Term and Long-Term Memories of Contextual Fear

Science.gov (United States)

Remaud, Jessica; Ceccom, Johnatan; Carponcy, Julien; Dugué, Laura; Menchon, Gregory; Pech, Stéphane; Halley, Helene; Francés, Bernard; Dahan, Lionel

2014-01-01

Protein synthesis is involved in the consolidation of short-term memory into long-term memory. Previous electrophysiological data concerning LTP in CA3 suggest that protein synthesis in that region might also be necessary for short-term memory. We tested this hypothesis by locally injecting the protein synthesis inhibitor anisomycin in hippocampal…

Comparison of Short-Term Estrogenicity Tests for Identification of Hormone-Disrupting Chemicals

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, Helle Raun; Andersson, Anna-Maria; Arnold, Steven F.

1999-01-01

The aim of this study was to compare results obtained by eight different short-term assays of estrogenlike actions of chemicals conducted in 10 different laboratories in five countries. Twenty chemicals were selected to represent direct-acting estrogens, compounds with estrogenic metabolites, est...

Comparison of short-term estrogenicity tests for identification of hormone-disrupting chemicals

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Andersen, H R; Andersson, A M; Arnold, S F

1999-01-01

The aim of this study was to compare results obtained by eight different short-term assays of estrogenlike actions of chemicals conducted in 10 different laboratories in five countries. Twenty chemicals were selected to represent direct-acting estrogens, compounds with estrogenic metabolites, est...

What are the differences between long-term, short-term, and working memory?

OpenAIRE

Cowan, Nelson

2008-01-01

In the recent literature there has been considerable confusion about the three types of memory: long-term, short-term, and working memory. This chapter strives to reduce that confusion and makes up-to-date assessments of these types of memory. Long- and short-term memory could differ in two fundamental ways, with only short-term memory demonstrating (1) temporal decay and (2) chunk capacity limits. Both properties of short-term memory are still controversial but the current literature is rath...

A Short-Term Longitudinal Study of Memorial Development during Early Grade School.

Science.gov (United States)

Kunzinger, Edward L., III

1985-01-01

Overt rehearsal and free recall performance was analyzed longitudinally in two experimental testing sessions at 7 and later at 9 years of age. Measures of short- and long-term memory recall, and two measures of input processing were obtained. Significant increases between age levels were exhibited by all variables except short-term memory.…

Effect of zinc supplementation of pregnant rats on short-term and long-term memory of their offspring

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ali, M.A.; Ghotbeddin, Z.; Parham, G.H.

2007-01-01

To see the dose dependent effects of zinc chloride on the short-term and long-term memory in a shuttle box (rats). Six pair adult wistar rats were taken for this experiment. One group of pregnant rats received a daily oral dose of 20 mg/kg Zn as zinc chloride and the remaining groups received a daily oral dose of (30, 50, 70,100 mg/kg) zinc chloride for two weeks by gavage. One month after birth, a shuttle box was used to test short-term and long-term memory. Two criteria were considered to behavioral test, including latency in entering dark chamber and time spent in the dark chamber. This experiment showed that oral administration of ZnCl/sub 2/ with (20, 30, 50 mg/kg/day) doses after 2 weeks at the stage of pregnancy, can improve the working memory of their offspring (p<0.05). Where as ZnCl/sub 2/ with 30 mg/kg/day dose has been more effective than other doses (p<0.001). But rat which received ZnCl/sub 2/ with 100 mg/kg/day at the stage of pregnancy, has shown significant impairment in working (short-term) memory of their offspring (p<0.05) and there was no significant difference in reference (long-term) memory 3 for any of groups. This study has demonstrated that zinc chloride consumption with 30 mg/kg/day dose for two weeks at the stage of pregnancy in rats, has positive effect on short-term memory on their offspring. But consumption of enhanced zinc 100 mg/kg/day in pregnant rats can cause short-term memory impairment. On the other hand, zinc supplementation such as zinc chloride has no effect on long-term memory. (author)

Short-term memory load and pronunciation rate

Science.gov (United States)

Schweickert, Richard; Hayt, Cathrin

1988-01-01

In a test of short-term memory recall, two subjects attempted to recall various lists. For unpracticed subjects, the time it took to read the list is a better predictor of immediate recall than the number of items on the list. For practiced subjects, the two predictors do about equally well. If the items that must be recalled are unfamiliar, it is advantageous to keep the items short to pronounce. On the other hand, if the same items will be encountered over and over again, it is advantageous to make them distinctive, even at the cost of adding to the number of syllables.

Short-term memory and dual task performance

Science.gov (United States)

Regan, J. E.

1982-01-01

Two hypotheses concerning the way in which short-term memory interacts with another task in a dual task situation are considered. It is noted that when two tasks are combined, the activity of controlling and organizing performance on both tasks simultaneously may compete with either task for a resource; this resource may be space in a central mechanism or general processing capacity or it may be some task-specific resource. If a special relationship exists between short-term memory and control, especially if there is an identity relationship between short-term and a central controlling mechanism, then short-term memory performance should show a decrement in a dual task situation. Even if short-term memory does not have any particular identity with a controlling mechanism, but both tasks draw on some common resource or resources, then a tradeoff between the two tasks in allocating resources is possible and could be reflected in performance. The persistent concurrence cost in memory performance in these experiments suggests that short-term memory may have a unique status in the information processing system.

Revisiting M&M with Taxes: An Alternative Equilibrating Process

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Kenneth J. Kopecky

2018-01-01

Full Text Available Modigliani and Miller present an equity-quantity shifting equilibrating process to achieve an optimal firm value in the presence of corporate taxes. However, in the era in which they derived their various propositions regarding the relation between a firm’s value and its capital structure, well-capitalized takeover specialists including private equity firms and sovereign funds did not exist, at least by today’s standards. In this paper we develop a simple arbitrage strategy, made viable by the presence of takeover firms, which presents an alternative equilibrating process to achieve the same optimal firm value. This alternative process is markedly different from that of the Modigliani and Miller theorem in terms of its predictions for debt use and restores the prospect of capital structure irrelevancy despite the existence of corporate taxes.

Short-term LNG-markets

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Eldegard, Tom; Lund, Arne-Christian; Miltersen, Kristian; Rud, Linda

2005-01-01

The global Liquefied Natural Gas (LNG) industry has experienced substantial growth in the past decades. In the traditional trade patterns of LNG the product has typically been handled within a dedicated chain of plants and vessels fully committed by long term contracts or common ownership, providing risk sharing of large investments in a non-liquid market. Increasing gas prices and substantial cost reductions in all parts of the LNG chain have made LNG projects viable even if only part of the capacity is secured by long-term contracts, opening for more flexible trade of the remainder. Increasing gas demand, especially in power generation, combined with cost reductions in the cost of LNG terminals, open new markets for LNG. For the LNG supplier, the flexibility of shifting volumes between regions represents an additional value. International trade in LNG has been increasing, now accounting for more than one fifth of the world's cross-border gas trade. Despite traditional vertical chain bonds, increased flexibility has contributed in fact to an increasing LNG spot trade, representing 8% of global trade in 2002. The focus of this paper is on the development of global short-term LNG markets, and their role with respect to efficiency and security of supply in European gas markets. Arbitrage opportunities arising from price differences between regional markets (such as North America versus Europe) are important impetuses for flexible short-term trade. However, the short-term LNG trade may suffer from problems related to market access, e.g. limited access to terminals and regulatory issues, as well as rigidities connected to vertical binding within the LNG chain. Important issues related to the role of short-term LNG-trade in the European gas market are: Competition, flexibility in meeting peak demand, security of supply and consequences of differences in pricing policies (oil-linked prices in Europe and spot market prices in North America). (Author)

[Short-term memory characteristics of vibration intensity tactile perception on human wrist].

Science.gov (United States)

Hao, Fei; Chen, Li-Juan; Lu, Wei; Song, Ai-Guo

2014-12-25

In this study, a recall experiment and a recognition experiment were designed to assess the human wrist's short-term memory characteristics of tactile perception on vibration intensity, by using a novel homemade vibrotactile display device based on the spatiotemporal combination vibration of multiple micro vibration motors as a test device. Based on the obtained experimental data, the short-term memory span, recognition accuracy and reaction time of vibration intensity were analyzed. From the experimental results, some important conclusions can be made: (1) The average short-term memory span of tactile perception on vibration intensity is 3 ± 1 items; (2) The greater difference between two adjacent discrete intensities of vibrotactile stimulation is defined, the better average short-term memory span human wrist gets; (3) There is an obvious difference of the average short-term memory span on vibration intensity between the male and female; (4) The mechanism of information extraction in short-term memory of vibrotactile display is to traverse the scanning process by comparison; (5) The recognition accuracy and reaction time performance of vibrotactile display compares unfavourably with that of visual and auditory. The results from this study are important for designing vibrotactile display coding scheme.

Short-term incentive schemes for hospital managers

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lucas Malambe

2013-10-01

Full Text Available Orientation: Short-term incentives, considered to be an extrinsic motivation, are commonly used to motivate performance. This study explored hospital managers’ perceptions of short term incentives in maximising performance and retention. Research purpose: The study explored the experiences, views and perceptions of private hospital managers in South Africa regarding the use of short-term incentives to maximise performance and retention, as well as the applicability of the findings to public hospitals. Motivation for the study: Whilst there is an established link between performance reward schemes and organisational performance, there is little understanding of the effects of short term incentives on the performance and retention of hospital managers within the South African context. Research design, approach, and method: The study used a qualitative research design: interviews were conducted with a purposive sample of 19 hospital managers, and a thematic content analysis was performed. Main findings: Short-term incentives may not be the primary motivator for hospital managers, but they do play a critical role in sustaining motivation. Participants indicated that these schemes could also be applicable to public hospitals. Practical/managerial implications: Hospital managers are inclined to be more motivated by intrinsic than extrinsic factors. However, hospital managers (as middle managers also seem to be motivated by short-term incentives. A combination of intrinsic and extrinsic motivators should thus be used to maximise performance and retention. Contribution/value-add: Whilst the study sought to explore hospital managers’ perceptions of short-term incentives, it also found that an adequate balance between internal and external motivators is key to implementing an effective short-term incentive scheme.

Short-Term Intercultural Psychotherapy: Ethnographic Inquiry

Science.gov (United States)

Seeley, Karen M.

2004-01-01

This article examines the challenges specific to short-term intercultural treatments and recently developed approaches to intercultural treatments based on notions of cultural knowledge and cultural competence. The article introduces alternative approaches to short-term intercultural treatments based on ethnographic inquiry adapted for clinical…

Proactive Interference in Short-Term Recognition and Recall Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Dillon, Richard F.; Petrusic, William M.

1972-01-01

Purpose of study was to (a) compare the rate of increase of proactive interference over the first few trials under recall and recognition memory test conditions, (2) determine the effects of two types of distractors on short-term recognition, and (3) test memory after proactive interference had reached a stable level under each of three test…

Why do short term workers have high mortality?

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Kolstad, Henrik; Olsen, Jørn

1999-01-01

or violence, the rate ratios for short term employment were 2.30 (95% Cl 1.74-3.06) and 1.86 (95% Cl 1.35-2.56), respectively. An unhealthy lifestyle may also be a determinant of short term employment. While it is possible in principle to adjust for lifestyle factors if proper data are collected, the health......Increased mortality is often reported among workers in short term employment. This may indicate either a health-related selection process or the presence of different lifestyle or social conditions among short term workers. The authors studied these two aspects of short term employment among 16...

Short-term Mobility and Increased Partnership Concurrency among Men in Zimbabwe.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Susan Cassels

Full Text Available Migration has long been understood as an underlying factor for HIV transmission, and sexual partner concurrency has been increasingly studied as an important component of HIV transmission dynamics. However, less work has examined the role of short-term mobility in sexual partner concurrency using a network approach. Short-term mobility may be a risk for HIV for the migrant's partner as well either through the partner's risk behaviors while the migrant is away, such as the partner having additional partners, or via exposure to the return migrant.Using data from the 2010-11 Zimbabwe Demographic and Health Survey, weighted generalized linear regression models were used to investigate the associations between short-term mobility and partnership concurrency at the individual and partnership levels.At the individual level, we find strong evidence of an association between short-term mobility and concurrency. Men who traveled were more likely to have concurrent partnerships compared to men who did not travel and the relationship was non-linear: each trip was associated with a 2% higher probability of concurrency, with a diminishing risk at 60 trips (p<0.001. At the partnership level, short-term mobility by the male only or both partners was associated with male concurrency. Couples in which the female only traveled exhibited less male concurrency.Short-term mobility has the ability to impact population-level transmission dynamics by facilitating partnership concurrency and thus onward HIV transmission. Short-term migrants may be an important population to target for HIV testing, treatment, or social and behavioral interventions to prevent the spread of HIV.

Conversion of short-term to long-term memory in the novel object recognition paradigm.

Science.gov (United States)

Moore, Shannon J; Deshpande, Kaivalya; Stinnett, Gwen S; Seasholtz, Audrey F; Murphy, Geoffrey G

2013-10-01

It is well-known that stress can significantly impact learning; however, whether this effect facilitates or impairs the resultant memory depends on the characteristics of the stressor. Investigation of these dynamics can be confounded by the role of the stressor in motivating performance in a task. Positing a cohesive model of the effect of stress on learning and memory necessitates elucidating the consequences of stressful stimuli independently from task-specific functions. Therefore, the goal of this study was to examine the effect of manipulating a task-independent stressor (elevated light level) on short-term and long-term memory in the novel object recognition paradigm. Short-term memory was elicited in both low light and high light conditions, but long-term memory specifically required high light conditions during the acquisition phase (familiarization trial) and was independent of the light level during retrieval (test trial). Additionally, long-term memory appeared to be independent of stress-mediated glucocorticoid release, as both low and high light produced similar levels of plasma corticosterone, which further did not correlate with subsequent memory performance. Finally, both short-term and long-term memory showed no savings between repeated experiments suggesting that this novel object recognition paradigm may be useful for longitudinal studies, particularly when investigating treatments to stabilize or enhance weak memories in neurodegenerative diseases or during age-related cognitive decline. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Flavour equilibration studies of quark-gluon plasma with non-zero ...

Indian Academy of Sciences (India)

Abstract. Flavour equilibration for a thermally equilibrated but chemically non- equilibrated quark-gluon plasma is presented. Flavour equilibration is studied enforcing baryon number conservation. In addition to the usual processes like single additional gluon production gg ⇌ ggg and its reverse and quark–antiquark pair ...

Potential breeding distributions of U.S. birds predicted with both short-term variability and long-term average climate data.

Science.gov (United States)

Bateman, Brooke L; Pidgeon, Anna M; Radeloff, Volker C; Flather, Curtis H; VanDerWal, Jeremy; Akçakaya, H Resit; Thogmartin, Wayne E; Albright, Thomas P; Vavrus, Stephen J; Heglund, Patricia J

2016-12-01

Climate conditions, such as temperature or precipitation, averaged over several decades strongly affect species distributions, as evidenced by experimental results and a plethora of models demonstrating statistical relations between species occurrences and long-term climate averages. However, long-term averages can conceal climate changes that have occurred in recent decades and may not capture actual species occurrence well because the distributions of species, especially at the edges of their range, are typically dynamic and may respond strongly to short-term climate variability. Our goal here was to test whether bird occurrence models can be predicted by either covariates based on short-term climate variability or on long-term climate averages. We parameterized species distribution models (SDMs) based on either short-term variability or long-term average climate covariates for 320 bird species in the conterminous USA and tested whether any life-history trait-based guilds were particularly sensitive to short-term conditions. Models including short-term climate variability performed well based on their cross-validated area-under-the-curve AUC score (0.85), as did models based on long-term climate averages (0.84). Similarly, both models performed well compared to independent presence/absence data from the North American Breeding Bird Survey (independent AUC of 0.89 and 0.90, respectively). However, models based on short-term variability covariates more accurately classified true absences for most species (73% of true absences classified within the lowest quarter of environmental suitability vs. 68%). In addition, they have the advantage that they can reveal the dynamic relationship between species and their environment because they capture the spatial fluctuations of species potential breeding distributions. With this information, we can identify which species and guilds are sensitive to climate variability, identify sites of high conservation value where climate

Weak and strong coupling equilibration in nonabelian gauge theories

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Keegan, Liam [Physics Department, Theory Unit, CERN,CH-1211 Genève 23 (Switzerland); Kurkela, Aleksi [Physics Department, Theory Unit, CERN,CH-1211 Genève 23 (Switzerland); Faculty of Science and Technology, University of Stavanger,4036 Stavanger (Norway); Romatschke, Paul [Department of Physics, 390 UCB, University of Colorado at Boulder,Boulder, CO (United States); Center for Theory of Quantum Matter, University of Colorado,Boulder, Colorado 80309 (United States); Schee, Wilke van der [Center for Theoretical Physics, MIT,Cambridge, MA 02139 (United States); Zhu, Yan [Department of Physics, University of Jyväskyla, P.O. Box 35, FI-40014 University of Jyväskylä (Finland); Helsinki Institute of Physics,P.O. Box 64, 00014 University of Helsinki (Finland)

2016-04-06

We present a direct comparison studying equilibration through kinetic theory at weak coupling and through holography at strong coupling in the same set-up. The set-up starts with a homogeneous thermal state, which then smoothly transitions through an out-of-equilibrium phase to an expanding system undergoing boost-invariant flow. This first apples-to-apples comparison of equilibration provides a benchmark for similar equilibration processes in heavy-ion collisions, where the equilibration mechanism is still under debate. We find that results at weak and strong coupling can be smoothly connected by simple, empirical power-laws for the viscosity, equilibration time and entropy production of the system.

Weak and strong coupling equilibration in nonabelian gauge theories

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Keegan, Liam; Kurkela, Aleksi; Romatschke, Paul; Schee, Wilke van der; Zhu, Yan

2016-01-01

We present a direct comparison studying equilibration through kinetic theory at weak coupling and through holography at strong coupling in the same set-up. The set-up starts with a homogeneous thermal state, which then smoothly transitions through an out-of-equilibrium phase to an expanding system undergoing boost-invariant flow. This first apples-to-apples comparison of equilibration provides a benchmark for similar equilibration processes in heavy-ion collisions, where the equilibration mechanism is still under debate. We find that results at weak and strong coupling can be smoothly connected by simple, empirical power-laws for the viscosity, equilibration time and entropy production of the system.

Strangeness Production in a Chemically Equilibrating Quark-Gluon Plasma

Institute of Scientific and Technical Information of China (English)

HE Ze-Jun; LONG Jia-Li; MA Yu-Gang; MA Guo-Liang

2004-01-01

@@ We study the strangeness of a chemically equilibrating quark-gluon plasma at finite baryon density based on the and will accelerate with the change of the initial system from a chemically non-equilibrated to an equilibrated system. We also find that the calculated strangeness is very different from the one in the thermodynamic equilibrium system. This study may be helpful to understand the formation of quark-gluon plasma via a chemically non-equilibrated evolution framework.

Short-term mechanisms influencing volumetric brain dynamics

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Nikki Dieleman

2017-01-01

Full Text Available With the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI and brain analysis tools, it has become possible to measure brain volume changes up to around 0.5%. Besides long-term brain changes caused by atrophy in aging or neurodegenerative disease, short-term mechanisms that influence brain volume may exist. When we focus on short-term changes of the brain, changes may be either physiological or pathological. As such determining the cause of volumetric dynamics of the brain is essential. Additionally for an accurate interpretation of longitudinal brain volume measures by means of neurodegeneration, knowledge about the short-term changes is needed. Therefore, in this review, we discuss the possible mechanisms influencing brain volumes on a short-term basis and set-out a framework of MRI techniques to be used for volumetric changes as well as the used analysis tools. 3D T1-weighted images are the images of choice when it comes to MRI of brain volume. These images are excellent to determine brain volume and can be used together with an analysis tool to determine the degree of volume change. Mechanisms that decrease global brain volume are: fluid restriction, evening MRI measurements, corticosteroids, antipsychotics and short-term effects of pathological processes like Alzheimer's disease, hypertension and Diabetes mellitus type II. Mechanisms increasing the brain volume include fluid intake, morning MRI measurements, surgical revascularization and probably medications like anti-inflammatory drugs and anti-hypertensive medication. Exercise was found to have no effect on brain volume on a short-term basis, which may imply that dehydration caused by exercise differs from dehydration by fluid restriction. In the upcoming years, attention should be directed towards studies investigating physiological short-term changes within the light of long-term pathological changes. Ultimately this may lead to a better understanding of the physiological short-term effects of

Assessment of short-term memory in Arabic speaking children with specific language impairment.

Science.gov (United States)

Kaddah, F A; Shoeib, R M; Mahmoud, H E

2010-12-15

Children with Specific Language Impairment (SLI) may have some kind of memory disorder that could increase their linguistic impairment. This study assessed the short-term memory skills in Arabic speaking children with either Expressive Language Impairment (ELI) or Receptive/Expressive Language Impairment (R/ELI) in comparison to controls in order to estimate the nature and extent of any specific deficits in these children that could explain the different prognostic results of language intervention. Eighteen children were included in each group. Receptive, expressive and total language quotients were calculated using the Arabic language test. Assessment of auditory and visual short-term memory was done using the Arabic version of the Illinois Test of Psycholinguistic Abilities. Both groups of SLI performed significantly lower linguistic abilities and poorer auditory and visual short-term memory in comparison to normal children. The R/ELI group presented an inferior performance than the ELI group in all measured parameters. Strong association was found between most tasks of auditory and visual short-term memory and linguistic abilities. The results of this study highlighted a specific degree of deficit of auditory and visual short-term memories in both groups of SLI. These deficits were more prominent in R/ELI group. Moreover, the strong association between the different auditory and visual short-term memories and language abilities in children with SLI must be taken into account when planning an intervention program for these children.

Equilibration and thermalization in finite quantum systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yukalov, V I

2011-01-01

Experiments with trapped atomic gases have opened novel possibilities for studying the evolution of nonequilibrium finite quantum systems, which revived the necessity of reconsidering and developing the theory of such processes. This review analyzes the basic approaches to describing the phenomena of equilibration, thermalization, and decoherence in finite quantum systems. Isolated, nonisolated, and quasi-isolated quantum systems are considered. The relations between equilibration, decoherence, and the existence of time arrow are emphasized. The possibility for the occurrence of rare events, preventing complete equilibration, are mentioned

Verbal Short-Term Memory Span in Speech-Disordered Children: Implications for Articulatory Coding in Short-Term Memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Raine, Adrian; And Others

1991-01-01

Children with speech disorders had lower short-term memory capacity and smaller word length effect than control children. Children with speech disorders also had reduced speech-motor activity during rehearsal. Results suggest that speech rate may be a causal determinant of verbal short-term memory capacity. (BC)

Real-time energy resources scheduling considering short-term and very short-term wind forecast

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Silva, Marco; Sousa, Tiago; Morais, Hugo; Vale, Zita [Polytechnic of Porto (Portugal). GECAD - Knowledge Engineering and Decision Support Research Center

2012-07-01

This paper proposes an energy resources management methodology based on three distinct time horizons: day-ahead scheduling, hour-ahead scheduling, and real-time scheduling. In each scheduling process the update of generation and consumption operation and of the storage and electric vehicles storage status are used. Besides the new operation conditions, the most accurate forecast values of wind generation and of consumption using results of short-term and very short-term methods are used. A case study considering a distribution network with intensive use of distributed generation and electric vehicles is presented. (orig.)

The BACHD Rat Model of Huntington Disease Shows Signs of Fronto-Striatal Dysfunction in Two Operant Conditioning Tests of Short-Term Memory.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Erik Karl Håkan Clemensson

Full Text Available The BACHD rat is a recently developed transgenic animal model of Huntington disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by extensive loss of striatal neurons. Cognitive impairments are common among patients, and characterization of similar deficits in animal models of the disease is therefore of interest. The present study assessed the BACHD rats' performance in the delayed alternation and the delayed non-matching to position test, two Skinner box-based tests of short-term memory function. The transgenic rats showed impaired performance in both tests, indicating general problems with handling basic aspects of the tests, while short-term memory appeared to be intact. Similar phenotypes have been found in rats with fronto-striatal lesions, suggesting that Huntington disease-related neuropathology might be present in the BACHD rats. Further analyses indicated that the performance deficit in the delayed alternation test might be due to impaired inhibitory control, which has also been implicated in Huntington disease patients. The study ultimately suggests that the BACHD rats might suffer from neuropathology and cognitive impairments reminiscent of those of Huntington disease patients.

The BACHD Rat Model of Huntington Disease Shows Signs of Fronto-Striatal Dysfunction in Two Operant Conditioning Tests of Short-Term Memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Clemensson, Erik Karl Håkan; Clemensson, Laura Emily; Riess, Olaf; Nguyen, Huu Phuc

2017-01-01

The BACHD rat is a recently developed transgenic animal model of Huntington disease, a progressive neurodegenerative disorder characterized by extensive loss of striatal neurons. Cognitive impairments are common among patients, and characterization of similar deficits in animal models of the disease is therefore of interest. The present study assessed the BACHD rats' performance in the delayed alternation and the delayed non-matching to position test, two Skinner box-based tests of short-term memory function. The transgenic rats showed impaired performance in both tests, indicating general problems with handling basic aspects of the tests, while short-term memory appeared to be intact. Similar phenotypes have been found in rats with fronto-striatal lesions, suggesting that Huntington disease-related neuropathology might be present in the BACHD rats. Further analyses indicated that the performance deficit in the delayed alternation test might be due to impaired inhibitory control, which has also been implicated in Huntington disease patients. The study ultimately suggests that the BACHD rats might suffer from neuropathology and cognitive impairments reminiscent of those of Huntington disease patients.

Equilibrator: Modeling Chemical Equilibria with Excel

Science.gov (United States)

Vander Griend, Douglas A.

2011-01-01

Equilibrator is a Microsoft Excel program for learning about chemical equilibria through modeling, similar in function to EQS4WIN, which is no longer supported and does not work well with newer Windows operating systems. Similar to EQS4WIN, Equilibrator allows the user to define a system with temperature, initial moles, and then either total…

Memory for relations in the short term and the long term after medial temporal lobe damage.

Science.gov (United States)

Squire, Larry R

2017-05-01

A central idea about the organization of declarative memory and the function of the hippocampus is that the hippocampus provides for the coding of relationships between items. A question arises whether this idea refers to the process of forming long-term memory or whether, as some studies have suggested, memory for relations might depend on the hippocampus even at short retention intervals and even when the task falls within the province of short-term (working) memory. The latter formulation appears to place the operation of relational memory into conflict with the idea that working memory is independent of medial temporal lobe (MTL) structures. In this report, the concepts of relational memory and working memory are discussed in the light of a simple demonstration experiment. Patients with MTL lesions successfully learned and recalled two word pairs when tested directly after learning but failed altogether when tested after a delay. The results do not contradict the idea that the hippocampus has a fundamental role in relational memory. However, there is a need for further elaboration and specification of the idea in order to explain why patients with MTL lesions can establish relational memory in the short term but not in long-term memory. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2017 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

The Mind and Brain of Short-Term Memory

OpenAIRE

Jonides, John; Lewis, Richard L.; Nee, Derek Evan; Lustig, Cindy A.; Berman, Marc G.; Moore, Katherine Sledge

2008-01-01

The past 10 years have brought near-revolutionary changes in psychological theories about short-term memory, with similarly great advances in the neurosciences. Here, we critically examine the major psychological theories (the “mind”) of short-term memory and how they relate to evidence about underlying brain mechanisms. We focus on three features that must be addressed by any satisfactory theory of short-term memory. First, we examine the evidence for the architecture of short-term memory, w...

Chemical and kinetic equilibrations via radiative parton transport

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhang Bin; Wortman, Warner A

2011-01-01

A hot and dense partonic system can be produced in the early stage of a relativistic heavy ion collision. How it equilibrates is important for the extraction of Quark-Gluon Plasma properties. We study the chemical and kinetic equilibrations of the Quark-Gluon Plasma using a radiative transport model. Thermal and Color-Glass-Condensate motivated initial conditions are used. We observe that screened parton interactions always lead to partial pressure isotropization. Different initial pressure anisotropies result in the same asymptotic evolution. Comparison of evolutions with and without radiative processes shows that chemical equilibration interacts with kinetic equilibration and radiative processes can contribute significantly to pressure isotropization.

Very-long-term and short-term chromatic adaptation: are their influences cumulative?

Science.gov (United States)

Belmore, Suzanne C; Shevell, Steven K

2011-02-09

Very-long-term (VLT) chromatic adaptation results from exposure to an altered chromatic environment for days or weeks. Color shifts from VLT adaptation are observed hours or days after leaving the altered environment. Short-term chromatic adaptation, on the other hand, results from exposure for a few minutes or less, with color shifts measured within seconds or a few minutes after the adapting light is extinguished; recovery to the pre-adapted state is complete in less than an hour. Here, both types of adaptation were combined. All adaptation was to reddish-appearing long-wavelength light. Shifts in unique yellow were measured following adaptation. Previous studies demonstrate shifts in unique yellow due to VLT chromatic adaptation, but shifts from short-term chromatic adaptation to comparable adapting light can be far greater than from VLT adaptation. The question considered here is whether the color shifts from VLT adaptation are cumulative with large shifts from short-term adaptation or, alternatively, does simultaneous short-term adaptation eliminate color shifts caused by VLT adaptation. The results show the color shifts from VLT and short-term adaptation together are cumulative, which indicates that both short-term and very-long-term chromatic adaptation affect color perception during natural viewing. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

SHORT-TERM EFFECT OF DIESEL OIL ON PHYTOPLANKTON

African Journals Online (AJOL)

PROF. EKWEME

Short-term effect of Nigerian diesel oil was tested on the phytoplankton species in Great Kwa River ... aquatic environment. Plant life is the basis of all food web in nature and hence constitutes the makes this fundamental contribution by photosynthesis, utilizing radiant energy to .... (2 cells/ml) re-colonized the area. The three ...

Stacking Ensemble Learning for Short-Term Electricity Consumption Forecasting

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Federico Divina

2018-04-01

Full Text Available The ability to predict short-term electric energy demand would provide several benefits, both at the economic and environmental level. For example, it would allow for an efficient use of resources in order to face the actual demand, reducing the costs associated to the production as well as the emission of CO 2 . To this aim, in this paper we propose a strategy based on ensemble learning in order to tackle the short-term load forecasting problem. In particular, our approach is based on a stacking ensemble learning scheme, where the predictions produced by three base learning methods are used by a top level method in order to produce final predictions. We tested the proposed scheme on a dataset reporting the energy consumption in Spain over more than nine years. The obtained experimental results show that an approach for short-term electricity consumption forecasting based on ensemble learning can help in combining predictions produced by weaker learning methods in order to obtain superior results. In particular, the system produces a lower error with respect to the existing state-of-the art techniques used on the same dataset. More importantly, this case study has shown that using an ensemble scheme can achieve very accurate predictions, and thus that it is a suitable approach for addressing the short-term load forecasting problem.

Errors in nonword repetition: bridging short- and long-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Santos, F H; Bueno, O F A; Gathercole, S E

2006-03-01

According to the working memory model, the phonological loop is the component of working memory specialized in processing and manipulating limited amounts of speech-based information. The Children's Test of Nonword Repetition (CNRep) is a suitable measure of phonological short-term memory for English-speaking children, which was validated by the Brazilian Children's Test of Pseudoword Repetition (BCPR) as a Portuguese-language version. The objectives of the present study were: i) to investigate developmental aspects of the phonological memory processing by error analysis in the nonword repetition task, and ii) to examine phoneme (substitution, omission and addition) and order (migration) errors made in the BCPR by 180 normal Brazilian children of both sexes aged 4-10, from preschool to 4th grade. The dominant error was substitution [F(3,525) = 180.47; P long than in short items, was observed [F(3,519) = 108.36; P long-term memory contributes to holding memory trace. The findings were discussed in terms of distinctiveness, clustering and redintegration hypotheses.

Deficits in verbal long-term memory and learning in children with poor phonological short-term memory skills.

Science.gov (United States)

Gathercole, Susan E; Briscoe, Josie; Thorn, Annabel; Tiffany, Claire

2008-03-01

Possible links between phonological short-term memory and both longer term memory and learning in 8-year-old children were investigated in this study. Performance on a range of tests of long-term memory and learning was compared for a group of 16 children with poor phonological short-term memory skills and a comparison group of children of the same age with matched nonverbal reasoning abilities but memory scores in the average range. The low-phonological-memory group were impaired on longer term memory and learning tasks that taxed memory for arbitrary verbal material such as names and nonwords. However, the two groups performed at comparable levels on tasks requiring the retention of visuo-spatial information and of meaningful material and at carrying out prospective memory tasks in which the children were asked to carry out actions at a future point in time. The results are consistent with the view that poor short-term memory function impairs the longer-term retention and ease of learning of novel verbal material.

Fluoroscopically guided caudal epidural steroid injection for management of degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis: short-term and long-term results

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Lee, Joon Woo; Myung, Jae Sung; Kang, Heung Sik [Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Department of Radiology, Seong Nam, Gyeongi-do (Korea); Park, Kun Woo; Yeom, Jin S. [Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Department of Orthopaedic Surgery, Seong Nam, Gyeongi-do (Korea); Kim, Ki-Jeong; Kim, Hyun-Jib [Seoul National University Bundang Hospital, Department of Neurosurgery, Seong Nam, Gyeongi-do (Korea)

2010-07-15

To evaluate the short-term and long-term effects of fluoroscopically guided caudal epidural steroid injection (ESI) for the management of degenerative lumbar spinal stenosis (DLSS) and to analyze outcome predictors. All patients who underwent caudal ESI in 2006 for DLSS were included in the study. Response was based on chart documentation (aggravated, no change, slightly improved, much improved, no pain). In June 2009 telephone interviews were conducted, using formatted questions including the North American Spine Society (NASS) patient satisfaction scale. For short-term and long-term effects, age difference was evaluated by the Mann-Whitney U test, and gender, duration of symptoms, level of DLSS, spondylolisthesis, and previous operations were evaluated by Fisher's exact test. Two hundred and sixteen patients (male: female = 75:141; mean age 69.2 years; range 48{proportional_to}91 years) were included in the study. Improvements (slightly improved, much improved, no pain) were seen in 185 patients (85.6%) after an initial caudal ESI and in 189 patients (87.5%) after a series of caudal ESIs. Half of the patients (89/179, 49.8%) replied positively to the NASS patient satisfaction scale (1 or 2). There were no significant outcome predictors for either the short-term or the long-term responses. Fluoroscopically guided caudal ESI was effective for the management of DLSS (especially central canal stenosis) with excellent short-term and good long-term results, without significant outcome predictors. (orig.)

Proactive Interference and Directed Forgetting in Short-Term Motor Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Burwitz, Leslie

1974-01-01

The present study was designed to test the effect of instructions to forget prior motor learning and the results were relevant to the understanding of short-term motor memory (STMM) proactive interference (PI). (Author/RK)

SHORT-TERM AND LONG-TERM WATER LEVEL PREDICTION AT ONE RIVER MEASUREMENT LOCATION

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rudolf Scitovski

2012-12-01

Full Text Available Global hydrological cycles mainly depend on climate changes whose occurrence is predominantly triggered by solar and terrestrial influence, and the knowledge of the high water regime is widely applied in hydrology. Regular monitoring and studying of river water level behavior is important from several perspectives. On the basis of the given data, by using modifications of general approaches known from literature, especially from investigation in hydrology, the problem of long- and short-term water level forecast at one river measurement location is considered in the paper. Long-term forecasting is considered as the problem of investigating the periodicity of water level behavior by using linear-trigonometric regression and short-term forecasting is based on the modification of the nearest neighbor method. The proposed methods are tested on data referring to the Drava River level by Donji Miholjac, Croatia, in the period between the beginning of 1900 and the end of 2012.

Testing visual short-term memory of pigeons (Columba livia) and a rhesus monkey (Macaca mulatta) with a location change detection task.

Science.gov (United States)

Leising, Kenneth J; Elmore, L Caitlin; Rivera, Jacquelyne J; Magnotti, John F; Katz, Jeffrey S; Wright, Anthony A

2013-09-01

Change detection is commonly used to assess capacity (number of objects) of human visual short-term memory (VSTM). Comparisons with the performance of non-human animals completing similar tasks have shown similarities and differences in object-based VSTM, which is only one aspect ("what") of memory. Another important aspect of memory, which has received less attention, is spatial short-term memory for "where" an object is in space. In this article, we show for the first time that a monkey and pigeons can be accurately trained to identify location changes, much as humans do, in change detection tasks similar to those used to test object capacity of VSTM. The subject's task was to identify (touch/peck) an item that changed location across a brief delay. Both the monkey and pigeons showed transfer to delays longer than the training delay, to greater and smaller distance changes than in training, and to novel colors. These results are the first to demonstrate location-change detection in any non-human species and encourage comparative investigations into the nature of spatial and visual short-term memory.

Short-term memory for tactile and temporal stimuli in a shared-attention recall task.

Science.gov (United States)

Bowers, R L; Mollenhauer, M S; Luxford, J

1990-06-01

The present study examined short-term memory for tactile and temporal stimuli. Subjects were required to touch three-dimensional sample objects of different shapes and textures, presented for three durations: short, medium, or long. After the sample duration elapsed, a retention interval (5 sec.-20 sec.) occurred followed by a recall test for one of the sample dimensions of shape, texture, or time, across trials. Analysis showed that accuracy for shape and texture was high throughout testing (95-99%), but memory for perceived duration was relatively poor (60%). Further analysis indicated that poor recall on the time dimension was isolated to the medium and long samples; accuracy for short durations was consistently high (90%). In addition, a reliable response bias emerged; subjects recalled durations shorter than the actual duration presented. The results were discussed in terms of two lines of research, one indicating that haptic short-term memory is strong relative to other memory systems, and the other suggesting that the choose-short bias occurs across species.

Short term memory in echo state networks

OpenAIRE

Jaeger, H.

2001-01-01

The report investigates the short-term memory capacity of echo state recurrent neural networks. A quantitative measure MC of short-term memory capacity is introduced. The main result is that MC 5 N for networks with linear Output units and i.i.d. input, where N is network size. Conditions under which these maximal memory capacities are realized are described. Several theoretical and practical examples demonstrate how the short-term memory capacities of echo state networks can be exploited for...

Frequency-specific insight into short-term memory capacity.

Science.gov (United States)

Feurra, Matteo; Galli, Giulia; Pavone, Enea Francesco; Rossi, Alessandro; Rossi, Simone

2016-07-01

The digit span is one of the most widely used memory tests in clinical and experimental neuropsychology for reliably measuring short-term memory capacity. In the forward version, sequences of digits of increasing length have to be reproduced in the order in which they are presented, whereas in the backward version items must be reproduced in the reversed order. Here, we assessed whether transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) increases the memory span for digits of young and midlife adults. Imperceptibly weak electrical currents in the alpha (10 Hz), beta (20 Hz), theta (5 Hz), and gamma (40 Hz) range, as well as a sham stimulation, were delivered over the left posterior parietal cortex, a cortical region thought to sustain maintenance processes in short-term memory through oscillatory brain activity in the beta range. We showed a frequency-specific effect of beta-tACS that robustly increased the forward memory span of young, but not middle-aged, healthy individuals. The effect correlated with age: the younger the subjects, the greater the benefit arising from parietal beta stimulation. Our results provide evidence of a short-term memory capacity improvement in young adults by online frequency-specific tACS application. Copyright © 2016 the American Physiological Society.

An open loop equilibrator for continuous monitoring of radon at the groundwater-surface water interface

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kil Yong Lee; Yoon Yeol Yoon; Soo Young Cho; Eunhee Lee; Sang-Ho Moon; Dong-Chan Koh; Kyoochul Ha; Yongcheol Kim; Kyung-Seok Ko

2015-01-01

A continuous monitoring system (CMS) using an open loop equilibrator for assessment of 222 Rn at the groundwater-surface water interface was developed and tested. For the characterization and validation of the system, three air loops (open loop, closed loop, and open bubble loop) were tested in relation to high and precise count rates, rapid response, and equilibration of radon. The water and air stream is fed to the equilibrator by an experimental setup with a commercial submersible water pump and the internal pump with built-in radon-in-air detector. Efficiency calibration of the CMS is done by simultaneous determination of a groundwater sample using liquid scintillation counting, and the RAD7 accessories RAD-H 2 O, BigBottle RAD-H 2 O. The higher count rates are provided by the closed loop. However, the open loop with bubbler (open bubble loop) provides the best precision count rates, rapid response, and equilibration time. The CMS allows radon determination in discrete water samples as well as continuous water streams. (author)

The effect of retraining of nurses on cardiopulmonary resuscitationsuccess rate and short-term and long-term survival in patients revived

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dahi M

2015-02-01

Full Text Available Background and Objective: Cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR is performed in order to restore the functioning of two most important body organs the heart and brain. The present study was performed to investigate the effect of retraining of nurses on CPR success rate and short-term and long-term CPR survival. Materials and Method: The study population of the present quasi-experimental study consisted of all nurses of Taleghani Hospital affiliated with Shahid Beheshti University, Tehran, Iran, in 2011. The study subjects (n = 400 were selected using convenience and purposive sampling method. The patient survival rate during the first 24 hours (short-term survival and discharge from the hospital (long-term survival after CPR were reported. Then, the study subjects, in groups of 20, participated in CPR training courses. Short-term (24 hours and long-term (discharge from hospital in good mental status survival subsequent to CPR were reevaluated and compared with pre-training results. Data were analyzed using SPSS software version 20, and t-test and chi-square test. Results: Retraining promoted CPR success rates. This increase in the short-term success rate was not significant, but the increase in long-term success rate was statistically significant (P = 0.007. Conclusion: Periodic retraining of nurses may improve CPR success rate particularly long-term survival or discharge from hospital. Therefore, further studies on long-term success of CPR considering confounding factors are recommended

Short term and medium term power distribution load forecasting by neural networks

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yalcinoz, T.; Eminoglu, U.

2005-01-01

Load forecasting is an important subject for power distribution systems and has been studied from different points of view. In general, load forecasts should be performed over a broad spectrum of time intervals, which could be classified into short term, medium term and long term forecasts. Several research groups have proposed various techniques for either short term load forecasting or medium term load forecasting or long term load forecasting. This paper presents a neural network (NN) model for short term peak load forecasting, short term total load forecasting and medium term monthly load forecasting in power distribution systems. The NN is used to learn the relationships among past, current and future temperatures and loads. The neural network was trained to recognize the peak load of the day, total load of the day and monthly electricity consumption. The suitability of the proposed approach is illustrated through an application to real load shapes from the Turkish Electricity Distribution Corporation (TEDAS) in Nigde. The data represents the daily and monthly electricity consumption in Nigde, Turkey

Multiscale approach to equilibrating model polymer melts

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Svaneborg, Carsten; Ali Karimi-Varzaneh, Hossein; Hojdis, Nils

2016-01-01

We present an effective and simple multiscale method for equilibrating Kremer Grest model polymer melts of varying stiffness. In our approach, we progressively equilibrate the melt structure above the tube scale, inside the tube and finally at the monomeric scale. We make use of models designed...

FFT transformed quantitative EEG analysis of short term memory load.

Science.gov (United States)

Singh, Yogesh; Singh, Jayvardhan; Sharma, Ratna; Talwar, Anjana

2015-07-01

The EEG is considered as building block of functional signaling in the brain. The role of EEG oscillations in human information processing has been intensively investigated. To study the quantitative EEG correlates of short term memory load as assessed through Sternberg memory test. The study was conducted on 34 healthy male student volunteers. The intervention consisted of Sternberg memory test, which runs on a version of the Sternberg memory scanning paradigm software on a computer. Electroencephalography (EEG) was recorded from 19 scalp locations according to 10-20 international system of electrode placement. EEG signals were analyzed offline. To overcome the problems of fixed band system, individual alpha frequency (IAF) based frequency band selection method was adopted. The outcome measures were FFT transformed absolute powers in the six bands at 19 electrode positions. Sternberg memory test served as model of short term memory load. Correlation analysis of EEG during memory task was reflected as decreased absolute power in Upper alpha band in nearly all the electrode positions; increased power in Theta band at Fronto-Temporal region and Lower 1 alpha band at Fronto-Central region. Lower 2 alpha, Beta and Gamma band power remained unchanged. Short term memory load has distinct electroencephalographic correlates resembling the mentally stressed state. This is evident from decreased power in Upper alpha band (corresponding to Alpha band of traditional EEG system) which is representative band of relaxed mental state. Fronto-temporal Theta power changes may reflect the encoding and execution of memory task.

C. elegans positive butanone learning, short-term, and long-term associative memory assays.

Science.gov (United States)

Kauffman, Amanda; Parsons, Lance; Stein, Geneva; Wills, Airon; Kaletsky, Rachel; Murphy, Coleen

2011-03-11

The memory of experiences and learned information is critical for organisms to make choices that aid their survival. C. elegans navigates its environment through neuron-specific detection of food and chemical odors, and can associate nutritive states with chemical odors, temperature, and the pathogenicity of a food source. Here, we describe assays of C. elegans associative learning and short- and long-term associative memory. We modified an aversive olfactory learning paradigm to instead produce a positive response; the assay involves starving ~400 worms, then feeding the worms in the presence of the AWC neuron-sensed volatile chemoattractant butanone at a concentration that elicits a low chemotactic index (similar to Toroyama et al.). A standard population chemotaxis assay1 tests the worms' attraction to the odorant immediately or minutes to hours after conditioning. After conditioning, wild-type animals' chemotaxis to butanone increases ~0.6 Chemotaxis Index units, its "Learning Index". Associative learning is dependent on the presence of both food and butanone during training. Pairing food and butanone for a single conditioning period ("massed training") produces short-term associative memory that lasts ~2 hours. Multiple conditioning periods with rest periods between ("spaced training") yields long-term associative memory (long-term memory across species. Our protocol also includes image analysis methods for quick and accurate determination of chemotaxis indices. High-contrast images of animals on chemotaxis assay plates are captured and analyzed by worm counting software in MatLab. The software corrects for uneven background using a morphological tophat transformation. Otsu's method is then used to determine a threshold to separate worms from the background. Very small particles are removed automatically and larger non-worm regions (plate edges or agar punches) are removed by manual selection. The software then estimates the size of single worm by ignoring

Determinants of Short-Term Export Performance in Pakistan

OpenAIRE

Subhani, Muhammad Imtiaz; Osman, Ms.Amber; Habib, Sukaina

2010-01-01

This research investigates the interdependency between independent (Increase of pricing strategy adaptation, Increase of export intensity, Firm's commitment to exporting, Export market development, Export market competition, Past Pricing Strategy Adaptation, Past Export Performance Satisfaction, Past Export Intensity, Export market distance) and dependent variables (i.e. Expected Short-Term Export Performance improvement) of export performance. The framework is tested via a survey through que...

Attentional priorities and access to short-term memory

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Gillebert, Celine; Dyrholm, Mads; Vangkilde, Signe Allerup

2012-01-01

The intraparietal sulcus (IPS) has been implicated in selective attention as well as visual short-term memory (VSTM). To contrast mechanisms of target selection, distracter filtering, and access to VSTM, we combined behavioral testing, computational modeling and functional magnetic resonance......, thereby displaying a significant interaction between the two factors. The interaction between target and distracter set size in IPS could not be accounted for by a simple explanation in terms of number of items accessing VSTM. Instead, it led us to a model where items accessing VSTM receive differential...

Short-term and long-term plasticity interaction in human primary motor cortex.

Science.gov (United States)

Iezzi, Ennio; Suppa, Antonio; Conte, Antonella; Li Voti, Pietro; Bologna, Matteo; Berardelli, Alfredo

2011-05-01

Repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation (rTMS) over primary motor cortex (M1) elicits changes in motor evoked potential (MEP) size thought to reflect short- and long-term forms of synaptic plasticity, resembling short-term potentiation (STP) and long-term potentiation/depression (LTP/LTD) observed in animal experiments. We designed this study in healthy humans to investigate whether STP as elicited by 5-Hz rTMS interferes with LTP/LTD-like plasticity induced by intermittent and continuous theta-burst stimulation (iTBS and cTBS). The effects induced by 5-Hz rTMS and iTBS/cTBS were indexed as changes in MEP size. We separately evaluated changes induced by 5-Hz rTMS, iTBS and cTBS applied alone and those induced by iTBS and cTBS delivered after priming 5-Hz rTMS. Interactions between 5-Hz rTMS and iTBS/cTBS were investigated under several experimental conditions by delivering 5-Hz rTMS at suprathreshold and subthreshold intensity, allowing 1 and 5 min intervals to elapse between 5-Hz rTMS and TBS, and delivering one and ten 5-Hz rTMS trains. We also investigated whether 5-Hz rTMS induces changes in intracortical excitability tested with paired-pulse transcranial magnetic stimulation. When given alone, 5-Hz rTMS induced short-lasting and iTBS/cTBS induced long-lasting changes in MEP amplitudes. When M1 was primed with 10 suprathreshold 5-Hz rTMS trains at 1 min before iTBS or cTBS, the iTBS/cTBS-induced after-effects disappeared. The 5-Hz rTMS left intracortical excitability unchanged. We suggest that STP elicited by suprathreshold 5-Hz rTMS abolishes iTBS/cTBS-induced LTP/LTD-like plasticity through non-homeostatic metaplasticity mechanisms. Our study provides new information on interactions between short-term and long-term rTMS-induced plasticity in human M1. © 2011 The Authors. European Journal of Neuroscience © 2011 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

Short-Term and Working Memory Impairments in Early-Implanted, Long-Term Cochlear Implant Users Are Independent of Audibility and Speech Production.

Science.gov (United States)

AuBuchon, Angela M; Pisoni, David B; Kronenberger, William G

2015-01-01

To determine whether early-implanted, long-term cochlear implant (CI) users display delays in verbal short-term and working memory capacity when processes related to audibility and speech production are eliminated. Twenty-three long-term CI users and 23 normal-hearing controls each completed forward and backward digit span tasks under testing conditions that differed in presentation modality (auditory or visual) and response output (spoken recall or manual pointing). Normal-hearing controls reproduced more lists of digits than the CI users, even when the test items were presented visually and the responses were made manually via touchscreen response. Short-term and working memory delays observed in CI users are not due to greater demands from peripheral sensory processes such as audibility or from overt speech-motor planning and response output organization. Instead, CI users are less efficient at encoding and maintaining phonological representations in verbal short-term memory using phonological and linguistic strategies during memory tasks.

Misremembering what you see or hear: Dissociable effects of modality on short- and long-term false recognition.

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Olszewska, Justyna M; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A; Munier, Emily; Bendler, Sara A

2015-09-01

False working memories readily emerge using a visual item-recognition variant of the converging associates task. Two experiments, manipulating study and test modality, extended prior working memory results by demonstrating a reliable false recognition effect (more false alarms to associatively related lures than to unrelated lures) within seconds of encoding in either the visual or auditory modality. However, false memories were nearly twice as frequent when study lists were seen than when they were heard, regardless of test modality, although study-test modality mismatch was generally disadvantageous (consistent with encoding specificity). A final experiment that varied study-test modality using a hybrid short- and long-term memory test (Flegal, Atkins & Reuter-Lorenz, 2010) replicated the auditory advantage in the short term but revealed a reversal in the long term: The false memory effect was greater in the auditory study-test condition than in the visual study-test condition. Thus, the same encoding conditions gave rise to an opposite modality advantage depending on whether recognition was tested under short-term or long-term memory conditions. Although demonstrating continuity in associative processing across delay, the results indicate that delay condition affects the availability of modality-dependent features of the memory trace and, thus, distinctiveness, leading to dissociable patterns of short- and long-term memory performance. (c) 2015 APA, all rights reserved).

Short-Term Memory and Aphasia: From Theory to Treatment.

Science.gov (United States)

Minkina, Irene; Rosenberg, Samantha; Kalinyak-Fliszar, Michelene; Martin, Nadine

2017-02-01

This article reviews existing research on the interactions between verbal short-term memory and language processing impairments in aphasia. Theoretical models of short-term memory are reviewed, starting with a model assuming a separation between short-term memory and language, and progressing to models that view verbal short-term memory as a cognitive requirement of language processing. The review highlights a verbal short-term memory model derived from an interactive activation model of word retrieval. This model holds that verbal short-term memory encompasses the temporary activation of linguistic knowledge (e.g., semantic, lexical, and phonological features) during language production and comprehension tasks. Empirical evidence supporting this model, which views short-term memory in the context of the processes it subserves, is outlined. Studies that use a classic measure of verbal short-term memory (i.e., number of words/digits correctly recalled in immediate serial recall) as well as those that use more intricate measures (e.g., serial position effects in immediate serial recall) are discussed. Treatment research that uses verbal short-term memory tasks in an attempt to improve language processing is then summarized, with a particular focus on word retrieval. A discussion of the limitations of current research and possible future directions concludes the review. Thieme Medical Publishers 333 Seventh Avenue, New York, NY 10001, USA.

Short-term carcinogenicity testing of a potent murine intestinal mutagen, 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo(4,5-b)pyridine (PhIP), in Apc1638N transgenic mice

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Ilona Kryspin; Kristiansen, E.; Mortensen, Alicja

1997-01-01

others, mammary tumors, We have studied these mice in a short-term carcinogenicity test with 2-amino-1-methyl-6-phenylimidazo(4,5-b)pyridine (PhIP), a potent murine small intestinal mutagen and lymphomagen. Upon dietary administration of 0.03% PhIP in a short-term (6 months) study, a significantly...

Long-Term and Short-Term Effects of Hemodialysis on Liver Function Evaluated Using the Galactose Single-Point Test

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yi-Chou Hou

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Aim. The galactose single-point (GSP test assesses functioning liver mass by measuring the galactose concentration in the blood 1 hour after its administration. The purpose of this study was to investigate the impact of hemodialysis (HD on short-term and long-term liver function by use of GSP test. Methods. Seventy-four patients on maintenance HD (46 males and 28 females, 60.38 ± 11.86 years with a mean time on HD of 60.77 ± 48.31 months were studied. The GSP values were compared in two groups: (1 before and after single session HD, and (2 after one year of maintenance HD. Results. Among the 74 HD patient, only the post-HD Cr levels and years on dialysis were significantly correlated with GSP values (r=0.280, P<0.05 and r=-0.240, P<0.05, resp.. 14 of 74 patients were selected for GSP evaluation before and after a single HD session, and the hepatic clearance of galactose was similar (pre-HD 410 ± 254 g/mL, post-HD 439 ± 298 g/mL, P=0.49. GSP values decreased from 420.20 ± 175.26 g/mL to 383.40 ± 153.97 g/mL after 1 year maintenance HD in other 15 patients (mean difference: 19.00 ± 37.66 g/mL, P<0.05. Conclusions. Patients on maintenance HD for several years may experience improvement of their liver function. However, a single HD session does not affect liver function significantly as assessed by the GSP test. Since the metabolism of galactose is dependent on liver blood flow and hepatic functional mass, further studies are needed.

Short-term memories with a stochastic perturbation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Pontes, Jose C.A. de; Batista, Antonio M.; Viana, Ricardo L.; Lopes, Sergio R.

2005-01-01

We investigate short-term memories in linear and weakly nonlinear coupled map lattices with a periodic external input. We use locally coupled maps to present numerical results about short-term memory formation adding a stochastic perturbation in the maps and in the external input

Fermi level equilibration between colloidal lead and silver particles in aqueous solution

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Henglein, A.; Holzwarth, A.; Mulvaney, P.

1992-01-01

Colloidal solutions of lead and silver were mixed under the exclusion of air. The equilibration of the Fermi levels in the two different types of metal particles took place over a few days at room temperature. The equilibration took place by the transfer of lead atoms from lead to silver particles until the latter carried a lead mantle of one to two monolayers. This could be concluded from the observed changes in the optical spectrum of the silver particles. The results are discussed in terms of two mechanisms: (1) Pb atom transfer following heterocoagulation of the lead and silver particles and (2) electron transfer during Brownian encounters, followed by Pb 2+ desorption from the lead particles and subsequent Pb 2+ reductor on the silver particles carrying the transferred electrons. Traces of methylviologen, MV 2+ , in the solution drastically increase the rate of equilibration; this is explained by a relay mechanism in which electrons in the lead particles are first picked up by MV 2+ and are then transferred from MV + to the silver particles. 2 refs., 4 figs

Short-term memory

Science.gov (United States)

Toulouse, G.

This is a rather bold attempt to bridge the gap between neuron structure and psychological data. We try to answer the question: Is there a relation between the neuronal connectivity in the human cortex (around 5,000) and the short-term memory capacity (7±2)? Our starting point is the Hopfield model (Hopfield 1982), presented in this volume by D.J. Amit.

Short-term memory in Down syndrome: applying the working memory model.

Science.gov (United States)

Jarrold, C; Baddeley, A D

2001-10-01

This paper is divided into three sections. The first reviews the evidence for a verbal short-term memory deficit in Down syndrome. Existing research suggests that short-term memory for verbal information tends to be impaired in Down syndrome, in contrast to short-term memory for visual and spatial material. In addition, problems of hearing or speech do not appear to be a major cause of difficulties on tests of verbal short-term memory. This suggests that Down syndrome is associated with a specific memory problem, which we link to a potential deficit in the functioning of the 'phonological loop' of Baddeley's (1986) model of working memory. The second section considers the implications of a phonological loop problem. Because a reasonable amount is known about the normal functioning of the phonological loop, and of its role in language acquisition in typical development, we can make firm predictions as to the likely nature of the short-term memory problem in Down syndrome, and its consequences for language learning. However, we note that the existing evidence from studies with individuals with Down syndrome does not fit well with these predictions. This leads to the third section of the paper, in which we consider key questions to be addressed in future research. We suggest that there are two questions to be answered, which follow directly from the contradictory results outlined in the previous section. These are 'What is the precise nature of the verbal short-term memory deficit in Down syndrome', and 'What are the consequences of this deficit for learning'. We discuss ways in which these questions might be addressed in future work.

Differences in the verbal fluency, working memory and executive functions in alcoholics: Short-term vs. long-term abstainers.

Science.gov (United States)

Nowakowska-Domagała, Katarzyna; Jabłkowska-Górecka, Karolina; Mokros, Łukasz; Koprowicz, Jacek; Pietras, Tadeusz

2017-03-01

The aim of the study was to assess differences in verbal fluency, working memory and executive functions in two subgroups of alcohol-dependent patients, those undergoing short-term abstinence (STA) and those undergoing long-term abstinence (LTA), and to compare the level of cognitive functions in patients after long-term abstinence with healthy subjects. The study group consisted of 106 alcohol-dependent patients (53 immediately after drinking at least 3 days and 53 after at least one-year abstinence). The control group comprised 53 subjects, whose age, sex and education levels matched those of the patients in the experimental group. The dependence intensity was assessed using SADD and MAST scales. The neuropsychological assessment was based on the FAS Test, Stroop Test and TMT A&B Test. The results obtained for alcohol-dependent patients revealed significant disturbances of cognitive functions. Such results indicate the presence of severe frontal cerebral cortex dysfunctions. Frontal cortex dysfunctions affecting the verbal fluency and working memory subsystems and the executive functions also persisted during long-term abstinence periods. No significant correlations between the duration of dependence, quantity of alcohol consumed and efficiency of the working memory and executive functions were observed in alcohol-dependent subjects after short-term or long-term abstinence. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Retrieval-Induced Inhibition in Short-Term Memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Kang, Min-Suk; Choi, Joongrul

2015-07-01

We used a visual illusion called motion repulsion as a model system for investigating competition between two mental representations. Subjects were asked to remember two random-dot-motion displays presented in sequence and then to report the motion directions for each. Remembered motion directions were shifted away from the actual motion directions, an effect similar to the motion repulsion observed during perception. More important, the item retrieved second showed greater repulsion than the item retrieved first. This suggests that earlier retrieval exerted greater inhibition on the other item being held in short-term memory. This retrieval-induced motion repulsion could be explained neither by reduced cognitive resources for maintaining short-term memory nor by continued inhibition between short-term memory representations. These results indicate that retrieval of memory representations inhibits other representations in short-term memory. We discuss mechanisms of retrieval-induced inhibition and their implications for the structure of memory. © The Author(s) 2015.

Evaluation of Short Term Memory Span Function In Children

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Barış ERGÜL

2016-12-01

Full Text Available Although details of the information encoded in the short-term memory where it is stored temporarily be recorded in the working memory in the next stage. Repeating the information mentally makes it remain in memory for a long time. Studies investigating the relationship between short-term memory and reading skills that are carried out to examine the relationship between short-term memory processes and reading comprehension. In this study information coming to short-term memory and the factors affecting operation of short term memory are investigated with regression model. The aim of the research is to examine the factors (age, IQ and reading skills that are expected the have an effect on short-term memory in children through regression analysis. One of the assumptions of regression analysis is to examine which has constant variance and normal distribution of the error term. In this study, because the error term is not normally distributed, robust regression techniques were applied. Also, for each technique; coefficient of determination is determined. According to the findings, the increase in age, IQ and reading skills caused the increase in short term memory in children. After applying robust regression techniques, the Winsorized Least Squares (WLS technique gives the highest coefficient of determination.

Evaluation of Short Term Memory Span Function In Children

OpenAIRE

Barış ERGÜL; Arzu ALTIN YAVUZ; Ebru GÜNDOĞAN AŞIK

2016-01-01

Although details of the information encoded in the short-term memory where it is stored temporarily be recorded in the working memory in the next stage. Repeating the information mentally makes it remain in memory for a long time. Studies investigating the relationship between short-term memory and reading skills that are carried out to examine the relationship between short-term memory processes and reading comprehension. In this study information coming to short-term memory and the factors ...

Short-Term Expectation Formation Versus Long-Term Equilibrium Conditions: The Danish Housing Market

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Andreas Hetland

2017-09-01

Full Text Available The primary contribution of this paper is to establish that the long-swings behavior observed in the market price of Danish housing since the 1970s can be understood by studying the interplay between short-term expectation formation and long-run equilibrium conditions. We introduce an asset market model for housing based on uncertainty rather than risk, which under mild assumptions allows for other forms of forecasting behavior than rational expectations. We test the theory via an I(2 cointegrated VAR model and find that the long-run equilibrium for the housing price corresponds closely to the predictions from the theoretical framework. Additionally, we corroborate previous findings that housing markets are well characterized by short-term momentum forecasting behavior. Our conclusions have wider relevance, since housing prices play a role in the wider Danish economy, and other developed economies, through wealth effects.

Determination of delta sub(18) in water from delta sub(18) in equilibrated CO2: influence of changes in experimental parameters on the equilibration process

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Nestler, V.; Arora, H.L.

1977-01-01

The result of an isotopic exchange reaction is expressed in terms of the isotopic abundance ratios, the fractionation factor and the atom number ratio of the reactants. The general formula is applied to the CO 2 -H 2 O system and simplified by neglecting terms small in relation to the experimental error. The influence of variations in the experimental parameters on the equilibrium is discussed. It is found that changes in temperature as well as atom number ratio will influence the equilibration process appreciably [pt

Short-term Memory as a Processing Shift

Science.gov (United States)

Lewis-Smith, Marion Quinn

1975-01-01

The series of experiments described here examined the predictions for free recall from sequential models and the shift formulation, focusing on the roles of short- and long-term memory in the primacy/recency shift and on the effects of expectancies on short- and long-term memory. (Author/RK)

Voltage equilibration for reactive atomistic simulations of electrochemical processes

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Onofrio, Nicolas; Strachan, Alejandro

2015-01-01

We introduce electrochemical dynamics with implicit degrees of freedom (EChemDID), a model to describe electrochemical driving force in reactive molecular dynamics simulations. The method describes the equilibration of external electrochemical potentials (voltage) within metallic structures and their effect on the self-consistent partial atomic charges used in reactive molecular dynamics. An additional variable assigned to each atom denotes the local potential in its vicinity and we use fictitious, but computationally convenient, dynamics to describe its equilibration within connected metallic structures on-the-fly during the molecular dynamics simulation. This local electrostatic potential is used to dynamically modify the atomic electronegativities used to compute partial atomic changes via charge equilibration. Validation tests show that the method provides an accurate description of the electric fields generated by the applied voltage and the driving force for electrochemical reactions. We demonstrate EChemDID via simulations of the operation of electrochemical metallization cells. The simulations predict the switching of the device between a high-resistance to a low-resistance state as a conductive metallic bridge is formed and resistive currents that can be compared with experimental measurements. In addition to applications in nanoelectronics, EChemDID could be useful to model electrochemical energy conversion devices

On the relationship between short- and long-term memory

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Thomas Alrik

James (1890) divided memory into separate stores; primary and secondary – or short-term and long-term memory. The interaction between the two stores often assumes that information initially is represented in volatile short-term store before entering and consolidating in the more durable long-term......, accepted). Counter to popular beliefs this suggest that long-term memory precedes short-term memory and not vice versa....... memory system (e.g. Atkinson & Shiffrin, 1968). Short-term memory seems to provide a surprising processing bottleneck where only a very limited amount of information can be represented at any given moment (Miller, 1956; Cowan, 2001). A number of studies have investigated the nature of this processing...

Short-term memory and long-term memory are still different.

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Norris, Dennis

2017-09-01

A commonly expressed view is that short-term memory (STM) is nothing more than activated long-term memory. If true, this would overturn a central tenet of cognitive psychology-the idea that there are functionally and neurobiologically distinct short- and long-term stores. Here I present an updated case for a separation between short- and long-term stores, focusing on the computational demands placed on any STM system. STM must support memory for previously unencountered information, the storage of multiple tokens of the same type, and variable binding. None of these can be achieved simply by activating long-term memory. For example, even a simple sequence of digits such as "1, 3, 1" where there are 2 tokens of the digit "1" cannot be stored in the correct order simply by activating the representations of the digits "1" and "3" in LTM. I also review recent neuroimaging data that has been presented as evidence that STM is activated LTM and show that these data are exactly what one would expect to see based on a conventional 2-store view. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2017 APA, all rights reserved).

Morphological processing with deficient phonological short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Kavé, Gitit; Ze'ev, Hagit Bar; Lev, Anita

2007-07-01

This paper investigates the processing of Hebrew derivational morphology in an individual (S.E.) with deficient phonological short-term memory. In comparison to 10 age- and education-matched men, S.E. was impaired on digit span tasks and demonstrated no recency effect in word list recall. S.E. had low word retention span, but he exhibited phonological similarity and word length effects. His ability to make lexical decisions was intact. In a paired-associate test S.E. successfully learned semantically and morphologically related pairs but not phonologically related pairs, and his learning of nonwords was facilitated by the presence of Hebrew consonant roots. Semantic and morphological similarity enhanced immediate word recall. Results show that S.E. is capable of conducting morphological decomposition of Hebrew-derived words despite his phonological deficit, suggesting that transient maintenance of morphological constituents is independent of temporary storage and rehearsal of phonological codes, and that each is processed separately within short-term memory.

Fast Weight Long Short-Term Memory

OpenAIRE

Keller, T. Anderson; Sridhar, Sharath Nittur; Wang, Xin

2018-01-01

Associative memory using fast weights is a short-term memory mechanism that substantially improves the memory capacity and time scale of recurrent neural networks (RNNs). As recent studies introduced fast weights only to regular RNNs, it is unknown whether fast weight memory is beneficial to gated RNNs. In this work, we report a significant synergy between long short-term memory (LSTM) networks and fast weight associative memories. We show that this combination, in learning associative retrie...

Effect of active warm-up duration on morning short-term maximal ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

Purpose: To examine the effect of active warm-up duration on short-term maximal performance assessed during Ramadan in the morning. Methods: Twelve healthy active men performed four Wingate tests for measurement of peak power and mean power before and during Ramadan at 09:00 a.m. The tests were performed ...

Working memory, short-term memory and reading proficiency in school-age children with cochlear implants.

Science.gov (United States)

Bharadwaj, Sneha V; Maricle, Denise; Green, Laura; Allman, Tamby

2015-10-01

The objective of the study was to examine short-term memory and working memory through both visual and auditory tasks in school-age children with cochlear implants. The relationship between the performance on these cognitive skills and reading as well as language outcomes were examined in these children. Ten children between the ages of 7 and 11 years with early-onset bilateral severe-profound hearing loss participated in the study. Auditory and visual short-term memory, auditory and visual working memory subtests and verbal knowledge measures were assessed using the Woodcock Johnson III Tests of Cognitive Abilities, the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children-IV Integrated and the Kaufman Assessment Battery for Children II. Reading outcomes were assessed using the Woodcock Reading Mastery Test III. Performance on visual short-term memory and visual working memory measures in children with cochlear implants was within the average range when compared to the normative mean. However, auditory short-term memory and auditory working memory measures were below average when compared to the normative mean. Performance was also below average on all verbal knowledge measures. Regarding reading outcomes, children with cochlear implants scored below average for listening and passage comprehension tasks and these measures were positively correlated to visual short-term memory, visual working memory and auditory short-term memory. Performance on auditory working memory subtests was not related to reading or language outcomes. The children with cochlear implants in this study demonstrated better performance in visual (spatial) working memory and short-term memory skills than in auditory working memory and auditory short-term memory skills. Significant positive relationships were found between visual working memory and reading outcomes. The results of the study provide support for the idea that WM capacity is modality specific in children with hearing loss. Based on these

Dispositional optimism as predictor of outcome in short- and long-term psychotherapy.

Science.gov (United States)

Heinonen, Erkki; Heiskanen, Tiia; Lindfors, Olavi; Härkäpää, Kristiina; Knekt, Paul

2017-09-01

Dispositional optimism predicts various beneficial outcomes in somatic health and treatment, but has been little studied in psychotherapy. This study investigated whether an optimistic disposition differentially predicts patients' ability to benefit from short-term versus long-term psychotherapy. A total of 326 adult outpatients with mood and/or anxiety disorder were randomized into short-term (solution-focused or short-term psychodynamic) or long-term psychodynamic therapy and followed up for 3 years. Dispositional optimism was assessed by patients at baseline with the self-rated Life Orientation Test (LOT) questionnaire. Outcome was assessed at baseline and seven times during the follow-up, in terms of depressive (BDI, HDRS), anxiety (SCL-90-ANX, HARS), and general psychiatric symptoms (SCL-90-GSI), all seven follow-up points including patients' self-reports and three including interview-based measures. Lower dispositional optimism predicted faster symptom reduction in short-term than in long-term psychotherapy. Higher optimism predicted equally rapid and eventually greater benefits in long-term, as compared to short-term, psychotherapy. Weaker optimism appeared to predict sustenance of problems early in long-term therapy. Stronger optimism seems to best facilitate engaging in and benefiting from a long-term therapy process. Closer research might clarify the psychological processes responsible for these effects and help fine-tune both briefer and longer interventions to optimize treatment effectiveness for particular patients and their psychological qualities. Weaker dispositional optimism does not appear to inhibit brief therapy from effecting symptomatic recovery. Patients with weaker optimism do not seem to gain added benefits from long-term therapy, but instead may be susceptible to prolonged psychiatric symptoms in the early stages of long-term therapy. © 2016 The British Psychological Society.

Time dependent black holes and thermal equilibration

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Bak, Dongsu; Gutperle, Michael; Karch, Andreas

2007-01-01

We study aspects of a recently proposed exact time dependent black hole solution of IIB string theory using the AdS/CFT correspondence. The dual field theory is a thermal system in which initially a vacuum density for a non-conserved operator is turned on. We can see that in agreement with general thermal field theory expectation the system equilibrates: the expectation value of the non-conserved operator goes to zero exponentially and the entropy increases. In the field theory the process can be described quantitatively in terms of a thermofield state and exact agreement with the gravity answers is found

Short- and long-term memory contributions to immediate serial recognition: evidence from serial position effects.

Science.gov (United States)

Purser, Harry; Jarrold, Christopher

2010-04-01

A long-standing body of research supports the existence of separable short- and long-term memory systems, relying on phonological and semantic codes, respectively. The aim of the current study was to measure the contribution of long-term knowledge to short-term memory performance by looking for evidence of phonologically and semantically coded storage within a short-term recognition task, among developmental samples. Each experimental trial presented 4-item lists. In Experiment 1 typically developing children aged 5 to 6 years old showed evidence of phonologically coded storage across all 4 serial positions, but evidence of semantically coded storage at Serial Positions 1 and 2. In a further experiment, a group of individuals with Down syndrome was investigated as a test case that might be expected to use semantic coding to support short-term storage, but these participants showed no evidence of semantically coded storage and evidenced phonologically coded storage only at Serial Position 4, suggesting that individuals with Down syndrome have a verbal short-term memory capacity of 1 item. Our results suggest that previous evidence of semantic effects on "short-term memory performance" does not reflect semantic coding in short-term memory itself, and provide an experimental method for researchers wishing to take a relatively pure measure of verbal short-term memory capacity, in cases where rehearsal is unlikely.

Short-term treatment with flumazenil restores long-term object memory in a mouse model of Down syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Colas, Damien; Chuluun, Bayarsaikhan; Garner, Craig C; Heller, H Craig

2017-04-01

Down syndrome (DS) is a common genetic cause of intellectual disability yet no pro-cognitive drug therapies are approved for human use. Mechanistic studies in a mouse model of DS (Ts65Dn mice) demonstrate that impaired cognitive function is due to excessive neuronal inhibitory tone. These deficits are normalized by chronic, short-term low doses of GABA A receptor (GABA A R) antagonists in adult animals, but none of the compounds investigated are approved for human use. We explored the therapeutic potential of flumazenil (FLUM), a GABA A R antagonist working at the benzodiazepine binding site that has FDA approval. Long-term memory was assessed by the Novel Object Recognition (NOR) testing in Ts65Dn mice after acute or short-term chronic treatment with FLUM. Short-term, low, chronic dose regimens of FLUM elicit long-lasting (>1week) normalization of cognitive function in both young and aged mice. FLUM at low dosages produces long lasting cognitive improvements and has the potential of fulfilling an unmet therapeutic need in DS. Copyright © 2017. Published by Elsevier Inc.

Short-term power plant operation scheduling in thermal systems with long-term boundary conditions

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Wolter, H.

1990-01-01

For the first time, the modeling of long-term quantitative conditions within the short-term planning of the application of power stations is made via their shadow prices. It corresponds to a decomposition of the quantitative conditions by means of the method of the Langrange relaxation. The shadow prices determined by the planning for energy application regarding long- term quantitative conditions pass into the short-term planning for power station application and subsidize or rather punish the application of limited amounts as for as they are not claimed for sufficiently or excessively. The clear advantage of this modeling is that the short-term planning of power station application can deviate from the envisioned energy application regarding the total optimum, because the shadow prices contain all information about the cost effect of the energy shifts in the residual total period, which become necessary due to the deviations in the short-term period to be planned in the current short-term period. (orig./DG) [de

Short-term consistency testing vs. long-term behavior

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ebert, W.L.; Bakel, A.J.; Wolf, S.F.; Strachan, D.M.

1997-01-01

The authors conducted Product Consistency Tests (PCTs) with a surrogate low-activity waste (LAW) glass to (1) evaluate the possible use of various test conditions in a specification test for LAW waste forms, (2) measure the reproducibility of the test at low temperatures, and (3) determine if the rates calculated from 7-day PCTs bound the rates measured in PCT conducted for longer durations, which represent more advanced corrosion. The effects of temperature and pH on the dissolution rate in PCTs are much less than the effects observed in dilute solutions due to the buildup of dissolved glass components in the PCTs. The precision of replicate 7-day tests at 20 and 40 degrees C was limited by the analytical uncertainty. The dissolution rates at all temperatures decreased with the test duration initially. However, the dissolution rates in tests at 70 and 90 degrees C increased when certain alteration phases formed after about 100 and 500 days, respectively; the rates in some tests exceeded that measured in a 7-day PCT. While the 7-day PCT does not provide a bounding rate for this glass at 70 or 90 degrees C, tests for longer durations are needed to determine if a 7-day test provides a bounding rate at lower temperatures

The University of Minnesota aquifer thermal energy storage (ATES) field test facility -- system description, aquifer characterization, and results of short-term test cycles

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Walton, M.; Hoyer, M.C.; Eisenreich, S.J.; Holm, N.L.; Holm, T.R.; Kanivetsky, R.; Jirsa, M.A.; Lee, H.C.; Lauer, J.L.; Miller, R.T.; Norton, J.L.; Runke, H. (Minnesota Geological Survey, St. Paul, MN (United States))

1991-06-01

Phase 1 of the Aquifer Thermal Energy Storage (ATES) Project at the University of Minnesota was to test the feasibility, and model, the ATES concept at temperatures above 100{degrees}C using a confined aquifer for the storage and recovery of hot water. Phase 1 included design, construction, and operation of a 5-MW thermal input/output field test facility (FTF) for four short-term ATES cycles (8 days each of heat injection, storage, and heat recover). Phase 1 was conducted from May 1980 to December 1983. This report describes the FTF, the Franconia-Ironton-Galesville (FIG) aquifer used for the test, and the four short-term ATES cycles. Heat recovery; operational experience; and thermal, chemical, hydrologic, and geologic effects are all included. The FTF consists of monitoring wells and the source and storage well doublet completed in the FIG aquifer with heat exchangers and a fixed-bed precipitator between the wells of the doublet. The FIG aquifer is highly layered and a really anisotropic. The upper Franconia and Ironton-Galesville parts of the aquifer, those parts screened, have hydraulic conductivities of {approximately}0.6 and {approximately}1.0 m/d, respectively. Primary ions in the ambient ground water are calcium and magnesium bicarbonate. Ambient temperature FIG ground water is saturated with respect to calcium/magnesium bicarbonate. Heating the ground water caused most of the dissolved calcium to precipitate out as calcium carbonate in the heat exchanger and precipitator. Silica, calcium, and magnesium were significantly higher in recovered water than in injected water, suggesting dissolution of some constituents of the aquifer during the cycles. Further work on the ground water chemistry is required to understand water-rock interactions.

The use of standardised short-term and working memory tests in aphasia research: a systematic review.

Science.gov (United States)

Murray, Laura; Salis, Christos; Martin, Nadine; Dralle, Jenny

2018-04-01

Impairments of short-term and working memory (STM, WM), both verbal and non-verbal, are ubiquitous in aphasia. Increasing interest in assessing STM and WM in aphasia research and clinical practice as well as a growing evidence base of STM/WM treatments for aphasia warrant an understanding of the range of standardised STM/WM measures that have been utilised in aphasia. To date, however, no previous systematic review has focused on aphasia. Accordingly, the goals of this systematic review were: (1) to identify standardised tests of STM and WM utilised in the aphasia literature, (2) to evaluate critically the psychometric strength of these tests, and (3) to appraise critically the quality of the investigations utilising these tests. Results revealed that a very limited number of standardised tests, in the verbal and non-verbal domains, had robust psychometric properties. Standardisation samples to elicit normative data were often small, and most measures exhibited poor validity and reliability properties. Studies using these tests inconsistently documented demographic and aphasia variables essential to interpreting STM/WM test outcomes. In light of these findings, recommendations are provided to foster, in the future, consistency across aphasia studies and confidence in STM/WM tests as assessment and treatment outcome measures.

Facilitative Effects of Forgetting from Short-Term Memory on Growth of Long-Term Memory in Retardates

Science.gov (United States)

Sperber, Richard D.

1976-01-01

Competing explanations of the beneficial effect of spacing in retardate discrimination learning were tested. Results are inconsistent with consolidation and rehearsal theories but support the prediction of the Geber, Greenfield, and House spacing model that forgetting from short-term memory facilities retardate learning. (Author/SB)

Thermal, chemical and spectral equilibration in heavy-ion collisions

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Almási, Gábor András, E-mail: g.almasi@gsi.de [Gesellschaft für Schwerionenforschung, GSI, D-64291 Darmstadt (Germany); Wolf, György, E-mail: wolf.gyorgy@wigner.mta.hu [Wigner RCP, Budapest (Hungary)

2015-11-15

We have considered the equilibration in relativistic heavy ion collisions at energies 1–7 A GeV using our transport model. We applied periodic boundary conditions to close the system in a box. We found that the thermal equilibration takes place in the first 20–40 fm/c whose time is comparable to the duration of a heavy ion collision. The chemical equilibration is a much slower process and the system does not equilibrate in a heavy ion collision. We have shown that in the testparticle simulation of the Boltzmann equation the mass spectra of broad resonances follow instantaneously their in-medium spectral functions as expected from the Markovian approximation to the Kadanoff–Baym equations employed via the (local) gradient expansion.

The Structure and Content of Long-Term and Short-Term Mate Preferences

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Peter K. Jonason

2013-12-01

Full Text Available This study addresses two limitations in the mate preferences literature. First, research all-too-often relies on single-item assessments of mate preferences precluding more advanced statistical techniques like factor analysis. Second, when factor analysis could be done, it exclusively has done for long-term mate preferences, at the exclusion of short-term mate preferences. In this study (N = 401, we subjected 20 items designed to measure short- and long-term mate preferences to both principle components (n = 200 and confirmatory factor analysis (n = 201. In the long-term context, we replicated previous findings that there are three different categories of preferences: physical attractiveness, interpersonal warmth, and social status. In the short-term context, physical attractiveness occupied two parts of the structure, social status dropped out, and interpersonal warmth remained. Across short- and long-term contexts, there were slight changes in what defined the shared dimensions (i.e., physical attractiveness and interpersonal warmth, suggesting prior work that applies the same inventory to each context might be flawed. We also replicated sex differences and similarities in mate preferences and correlates with sociosexuality and mate value. We adopt an evolutionary paradigm to understand our results.

Short-term energy outlook, annual supplement 1994

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1994-08-01

The Short-Term Energy Outlook Annual Supplement (Supplement) is published once a year as a complement to the Short-Term Energy Outlook (Outlook), Quarterly Projections. The purpose of the Supplement is to review the accuracy of the forecasts published in the Outlook, make comparisons with other independent energy forecasts, and examine current energy topics that affect the forecasts

Short-term energy outlook annual supplement, 1993

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

1993-08-06

The Short-Term Energy Outlook Annual Supplement (supplement) is published once a year as a complement to the Short-Term Energy Outlook (Outlook), Quarterly Projections. The purpose of the Supplement is to review the accuracy of the forecasts published in the Outlook, make comparisons with other independent energy forecasts, and examine current energy topics that affect the forecasts.

An Exemplar-Familiarity Model Predicts Short-Term and Long-Term Probe Recognition across Diverse Forms of Memory Search

Science.gov (United States)

Nosofsky, Robert M.; Cox, Gregory E.; Cao, Rui; Shiffrin, Richard M.

2014-01-01

Experiments were conducted to test a modern exemplar-familiarity model on its ability to account for both short-term and long-term probe recognition within the same memory-search paradigm. Also, making connections to the literature on attention and visual search, the model was used to interpret differences in probe-recognition performance across…

Evaluation of short-term tracer fluctuations in groundwater and soil air in a two year study

Science.gov (United States)

Jenner, Florian; Mayer, Simon; Aeschbach, Werner; Weissbach, Therese

2016-04-01

The application of gas tracers like noble gases (NGs), SF6 or CFCs in groundwater studies such as paleo temperature determination requires a detailed understanding of the dynamics of reactive and inert gases in the soil air with which the infiltrating water equilibrates. Due to microbial gas consumption and production, NG partial pressures in soil air can deviate from atmospheric air, an effect that could bias noble gas temperatures estimates if not taken into account. So far, such an impact on NG contents in groundwater has not been directly demonstrated. We provide the first long-term study of the above mentioned gas tracers and physical parameters in both the saturated and unsaturated soil zone, sampled continuously for more than two years near Mannheim (Germany). NG partial pressures in soil air correlate with soil moisture and the sum value of O2+CO2, with a maximal significant enhancement of 3-6% with respect to atmospheric air during summer time. Observed seasonal fluctuations result in a mass dependent fractionation of NGs in soil air. Concentrations of SF6 and CFCs in soil air are determined by corresponding fluctuations in local atmospheric air, caused by industrial emissions. Arising concentration peaks are damped with increasing soil depth. Shallow groundwater shows short-term NG fluctuations which are smoothed within a few meters below the water table. A correlation between NG contents of soil air and of groundwater is observable during strong recharge events. However, there is no evidence for a permanent influence of seasonal variations of soil air composition on shallow groundwater. Fluctuating NG contents in shallow groundwater are rather determined by variations of soil temperature and water table level. Our data gives evidence for a further temperature driven equilibration of groundwater with entrapped air bubbles within the topmost saturated zone, which permanently occurs even some years after recharge. Local subsurface temperature fluctuations

In Search of Decay in Verbal Short-Term Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Berman, Marc G.; Jonides, John; Lewis, Richard L.

2009-01-01

Is forgetting in the short term due to decay with the mere passage of time, interference from other memoranda, or both? Past research on short-term memory has revealed some evidence for decay and a plethora of evidence showing that short-term memory is worsened by interference. However, none of these studies has directly contrasted decay and…

Attention Problems, Phonological Short-Term Memory, and Visuospatial Short-Term Memory: Differential Effects on Near- and Long-Term Scholastic Achievement

Science.gov (United States)

Sarver, Dustin E.; Rapport, Mark D.; Kofler, Michael J.; Scanlan, Sean W.; Raiker, Joseph S.; Altro, Thomas A.; Bolden, Jennifer

2012-01-01

The current study examined individual differences in children's phonological and visuospatial short-term memory as potential mediators of the relationship among attention problems and near- and long-term scholastic achievement. Nested structural equation models revealed that teacher-reported attention problems were associated negatively with…

The Development of Automaticity in Short-Term Memory Search: Item-Response Learning and Category Learning

Science.gov (United States)

Cao, Rui; Nosofsky, Robert M.; Shiffrin, Richard M.

2017-01-01

In short-term-memory (STM)-search tasks, observers judge whether a test probe was present in a short list of study items. Here we investigated the long-term learning mechanisms that lead to the highly efficient STM-search performance observed under conditions of consistent-mapping (CM) training, in which targets and foils never switch roles across…

Passive adaptation to stress in adulthood after short-term social instability stress during adolescence in mice.

Science.gov (United States)

de Lima, A P N; Massoco, C O

2017-05-01

This study reports that short-term social instability stress (SIS) in adolescence increases passive-coping in adulthood in male mice. Short-term SIS decreased the latency of immobility and increased the frequency and time of immobility in tail suspension test. These findings support the hypothesis that adolescent stress can induce a passive adaptation to stress in adulthood, even if it is a short period of stress.

Short-Term Reciprocity in Late Parent-Child Relationships

Science.gov (United States)

Leopold, Thomas; Raab, Marcel

2011-01-01

Long-term concepts of parent-child reciprocity assume that the amount of support given and received is only balanced in a generalized fashion over the life course. We argue that reciprocity in parent-child relationships also operates in the short term. Our analysis of short-term reciprocity focuses on concurrent exchange in its main upward and…

Implementing a short-term loyalty program : case: Bosch Lawn & Garden and the Ventum short-term loyalty program

OpenAIRE

Logvinova, Veronika

2015-01-01

In 2015, one of the Bosch Home and Garden divisions, Bosch Lawn and Garden, has made a strategic decision to adopt a points-based short-term loyalty program called Ventum LG in the German supermarkets and petrol stations. It was decided that the base of this program will be completed Ventum PT short-term loyalty program which was managed by another division, Bosch Power Tools, and proved to be successful. This thesis aims to evaluate the worthiness of the Ventum LG loyalty program for Bosch L...

Binding among Select Episodic Elements Is Altered via Active Short-Term Retrieval

Science.gov (United States)

Bridge, Donna J.; Voss, Joel L.

2015-01-01

Of the many elements that comprise an episode, are any disproportionately bound to the others? We tested whether active short-term retrieval selectively increases binding. Individual objects from multiobject displays were retrieved after brief delays. Memory was later tested for the other objects. Cueing with actively retrieved objects facilitated…

Consequence of preterm birth in early adolescence: the role of language on auditory short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Fraello, David; Maller-Kesselman, Jill; Vohr, Betty; Katz, Karol H; Kesler, Shelli; Schneider, Karen; Reiss, Allan; Ment, Laura; Spann, Marisa N

2011-06-01

This study tested the hypothesis that preterm early adolescents' short-term memory is compromised when presented with increasingly complex verbal information and that associated neuroanatomical volumes would differ between preterm and term groups. Forty-nine preterm and 20 term subjects were evaluated at age 12 years with neuropsychological measures and magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). There were no differences between groups in simple short-term and working memory. Preterm subjects performed lower on learning and short-term memory tests that included increased verbal complexity. They had reduced right parietal, left temporal, and right temporal white matter volumes and greater bilateral frontal gray and right frontal white matter volumes. There was a positive association between complex working memory and the left hippocampus and frontal white matter in term subjects. While not correlated, memory scores and volumes of cortical regions known to subserve language and memory were reduced in preterm subjects. This study provides evidence of possible mechanisms for learning problems in former preterm infants.

Short-term energy outlook annual supplement, 1993

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1993-01-01

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) prepares quarterly, short-term energy supply, demand, and price projections for publication in February, May, August, and November in the Short-Term Energy Outlook (Outlook). An annual supplement analyzes the performance of previous forecasts, compares recent cases with those of other forecasting services, and discusses current topics related to the short-term energy markets. (See Short-Term Energy Outlook Annual Supplement, DOE/EIA-0202.) The forecast period for this issue of the Outlook extends from the third quarter of 1993 through the fourth quarter of 1994. Values for the second quarter of 1993, however, are preliminary EIA estimates (for example, some monthly values for petroleum supply and disposition are derived in part from weekly data reported in the Weekly Petroleum Status Report) or are calculated from model simulations using the latest exogenous information available (for example, electricity sales and generation are simulated using actual weather data). The historical energy data are EIA data published in the Monthly Energy Review, Petroleum Supply Monthly, and other EIA publications. Minor discrepancies between the data in these publications and the historical data in this Outlook are due to independent rounding

Short term assays for risk evaluate of α irradiation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Fritsch, P.; Beauvallet, M.; Masse, R.; Lafuma, J.

1979-01-01

The genetic effects induced by α irradiation were examined using short term assays in Procaryotes and Eucaryotes. Irradiation was produced by 239 Pu dissolved as a DTPA equimolar complex in the culture medium. Induced mutagenesis was not observed with Ames' test or when test for ouabain resistance in CHO cells was used: GTG resistance and chromosome aberrations in Eucaryote cells were increased at dose rate exposure down to 5 R.day -1 . Until an optimal delivered dose, these two biological effects have shown a linear increase as a function of the dose. In our experimental conditions α irradiation has appeared to be much more lethal than mutagenic. Using lower dose rate, corresponding to 1 and 3 R a day we could also demonstrate a linear increase with dose of the induced TG resistant cells. Efficiency per unit dose was 3 to 5 times superior to what was observed at 5 R.day -1 . This phenomenon could correspond to an induced cell sensitivity, and clearly pointed out that for chronic and low delivered doses, informations deduced from flash or short term α exposure are not valuable

Differential age-related effects on conjunctive and relational visual short-term memory binding.

Science.gov (United States)

Bastin, Christine

2017-12-28

An age-related associative deficit has been described in visual short-term binding memory tasks. However, separate studies have suggested that ageing disrupts relational binding (to associate distinct items or item and context) more than conjunctive binding (to integrate features within an object). The current study directly compared relational and conjunctive binding with a short-term memory task for object-colour associations in 30 young and 30 older adults. Participants studied a number of object-colour associations corresponding to their individual object span level in a relational task in which objects were associated to colour patches and a conjunctive task where colour was integrated into the object. Memory for individual items and for associations was tested with a recognition memory test. Evidence for an age-related associative deficit was observed in the relational binding task, but not in the conjunctive binding task. This differential impact of ageing on relational and conjunctive short-term binding is discussed by reference to two underlying age-related cognitive difficulties: diminished hippocampally dependent binding and attentional resources.

Short term aerobic exercise training increases postprandial pancreatic polypeptide but not peptide YY concentrations in obese individuals

OpenAIRE

Kanaley, Jill A.; Heden, Timothy D.; Liu, Ying; Whaley-Connell, Adam T.; Chockalingam, Anand; Dellsperger, Kevin C.; Fairchild, Timothy J.

2013-01-01

Objective Short-term exercise training improves glycemic control, but the effect of short-term training on postprandial satiety peptide responses or perceived satiety remains unknown. We tested the hypothesis that short-term aerobic exercise training (15 days) would alter postprandial pancreatic and gut peptide [pancreatic polypeptide (PP) and peptide YY (PYY)] responses and perceived appetite and satiety in obese individuals. Subjects Thirteen healthy obese men and women (age: 42±2 y; BMI: 3...

Relationship between Short Term Memory and Cardiopulmonary Fitness of Administrative Officers at Universitas Padjadjaran

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Iswaran Ampalakan

2016-03-01

Full Text Available Background: The work of administrative officers depends a lot on their capability in memorizing. Increased fitness is strongly associated with a better memory. This study was conducted to determine the relationship between cardiopulmonary fitness and short term memory. Methods: This analytical cross sectional study was carried out from August to September 2014. Subjects from administrative offices within Universitas Padjadjaran were chosen by simple random sampling. 101 individuals were selected, comprising of 68 males and 33 females. Data were obtained through Digit Span Test for short term memory and the cardiopulmonary fitness was measured using Harvard Step Test. The VO2 Max obtained was correlated with the Digit Span Test score. Results: The mean for cardiopulmonary fitness of males was found to be 36.1, with standard deviation 8.63, whereas mean cardiopulmonary fitness for females was found to be 32.94, with standard deviation 7.5. For correlation analysis, the result of Spearman’s rank analysis from the study showed that the p-value is 0.00. Comparing to the significance level α=5%, the p value is worth less, thus the null hypothesis, Ho is rejected. Therefore, it could be concluded that there was a relationship between cardiopulmonary fitness and short term memory of male and female administrative officers at Universitas Padjadjaran. Conclusions: There is a relationship between cardiopulmonary fitness and short term memory of male and female administrative officers at Universitas Padjadjaran.

Rapid spatial equilibration of a particle in a box.

Science.gov (United States)

Malabarba, Artur S L; Linden, Noah; Short, Anthony J

2015-12-01

We study the equilibration behavior of a quantum particle in a one-dimensional box, with respect to a coarse-grained position measurement (whether it lies in a certain spatial window or not). We show that equilibration in this context indeed takes place and does so very rapidly, in a time comparable to the time for the initial wave packet to reach the edges of the box. We also show that, for this situation, the equilibration behavior is relatively insensitive to the precise choice of position measurements or initial condition.

Thermal lattice Boltzmann simulation for multispecies fluid equilibration

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vahala, Linda; Wah, Darren; Vahala, George; Carter, Jonathan; Pavlo, Pavol

2000-01-01

The equilibration rate for multispecies fluids is examined using thermal lattice Boltzmann simulations. Two-dimensional free-decay simulations are performed for effects of velocity shear layer turbulence on sharp temperature profiles. In particular, parameters are so chosen that the lighter species is turbulent while the heavier species is laminar--and so its vorticity layers would simply decay and diffuse in time. With species coupling, however, there is velocity equilibration followed by the final relaxation to one large co- and one large counter-rotating vortex. The temperature equilibration proceeds on a slower time scale and is in good agreement with the theoretical order of magnitude estimate of Morse [Phys. Fluids 6, 1420 (1963)]. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society

Thermal lattice Boltzmann simulation for multispecies fluid equilibration

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Vahala, Linda [Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, Old Dominion University, Norfolk, Virginia 23529 (United States); Wah, Darren [Department of Physics, William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Virginia 23187 (United States); Vahala, George [Department of Physics, William and Mary College, Williamsburg, Virginia 23187 (United States); Carter, Jonathan [NERSC, Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory, Berkeley, California 97320 (United States); Pavlo, Pavol [Institute of Plasma Physics, Czech Academy of Science, Praha 8, (Czech Republic)

2000-07-01

The equilibration rate for multispecies fluids is examined using thermal lattice Boltzmann simulations. Two-dimensional free-decay simulations are performed for effects of velocity shear layer turbulence on sharp temperature profiles. In particular, parameters are so chosen that the lighter species is turbulent while the heavier species is laminar--and so its vorticity layers would simply decay and diffuse in time. With species coupling, however, there is velocity equilibration followed by the final relaxation to one large co- and one large counter-rotating vortex. The temperature equilibration proceeds on a slower time scale and is in good agreement with the theoretical order of magnitude estimate of Morse [Phys. Fluids 6, 1420 (1963)]. (c) 2000 The American Physical Society.

Word-length effect in verbal short-term memory in individuals with Down's syndrome.

Science.gov (United States)

Kanno, K; Ikeda, Y

2002-11-01

Many studies have indicated that individuals with Down's syndrome (DS) show a specific deficit in short-term memory for verbal information. The aim of the present study was to investigate the influence of the length of words on verbal short-term memory in individuals with DS. Twenty-eight children with DS and 10 control participants matched for memory span were tested on verbal serial recall and speech rate, which are thought to involve rehearsal and output speed. Although a significant word-length effect was observed in both groups for the recall of a larger number of items with a shorter spoken duration than for those with a longer spoken duration, the number of correct recalls in the group with DS was reduced compared to the control subjects. The results demonstrating poor short-term memory in children with DS were irrelevant to speech rate. In addition, the proportion of repetition-gained errors in serial recall was higher in children with DS than in control subjects. The present findings suggest that poor access to long-term lexical knowledge, rather than overt articulation speed, constrains verbal short-term memory functions in individuals with DS.

Circadian modulation of short-term memory in Drosophila.

Science.gov (United States)

Lyons, Lisa C; Roman, Gregg

2009-01-01

Endogenous biological clocks are widespread regulators of behavior and physiology, allowing for a more efficient allocation of efforts and resources over the course of a day. The extent that different processes are regulated by circadian oscillators, however, is not fully understood. We investigated the role of the circadian clock on short-term associative memory formation using a negatively reinforced olfactory-learning paradigm in Drosophila melanogaster. We found that memory formation was regulated in a circadian manner. The peak performance in short-term memory (STM) occurred during the early subjective night with a twofold performance amplitude after a single pairing of conditioned and unconditioned stimuli. This rhythm in memory is eliminated in both timeless and period mutants and is absent during constant light conditions. Circadian gating of sensory perception does not appear to underlie the rhythm in short-term memory as evidenced by the nonrhythmic shock avoidance and olfactory avoidance behaviors. Moreover, central brain oscillators appear to be responsible for the modulation as cryptochrome mutants, in which the antennal circadian oscillators are nonfunctional, demonstrate robust circadian rhythms in short-term memory. Together these data suggest that central, rather than peripheral, circadian oscillators modulate the formation of short-term associative memory and not the perception of the stimuli.

The Role of Short-term Consolidation in Memory Persistence

OpenAIRE

Timothy J. Ricker

2015-01-01

Short-term memory, often described as working memory, is one of the most fundamental information processing systems of the human brain. Short-term memory function is necessary for language, spatial navigation, problem solving, and many other daily activities. Given its importance to cognitive function, understanding the architecture of short-term memory is of crucial importance to understanding human behavior. Recent work from several laboratories investigating the entry of information into s...

Quality of rearing practices as predictor of short-term outcome in adolescent anorexia nervosa.

Science.gov (United States)

Castro, J; Toro, J; Cruz, M

2000-01-01

Studies of family relationships in anorexia nervosa have produced conflicting results. Some authors claim that family factors are related to short-term outcomes. Perceived rearing practices, as measured by the EMBU (Egna Minnen Betraffande Uppfostran: 'My memories of Upbringing') were examined in a sample (N = 158) of adolescents with anorexia nervosa and compared with the perceptions of adolescents (N = 159) from the general population. A further comparison was made between the groups of patients with good and bad short-term outcomes. Logistic regression analysis was performed to evaluate the predictive value of different variables on short-term outcome. Overall, small differences were observed in the perceptions of rearing practices as expressed by the controls and the anorexic patients. Patients with bad short-term outcome perceived more rejection and control-overprotection from both parents than those with good outcome. In the logistic regression analysis only Rejection from father and the EAT (Eating Attitudes Test) total score gave independent prediction of treatment response. Taken as a whole, these results do not support the idea of altered rearing practices in anorexic patients, at least in young patients with a short evolution of the disease. Perceived rearing practices, especially 'rejection', appear to have an appreciable effect on the short-term outcome.

Effect of Short-Term Hypergravity Treatment on Mouse 2-Cell Embryo Development

Science.gov (United States)

Ning, Li-Na; Lei, Xiao-Hua; Cao, Yu-Jing; Zhang, Yun-Fang; Cao, Zhong-Hong; Chen, Qi; Duan, En-Kui

2015-11-01

Though there are numerous biological experiments, which have been performed in a space environment, to study the physiological effect of space travel on living organisms, while the potential effect of weightlessness or short-term hypergravity on the reproductive system in most species, particularly in mammalian is still controversial and unclear. In our previous study, we investigated the effect of space microgravity on the development of mouse 4-cell embryos by using Chinese SJ-8. .Unexpectedly, we did not get any developed embryo during the space-flight. Considering that the process of space experiment is quite different from most experiments done on earth in several aspects such as, the vibration and short-term hypergravity during the rock launching and landing. Thus we want to know whether the short-term hypergravity produced by the launch process affect the early embryo development in mice, and howthe early embryos respond to the hypergravity. In present study, we are mimicking the short-term hypergravity during launch by using a centrifuge to investigate its influence on the development of early embryo (2-cell) in mice. We also examined the actin filament distribution in 2-cell embryos by immunostaining to test their potential capacity of development under short-term hypergravity exposure. Our results showed that most 2-cell embryos in the hypergravity exposure groups developed into blastocysts with normal morphology after 72h cultured in vitro, and there is no obvious difference in the development rate of blastocyst formation compared to the control. Moreover, there were no statistically significant differences in birth rates after oviduct transfer of 2-cell mouse embryos exposed on short-term hypergravity compared with 1 g condition. In addition, the well-organized actin distribution appeared in 2-cell embryos after exposed on hypergravity and also in the subsequent developmental blastocysts. Taken together, our data shows that short-term exposure in

Short- and long-term reliability of language fMRI.

Science.gov (United States)

Nettekoven, Charlotte; Reck, Nicola; Goldbrunner, Roland; Grefkes, Christian; Weiß Lucas, Carolin

2018-08-01

When using functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) for mapping important language functions, a high test-retest reliability is mandatory, both in basic scientific research and for clinical applications. We, therefore, systematically tested the short- and long-term reliability of fMRI in a group of healthy subjects using a picture naming task and a sparse-sampling fMRI protocol. We hypothesized that test-retest reliability might be higher for (i) speech-related motor areas than for other language areas and for (ii) the short as compared to the long intersession interval. 16 right-handed subjects (mean age: 29 years) participated in three sessions separated by 2-6 (session 1 and 2, short-term) and 21-34 days (session 1 and 3, long-term). Subjects were asked to perform the same overt picture naming task in each fMRI session (50 black-white images per session). Reliability was tested using the following measures: (i) Euclidean distances (ED) between local activation maxima and Centers of Gravity (CoGs), (ii) overlap volumes and (iii) voxel-wise intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs). Analyses were performed for three regions of interest which were chosen based on whole-brain group data: primary motor cortex (M1), superior temporal gyrus (STG) and inferior frontal gyrus (IFG). Our results revealed that the activation centers were highly reliable, independent of the time interval, ROI or hemisphere with significantly smaller ED for the local activation maxima (6.45 ± 1.36 mm) as compared to the CoGs (8.03 ± 2.01 mm). In contrast, the extent of activation revealed rather low reliability values with overlaps ranging from 24% (IFG) to 56% (STG). Here, the left hemisphere showed significantly higher overlap volumes than the right hemisphere. Although mean ICCs ranged between poor (ICC0.75) were found for all ROIs. Voxel-wise reliability of the different ROIs was influenced by the intersession interval. Taken together, we could show that, despite of

Short-term and long-term sick-leave in Sweden

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Blank, N; Diderichsen, Finn

1995-01-01

The primary aim of the study was to analyse similarities and differences between repeated spells of short-term sick-leave (more than 3 spells of less than 7 days' duration in a 12-month period) and long-term absence through sickness (at least 1 spell of more than 59 days' duration in a 12-month p...

Short-term load forecasting by a neuro-fuzzy based approach

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Ruey-Hsun Liang; Ching-Chi Cheng [National Yunlin University of Science and Technology (China). Dept. of Electrical Engineering

2002-02-01

An approach based on an artificial neural network (ANN) combined with a fuzzy system is proposed for short-term load forecasting. This approach was developed in order to reach the desired short-term load forecasting in an efficient manner. Over the past few years, ANNs have attained the ability to manage a great deal of system complexity and are now being proposed as powerful computational tools. In order to select the appropriate load as the input for the desired forecasting, the Pearson analysis method is first applied to choose two historical record load patterns that are similar to the forecasted load pattern. These two load patterns and the required weather parameters are then fuzzified and input into a neural network for training or testing the network. The back-propagation (BP) neural network is applied to determine the preliminary forecasted load. In addition, the rule base for the fuzzy inference machine contains important linguistic membership function terms with knowledge in the form of fuzzy IF-THEN rules. This produces the load correction inference from the historical information and past forecasted load errors to obtain an inferred load error. Adding the inferred load error to the preliminary forecasted load, we can obtain the finial forecasted load. The effectiveness of the proposed approach to the short-term load-forecasting problem is demonstrated using practical data from the Taiwan Power Company (TPC). (Author)

The Effects of Music on High-intensity Short-term Exercise in Well Trained Athletes.

Science.gov (United States)

Jarraya, Mohamed; Chtourou, Hamdi; Aloui, Asma; Hammouda, Omar; Chamari, Karim; Chaouachi, Anis; Souissi, Nizar

2012-12-01

The purpose of this investigation was to assess the effects of listening to music during warm-up on short-term supramaximal performances during the 30-s Wingate test in highly trained athletes. Twelve young male athletes (20.6±1.8 yrs, 177±4.4 cm and 72.3±5.3 kg) underwent two Wingate tests in separate sessions with a recovery period of 48 h in-between, either after a 10 min of warm-up with (MWU) or without (NMWU) music. High tempo music (>120 to 140bpm) was selected for the study. Heart rate (HR) and rate of perceived exertion (RPE) were recorded after the warm-up (for HR = average of warm-up) and immediately after the Wingate test. HR, RPE and the fatigue index during the Wingate test are not affected by the incorporation of music during warm-up. However, power output (P(peak) and P(mean)) was significantly higher after MWU than NMWU (Peffect of music during warm-up on short-term supramaximal performances. As it's a legal method and an additional aid, music may be used during warm-up before performing activities requiring powerful lower limbs' muscles contractions during short-term supramaximal exercises.

Geopathic stress zones: short-term effects on work performance and well-being?

Science.gov (United States)

Augner, Christoph; Hacker, Gerhard W; Jekel, Ilse

2010-06-01

The aim of the study was to evaluate whether two different locations in the same room as tested by dowsers ("geopathic stress zone" [GSZ] versus "more neutral zone" [NZ]) would show significant short-term effects on work performance and well-being. It was also tested whether a device reported to "neutralize" GSZ would influence results obtained with the specific setup used in this study. This was a blinded, randomized, short-term laboratory experiment using a within-subject design. The study was conducted in the laboratory of the Research Institute for Frontier Questions of Medicine and Biotechnology at Salzburg Federal Hospital. The subjects were 26 persons, aged 20-57. Participants had to accomplish reaction tasks during three different conditions: GSZ, NZ, and GSZ with a device reported to "neutralize" GSZ. These conditions were counterbalanced into six different sequences and randomized to the subjects. At the end of each condition, a standardized well-being questionnaire had to be completed. Dependent variables were reactive stress tolerance (reaction time, timely right answers, right answers, false answers, left out) and well-being (described by six adjectives). No location-dependent effects on performance during reactive stress tolerance test were seen. For well-being, analysis of variance revealed a trend (p = 0.07) and showed significantly poorer well-being during the GSZ condition compared to NZ (p = 0.01). This study shows that well-being can be location dependent and that this might be caused by a so-called GSZ. However, in our short-term experiment, factors of work performance tested remained unaffected.

Chemical equilibration due to heavy Hagedorn states

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Greiner, C; Koch-Steinheimer, P; Liu, F M; Shovkovy, I A; Stoecker, H

2005-01-01

A scenario of heavy resonances, called massive Hagedorn states, is proposed which exhibits a fast (t ∼ 1 fm/c) chemical equilibration of (strange) baryons and anti-baryons at the QCD critical temperature T c . For relativistic heavy ion collisions this scenario predicts that hadronization is followed by a brief expansion phase during which the equilibration rate is higher than the expansion rate, so that baryons and antibaryons reach chemical equilibrium before chemical freeze-out occurs

Enhanced long-term and impaired short-term spatial memory in GluA1 AMPA receptor subunit knockout mice: evidence for a dual-process memory model.

Science.gov (United States)

Sanderson, David J; Good, Mark A; Skelton, Kathryn; Sprengel, Rolf; Seeburg, Peter H; Rawlins, J Nicholas P; Bannerman, David M

2009-06-01

The GluA1 AMPA receptor subunit is a key mediator of hippocampal synaptic plasticity and is especially important for a rapidly-induced, short-lasting form of potentiation. GluA1 gene deletion impairs hippocampus-dependent, spatial working memory, but spares hippocampus-dependent spatial reference memory. These findings may reflect the necessity of GluA1-dependent synaptic plasticity for short-term memory of recently visited places, but not for the ability to form long-term associations between a particular spatial location and an outcome. This hypothesis is in concordance with the theory that short-term and long-term memory depend on dissociable psychological processes. In this study we tested GluA1-/- mice on both short-term and long-term spatial memory using a simple novelty preference task. Mice were given a series of repeated exposures to a particular spatial location (the arm of a Y-maze) before their preference for a novel spatial location (the unvisited arm of the maze) over the familiar spatial location was assessed. GluA1-/- mice were impaired if the interval between the trials was short (1 min), but showed enhanced spatial memory if the interval between the trials was long (24 h). This enhancement was caused by the interval between the exposure trials rather than the interval prior to the test, thus demonstrating enhanced learning and not simply enhanced performance or expression of memory. This seemingly paradoxical enhancement of hippocampus-dependent spatial learning may be caused by GluA1 gene deletion reducing the detrimental effects of short-term memory on subsequent long-term learning. Thus, these results support a dual-process model of memory in which short-term and long-term memory are separate and sometimes competitive processes.

Short-term Consumer Benefits of Dynamic Pricing

OpenAIRE

Dupont, Benjamin; De Jonghe, Cedric; Kessels, Kris; Belmans, Ronnie

2011-01-01

Consumer benefits of dynamic pricing depend on a variety of factors. Consumer characteristics and climatic circumstances widely differ, which forces a regional comparison. This paper presents a general overview of demand response programs and focuses on the short-term benefits of dynamic pricing for an average Flemish residential consumer. It reaches a methodology to develop a cost reflective dynamic pricing program and to estimate short-term bill savings. Participating in a dynamic pricing p...

Short-term sleep deprivation stimulates hippocampal neurogenesis in rats following global cerebral ischemia/reperfusion.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Oumei Cheng

Full Text Available Sleep deprivation (SD plays a complex role in central nervous system (CNS diseases. Recent studies indicate that short-term SD can affect the extent of ischemic damage. The aim of this study was to investigate whether short-term SD could stimulate hippocampal neurogenesis in a rat model of global cerebral ischemia/reperfusion (GCIR.One hundred Sprague-Dawley rats were randomly divided into Sham, GCIR and short-term SD groups based on different durations of SD; the short-term SD group was randomly divided into three subgroups: the GCIR+6hSD*3d-treated, GCIR+12hSD-treated and GCIR+12hSD*3d-treated groups. The GCIR rat model was induced via the bilateral occlusion of the common carotid arteries and hemorrhagic hypotension. The rats were sleep-deprived starting at 48 h following GCIR. A Morris water maze test was used to assess learning and memory ability; cell proliferation and differentiation were analyzed via 5-bromodeoxyuridine (BrdU and neuron-specific enolase (NSE, respectively, at 14 and 28 d; the expression of hippocampal BDNF was measured after 7 d.The different durations of short-term SD designed in our experiment exhibited improvement in cognitive function as well as increased hippocampal BDNF expression. Additionally, the short-term SD groups also showed an increased number of BrdU- and BrdU/NSE-positive cells compared with the GCIR group. Of the three short-term SD groups, the GCIR+12hSD*3d-treated group experienced the most substantial beneficial effects.Short-term SD, especially the GCIR+12hSD*3d-treated method, stimulates neurogenesis in the hippocampal dentate gyrus (DG of rats that undergo GCIR, and BDNF may be an underlying mechanism in this process.

Short-term heart rate variability in asthmatic obese children: effect of exhaustive exercise and different humidity conditions.

Science.gov (United States)

Rezvan, K; Dabidi Roshan, V; Mahmudi, S A

2015-11-01

Asthmatic obese children experience changes in functional capacity and autonomic control. Previous heart rate variability (HRV) studies were based on 24-hour recordings, little research has been conducted on the short-term HRV in asthmatic obese children, primarily during physical effort indifferent environmental humidity conditions. The aim of this study was to evaluate the effect of aerobic activity on short-term HRV in asthmatic obese children under two different environmental humidity conditions. Ten obese boys with mild asthma as experimental group and 15 obese healthy boys with the same conditions were involved as a control group. Protocol included progressive and exhaustive aerobic activities on a calibrated ergometer pedal bicycle in two various environmental humidity 35±5% and 65±5%. HRV was measured by PADSY MEDSET Holter monitoring device during three phases; pre-test, mid-test and post-test. Then, short-term HRV was assessed from calculation of the mean R-R interval measured on HRV at each phases. HRV significantly decreased at mid-test and post-test among asthmatic and health children. However, the aforesaid changes were significantly higher in the asthmatic than health children following. Moreover, decrease of short-term HRV was significantly greater in the 35±5% than 65±5% environmental humidity. Our findings suggest from the autonomic standpoint, asthmatic and non-asthmatic children respond differently to exhaustive exercise induced stress. Aerobic exercise at an environment with high humidity compared with the low humidity appears to have additional benefits on short-term HRV in that it enhances the parasympathetic and autonomic modulation of the heart in asthmatic obese children.

Short- circuit tests of circuit breakers

OpenAIRE

Chorovský, P.

2015-01-01

This paper deals with short-circuit tests of low voltage electrical devices. In the first part of this paper, there are described basic types of short- circuit tests and their principles. Direct and indirect (synthetic) tests with more details are described in the second part. Each test and principles are explained separately. Oscilogram is obtained from short-circuit tests of circuit breakers at laboratory. The aim of this research work is to propose a test circuit for performing indirect test.

Morpho-Functional 1H-MRI of the Lung in COPD: Short-Term Test-Retest Reliability.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Bertram J Jobst

Full Text Available Non-invasive end-points for interventional trials and tailored treatment regimes in chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD for monitoring regionally different manifestations of lung disease instead of global assessment of lung function with spirometry would be valuable. Proton nuclear magnetic resonance imaging (1H-MRI allows for a radiation-free assessment of regional structure and function. The aim of this study was to evaluate the short-term reproducibility of a comprehensive morpho-functional lung MRI protocol in COPD.20 prospectively enrolled COPD patients (GOLD I-IV underwent 1H-MRI of the lung at 1.5T on two consecutive days, including sequences for morphology, 4D contrast-enhanced perfusion, and respiratory mechanics. Image quality and COPD-related morphological and functional changes were evaluated in consensus by three chest radiologists using a dedicated MRI-based visual scoring system. Test-retest reliability was calculated per each individual lung lobe for the extent of large airway (bronchiectasis, wall thickening, mucus plugging and small airway abnormalities (tree in bud, peripheral bronchiectasis, mucus plugging, consolidations, nodules, parenchymal defects and perfusion defects. The presence of tracheal narrowing, dystelectasis, pleural effusion, pulmonary trunk ectasia, right ventricular enlargement and, finally, motion patterns of diaphragma and chest wall were addressed.Median global scores [10(Q1:8.00;Q3:16.00 vs.11(Q1:6.00;Q3:15.00] as well as category subscores were similar between both timepoints, and kappa statistics indicated "almost perfect" global agreement (ĸ = 0.86, 95%CI = 0.81-0.91. Most subscores showed at least "substantial" agreement of MRI1 and MRI2 (ĸ = 0.64-1.00, whereas the agreement for the diagnosis of dystelectasis/effusion (ĸ = 0.42, 95%CI = 0.00-0.93 was "moderate" and of tracheal abnormalities (ĸ = 0.21, 95%CI = 0.00-0.75 "fair". Most MRI acquisitions showed at least diagnostic quality at

Ministers of Health: short-term tenure for long-term goals?

Science.gov (United States)

Ferraz, Marcos Bosi; Azevedo, Rafael Teixeira

2011-03-01

Healthcare investments should consider short and long-term demands. The objectives here were to compare the average tenures of ministers of health in Brazil and in another 22 countries and to evaluate the relationship between ministers' tenures and a number of indicators. Descriptive study conducted at Centro Paulista de Economia da Saúde (CPES). Twenty-two countries with the highest Human Development Indices (HDIs) and Brazil were included. The number of ministers over the past 20 years was investigated through each country's Ministry of Health website. Pearson's correlation coefficient was used to compare the number of ministers in each country with that country's indicators. The Mann-Whitney test was used to compare ministers' tenures in Brazil and other countries. The mean tenure (standard deviation, SD) of Brazilian ministers of health was 15 (12) months, a period that is statistically significantly shorter than the mean tenure of 33 (18) months in the other 22 countries (P < 0.05). There was a moderate and statistically significant positive correlation between the number of ministers and mortality rates for several conditions. The number of ministers also presented moderate and statistically significant negative correlations with per capita total healthcare expenditure (r = -0.567) and with per capita government healthcare expenditure (r = -0.530). On average, ministers of health have extremely short tenures. There is an urgent need to think and plan healthcare systems from a long-term perspective.

A least squares approach for efficient and reliable short-term versus long-term optimization

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Christiansen, Lasse Hjuler; Capolei, Andrea; Jørgensen, John Bagterp

2017-01-01

The uncertainties related to long-term forecasts of oil prices impose significant financial risk on ventures of oil production. To minimize risk, oil companies are inclined to maximize profit over short-term horizons ranging from months to a few years. In contrast, conventional production...... optimization maximizes long-term profits over horizons that span more than a decade. To address this challenge, the oil literature has introduced short-term versus long-term optimization. Ideally, this problem is solved by a posteriori multi-objective optimization methods that generate an approximation...... the balance between the objectives, leaving an unfulfilled potential to increase profits. To promote efficient and reliable short-term versus long-term optimization, this paper introduces a natural way to characterize desirable Pareto points and proposes a novel least squares (LS) method. Unlike hierarchical...

Verbal short-term memory span in children: long-term modality dependent effects of intrauterine growth restriction.

Science.gov (United States)

Geva, R; Eshel, R; Leitner, Y; Fattal-Valevski, A; Harel, S

2008-12-01

Recent reports showed that children born with intrauterine growth restriction (IUGR) are at greater risk of experiencing verbal short-term memory span (STM) deficits that may impede their learning capacities at school. It is still unknown whether these deficits are modality dependent. This long-term, prospective design study examined modality-dependent verbal STM functions in children who were diagnosed at birth with IUGR (n = 138) and a control group (n = 64). Their STM skills were evaluated individually at 9 years of age with four conditions of the Visual-Aural Digit Span Test (VADS; Koppitz, 1981): auditory-oral, auditory-written, visuospatial-oral and visuospatial-written. Cognitive competence was evaluated with the short form of the Wechsler Intelligence Scales for Children--revised (WISC-R95; Wechsler, 1998). We found IUGR-related specific auditory-oral STM deficits (p long-term relationship between prenatal aberrant head growth and auditory verbal STM deficits by the end of the first decade of life. Empirical, clinical and educational implications are presented.

Short-term test-retest-reliability of conditioned pain modulation using the cold-heat-pain method in healthy subjects and its correlation to parameters of standardized quantitative sensory testing.

Science.gov (United States)

Gehling, Julia; Mainka, Tina; Vollert, Jan; Pogatzki-Zahn, Esther M; Maier, Christoph; Enax-Krumova, Elena K

2016-08-05

Conditioned Pain Modulation (CPM) is often used to assess human descending pain inhibition. Nine different studies on the test-retest-reliability of different CPM paradigms have been published, but none of them has investigated the commonly used heat-cold-pain method. The results vary widely and therefore, reliability measures cannot be extrapolated from one CPM paradigm to another. Aim of the present study was to analyse the test-retest-reliability of the common heat-cold-pain method and its correlation to pain thresholds. We tested the short-term test-retest-reliability within 40 ± 19.9 h using a cold-water immersion (10 °C, left hand) as conditioning stimulus (CS) and heat pain (43-49 °C, pain intensity 60 ± 5 on the 101-point numeric rating scale, right forearm) as test stimulus (TS) in 25 healthy right-handed subjects (12females, 31.6 ± 14.1 years). The TS was applied 30s before (TSbefore), during (TSduring) and after (TSafter) the 60s CS. The difference between the pain ratings for TSbefore and TSduring represents the early CPM-effect, between TSbefore and TSafter the late CPM-effect. Quantitative sensory testing (QST, DFNS protocol) was performed on both sessions before the CPM assessment. paired t-tests, Intraclass correlation coefficient (ICC), standard error of measurement (SEM), smallest real difference (SRD), Pearson's correlation, Bland-Altman analysis, significance level p Pain ratings during CPM correlated significantly (ICC: 0.411…0.962) between both days, though ratings for TSafter were lower on day 2 (p pain thresholds. The short-term test-retest-reliability of the early CPM-effect using the heat-cold-pain method in healthy subjects achieved satisfying results in terms of the ICC. The SRD of the early CPM effect showed that an individual change of > 20 NRS can be attributed to a real change rather than chance. The late CPM-effect was weaker and not reliable.

Do Short-Term Managerial Objectives Lead to Under- or Over-Investment in Long-Term Projects

OpenAIRE

Lucian Arye Bebchuk; Lars A. Stole

1994-01-01

This paper studies managerial decisions about investment in long-run projects in the presence of imperfect information (the market knows less about such investments than the firm's managers) and short-term managerial objectives (the managers are concerned about the short-term stock price as well as the long-term stock price). Prior work has suggested that imperfect information and short-term managerial objectives induce managers to underinvest in long-run projects. We show that either underin...

Intensive video gaming improves encoding speed to visual short-term memory in young male adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Wilms, Inge L; Petersen, Anders; Vangkilde, Signe

2013-01-01

The purpose of this study was to measure the effect of action video gaming on central elements of visual attention using Bundesen's (1990) Theory of Visual Attention. To examine the cognitive impact of action video gaming, we tested basic functions of visual attention in 42 young male adults. Participants were divided into three groups depending on the amount of time spent playing action video games: non-players (15h/month, N=20). All participants were tested in three tasks which tap central functions of visual attention and short-term memory: a test based on the Theory of Visual Attention (TVA), an enumeration test and finally the Attentional Network Test (ANT). The results show that action video gaming does not seem to impact the capacity of visual short-term memory. However, playing action video games does seem to improve the encoding speed of visual information into visual short-term memory and the improvement does seem to depend on the time devoted to gaming. This suggests that intense action video gaming improves basic attentional functioning and that this improvement generalizes into other activities. The implications of these findings for cognitive rehabilitation training are discussed. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

PENGARUH KEDALAMAN AIR TERHADAP SHORT TERM MEMORY DAN KONSUMSI ENERGI PADA PENYELAM

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Rini Dharmastiti

2012-02-01

Full Text Available Penelitian ini akan melihat pengaruh kedalaman air terhadap short term memory dan konsumsi energi penyelam. Penelitian ini mengambil sampel 10 mahasiswa pria dan 5 wanita. Pengukuran performansi short term memory dilakukan dengan cara setiap obyek diperlihatkan deretan 7 angka acak yang diberikan selama 5 detik dan setelah 15 detik kemudian dilakukan pemanggilan kembali informasi yang baru saja diberikan. Setiap obyek diuji sebangak 30 kali untuk setiap kedalaman (1 m; 2,5 m; dan 4 m. Pengukuran konsumsi energi dilakukan dengan menghitung denyut jantung menggunakan metode palpasi. Hasil penelitian menunjukkan bahwa semakin meningkat kedalaman air, maka performasi short term memory penyelam tersebut semakin menurun.  Penurunan ini berlaku untuk pria dan wanita. Penambahan kedalaman ini juga meningkatkan konsumsi energi baik pada pria maupun wanita. Perbedaan jenis kelamin mempengaruhi performansi short term memory secara signifikan. Pria memiliki performansi rata-rata short term memory sebesar 91,67% pada kedalaman 1 m, 90,67% pada kedalaman 2,5 m, dan 86,33% pada kedalaman 4 m. Sedangkan wanita memiliki performansi rata-rata sebesar 86% pada kedalaman 1 m, 84% pada kedalaman 2,5 m, dan 80,67% pada kedalaman 4 m. Rata-rata konsumsi energi pria adalah 3,19 kkal, 3,34 kkal, dan 3,65 kkal pada kedalaman 1 m; 2,5 m; dan 4 m berturut-turut. Sedangkan rata-rata konsumsi energi wanita adalah 3,81 kkal, 4,07 kkal, dan 4,54 kkal pada kedalaman yang sama dengan pria.     Kata kunci : tekanan, kedalaman air, performansi short term memory, konsumsi energi.       This research is to observe water depth effects on short term memory and energy expenditure of diver. This research objects are 10 male and 5 female students. Short term memory performance measurement held by every object has been shown 7 random numerics (as information for 5 seconds and after 15 seconds later they write down the information on a paper. Every object got 30 tests for every

Sleep Quality, Short-Term and Long-Term CPAP Adherence

Science.gov (United States)

Somiah, Manya; Taxin, Zachary; Keating, Joseph; Mooney, Anne M.; Norman, Robert G.; Rapoport, David M.; Ayappa, Indu

2012-01-01

Study Objectives: Adherence to CPAP therapy is low in patients with obstructive sleep apnea/hypopnea syndrome (OSAHS). The purpose of the present study was to evaluate the utility of measures of sleep architecture and sleep continuity on the CPAP titration study as predictors of both short- and long-term CPAP adherence. Methods: 93 patients with OSAHS (RDI 42.8 ± 34.3/h) underwent in-laboratory diagnostic polysomnography, CPAP titration, and follow-up polysomnography (NPSG) on CPAP. Adherence to CPAP was objectively monitored. Short-term (ST) CPAP adherence was averaged over 14 days immediately following the titration study. Long-term (LT) CPAP adherence was obtained in 56/93 patients after approximately 2 months of CPAP use. Patients were grouped into CPAP adherence groups for ST ( 4 h) and LT adherence ( 4 h). Sleep architecture, sleep disordered breathing (SDB) indices, and daytime outcome variables from the diagnostic and titration NPSGs were compared between CPAP adherence groups. Results: There was a significant relationship between ST and LT CPAP adherence (r = 0.81, p CPAP adherence groups had significantly lower %N2 and greater %REM on the titration NPSG. A model combining change in sleep efficiency and change in sleep continuity between the diagnostic and titration NPSGs predicted 17% of the variance in LT adherence (p = 0.006). Conclusions: These findings demonstrate that characteristics of sleep architecture, even on the titration NPSG, may predict some of the variance in CPAP adherence. Better sleep quality on the titration night was related to better CPAP adherence, suggesting that interventions to improve sleep on/prior to the CPAP titration study might be used as a therapeutic intervention to improve CPAP adherence. Citation: Somiah M; Taxin Z; Keating J; Mooney AM; Norman RG; Rapoport DM; Ayappa I. Sleep quality, short-term and long-term CPAP adherence. J Clin Sleep Med 2012;8(5):489-500. PMID:23066359

Retrospective attention in short-term memory has a lasting effect on long-term memory across age.

Science.gov (United States)

Strunk, Jonathan; Morgan, Lauren; Reaves, Sarah; Verhaeghen, Paul; Duarte, Audrey

2018-04-13

Declines in both short- and long-term memory are typical of healthy aging. Recent findings suggest that retrodictive attentional cues ("retro-cues") that indicate the location of to-be-probed items in short-term memory (STM) have a lasting impact on long-term memory (LTM) performance in young adults. Whether older adults can also use retro-cues to facilitate both STM and LTM is unknown. Young and older adults performed a visual STM task in which spatially informative retro-cues or non-informative neutral-cues were presented during STM maintenance of real-world objects. We tested participants' memory at both STM and LTM delays for objects that were previously cued with retrodictive or neutral cues during STM order to measure the lasting impact of retrospective attention on LTM. Older adults showed reduced STM and LTM capacity compared to young adults. However, they showed similar magnitude retro-cue memory benefits as young adults at both STM and LTM delays. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to investigate whether retro-cues in STM facilitate the encoding of objects into LTM such that they are more likely to be subsequently retrieved by older adults. Our results support the idea that retrospective attention can be an effective means by which older adults can improve their short and long-term memory performance, even in the context of reduced memory capacity.

Particle-particle correlations and lifetimes of composite nuclei: New tests for the evaporation model and for statistical equilibration

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

DeYoung, P.A.; Gelderloos, C.J.; Kortering, D.; Sarafa, J.; Zienert, K.; Gordon, M.S.; Fineman, B.J.; Gilfoyle, G.P.; Lu, X.; McGrath, R.L.; de Castro Rizzo, D.M.; Alexander, J.M.; Auger, G.; Kox, S.; Vaz, L.C.; Beck, C.; Henderson, D.J.; Kovar, D.G.; Vineyard, M.F.; Department of Physics, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794; Department of Chemistry, State University of New York at Stony Brook, Stony Brook, New York 11794; Argonne National Laboratory, Argonne, Illinois 60439)

1990-01-01

We present data for small-angle particle-particle correlations from the reactions 80, 140, 215, and 250 MeV 16 O+ 27 Al→p-p or p-d. The main features of these data are anticorrelations for small relative momenta (≤25 MeV/c) that strengthen with increasing bombarding energy. Statistical model calculations have been performed to predict the mean lifetimes for each step of evaporative decay, and then simulate the trajectories of the particle pairs and the resulting particle correlations. This simulation accounts very well for the trends of the data and can provide an important new test for the hypothesis of equilibration on which the model is built

Smart Demand for Improving Short-term Voltage Control on Distribution Networks

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Garcia-Valle, Rodrigo; P. Da Silva, Luiz C.; Xu, Zhao

2009-01-01

customer integration to aid power system performance is almost inevitable. This study introduces a new type of smart demand side technology, denoted demand as voltage controlled reserve (DVR), to improve short-term voltage control, where customers are expected to play a more dynamic role to improve voltage...... control. The technology can be provided by thermostatically controlled loads as well as other types of load. This technology is proven to be effective in case of distribution systems with a large composition of induction motors, where the voltage presents a slow recovery characteristic due to deceleration...... of the motors during faults. This study presents detailed models, discussion and simulation tests to demonstrate the technical viability and effectiveness of the DVR technology for short-term voltage control....

Quench of non-Markovian coherence in the deep sub-Ohmic spin–boson model: A unitary equilibration scheme

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Yao, Yao

2015-01-01

The deep sub-Ohmic spin–boson model shows a longstanding non-Markovian coherence at low temperature. Motivating to quench this robust coherence, the thermal effect is unitarily incorporated into the time evolution of the model, which is calculated by the adaptive time-dependent density matrix renormalization group algorithm combined with the orthogonal polynomials theory. Via introducing a unitary heating operator to the bosonic bath, the bath is heated up so that a majority portion of the bosonic excited states is occupied. It is found in this situation the coherence of the spin is quickly quenched even in the coherent regime, in which the non-Markovian feature dominates. With this finding we come up with a novel way to implement the unitary equilibration, the essential term of the eigenstate-thermalization hypothesis, through a short-time evolution of the model

The pedagogy of Short-Term Study-Abroad Programs

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jude Gonsalvez

2013-10-01

Full Text Available This paper focuses on establishing guidelines on the pedagogy of short term study abroad programs. This study follows 33 students who participated in a short-term study-abroad program to India with the researcher from 2006 through 2011. The study relies heavily on the student reflections and expressions as they experienced them. It is qualitative in nature. Focus groups were the main method of data collection, where participants were invited to reflect, express, and share their experiences with one another. This provided an opportunity for the participants to come together, relive their experiences, and help provide information as to how and what type of an influence this short-term study-abroad program provided.

Aggregated effects of combining daily milk consumption and aerobic exercise on short-term memory and sustained attention among female students.

Science.gov (United States)

Leong, In-Tyng; Moghadam, Sedigheh; Hashim, Hairul A

2015-02-01

Regular aerobic exercise and milk consumption have been found to have positive effects on certain cognitive functions such as short-term memory and sustained attention. However, aggregated effects of combining these modalities have not been explored. This study examined the combined effects of milk supplementation and aerobic exercise on the short-term memory and sustained attention of female students aged 16 yr. (N = 81). The intervention involved serving of 250 ml of regular milk during school days and/or a 1-hr. aerobic exercise period twice per week for 6 weeks. The Digit Span Test and Digit Vigilance Test were used to measure short-term memory and sustained attention, respectively. The combination group (milk and exercise) and exercise group performed significantly better than did the milk and control groups in terms of short-term memory. No significant interaction or group differences were found for sustained attention. The results suggest benefits of regular exercise for students' short-term memory.

The short- and long-term consequences of directed forgetting in a working memory task.

Science.gov (United States)

Festini, Sara B; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A

2013-01-01

Directed forgetting requires the voluntary control of memory. Whereas many studies have examined directed forgetting in long-term memory (LTM), the mechanisms and effects of directed forgetting within working memory (WM) are less well understood. The current study tests how directed forgetting instructions delivered in a WM task influence veridical memory, as well as false memory, over the short and long term. In a modified item recognition task Experiment 1 tested WM only and demonstrated that directed forgetting reduces false recognition errors and semantic interference. Experiment 2 replicated these WM effects and used a surprise LTM recognition test to assess the long-term effects of directed forgetting in WM. Long-term veridical memory for to-be-remembered lists was better than memory for to-be-forgotten lists-the directed forgetting effect. Moreover, fewer false memories emerged for to-be-forgotten information than for to-be-remembered information in LTM as well. These results indicate that directed forgetting during WM reduces semantic processing of to-be-forgotten lists over the short and long term. Implications for theories of false memory and the mechanisms of directed forgetting within working memory are discussed.

Genetic deletion of melanin-concentrating hormone neurons impairs hippocampal short-term synaptic plasticity and hippocampal-dependent forms of short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Le Barillier, Léa; Léger, Lucienne; Luppi, Pierre-Hervé; Fort, Patrice; Malleret, Gaël; Salin, Paul-Antoine

2015-11-01

The cognitive role of melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) neurons, a neuronal population located in the mammalian postero-lateral hypothalamus sending projections to all cortical areas, remains poorly understood. Mainly activated during paradoxical sleep (PS), MCH neurons have been implicated in sleep regulation. The genetic deletion of the only known MCH receptor in rodent leads to an impairment of hippocampal dependent forms of memory and to an alteration of hippocampal long-term synaptic plasticity. By using MCH/ataxin3 mice, a genetic model characterized by a selective deletion of MCH neurons in the adult, we investigated the role of MCH neurons in hippocampal synaptic plasticity and hippocampal-dependent forms of memory. MCH/ataxin3 mice exhibited a deficit in the early part of both long-term potentiation and depression in the CA1 area of the hippocampus. Post-tetanic potentiation (PTP) was diminished while synaptic depression induced by repetitive stimulation was enhanced suggesting an alteration of pre-synaptic forms of short-term plasticity in these mice. Behaviorally, MCH/ataxin3 mice spent more time and showed a higher level of hesitation as compared to their controls in performing a short-term memory T-maze task, displayed retardation in acquiring a reference memory task in a Morris water maze, and showed a habituation deficit in an open field task. Deletion of MCH neurons could thus alter spatial short-term memory by impairing short-term plasticity in the hippocampus. Altogether, these findings could provide a cellular mechanism by which PS may facilitate memory encoding. Via MCH neuron activation, PS could prepare the day's learning by increasing and modulating short-term synaptic plasticity in the hippocampus. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Relationship between short and long term radon measurements

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Martinez, T.; Ramirez, D.; Navarrete, M.; Cabrera, L.; Ramirez, A.; Gonzalez, P.

2000-01-01

In this work the radon group of the Faculty of Chemistry at the National University of Mexico presents the results obtained in the establishment of a relation between the short and long term radon measures made with passive electret detectors E-PERM type LLT and HST. The measures were carried out inside single family dwellings (open house condition) located in the southeast of Mexico City (in Xochimilco) during the four seasons of the year 1997. A correlation was established between the short term measures (five days) and those of a long term for every season as well as an annual average, with an equation that relates them. The objective and advantage of this correlation are that with a short term measure it is possible to predict the annual mean radon concentration, that represents a saving of human and economic resources. (author)

Impact of short-term severe accident management actions in a long-term perspective. Final Report

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

2000-03-01

The present systems for severe accident management are focused on mitigating the consequences of special severe accident phenomena and to reach a safe plant state. However, in the development of strategies and procedures for severe accident management, it is also important to consider the long-term perspective of accident management and especially to secure the safe state of the plant. The main reason for this is that certain short-term actions have an impact on the long-term scenario. Both positive and negative effects from short-term actions on the accident management in the long-term perspective have been included in this paper. Short-term actions are accident management measures taken within about 24 hours after the initiating event. The purpose of short-term actions is to reach a stable status of the plant. The main goal in the long-term perspective is to maintain the reactor in a stable state and prevent uncontrolled releases of activity. The purpose of this short Technical Note, deliberately limited in scope, is to draw attention to potential long-term problems, important to utilities and regulatory authorities, arising from the way a severe accident would be managed during the first hours. Its objective is to encourage discussions on the safest - and maybe also most economical - way to manage a severe accident in the long term by not making the situation worse through inappropriate short-term actions, and on the identification of short-term actions likely to make long-term management easier and safer. The Note is intended as a contribution to the knowledge base put at the disposal of Member countries through international collaboration. The scope of the work has been limited to a literature search. Useful further activities have been identified. However, there is no proposal, at this stage, for more detailed work to be undertaken under the auspices of the CSNI. Plant-specific applications would need to be developed by utilities

Kinetics of bacterial potentiometric titrations: the effect of equilibration time on buffering capacity of Pantoea agglomerans suspensions.

Science.gov (United States)

Kapetas, Leon; Ngwenya, Bryne T; Macdonald, Alan M; Elphick, Stephen C

2011-07-15

Several recent studies have made use of continuous acid-base titration data to describe the surface chemistry of bacterial cells as a basis for accurately modelling metal adsorption to bacteria and other biomaterials of potential industrial importance. These studies do not share a common protocol; rather they titrate in different pH ranges and they use different stability criteria to define equilibration time during titration. In the present study we investigate the kinetics of bacterial titrations and test the effect they have on the derivation of functional group concentrations and acidity constants. We titrated suspensions of Pantoea agglomerans by varying the equilibration time between successive titrant additions until stability of 0.1 or 0.001 mV s(-1) was attained. We show that under longer equilibration times, titration results are less reproducible and suspensions exhibit marginally higher buffering. Fluorescence images suggest that cell lysis is not responsible for these effects. Rather, high DOC values and titration reversibility hysterisis after long equilibration times suggest that variability in buffering is due to the presence of bacterial exudates, as demonstrated by titrating supernatants separated from suspensions of different equilibration times. It is recommended that an optimal equilibration time is always determined with variable stability control and preliminary reversibility titration experiments. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Short-term memory deficits correlate with hippocampal-thalamic functional connectivity alterations following acute sleep restriction.

Science.gov (United States)

Chengyang, Li; Daqing, Huang; Jianlin, Qi; Haisheng, Chang; Qingqing, Meng; Jin, Wang; Jiajia, Liu; Enmao, Ye; Yongcong, Shao; Xi, Zhang

2017-08-01

Acute sleep restriction heavily influences cognitive function, affecting executive processes such as attention, response inhibition, and memory. Previous neuroimaging studies have suggested a link between hippocampal activity and short-term memory function. However, the specific contribution of the hippocampus to the decline of short-term memory following sleep restriction has yet to be established. In the current study, we utilized resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to examine the association between hippocampal functional connectivity (FC) and the decline of short-term memory following total sleep deprivation (TSD). Twenty healthy adult males aged 20.9 ± 2.3 years (age range, 18-24 years) were enrolled in a within-subject crossover study. Short-term memory and FC were assessed using a Delay-matching short-term memory test and a resting-state fMRI scan before and after TSD. Seed-based correlation analysis was performed using fMRI data for the left and right hippocampus to identify differences in hippocampal FC following TSD. Subjects demonstrated reduced alertness and a decline in short-term memory performance following TSD. Moreover, fMRI analysis identified reduced hippocampal FC with the superior frontal gyrus (SFG), temporal regions, and supplementary motor area. In addition, an increase in FC between the hippocampus and bilateral thalamus was observed, the extent of which correlated with short-term memory performance following TSD. Our findings indicate that the disruption of hippocampal-cortical connectivity is linked to the decline in short-term memory observed after acute sleep restriction. Such results provide further evidence that support the cognitive impairment model of sleep deprivation.

A critical evaluation of multistage equilibration technique for preconcentration by ion-exchange

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Iyer, R.K.

1994-01-01

Capabilities of the method of preconcentration of heavy metal ions from aqueous samples by Chelex 100 using a successive equilibration technique has been evaluated. The process of successive equilibrations may be looked upon in one of the two ways: one of equilibrating a given amount of resin with n successive aliquots so that sample size increases n-fold. Alternatively one may consider this as dividing a large-sized sample into n equal aliquots and carrying out the equilibrations with a smaller amount of resin maintaining the v/m ratio. Expressions have been derived for overall recovery, percentage recovery and decontamination factor for the successive equilibration technique. The validity of the expressions has been checked with experimental data. The values for recovery and decontamination factor have been compared with those for a single equilibration using the whole sample. Finally the factors which affect the value of recovery have been examined and their effect on the recovery has been evaluated. (author). 12 refs., 4 tabs., 1 appendix

Concreteness effects in short-term memory: a test of the item-order hypothesis.

Science.gov (United States)

Roche, Jaclynn; Tolan, G Anne; Tehan, Gerald

2011-12-01

The following experiments explore word length and concreteness effects in short-term memory within an item-order processing framework. This framework asserts order memory is better for those items that are relatively easy to process at the item level. However, words that are difficult to process benefit at the item level for increased attention/resources being applied. The prediction of the model is that differential item and order processing can be detected in episodic tasks that differ in the degree to which item or order memory are required by the task. The item-order account has been applied to the word length effect such that there is a short word advantage in serial recall but a long word advantage in item recognition. The current experiment considered the possibility that concreteness effects might be explained within the same framework. In two experiments, word length (Experiment 1) and concreteness (Experiment 2) are examined using forward serial recall, backward serial recall, and item recognition. These results for word length replicate previous studies showing the dissociation in item and order tasks. The same was not true for the concreteness effect. In all three tasks concrete words were better remembered than abstract words. The concreteness effect cannot be explained in terms of an item-order trade off. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved.

Short-term delayed recall of auditory verbal learning test is equivalent to long-term delayed recall for identifying amnestic mild cognitive impairment.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Qianhua Zhao

Full Text Available Delayed recall of words in a verbal learning test is a sensitive measure for the diagnosis of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI and early Alzheimer's disease (AD. The relative validity of different retention intervals of delayed recall has not been well characterized. Using the Auditory Verbal Learning Test-Huashan version, we compared the differentiating value of short-term delayed recall (AVL-SR, that is, a 3- to 5-minute delay time and long-term delayed recall (AVL-LR, that is, a 20-minute delay time in distinguishing patients with aMCI (n = 897 and mild AD (n = 530 from the healthy elderly (n = 1215. In patients with aMCI, the correlation between AVL-SR and AVL-LR was very high (r = 0.94, and the difference between the two indicators was less than 0.5 points. There was no difference between AVL-SR and AVL-LR in the frequency of zero scores. In the receiver operating characteristic curves analysis, although the area under the curve (AUC of AVL-SR and AVL-LR for diagnosing aMCI was significantly different, the cut-off scores of the two indicators were identical. In the subgroup of ages 80 to 89, the AUC of the two indicators showed no significant difference. Therefore, we concluded that AVL-SR could substitute for AVL-LR in identifying aMCI, especially for the oldest patients.

Divergent short- and long-term effects of acute stress in object recognition memory are mediated by endogenous opioid system activation.

Science.gov (United States)

Nava-Mesa, Mauricio O; Lamprea, Marisol R; Múnera, Alejandro

2013-11-01

Acute stress induces short-term object recognition memory impairment and elicits endogenous opioid system activation. The aim of this study was thus to evaluate whether opiate system activation mediates the acute stress-induced object recognition memory changes. Adult male Wistar rats were trained in an object recognition task designed to test both short- and long-term memory. Subjects were randomly assigned to receive an intraperitoneal injection of saline, 1 mg/kg naltrexone or 3 mg/kg naltrexone, four and a half hours before the sample trial. Five minutes after the injection, half the subjects were submitted to movement restraint during four hours while the other half remained in their home cages. Non-stressed subjects receiving saline (control) performed adequately during the short-term memory test, while stressed subjects receiving saline displayed impaired performance. Naltrexone prevented such deleterious effect, in spite of the fact that it had no intrinsic effect on short-term object recognition memory. Stressed subjects receiving saline and non-stressed subjects receiving naltrexone performed adequately during the long-term memory test; however, control subjects as well as stressed subjects receiving a high dose of naltrexone performed poorly. Control subjects' dissociated performance during both memory tests suggests that the short-term memory test induced a retroactive interference effect mediated through light opioid system activation; such effect was prevented either by low dose naltrexone administration or by strongly activating the opioid system through acute stress. Both short-term memory retrieval impairment and long-term memory improvement observed in stressed subjects may have been mediated through strong opioid system activation, since they were prevented by high dose naltrexone administration. Therefore, the activation of the opioid system plays a dual modulating role in object recognition memory. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights

Using electrophysiology to demonstrate that cueing affects long-term memory storage over the short term.

Science.gov (United States)

Maxcey, Ashleigh M; Fukuda, Keisuke; Song, Won S; Woodman, Geoffrey F

2015-10-01

As researchers who study working memory, we often assume that participants keep a representation of an object in working memory when we present a cue that indicates that the object will be tested in a couple of seconds. This intuitively accounts for how well people can remember a cued object, relative to their memory for that same object presented without a cue. However, it is possible that this superior memory does not purely reflect storage of the cued object in working memory. We tested the hypothesis that cues presented during a stream of objects, followed by a short retention interval and immediate memory test, can change how information is handled by long-term memory. We tested this hypothesis by using a family of frontal event-related potentials believed to reflect long-term memory storage. We found that these frontal indices of long-term memory were sensitive to the task relevance of objects signaled by auditory cues, even when the objects repeated frequently, such that proactive interference was high. Our findings indicate the problematic nature of assuming process purity in the study of working memory, and demonstrate that frequent stimulus repetitions fail to isolate the role of working memory mechanisms.

Short-term memory binding deficits in Alzheimer's disease

OpenAIRE

Parra, Mario; Abrahams, S.; Fabi, K.; Logie, R.; Luzzi, S.; Della Sala, Sergio

2009-01-01

Alzheimer's disease impairs long term memories for related events (e.g. faces with names) more than for single events (e.g. list of faces or names). Whether or not this associative or ‘binding’ deficit is also found in short-term memory has not yet been explored. In two experiments we investigated binding deficits in verbal short-term memory in Alzheimer's disease. Experiment 1 : 23 patients with Alzheimer's disease and 23 age and education matched healthy elderly were recruited. Participants...

Impact of long-term and short-term therapies on seminal parameters

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jlenia Elia

2013-04-01

Full Text Available Aim: The aim of this work was: i to evaluate the prevalence of male partners of subfertile couples being treated with long/short term therapies for non andrological diseases; ii to study their seminal profile for the possible effects of their treatments on spermatogenesis and/or epididymal maturation. Methods: The study group was made up of 723 subjects, aged between 25 and 47 years. Semen analysis was performed according to World Health Organization (WHO guidelines (1999. The Superimposed Image Analysis System (SIAS, which is based on the computerized superimposition of spermatozoa images, was used to assess sperm motility parameters. Results: The prevalence of subjects taking pharmacological treatments was 22.7% (164/723. The prevalence was 3.7% (27/723 for the Short-Term Group and 18.9% (137/723 for the Long-Term Group. The subjects of each group were also subdivided into subgroups according to the treatments being received. Regarding the seminal profile, we did not observe a significant difference between the Long-Term, Short-Term or the Control Group. However, regarding the subgroups, we found a significant decrease in sperm number and progressive motility percentage in the subjects receiving treatment with antihypertensive drugs compared with the other subgroups and the Control Group. Conclusions: In the management of infertile couples, the potential negative impact on seminal parameters of any drugs being taken as Long-Term Therapy should be considered. The pathogenic mechanism needs to be clarified.

Model documentation report: Short-Term Hydroelectric Generation Model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1993-08-01

The purpose of this report is to define the objectives of the Short- Term Hydroelectric Generation Model (STHGM), describe its basic approach, and to provide details on the model structure. This report is intended as a reference document for model analysts, users, and the general public. Documentation of the model is in accordance with the Energy Information Administration's (AYE) legal obligation to provide adequate documentation in support of its models (Public Law 94-385, Section 57.b.2). The STHGM performs a short-term (18 to 27- month) forecast of hydroelectric generation in the United States using an autoregressive integrated moving average (UREMIA) time series model with precipitation as an explanatory variable. The model results are used as input for the short-term Energy Outlook

Intact short-term memory and impaired executive functions in obsessive compulsive disorder.

Science.gov (United States)

Demeter, Gyula; Racsmány, Mihály; Csigó, Katalin; Harsányi, András; Németh, Attila; Döme, László

2013-01-30

Previous neuropsychological studies produced inconsistent results with tasks tapping short-term verbal and visual-spatial memory and executive functions in obsessive compulsive disorder (OCD). The aim of this study was to investigate the presence of deficits in these cognitive domains. A further goal was to describe the distribution of patients in different impairment ranges for all functions, and clarify the relationship between symptom severity and cognitive impairments. Thirty patients with OCD (DSM-IV) and 30 healthy volunteers were compared using well-known neuropsychological tasks. We assessed short-term verbal memory with the Digit Span Forward and Digit Span Backward Tasks, short-term visual-spatial memory with the Corsi Block Tapping Task, while we measured the level of executive functions with the StroopTask and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (WCST). Compared with a matched healthy control group, the performance of OCD patients was in the impaired range only in the two executive tasks. We find a significant positive correlations between the Y-BOCS (Yale-Brown Obsessive Compulsive Scale) total scores and the number of perseverative responses (r(28) = 0.409, p short-term memory is intact in OCD. This is in line with neuropsychological model of OCD that the deficit of cognitive and behavioral inhibition are responsible for the main cognitive findings of this disorder, most prevalently the deficit in set shifting and prepotent response inhibition.

A novel TRNSYS type for short-term borehole heat exchanger simulation: B2G model

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

De Rosa, Mattia; Ruiz-Calvo, Félix; Corberán, José M.; Montagud, Carla; Tagliafico, Luca A.

2015-01-01

Highlights: • A novel dynamic borehole heat exchanger model is presented. • Theoretical approach for model parameters calculation is described. • The short-term model is validated against experimental data of a real GSHP. • Strong dynamic conditions due to the ON–OFF regulation are investigated. - Abstract: Models of ground source heat pump (GSHP) systems are used as an aid for the correct design and optimization of the system. For this purpose, it is necessary to develop models which correctly reproduce the dynamic thermal behavior of each component in a short-term basis. Since the borehole heat exchanger (BHE) is one of the main components, special attention should be paid to ensuring a good accuracy on the prediction of the short-term response of the boreholes. The BHE models found in literature which are suitable for short-term simulations usually present high computational costs. In this work, a novel TRNSYS type implementing a borehole-to-ground (B2G) model, developed for modeling the short-term dynamic performance of a BHE with low computational cost, is presented. The model has been validated against experimental data from a GSHP system located at Universitat Politècnica de València, Spain. Validation results show the ability of the model to reproduce the short-term behavior of the borehole, both for a step-test and under normal operating conditions

Does exposure to GSM 900 MHz mobile phone radiation affect short-term memory of elementary school students?

Science.gov (United States)

Movvahedi, M M; Tavakkoli-Golpayegani, A; Mortazavi, S A R; Haghani, M; Razi, Z; Shojaie-Fard, M B; Zare, M; Mina, E; Mansourabadi, L; Nazari-Jahromi; Safari, A; Shokrpour, N; Mortazavi, S M J

2014-05-01

Now-a-days, children are exposed to mobile phone radiation at a very early age. We have previously shown that a large proportion of children in the city of Shiraz, Iran use mobile phones. Furthermore, we have indicated that the visual reaction time (VRT) of university students was significantly affected by a 10 min real/sham exposure to electromagnetic fields emitted by mobile phone. We found that these exposures decreased the reaction time which might lead to a better response to different hazards. We have also revealed that occupational exposures to radar radiations decreased the reaction time in radar workers. The purpose of this study was to investigate whether short-term exposure of elementary school students to radiofrequency (RF) radiation leads to changes in their reaction time and short-term memory. A total of 60 elementary school children ages ranging from 8 to 10 years studying at a public elementary school in Shiraz, Iran were enrolled in this study. Standardized computer-based tests of VRT and short-term memory (modified for children) were administered. The students were asked to perform some preliminary tests for orientation with the VRT test. After orientation, to reduce the random variation of measurements, each test was repeated ten times in both real and sham exposure phases. The time interval between the two subsequent sham and real exposure phases was 30 min. The mean ± standard deviation reaction times after a 10 min talk period and after a 10 min sham exposure (switched off mobile) period were 249.0 ± 82.3 ms and 252.9 ± 68.2 ms (P = 0.629), respectively. On the other hand, the mean short-term memory scores after the talk and sham exposure periods were 1062.60 ± 305.39, and 1003.84 ± 339.68 (P = 0.030), respectively. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first study to show that short-term exposure of elementary school students to RF radiation leads to the better performance of their short-term memory.

Short-term flow induced crystallization in isotactic polypropylene : how short is short?

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Ma, Z.; Balzano, L.; Portale, G.; Peters, G.W.M.

2013-01-01

The so-called "short-term flow" protocol is widely applied in experimental flow-induced crystallization studies on polymers in order to separate the nucleation and subsequent growth processes [Liedauer et al. Int. Polym. Proc. 1993, 8, 236–244]. The basis of this protocol is the assumption that

Effects of short term and long term Extremely Low Frequency Magnetic Field on depressive disorder in mice: Involvement of nitric oxide pathway.

Science.gov (United States)

Madjid Ansari, Alireza; Farzampour, Shahrokh; Sadr, Ali; Shekarchi, Babak; Majidzadeh-A, Keivan

2016-02-01

Previous reports on the possible effects of Extremely Low Frequency Magnetic Fields (ELF MF) on mood have been paradoxical in different settings while no study has yet been conducted on animal behavior. In addition, it was shown that ELF MF exposure makes an increase in brain nitric oxide level. Therefore, in the current study, we aimed to assess the possible effect(s) of ELF MF exposure on mice Forced Swimming Test (FST) and evaluate the probable role of the increased level of nitric oxide in the observed behavior. Male adult mice NMRI were recruited to investigate the short term and long term ELF MF exposure (0.5 mT and 50 Hz, single 2h and 2 weeks 2h a day). Locomotor behavior was assessed by using open-field test (OFT) followed by FST to evaluate the immobility time. Accordingly, NΩ-nitro-l-arginine methyl ester 30 mg/kg was used to exert anti-depressant like effect. According to the results, short term exposure did not alter the immobility time, whereas long term exposure significantly reduces immobility time (pmice, whereas short term exposure has no significant effect. Also, reversing the anti-depressant activity of L-NAME indicates a probable increase in the brain nitric oxide. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Short-term versus long-term market opportunities and financial constraints

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ferrari, Angelo

1999-01-01

This presentation discusses gas developments in Europe, the European Gas Directive, short term vs. long term, and Snam's new challenges. The European gas market is characterized by (1) The role of gas in meeting the demand for energy, which varies greatly from one country to another, (2) A growing market, (3) Decreasing role of domestic production, and (4) Increasing imports. Within the European Union, the Gas Directive aims to transform single national markets into one integrated European market by introducing third party access to the network for eligible clients as a means of increasing the competition between operators. The Gas Directive would appear to modify the form of the market rather than its size, and in particular the sharing of responsibility and risk among operators. The market in the future will offer operators the possibility to exploit opportunities deriving mainly from demands for increased flexibility. Opportunities linked to entrepreneurial initiatives require long-term investments characteristic of the gas business. Risks and opportunities must be balanced evenly between different operators. If everyone takes on their own risks and responsibilities, this means a wider distribution of the risks of long-term vs. short-term, currently borne by the gas companies that are integrated, into a market that tends to favour the short-term. A gradual liberalization process should allow incumbent operators to gradually diversify their activities in new gas market areas or enter new business activities. They could move beyond their local and European boundaries in pursuit of an international dimension. The market will have to make the transition from the national to the European dimension: as an example, Snam covers 90% of the Italian market, but its share of an integrated European market will be about 15%

Readiness for change and short-term outcomes of female adolescents in residential treatment for anorexia nervosa.

Science.gov (United States)

McHugh, Matthew D

2007-11-01

To determine if readiness for change (RFC) at admission predicted length of stay (LOS) and short-term outcomes among female adolescents in residential treatment for anorexia nervosa (AN). Using a prospective cohort design to collect data from participants (N = 65) at admission and discharge, Kaplan-Meier survival analysis and Cox regression tested whether RFC on admission predicted time in LOS to a favorable short-term outcome--a composite endpoint based on minimum criteria for weight gain, drive for thinness, depression, anxiety, and health-related quality of life (HRQOL). Participants with low RFC had a mean survival time to a favorable short-term outcome of 59.4 days compared to 34.1 days for those with high RFC (log rank = 8.44, df = 1, p = .003). The probability of a favorable short-term outcome was 5.30 times greater for participants with high RFC. Readiness for change is a useful predictor of a favorable short-term outcome and should be considered in the assessment profile of patients with AN. (c) 2007 by Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Short-Term Forecasting of Electric Energy Generation for a Photovoltaic System

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Dinh V.T.

2018-01-01

Full Text Available This article presents a short-term forecast of electric energy output of a photovoltaic (PV system towards Tomsk city, Russia climate variations (module temperature and solar irradiance. The system is located at Institute of Non-destructive Testing, Tomsk Polytechnic University. The obtained results show good agreement between actual data and prediction values.

Frequency-specific insight into short-term memory capacity

OpenAIRE

Feurra, Matteo; Galli, Giulia; Pavone, Enea Francesco; Rossi, Alessandro; Rossi, Simone

2016-01-01

We provided novel evidence of a frequency-specific effect by transcranial alternating current stimulation (tACS) of the left posterior parietal cortex on short-term memory, during a digit span task. the effect was prominent with stimulation at beta frequency for young and not for middle-aged adults and correlated with age. Our findings highlighted a short-term memory capacity improvement by tACS application.

Mothers with HIP - the short term and long-term impact, what is new?

Science.gov (United States)

Mecacci, Federico; Ottanelli, Serena; Petraglia, Felice

2018-05-03

Hyperglycemia is one of the most common medical conditions that women encounter during pregnancy and it is due to gestational diabetes (GDM) in the majority of cases [1]. GDM is associated with a higher incidence of maternal morbidity in pregnancy in term of hypertensive disorders/preclampsia and higher rate of cesarean delivery but also with long-term risk of type 2 diabetes and cardiovascular disease. Pregnancy can therefore be considered a stress test; diagnosis of HIP can unmask a preexisting susceptibility and consequently a future risk for type 2 diabetes and can be a useful marker of future cardiovascular risk. Postpartum follow up provides an excellent opportunity to implement healthy lifestyle behaviors to prevent or delay the development of diabetes or cardiovascular disease. The aim of the current review is to focus on short and long term maternal morbidity of HIP. Copyright © 2018. Published by Elsevier B.V.

Reconciling long-term cultural diversity and short-term collective social behavior.

Science.gov (United States)

Valori, Luca; Picciolo, Francesco; Allansdottir, Agnes; Garlaschelli, Diego

2012-01-24

An outstanding open problem is whether collective social phenomena occurring over short timescales can systematically reduce cultural heterogeneity in the long run, and whether offline and online human interactions contribute differently to the process. Theoretical models suggest that short-term collective behavior and long-term cultural diversity are mutually excluding, since they require very different levels of social influence. The latter jointly depends on two factors: the topology of the underlying social network and the overlap between individuals in multidimensional cultural space. However, while the empirical properties of social networks are intensively studied, little is known about the large-scale organization of real societies in cultural space, so that random input specifications are necessarily used in models. Here we use a large dataset to perform a high-dimensional analysis of the scientific beliefs of thousands of Europeans. We find that interopinion correlations determine a nontrivial ultrametric hierarchy of individuals in cultural space. When empirical data are used as inputs in models, ultrametricity has strong and counterintuitive effects. On short timescales, it facilitates a symmetry-breaking phase transition triggering coordinated social behavior. On long timescales, it suppresses cultural convergence by restricting it within disjoint groups. Moreover, ultrametricity implies that these results are surprisingly robust to modifications of the dynamical rules considered. Thus the empirical distribution of individuals in cultural space appears to systematically optimize the coexistence of short-term collective behavior and long-term cultural diversity, which can be realized simultaneously for the same moderate level of mutual influence in a diverse range of online and offline settings.

Short-term effects of playing computer games on attention.

Science.gov (United States)

Tahiroglu, Aysegul Yolga; Celik, Gonca Gul; Avci, Ayse; Seydaoglu, Gulsah; Uzel, Mehtap; Altunbas, Handan

2010-05-01

The main aim of the present study is to investigate the short-term cognitive effects of computer games in children with different psychiatric disorders and normal controls. One hundred one children are recruited for the study (aged between 9 and 12 years). All participants played a motor-racing game on the computer for 1 hour. The TBAG form of the Stroop task was administered to all participants twice, before playing and immediately after playing the game. Participants with improved posttest scores, compared to their pretest scores, used the computer on average 0.67 +/- 1.1 hr/day, while the average administered was measured at 1.6 +/- 1.4 hr/day and 1.3 +/- 0.9 hr/day computer use for participants with worse or unaltered scores, respectively. According to the regression model, male gender, younger ages, duration of daily computer use, and ADHD inattention type were found to be independent risk factors for worsened posttest scores. Time spent playing computer games can exert a short-term effect on attention as measured by the Stroop test.

Short Term Airing by Natural Ventilation

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Heiselberg, Per; Perino, M.

2010-01-01

The need to improve the energy efficiency of buildings requires new and more efficient ventilation systems. It has been demonstrated that innovative operating concepts that make use of natural ventilation seem to be more appreciated by occupants. Among the available ventilation strategies...... that are currently available, buoyancy driven, single-sided natural ventilation has proved to be very effective and can provide high air change rates for temperature and Indoor Air Quality (IAQ) control. However, to promote a wider distribution of these systems an improvement in the knowledge of their working...... airflow rate, ventilation efficiency, thermal comfort and dynamic temperature conditions. A suitable laboratory test rig was developed to perform extensive experimental analyses of the phenomenon under controlled and repeatable conditions. The results showed that short-term window airing is very effective...

Short-Term Robustness of Production Management Systems : New Methodology

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kleijnen, J.P.C.; Gaury, E.G.A.

2000-01-01

This paper investigates the short-term robustness of production planning and control systems. This robustness is defined here as the systems ability to maintain short-term service probabilities (i.e., the probability that the fill rate remains within a prespecified range), in a variety of

Differences in health status between long-term and short-term benzodiazepine users.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Zandstra, S.M.; Furer, J.W.; Lisdonk, E.H. van de; Bor, J.H.J.; Zitman, F.G.; Weel, C. van

2002-01-01

BACKGROUND: Despite generally accepted advice to keep treatment short, benzodiazepines are often prescibed for more than six months. Prevention of long-term benzodiazepine use could be facilitated by the utilisation of risk indicators for long-term use. However, the characteristics of long-term

The roles of long-term phonotactic and lexical prosodic knowledge in phonological short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Tanida, Yuki; Ueno, Taiji; Lambon Ralph, Matthew A; Saito, Satoru

2015-04-01

Many previous studies have explored and confirmed the influence of long-term phonological representations on phonological short-term memory. In most investigations, phonological effects have been explored with respect to phonotactic constraints or frequency. If interaction between long-term memory and phonological short-term memory is a generalized principle, then other phonological characteristics-that is, suprasegmental aspects of phonology-should also exert similar effects on phonological short-term memory. We explored this hypothesis through three immediate serial-recall experiments that manipulated Japanese nonwords with respect to lexical prosody (pitch-accent type, reflecting suprasegmental characteristics) as well as phonotactic frequency (reflecting segmental characteristics). The results showed that phonotactic frequency affected the retention not only of the phonemic sequences, but also of pitch-accent patterns, when participants were instructed to recall both the phoneme sequence and accent pattern of nonwords. In addition, accent pattern typicality influenced the retention of the accent pattern: Typical accent patterns were recalled more accurately than atypical ones. These results indicate that both long-term phonotactic and lexical prosodic knowledge contribute to phonological short-term memory performance.

Visual Short-Term Memory Complexity

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Thomas Alrik

Several recent studies have explored the nature and limits of visual short-term memory (VSTM) (e.g. Luck & Vogel, 1997). A general VSTM capacity limit of about 3 to 4 letters has been found, thus confirming results from earlier studies (e.g. Cattell, 1885; Sperling, 1960). However, Alvarez...

Brain oscillatory substrates of visual short-term memory capacity.

Science.gov (United States)

Sauseng, Paul; Klimesch, Wolfgang; Heise, Kirstin F; Gruber, Walter R; Holz, Elisa; Karim, Ahmed A; Glennon, Mark; Gerloff, Christian; Birbaumer, Niels; Hummel, Friedhelm C

2009-11-17

The amount of information that can be stored in visual short-term memory is strictly limited to about four items. Therefore, memory capacity relies not only on the successful retention of relevant information but also on efficient suppression of distracting information, visual attention, and executive functions. However, completely separable neural signatures for these memory capacity-limiting factors remain to be identified. Because of its functional diversity, oscillatory brain activity may offer a utile solution. In the present study, we show that capacity-determining mechanisms, namely retention of relevant information and suppression of distracting information, are based on neural substrates independent of each other: the successful maintenance of relevant material in short-term memory is associated with cross-frequency phase synchronization between theta (rhythmical neural activity around 5 Hz) and gamma (> 50 Hz) oscillations at posterior parietal recording sites. On the other hand, electroencephalographic alpha activity (around 10 Hz) predicts memory capacity based on efficient suppression of irrelevant information in short-term memory. Moreover, repetitive transcranial magnetic stimulation at alpha frequency can modulate short-term memory capacity by influencing the ability to suppress distracting information. Taken together, the current study provides evidence for a double dissociation of brain oscillatory correlates of visual short-term memory capacity.

Impaired short-term memory for pitch in congenital amusia.

Science.gov (United States)

Tillmann, Barbara; Lévêque, Yohana; Fornoni, Lesly; Albouy, Philippe; Caclin, Anne

2016-06-01

Congenital amusia is a neuro-developmental disorder of music perception and production. The hypothesis is that the musical deficits arise from altered pitch processing, with impairments in pitch discrimination (i.e., pitch change detection, pitch direction discrimination and identification) and short-term memory. The present review article focuses on the deficit of short-term memory for pitch. Overall, the data discussed here suggest impairments at each level of processing in short-term memory tasks; starting with the encoding of the pitch information and the creation of the adequate memory trace, the retention of the pitch traces over time as well as the recollection and comparison of the stored information with newly incoming information. These impairments have been related to altered brain responses in a distributed fronto-temporal network, associated with decreased connectivity between these structures, as well as in abnormalities in the connectivity between the two auditory cortices. In contrast, amusic participants׳ short-term memory abilities for verbal material are preserved. These findings show that short-term memory deficits in congenital amusia are specific to pitch, suggesting a pitch-memory system that is, at least partly, separated from verbal memory. This article is part of a Special Issue entitled SI: Auditory working memory. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The uranium industry: long-term planning for short-term competition

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Vottero, X.; Georges Capus, G.

2001-01-01

Long term planning for short term competition Today, uranium producers face new challenges in terms of both production (new regulatory, environmental and social constraints) and market conditions (new sources of uranium supply, very low prices and tough competition). In such a context, long-term planning is not just a prerequisite to survive in the nuclear fuel cycle industry. In fact, it also contributes to sustaining nuclear electricity generation facing fierce competition from other energy sources in increasingly deregulated markets. Firstly, the risk of investing in new mining projects in western countries is growing because, on the one hand, of very erratic market conditions and, on the other hand, of increasingly lengthy, complex and unpredictable regulatory conditions. Secondly, the supply of other sources of uranium (uranium derived from nuclear weapons, uranium produced in CIS countries, ...) involve other risks, mainly related to politics and commercial restrictions. Consequently, competitive uranium supply requires not only technical competence but also financial strength and good marketing capabilities in order to anticipate long-term market trends, in terms of both demand and supply. It also requires taking into account new parameters such as politics, environment, regulations, etc. Today, a supplier dedicated to the sustainable production of nuclear electricity must manage a broad range of long-term risks inherent to the procurement of uranium. Taking into account all these parameters in a context of short-term, fast-changing market is a great challenge for the future generation. World Uranium Civilian Supply and Demand. (authors)

A Methodological Approach for Testing the Viability of Seeds Stored in Short-Term Seed Banks

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jose A. FORTE GIL

2017-12-01

Full Text Available Efficient management of ‘active’ seed banks – specifically aimed at the short-term storage at room temperature of seeds to be used locally in conservation/regeneration programmes of endemic or endangered plant species – requires establishing the optimal storage time to maintain high seed viability, for each stored species. In this work, germination of seeds of the halophytes Thalictrum maritimum, Centaurea dracunculifolia and Linum maritimum has been investigated. The seeds had been stored for different periods of time in the seed bank of ‘La Albufera’ Natural Park (Valencia, SE Spain after collection in salt marshes of the Park, where small populations of the three species are present. Seeds of T. maritimum and C. dracunculifolia have a relatively short period of viability at room temperature, and should not be stored for more than three years. On the other hand, L. maritimum seeds maintain a high germination percentage and can be kept at room temperature for up to 10 years. T. maritimum seeds, in contrast to those of the other two species, did not germinate in in vitro tests nor when sown directly on a standard substrate, unless a pre-treatment of the seeds was applied, mechanical scarification being the most effective. These results will help to improve the management of the seed bank, to generate more efficiently new plants for reintroduction and reinforcement of populations of these species in their natural ecosystems within the Natural Park.

Short-term isolation increases social interactions of male rats: A parametric analysis

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Niesink, R.J.M.; Ree, J.M. van

1982-01-01

Frequencies of social interactions were higher in pairs of short-term individually housed male Wistar rats as compared to group-housed animals. This was most pronounced when an individually housed rat and a group-housed conspecific were tested together in the morning under red light conditions.

Effects of Two Short-Term Desensitization Methods in the Treatment of Test Anxiety

Science.gov (United States)

Richardson, Frank C.; Suinn, Richard M.

1974-01-01

Accelerated massed desensitization and anxiety management training were compared with standard systematic desensitization in terms of reducing self-reported test anxiety in high test-anxious college students. All three treatments significantly reduced test anxiety as compared with a waiting list control group. (Author)

Remembering over the short-term: the case against the standard model.

Science.gov (United States)

Nairne, James S

2002-01-01

Psychologists often assume that short-term storage is synonymous with activation, a mnemonic property that keeps information in an immediately accessible form. Permanent knowledge is activated, as a result of on-line cognitive processing, and an activity trace is established "in" short-term (or working) memory. Activation is assumed to decay spontaneously with the passage of time, so a refreshing process-rehearsal-is needed to maintain availability. Most of the phenomena of immediate retention, such as capacity limitations and word length effects, are assumed to arise from trade-offs between rehearsal and decay. This "standard model" of how we remember over the short-term still enjoys considerable popularity, although recent research questions most of its main assumptions. In this chapter I review the recent research and identify the empirical and conceptual problems that plague traditional conceptions of short-term memory. Increasingly, researchers are recognizing that short-term retention is cue driven, much like long-term memory, and that neither rehearsal nor decay is likely to explain the particulars of short-term forgetting.

Gummed-up memory: chewing gum impairs short-term recall.

Science.gov (United States)

Kozlov, Michail D; Hughes, Robert W; Jones, Dylan M

2012-01-01

Several studies have suggested that short-term memory is generally improved by chewing gum. However, we report the first studies to show that chewing gum impairs short-term memory for both item order and item identity. Experiment 1 showed that chewing gum reduces serial recall of letter lists. Experiment 2 indicated that chewing does not simply disrupt vocal-articulatory planning required for order retention: Chewing equally impairs a matched task that required retention of list item identity. Experiment 3 demonstrated that manual tapping produces a similar pattern of impairment to that of chewing gum. These results clearly qualify the assertion that chewing gum improves short-term memory. They also pose a problem for short-term memory theories asserting that forgetting is based on domain-specific interference given that chewing does not interfere with verbal memory any more than tapping. It is suggested that tapping and chewing reduce the general capacity to process sequences.

Modelling of long-term and short-term mechanisms of arterial pressure control in the cardiovascular system: an object-oriented approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Fernandez de Canete, J; Luque, J; Barbancho, J; Munoz, V

2014-04-01

A mathematical model that provides an overall description of both the short- and long-term mechanisms of arterial pressure regulation is presented. Short-term control is exerted through the baroreceptor reflex while renal elimination plays a role in long-term control. Both mechanisms operate in an integrated way over the compartmental model of the cardiovascular system. The whole system was modelled in MODELICA, which uses a hierarchical object-oriented modelling strategy, under the DYMOLA simulation environment. The performance of the controlled system was analysed by simulation in light of the existing hypothesis and validation tests previously performed with physiological data, demonstrating the effectiveness of both regulation mechanisms under physiological and pathological conditions. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Short- and long-term cognitive effects of chronic cannabinoids administration in late-adolescence rats.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hila Abush

Full Text Available The use of cannabis can impair cognitive function, especially short-term memory. A controversial question is whether long-term cannabis use during the late-adolescence period can cause irreversible deficits in higher brain function that persist after drug use stops. In order to examine the short- and long-term effects of chronic exposure to cannabinoids, rats were administered chronic i.p. treatment with the CB1/CB2 receptor agonist WIN55,212-2 (WIN; 1.2 mg/kg for two weeks during the late adolescence period (post-natal days 45-60 and tested for behavioral and electrophysiological measures of cognitive performance 24 hrs, 10 and 30 days after the last drug injection. The impairing effects of chronic WIN on short-term memory in the water maze and the object recognition tasks as well as long-term potentiation (LTP in the ventral subiculum (vSub-nucleus accumbens (NAc pathway were temporary as they lasted only 24 h or 10 d after withdrawal. However, chronic WIN significantly impaired hippocampal dependent short-term memory measured in the object location task 24 hrs, 10, 30, and 75 days after the last drug injection. Our findings suggest that some forms of hippocampal-dependent short-term memory are sensitive to chronic cannabinoid administration but other cognitive impairments are temporary and probably result from a residue of cannabinoids in the brain or acute withdrawal effects from cannabinoids. Understanding the effects of cannabinoids on cognitive function may provide us with tools to overcome these impairments and for cannabinoids to be more favorably considered for clinical use.

Security threats to automotive CAN networks-Practical examples and selected short-term countermeasures

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hoppe, Tobias; Kiltz, Stefan; Dittmann, Jana

2011-01-01

The IT security of automotive systems is an evolving area of research. To analyse the current situation and the potentially growing tendency of arising threats we performed several practical tests on recent automotive technology. With a focus on automotive systems based on CAN bus technology, this article summarises the results of four selected tests performed on the control systems for the window lift, warning light and airbag control system as well as the central gateway. These results are supplemented in this article by a classification of these four attack scenarios using the established CERT taxonomy and an analysis of underlying security vulnerabilities, and especially, potential safety implications. With respect to the results of these tests, in this article we further discuss two selected countermeasures to address basic weaknesses exploited in our tests. These are adaptations of intrusion detection (discussing three exemplary detection patterns) and IT-forensic measures (proposing proactive measures based on a forensic model). This article discusses both looking at the four attack scenarios introduced before, covering their capabilities and restrictions. While these reactive approaches are short-term measures, which could already be added to today's automotive IT architecture, long-term concepts also are shortly introduced, which are mainly preventive but will require a major redesign. Beneath a short overview on respective research approaches, we discuss their individual requirements, potential and restrictions.

Retention interval affects visual short-term memory encoding.

Science.gov (United States)

Bankó, Eva M; Vidnyánszky, Zoltán

2010-03-01

Humans can efficiently store fine-detailed facial emotional information in visual short-term memory for several seconds. However, an unresolved question is whether the same neural mechanisms underlie high-fidelity short-term memory for emotional expressions at different retention intervals. Here we show that retention interval affects the neural processes of short-term memory encoding using a delayed facial emotion discrimination task. The early sensory P100 component of the event-related potentials (ERP) was larger in the 1-s interstimulus interval (ISI) condition than in the 6-s ISI condition, whereas the face-specific N170 component was larger in the longer ISI condition. Furthermore, the memory-related late P3b component of the ERP responses was also modulated by retention interval: it was reduced in the 1-s ISI as compared with the 6-s condition. The present findings cannot be explained based on differences in sensory processing demands or overall task difficulty because there was no difference in the stimulus information and subjects' performance between the two different ISI conditions. These results reveal that encoding processes underlying high-precision short-term memory for facial emotional expressions are modulated depending on whether information has to be stored for one or for several seconds.

Equilibration: Developing the Hard Core of the Piagetian Research Program.

Science.gov (United States)

Rowell, J.A.

1983-01-01

Argues that the status of the concept of equilibration is classified by considering Piagetian theory as a research program in the sense elaborated in 1974 by Lakatos. A pilot study was made to examine the precision and testability of equilibration in Piaget's 1977 model.(Author/RH)

Sacubitril/valsartan and short-term changes in the 6-minute walk test: A pilot study.

Science.gov (United States)

Beltrán, Paola; Palau, Patricia; Domínguez, Eloy; Faraudo, Mercedes; Núñez, Eduardo; Guri, Olga; Mollar, Anna; Sanchis, Juan; Bayés-Genís, Antoni; Núñez, Julio

2018-02-01

Impaired exercise capacity is the most disabling symptom in patients with heart failure with reduced ejection fraction (HFrEF). Despite sacubitril/valsartan showing reduced long-term morbidity and mortality over enalapril in HFrEF, its effects on short-term functional capacity remain uncertain. We sought to evaluate the effects of sacubitril/valsartan on a 30-day six-minute walk test in eligible patients with HFrEF. From November 1, 2016 to February 1, 2017, a total of 58 stable symptomatic patients with HFrEF were eligible for sacubitril/valsartan and underwent 6-MWT before and 30days after initiation of sacubitril/valsartan therapy. A mixed-effects model for repeated-measures was used to analyze the changes. Mean age was 70±11years. 72.4% males, 46.6% with ischemic heart disease, and 51.7% on NYHA functional class III were included. The mean (SD) values of baseline LVEF and 6MWT were 30±7%, and 300±89m, respectively. The median (IQR) of NT-proBNP at baseline was 2701pg/ml (1087-4200). Compared with baseline, the 6-MWT distance increased significantly at 30days by 13.9% (+∆=41.8m (33.4-50.2); psacubitril/valsartan was associated with an improvement in exercise tolerance in symptomatic patients with HFrEF. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ireland Ltd. All rights reserved.

Short-term lending: Payday loans as risk factors for anxiety, inflammation and poor health.

Science.gov (United States)

Sweet, Elizabeth; Kuzawa, Christopher W; McDade, Thomas W

2018-08-01

While research now consistently links consumer financial debt with adverse emotional health outcomes, specific forms of debt and their impact on measures of physical health are underexplored. This gap in knowledge is significant because different forms of loans and debt may have different experiential qualities. In this paper, we focus on a type of unsecured debt - short-term/payday loan borrowing - that has risen dramatically in recent decades in the United States and is characterized by predatory, discriminatory, and poorly regulated lending practices. Using data from a study of debt and health among adults in Boston, MA (n=286), we test whether short-term borrowing is associated with a range of emotional and physical health indicators. We find that short-term loans are associated with higher body mass index, waist circumference, C-reactive protein levels, and self-reported symptoms of physical health, sexual health, and anxiety, after controlling for several socio-demographic covariates. We discuss these findings within the contexts of regulatory shortcomings, psychosocial stress, and racial and economic credit disparities. We suggest that within the broader context of financial debt and health, short-term loans should be considered a specific risk to population health.

Learning to perceive in the sensorimotor approach: Piaget's theory of equilibration interpreted dynamically.

Science.gov (United States)

Di Paolo, Ezequiel Alejandro; Barandiaran, Xabier E; Beaton, Michael; Buhrmann, Thomas

2014-01-01

if understanding is required for perception, how can we learn to perceive something new, something we do not yet understand? According to the sensorimotor approach, perception involves mastery of regular sensorimotor co-variations that depend on the agent and the environment, also known as the "laws" of sensorimotor contingencies (SMCs). In this sense, perception involves enacting relevant sensorimotor skills in each situation. It is important for this proposal that such skills can be learned and refined with experience and yet up to this date, the sensorimotor approach has had no explicit theory of perceptual learning. The situation is made more complex if we acknowledge the open-ended nature of human learning. In this paper we propose Piaget's theory of equilibration as a potential candidate to fulfill this role. This theory highlights the importance of intrinsic sensorimotor norms, in terms of the closure of sensorimotor schemes. It also explains how the equilibration of a sensorimotor organization faced with novelty or breakdowns proceeds by re-shaping pre-existing structures in coupling with dynamical regularities of the world. This way learning to perceive is guided by the equilibration of emerging forms of skillful coping with the world. We demonstrate the compatibility between Piaget's theory and the sensorimotor approach by providing a dynamical formalization of equilibration to give an explicit micro-genetic account of sensorimotor learning and, by extension, of how we learn to perceive. This allows us to draw important lessons in the form of general principles for open-ended sensorimotor learning, including the need for an intrinsic normative evaluation by the agent itself. We also explore implications of our micro-genetic account at the personal level.

Short-term memory for emotional faces in dysphoria.

Science.gov (United States)

Noreen, Saima; Ridout, Nathan

2010-07-01

The study aimed to determine if the memory bias for negative faces previously demonstrated in depression and dysphoria generalises from long- to short-term memory. A total of 29 dysphoric (DP) and 22 non-dysphoric (ND) participants were presented with a series of faces and asked to identify the emotion portrayed (happiness, sadness, anger, or neutral affect). Following a delay, four faces were presented (the original plus three distractors) and participants were asked to identify the target face. Half of the trials assessed memory for facial emotion, and the remaining trials examined memory for facial identity. At encoding, no group differences were apparent. At memory testing, relative to ND participants, DP participants exhibited impaired memory for all types of facial emotion and for facial identity when the faces featured happiness, anger, or neutral affect, but not sadness. DP participants exhibited impaired identity memory for happy faces relative to angry, sad, and neutral, whereas ND participants exhibited enhanced facial identity memory when faces were angry. In general, memory for faces was not related to performance at encoding. However, in DP participants only, memory for sad faces was related to sadness recognition at encoding. The results suggest that the negative memory bias for faces in dysphoria does not generalise from long- to short-term memory.

Comparison of Sugammadex and Neostigmine in Short Term Surgery

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fatih Koc

2014-03-01

Full Text Available Aim: This study compared the efficacy and cost effectivines of sugammadex and neostigmine for reversal of neuromuscular blockade induced by rocuronium for short term elective surgery. Material and Method: After written informed consent, 33 patients aged 18%u201365, ASA I-III, who were undergoing short term surgery (

Short-term memory for scenes with affective content

OpenAIRE

Maljkovic, Vera; Martini, Paolo

2005-01-01

The emotional content of visual images can be parameterized along two dimensions: valence (pleasantness) and arousal (intensity of emotion). In this study we ask how these distinct emotional dimensions affect the short-term memory of human observers viewing a rapid stream of images and trying to remember their content. We show that valence and arousal modulate short-term memory as independent factors. Arousal influences dramatically the average speed of data accumulation in memory: Higher aro...

Effect of acoustic similarity on short-term auditory memory in the monkey.

Science.gov (United States)

Scott, Brian H; Mishkin, Mortimer; Yin, Pingbo

2013-04-01

Recent evidence suggests that the monkey's short-term memory in audition depends on a passively retained sensory trace as opposed to a trace reactivated from long-term memory for use in working memory. Reliance on a passive sensory trace could render memory particularly susceptible to confusion between sounds that are similar in some acoustic dimension. If so, then in delayed matching-to-sample, the monkey's performance should be predicted by the similarity in the salient acoustic dimension between the sample and subsequent test stimulus, even at very short delays. To test this prediction and isolate the acoustic features relevant to short-term memory, we examined the pattern of errors made by two rhesus monkeys performing a serial, auditory delayed match-to-sample task with interstimulus intervals of 1 s. The analysis revealed that false-alarm errors did indeed result from similarity-based confusion between the sample and the subsequent nonmatch stimuli. Manipulation of the stimuli showed that removal of spectral cues was more disruptive to matching behavior than removal of temporal cues. In addition, the effect of acoustic similarity on false-alarm response was stronger at the first nonmatch stimulus than at the second one. This pattern of errors would be expected if the first nonmatch stimulus overwrote the sample's trace, and suggests that the passively retained trace is not only vulnerable to similarity-based confusion but is also highly susceptible to overwriting. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Mouse short- and long-term locomotor activity analyzed by video tracking software.

Science.gov (United States)

York, Jason M; Blevins, Neil A; McNeil, Leslie K; Freund, Gregory G

2013-06-20

Locomotor activity (LMA) is a simple and easily performed measurement of behavior in mice and other rodents. Improvements in video tracking software (VTS) have allowed it to be coupled to LMA testing, dramatically improving specificity and sensitivity when compared to the line crossings method with manual scoring. In addition, VTS enables high-throughput experimentation. While similar to automated video tracking used for the open field test (OFT), LMA testing is unique in that it allows mice to remain in their home cage and does not utilize the anxiogenic stimulus of bright lighting during the active phase of the light-dark cycle. Traditionally, LMA has been used for short periods of time (mins), while longer movement studies (hrs-days) have often used implanted transmitters and biotelemetry. With the option of real-time tracking, long-, like short-term LMA testing, can now be conducted using videography. Long-term LMA testing requires a specialized, but easily constructed, cage so that food and water (which is usually positioned on the cage top) does not obstruct videography. Importantly, videography and VTS allows for the quantification of parameters, such as path of mouse movement, that are difficult or unfeasible to measure with line crossing and/or biotelemetry. In sum, LMA testing coupled to VTS affords a more complete description of mouse movement and the ability to examine locomotion over an extended period of time.

LANGUAGE REPETITION AND SHORT-TERM MEMORY: AN INTEGRATIVE FRAMEWORK

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Steve eMajerus

2013-07-01

Full Text Available Short-term maintenance of verbal information is a core factor of language repetition, especially when reproducing multiple or unfamiliar stimuli. Many models of language processing locate the verbal short-term maintenance function in the left posterior superior temporo-parietal area and its connections with the inferior frontal gyrus. However, research in the field of short-term memory has implicated bilateral fronto-parietal networks, involved in attention and serial order processing, as being critical for the maintenance and reproduction of verbal sequences. We present here an integrative framework aimed at bridging research in the language processing and short-term memory fields. This framework considers verbal short-term maintenance as an emergent function resulting from synchronized and integrated activation in dorsal and ventral language processing networks as well as fronto-parietal attention and serial order processing networks. To-be-maintained item representations are temporarily activated in the dorsal and ventral language processing networks, novel phoneme and word serial order information is proposed to be maintained via a right fronto-parietal serial order processing network, and activation in these different networks is proposed to be coordinated and maintained via a left fronto-parietal attention processing network. This framework provides new perspectives for our understanding of information maintenance at the nonword-, word- and sentence-level as well as of verbal maintenance deficits in case of brain injury.

Language repetition and short-term memory: an integrative framework.

Science.gov (United States)

Majerus, Steve

2013-01-01

Short-term maintenance of verbal information is a core factor of language repetition, especially when reproducing multiple or unfamiliar stimuli. Many models of language processing locate the verbal short-term maintenance function in the left posterior superior temporo-parietal area and its connections with the inferior frontal gyrus. However, research in the field of short-term memory has implicated bilateral fronto-parietal networks, involved in attention and serial order processing, as being critical for the maintenance and reproduction of verbal sequences. We present here an integrative framework aimed at bridging research in the language processing and short-term memory fields. This framework considers verbal short-term maintenance as an emergent function resulting from synchronized and integrated activation in dorsal and ventral language processing networks as well as fronto-parietal attention and serial order processing networks. To-be-maintained item representations are temporarily activated in the dorsal and ventral language processing networks, novel phoneme and word serial order information is proposed to be maintained via a right fronto-parietal serial order processing network, and activation in these different networks is proposed to be coordinated and maintained via a left fronto-parietal attention processing network. This framework provides new perspectives for our understanding of information maintenance at the non-word-, word- and sentence-level as well as of verbal maintenance deficits in case of brain injury.

Short-horizon regulation for long-term investors

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Shi, Z.; Werker, B.J.M.

2012-01-01

We study the effects of imposing repeated short-horizon regulatory constraints on long-term investors. We show that Value-at-Risk and Expected Shortfall constraints, when imposed dynamically, lead to similar optimal portfolios and wealth distributions. We also show that, in utility terms, the costs

Short- and long-term antidepressant effects of ketamine in a rat chronic unpredictable stress model.

Science.gov (United States)

Jiang, Yinghong; Wang, Yiqiang; Sun, Xiaoran; Lian, Bo; Sun, Hongwei; Wang, Gang; Du, Zhongde; Li, Qi; Sun, Lin

2017-08-01

This research was aimed to evaluate the behaviors of short- or long-term antidepressant effects of ketamine in rats exposed to chronic unpredictable stress (CUS). Ketamine, a glutamate noncompetitive NMDA receptor antagonist, regulates excitatory amino acid functions, such as anxiety disorders and major depression, and plays an important role in synaptic plasticity and learning and memory. After 42 days of CUS model, male rats received either a single injection of ketamine (10 mg/kg; day 43) or 15 daily injections (days 43-75). The influence of ketamine on behavioral reactivity was assessed 24 hr (short-term) or 7 weeks after ketamine treatment (long-term). Behavioral tests used to assess the effects of these treatments included the sucrose preference (SP), open field (OF), elevated plus maze (EPM), forced swimming (FS), and water maze (WM) to detect anxiety-like behavior (OF and EPM), forced swimming (FS), and water maze (WM). Results: Short-term ketamine administration resulted in increases of body weight gain, higher sensitivity to sucrose, augmented locomotor activity in the OF, more entries into the open arms of the EPM, along increased activity in the FS test; all responses indicative of reductions in depression/despair in anxiety-eliciting situations. No significant differences in these behaviors were obtained under conditions of long-term ketamine administration ( p  > .05). The CUS + Ketamine group showed significantly increased activity as compared with the CUS + Vehicle group for analysis of the long-term effects of ketamine (* p   .05). Taken together these findings demonstrate that a short-term administration of ketamine induced rapid antidepressant-like effects in adult male rats exposed to CUS conditions, effects that were not observed in response to the long-term treatment regime.

The stimulation of hematosis on short-term and prolong irradiation

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Tukhtaev, T.M.

1978-01-01

This book studies the stimulation of hematosis on short-term and prolong irradiation, pathogenetic mechanisms of lesion and reconstruction of hematosis at critical radiation sickness, action hematosis stimulators in short-term irradiation conditions

Rapid effects of estrogens on short-term memory: Possible mechanisms.

Science.gov (United States)

Paletta, Pietro; Sheppard, Paul A S; Matta, Richard; Ervin, Kelsy S J; Choleris, Elena

2018-06-01

Estrogens affect learning and memory through rapid and delayed mechanisms. Here we review studies on rapid effects on short-term memory. Estradiol rapidly improves social and object recognition memory, spatial memory, and social learning when administered systemically. The dorsal hippocampus mediates estrogen rapid facilitation of object, social and spatial short-term memory. The medial amygdala mediates rapid facilitation of social recognition. The three estrogen receptors, α (ERα), β (ERβ) and the G-protein coupled estrogen receptor (GPER) appear to play different roles depending on the task and brain region. Both ERα and GPER agonists rapidly facilitate short-term social and object recognition and spatial memory when administered systemically or into the dorsal hippocampus and facilitate social recognition in the medial amygdala. Conversely, only GPER can facilitate social learning after systemic treatment and an ERβ agonist only rapidly improved short-term spatial memory when given systemically or into the hippocampus, but also facilitates social recognition in the medial amygdala. Investigations into the mechanisms behind estrogens' rapid effects on short term memory showed an involvement of the extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) and the phosphoinositide 3-kinase (PI3K) kinase pathways. Recent evidence also showed that estrogens interact with the neuropeptide oxytocin in rapidly facilitating social recognition. Estrogens can increase the production and/or release of oxytocin and other neurotransmitters, such as dopamine and acetylcholine. Therefore, it is possible that estrogens' rapid effects on short-term memory may occur through the regulation of various neurotransmitters, although more research is need on these interactions as well as the mechanisms of estrogens' actions on short-term memory. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Visual short-term memory for high resolution associations is impaired in patients with medial temporal lobe damage.

Science.gov (United States)

Koen, Joshua D; Borders, Alyssa A; Petzold, Michael T; Yonelinas, Andrew P

2017-02-01

The medial temporal lobe (MTL) plays a critical role in episodic long-term memory, but whether the MTL is necessary for visual short-term memory is controversial. Some studies have indicated that MTL damage disrupts visual short-term memory performance whereas other studies have failed to find such evidence. To account for these mixed results, it has been proposed that the hippocampus is critical in supporting short-term memory for high resolution complex bindings, while the cortex is sufficient to support simple, low resolution bindings. This hypothesis was tested in the current study by assessing visual short-term memory in patients with damage to the MTL and controls for high resolution and low resolution object-location and object-color associations. In the location tests, participants encoded sets of two or four objects in different locations on the screen. After each set, participants performed a two-alternative forced-choice task in which they were required to discriminate the object in the target location from the object in a high or low resolution lure location (i.e., the object locations were very close or far away from the target location, respectively). Similarly, in the color tests, participants were presented with sets of two or four objects in a different color and, after each set, were required to discriminate the object in the target color from the object in a high or low resolution lure color (i.e., the lure color was very similar or very different, respectively, to the studied color). The patients were significantly impaired in visual short-term memory, but importantly, they were more impaired for high resolution object-location and object-color bindings. The results are consistent with the proposal that the hippocampus plays a critical role in forming and maintaining complex, high resolution bindings. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.

Rhythmic Haptic Stimuli Improve Short-Term Attention.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhang, Shusheng; Wang, Dangxiao; Afzal, Naqash; Zhang, Yuru; Wu, Ruilin

2016-01-01

Brainwave entrainment using rhythmic visual and/or auditory stimulation has shown its efficacy in modulating neural activities and cognitive ability. In the presented study, we aim to investigate whether rhythmic haptic stimulation could enhance short-term attention. An experiment with sensorimotor rhythm (SMR) increasing protocol was performed in which participants were presented sinusoidal vibrotactile stimulus of 15 Hz on their palm. Test of Variables of Attention (T.O.V.A.) was performed before and after the stimulating session. Electroencephalograph (EEG) was recorded across the stimulating session and the two attention test sessions. SMR band power manifested a significant increase after stimulation. Results of T.O.V.A. tests indicated an improvement in the attention of participants who had received the stimulation compared to the control group who had not received the stimulation. The D prime score of T.O.V.A. reveals that participants performed better in perceptual sensitivity and sustaining attention level compared to their baseline performance before the stimulating session. These findings highlight the potential value of using haptics-based brainwave entrainment for cognitive training.

Transcranial focal electrical stimulation via tripolar concentric ring electrodes does not modify the short- and long-term memory formation in rats evaluated in the novel object recognition test.

Science.gov (United States)

Rogel-Salazar, G; Luna-Munguía, H; Stevens, K E; Besio, W G

2013-04-01

Noninvasive transcranial focal electrical stimulation (TFS) via tripolar concentric ring electrodes (TCREs) has been under development as an alternative/complementary therapy for seizure control. Transcranial focal electrical stimulation has shown efficacy in attenuating penicillin-, pilocarpine-, and pentylenetetrazole-induced acute seizures in rat models. This study evaluated the effects of TFS via TCREs on the memory formation of healthy rats as a safety test of TFS. Short- and long-term memory formation was tested after the application of TFS using the novel object recognition (NOR) test. The following independent groups were used: naïve, control (without TFS), and TFS (treated). The naïve, control, and stimulated groups spent more time investigating the new object than the familiar one during the test phase. Transcranial focal electrical stimulation via TCREs given once does not modify the short- and long-term memory formation in rats in the NOR test. Results provide an important step towards a better understanding for the safe usage of TFS via TCREs. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Comparison of short term mortality in ischemic stroke patients with or without stress hyperglycemia

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Raja, W; Zaidi, S.B.H.; Waheed, S.; Khan, M.

2016-01-01

Objective: To compare short term mortality in non-diabetic ischemic stroke patients with or without stress hyperglycemia. Study Design: Cohort study. Place and Duration of Study: This study was carried out at Neurology Department of Military Hospital, Rawalpindi from Jan 2010 to Jul 2012 for a total duration of six months. Material and Methods: Non-diabetic ischemic stroke patients were included in the study and they were divided in two groups. Each group had 75 patients. Group 'I' (Normoglycemic or control group) had normal blood glucose level while group 'II' (Hyperglycaemic or cohort) had hyperglycaemia on presentation or over next 72 hours. Prognosis in terms of patient either being dead or alive was determined within or at 4 weeks of admission in both groups. Data were entered and analysed using Statistical Package for Social Sciences SPSS version 10. Descriptive statistics were calculated for both qualitative and quantitative variables. For comparison of short term mortality in hyperglycaemic and normoglycemic stroke patients, chi-square test was applied. p-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. Results: Short term mortality was higher in cohort (hyperglycemic) group as compared to control (normoglycemic) group (34.7 percent vs. 14.7 percent). Relative risk was 2.36. The groups had a statistically significant difference in the short term mortality within four weeks with a Chi-Square 'p' value of 0.004 (p=0.004). Conclusion: Short term mortality in non-diabetic ischemic stroke patients with stress hyperglycemia is higher than those patients who do not have stress hyperglycemia. (author)

Short-Term Energy Outlook: Quarterly projections. Fourth quarter 1993

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

1993-11-05

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) prepares quarterly, short-term energy supply, demand, and price projections for publication in February, May, August, and November in the Short-Term Energy Outlook (Outlook). An annual supplement analyzes the performance of previous forecasts, compares recent cases with those of other forecasting services, and discusses current topics related to the short-term energy markets. (See Short-Term Energy Outlook Annual Supplement, DOE/EIA-0202.) The forecast period for this issue of the Outlook extends from the fourth quarter of 1993 through the fourth quarter of 1994. Values for the third quarter of 1993, however, are preliminary EIA estimates (for example, some monthly values for petroleum supply and disposition are derived in part from weekly data reported in the Weekly Petroleum Status Report) or are calculated from model simulations using the latest exogenous information available (for example, electricity sales and generation are simulated using actual weather data). The historical energy data are EIA data published in the Monthly Energy Review, Petroleum Supply Monthly, and other EIA publications.

International Short-Term Countermeasures Survey - 2012 Update

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ingham, Grant

2013-01-01

national legislation that defines intervention levels. Many also used IAEA or ICRP guidance, while others turned to WHO, EURATOM, or EC guidelines. In terms of harmonisation of the countermeasures, more than half of the respondent countries reported that harmonisation attempts had been made to various extents. Most countries have bilateral agreements in place where there are nuclear facilities near a border. It was pointed out that further work is needed to agree upon common procedures, exchange information, and conduct exercises to test this aspect of the response. The WPNEM supports the updating of this survey of national policies regarding short-term countermeasures on a regularly basis, e.g. every five years. (authors)

Category Specific Knowledge Modulate Capacity Limitations of Visual Short-Term Memory

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Dall, Jonas Olsen; Watanabe, Katsumi; Sørensen, Thomas Alrik

2016-01-01

We explore whether expertise can modulate the capacity of visual short-term memory, as some seem to argue that training affects capacity of short-term memory [13] while others are not able to find this modulation [12]. We extend on a previous study [3] demonstrating expertise effects by investiga...... are in line with the theoretical interpretation that visual short-term memory reflects the sum of the reverberating feedback loops to representations in long-term memory.......We explore whether expertise can modulate the capacity of visual short-term memory, as some seem to argue that training affects capacity of short-term memory [13] while others are not able to find this modulation [12]. We extend on a previous study [3] demonstrating expertise effects......), and expert observers (Japanese university students). For both the picture and the letter condition we find no performance difference in memory capacity, however, in the critical hiragana condition we demonstrate a systematic difference relating expertise differences between the groups. These results...

Association between early attention-deficit/hyperactivity symptoms and current verbal and visuo-spatial short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Gau, Susan Shur-Fen; Chiang, Huey-Ling

2013-01-01

Deficits in short-term memory are common in adolescents with attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), but their current ADHD symptoms cannot well predict their short-term performance. Taking a developmental perspective, we wanted to clarify the association between ADHD symptoms at early childhood and short-term memory in late childhood and adolescence. The participants included 401 patients with a clinical diagnosis of DSM-IV ADHD, 213 siblings, and 176 unaffected controls aged 8-17 years (mean age, 12.02 ± 2.24). All participants and their mothers were interviewed using the Chinese Kiddie Epidemiologic version of the Schedule for Affective Disorders and Schizophrenia to obtain information about ADHD symptoms and other psychiatric disorders retrospectively, at an earlier age first, then currently. The participants were assessed with the Wechsler Intelligence Scale for Children--3rd edition, including Digit Span, and the Spatial working memory task of the Cambridge Neuropsychological Test Automated Battery. Multi-level regression models were used for data analysis. Although crude analyses revealed that inattention, hyperactivity, and impulsivity symptoms significantly predicted deficits in short-term memory, only inattention symptoms had significant effects (all pshort-term memory at the current assessment. Therefore, our findings suggest that earlier inattention symptoms are associated with impaired verbal and visuo-spatial short-term memory at a later development stage. Impaired short-term memory in adolescence can be detected earlier by screening for the severity of inattention in childhood. Copyright © 2012 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Subthreshold pharmacological and genetic approaches to analyzing CaV2.1-mediated NMDA receptor signaling in short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Takahashi, Eiki; Niimi, Kimie; Itakura, Chitoshi

2010-10-25

Ca(V)2.1 is highly expressed in the nervous system and plays an essential role in the presynaptic modulation of neurotransmitter release machinery. Recently, the antiepileptic drug levetiracetam was reported to inhibit presynaptic Ca(V)2.1 functions, reducing glutamate release in the hippocampus, although the precise physiological role of Ca(V)2.1-regulated synaptic functions in cognitive performance at the system level remains unknown. This study examined whether Ca(V)2.1 mediates hippocampus-dependent spatial short-term memory using the object location and Y-maze tests, and perirhinal cortex-dependent nonspatial short-term memory using the object recognition test, via a combined pharmacological and genetic approach. Heterozygous rolling Nagoya (rol/+) mice carrying the Ca(V)2.1alpha(1) mutation had normal spatial and nonspatial short-term memory. A 100mg/kg dose of levetiracetam, which is ineffective in wild-type controls, blocked spatial short-term memory in rol/+ mice. At 5mg/kg, the N-methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptor blocker (+/-)-3-(2-carboxypiperazin-4-yl)-propyl-1-phosphonic acid (CPP), which is ineffective in wild-type controls, also blocked the spatial short-term memory in rol/+ mice. Furthermore, a combination of subthreshold doses of levetiracetam (25 mg/kg) and CPP (2.5mg/kg) triggered a spatial short-term memory deficit in rol/+ mice, but not in wild-type controls. Similar patterns of nonspatial short-term memory were observed in wild-type and rol/+ mice when injected with levetiracetam (0-300 mg/kg). These results indicate that Ca(V)2.1-mediated NMDA receptor signaling is critical in hippocampus-dependent spatial short-term memory and differs in various regions. The combination subthreshold pharmacological and genetic approach presented here is easily performed and can be used to study functional signaling pathways in neuronal circuits. Copyright © 2010 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Short-term mechanisms influencing volumetric brain dynamics

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dieleman, Nikki; Koek, Huiberdina L.; Hendrikse, Jeroen

2017-01-01

With the use of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) and brain analysis tools, it has become possible to measure brain volume changes up to around 0.5%. Besides long-term brain changes caused by atrophy in aging or neurodegenerative disease, short-term mechanisms that influence brain volume may exist.

Short-term robustness of production management systems

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Kleijnen, J.P.C.; Gaury, E.G.A.

1998-01-01

Short-term performance of a production management system for make-to-stock factories may be quantified through the service rate per shift; long-term performance through the average monthly work in process (WIP). This may yield, for example, that WIP is minimized, while the probability of the service

Speech Perception and Short-Term Memory Deficits in Persistent Developmental Speech Disorder

Science.gov (United States)

Kenney, Mary Kay; Barac-Cikoja, Dragana; Finnegan, Kimberly; Jeffries, Neal; Ludlow, Christy L.

2006-01-01

Children with developmental speech disorders may have additional deficits in speech perception and/or short-term memory. To determine whether these are only transient developmental delays that can accompany the disorder in childhood or persist as part of the speech disorder, adults with a persistent familial speech disorder were tested on speech…

Potentials of short term and long term cryopreserved sperm of the ...

African Journals Online (AJOL)

To service the growing demand for male African giant catfish (Clarias gariepinus) broodstock for aquaculture in Nigeria, and to conserve valuable genetic resources, we improved both short-term (in deep freezer at -35°C) and long-term cryopreservation (in liquid nitrogen at -296°C) of catfish sperm. Catfish sperm ...

Selective deficit of spatial short-term memory: Role of storage and rehearsal mechanisms.

Science.gov (United States)

Bonnì, Sonia; Perri, Roberta; Fadda, Lucia; Tomaiuolo, Francesco; Koch, Giacomo; Caltagirone, Carlo; Carlesimo, Giovanni Augusto

2014-10-01

We report the neuropsychological and MRI investigation of a patient (GP) who developed a selective impairment of spatial short-term memory (STM) following damage to the dorso-mesial areas of the right frontal lobe. We assessed in this patient spatial STM with an experimental procedure that evaluated immediate and 5-20 s delayed recall of verbal, visual and spatial stimuli. The patient scored significantly worse than normal controls on tests that required delayed recall of spatial data. This could not be ascribed to a deficit of spatial episodic long-term memory because amnesic patients performed normally on these tests. Conversely, the patient scored in the normal range on tests of immediate recall of verbal, visual and spatial data and tests of delayed recall of verbal and visual data. Comparison with a previously described patient who had a selective deficit in immediate spatial recall and an ischemic lesion that affected frontal and parietal dorso-mesial areas in the right hemisphere (Carlesimo GA, Perri R, Turriziani P, Tomaiuolo F, Caltagirone C. Remembering what but not where: independence of spatial and visual working memory in the human brain. Cortex. 2001 Sep; 37(4):519-34) suggests that the right parietal areas are involved in the short-term storage of spatial information and that the dorso-mesial regions of the right frontal underlie mechanisms for the delayed maintenance of the same data.

Short and long term variation in ultraviolet radiation and multiple sclerosis

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Menni, Cristina; Lowell, Walter E; Bentzen, Joan

2012-01-01

We examined the role of ultraviolet radiation (UVR) in persons diagnosed with multiple sclerosis (MS) in four different populations, Italians, Danish, White and African Americans. We tested whether variation in UVR as determined by seasons (short term variation) and solar cycles (long term...... to study the pattern of month of birth distribution in patients with MS comparing with general population data. T-tests were employed to study solar cycles association with lifespan. A surplus of births was observed in June for White Americans. A decrease of births in October and November, though...... not significant after multiple testing correction, was observed in the three populations. In White American with MS overall, males and females, we found that solar cycle is associated with lifespan. We found that season and solar cycles have some role in MS susceptibility and life duration. However...

Biochemical and hematologic changes after short-term space flight

Science.gov (United States)

Leach, C. S.

1992-01-01

Clinical laboratory data from blood samples obtained from astronauts before and after 28 flights (average duration = 6 days) of the Space Shuttle were analyzed by the paired t-test and the Wilcoxon signed-rank test and compared with data from the Skylab flights (duration approximately 28, 59, and 84 days). Angiotensin I and aldosterone were elevated immediately after short-term space flights, but the response of angiotensin I was delayed after Skylab flights. Serum calcium was not elevated after Shuttle flights, but magnesium and uric acid decreased after both Shuttle and Skylab. Creatine phosphokinase in serum was reduced after Shuttle but not Skylab flights, probably because exercises to prevent deconditioning were not performed on the Shuttle. Total cholesterol was unchanged after Shuttle flights, but low density lipoprotein cholesterol increased and high density lipoprotein cholesterol decreased. The concentration of red blood cells was elevated after Shuttle flights and reduced after Skylab flights. Reticulocyte count was decreased after both short- and long-term flights, indicating that a reduction in red blood cell mass is probably more closely related to suppression of red cell production than to an increase in destruction of erythrocytes. Serum ferritin and number of platelets were also elevated after Shuttle flights. In determining the reasons for postflight differences between the shorter and longer flights, it is important to consider not only duration but also countermeasures, differences between spacecraft, and procedures for landing and egress.

Influence of acute high-intensity aerobic interval exercise bout on selective attention and short-term memory tasks.

Science.gov (United States)

Alves, Christiano R R; Tessaro, Victor H; Teixeira, Luis A C; Murakava, Karina; Roschel, Hamilton; Gualano, Bruno; Takito, Monica Y

2014-02-01

Acute moderate intensity continuous aerobic exercise can improve specific cognitive functions, such as short-term memory and selective attention. Moreover, high-intensity interval training (HIT) has been recently proposed as a time-efficient alternative to traditional cardiorespiratory exercise. However, considering previous speculations that the exercise intensity affects cognition in a U-shaped fashion, it was hypothesized that a HIT session may impair cognitive performance. Therefore, this study assessed the effects of an acute HIT session on selective attention and short-term memory tasks. 22 healthy middle-aged individuals (M age = 53.7 yr.) engaged in both (1) a HIT session, 10 1 min. cycling bouts at the intensity corresponding to 80% of the reserve heart rate interspersed by 1 min. active pauses cycling at 60% of the reserve heart rate and (2) a control session, consisting of an active condition with low-intensity active stretching exercise. Before and after each experimental session, cognitive performance was assessed by the Victoria Version of the Stroop test (a selective attention test) and the Digit Span test (a short-term memory test). Following the HIT session, the time to complete the Stroop "Color word" test was significantly lower when compared with that of the control session. The performances in the other subtasks of the Stroop test as well as in the Digit Span test were not significantly different. A HIT session can improve cognitive function.

An accident diagnosis algorithm using long short-term memory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jaemin Yang

2018-05-01

Full Text Available Accident diagnosis is one of the complex tasks for nuclear power plant (NPP operators. In abnormal or emergency situations, the diagnostic activity of the NPP states is burdensome though necessary. Numerous computer-based methods and operator support systems have been suggested to address this problem. Among them, the recurrent neural network (RNN has performed well at analyzing time series data. This study proposes an algorithm for accident diagnosis using long short-term memory (LSTM, which is a kind of RNN, which improves the limitation for time reflection. The algorithm consists of preprocessing, the LSTM network, and postprocessing. In the LSTM-based algorithm, preprocessed input variables are calculated to output the accident diagnosis results. The outputs are also postprocessed using softmax to determine the ranking of accident diagnosis results with probabilities. This algorithm was trained using a compact nuclear simulator for several accidents: a loss of coolant accident, a steam generator tube rupture, and a main steam line break. The trained algorithm was also tested to demonstrate the feasibility of diagnosing NPP accidents. Keywords: Accident Diagnosis, Long Short-term Memory, Recurrent Neural Network, Softmax

Forecasting stock return volatility: A comparison between the roles of short-term and long-term leverage effects

Science.gov (United States)

Pan, Zhiyuan; Liu, Li

2018-02-01

In this paper, we extend the GARCH-MIDAS model proposed by Engle et al. (2013) to account for the leverage effect in short-term and long-term volatility components. Our in-sample evidence suggests that both short-term and long-term negative returns can cause higher future volatility than positive returns. Out-of-sample results show that the predictive ability of GARCH-MIDAS is significantly improved after taking the leverage effect into account. The leverage effect for short-term volatility component plays more important role than the leverage effect for long-term volatility component in affecting out-of-sample forecasting performance.

Role of serial order in the impact of talker variability on short-term memory: testing a perceptual organization-based account.

Science.gov (United States)

Hughes, Robert W; Marsh, John E; Jones, Dylan M

2011-11-01

In two experiments, we examined the impact of the degree of match between sequential auditory perceptual organization processes and the demands of a short-term memory task (memory for order vs. item information). When a spoken sequence of digits was presented so as to promote its perceptual partitioning into two distinct streams by conveying it in alternating female (F) and male (M) voices (FMFMFMFM)--thereby disturbing the perception of true temporal order--recall of item order was greatly impaired (as compared to recall of item identity). Moreover, an order error type consistent with the formation of voice-based streams was committed more quickly in the alternating-voice condition (Exp. 1). In contrast, when the perceptual organization of the sequence mapped well onto an optimal two-group serial rehearsal strategy--by presenting the two voices in discrete clusters (FFFFMMMM)--order, but not item, recall was enhanced (Exp. 2). The results are consistent with the view that the degree of compatibility between perceptual and deliberate sequencing processes is a key determinant of serial short-term memory performance. Alternative accounts of talker variability effects in short-term memory, based on the concept of a dedicated phonological short-term store and a capacity-limited focus of attention, are also reviewed.

The effect of artesunate on short-term memory in Lyme borreliosis.

Science.gov (United States)

Puri, B K; Hakkarainen-Smith, J S; Monro, J A

2017-08-01

Lyme borreliosis is associated with memory deficits. While this may be related to cerebral infection by Borrelia bacteria, it may also be caused by concomitant co-infection by Babesia protozoa. The anti-malarial artemisinin-derivative artesunate has been shown to be effective against a number of Babesia species and to have efficacy against human cerebral malaria. We hypothesised that concomitant administration of artesunate in Lyme borreliosis patients would help alleviate the severity of self-reported short-term memory impairment. This hypothesis was tested in a small pilot study in which patients were treated with both an intravenous antibiotic and oral artesunate (20mg four times per day); treatment was associated with a reduction in the severity of short-term memory difficulties (P≃0.08). In light of these findings, we recommend that a formal randomised, placebo-controlled study be carried out. Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Auditory short-term memory activation during score reading.

Science.gov (United States)

Simoens, Veerle L; Tervaniemi, Mari

2013-01-01

Performing music on the basis of reading a score requires reading ahead of what is being played in order to anticipate the necessary actions to produce the notes. Score reading thus not only involves the decoding of a visual score and the comparison to the auditory feedback, but also short-term storage of the musical information due to the delay of the auditory feedback during reading ahead. This study investigates the mechanisms of encoding of musical information in short-term memory during such a complicated procedure. There were three parts in this study. First, professional musicians participated in an electroencephalographic (EEG) experiment to study the slow wave potentials during a time interval of short-term memory storage in a situation that requires cross-modal translation and short-term storage of visual material to be compared with delayed auditory material, as it is the case in music score reading. This delayed visual-to-auditory matching task was compared with delayed visual-visual and auditory-auditory matching tasks in terms of EEG topography and voltage amplitudes. Second, an additional behavioural experiment was performed to determine which type of distractor would be the most interfering with the score reading-like task. Third, the self-reported strategies of the participants were also analyzed. All three parts of this study point towards the same conclusion according to which during music score reading, the musician most likely first translates the visual score into an auditory cue, probably starting around 700 or 1300 ms, ready for storage and delayed comparison with the auditory feedback.

Do elite breath-hold divers suffer from mild short-term memory impairments?

Science.gov (United States)

Billaut, François; Gueit, Patrice; Faure, Sylvane; Costalat, Guillaume; Lemaître, Frédéric

2018-03-01

Repeated apneas are associated with severe hypoxemia that may ultimately lead to loss of consciousness in some breath-hold divers. Despite increasing number of practitioners, the relationship between apnea-induced hypoxia and neurocognitive functions is still poorly understood in the sport of free diving. To shed light onto this phenomenon, we examined the impact of long-term breath-hold diving training on attentional processing, short-term memory, and long-term mnesic and executive functions. Thirty-six men matched for age, height, and weight were separated into the following 3 groups: (i) 12 elite breath-hold divers (EBHD), mean static apnea best time 371 s, 105 months mean apnea experience; (ii) 12 novice breath-hold divers, mean best time 243 s, 8.75 months mean apnea experience; and (iii) 12 physical education students with no breath-hold diving experience; all of these participants performed varied written and computerized neuropsychological tasks. Compared with the 2 other groups, the EBHD group was slower to complete the interference card during a Stroop test (F [1,33] = 4.70, p short-term memory impairments.

Short-term memory for spatial configurations in the tactile modality: a comparison with vision.

Science.gov (United States)

Picard, Delphine; Monnier, Catherine

2009-11-01

This study investigates the role of acquisition constraints on the short-term retention of spatial configurations in the tactile modality in comparison with vision. It tests whether the sequential processing of information inherent to the tactile modality could account for limitation in short-term memory span for tactual-spatial information. In addition, this study investigates developmental aspects of short-term memory for tactual- and visual-spatial configurations. A total of 144 child and adult participants were assessed for their memory span in three different conditions: tactual, visual, and visual with a limited field of view. The results showed lower tactual-spatial memory span than visual-spatial, regardless of age. However, differences in memory span observed between the tactile and visual modalities vanished when the visual processing of information occurred within a limited field. These results provide evidence for an impact of acquisition constraints on the retention of spatial information in the tactile modality in both childhood and adulthood.

Short-term and working memory impairments in aphasia.

Science.gov (United States)

Potagas, Constantin; Kasselimis, Dimitrios; Evdokimidis, Ioannis

2011-08-01

The aim of the present study is to investigate short-term memory and working memory deficits in aphasics in relation to the severity of their language impairment. Fifty-eight aphasic patients participated in this study. Based on language assessment, an aphasia score was calculated for each patient. Memory was assessed in two modalities, verbal and spatial. Mean scores for all memory tasks were lower than normal. Aphasia score was significantly correlated with performance on all memory tasks. Correlation coefficients for short-term memory and working memory were approximately of the same magnitude. According to our findings, severity of aphasia is related with both verbal and spatial memory deficits. Moreover, while aphasia score correlated with lower scores in both short-term memory and working memory tasks, the lack of substantial difference between corresponding correlation coefficients suggests a possible primary deficit in information retention rather than impairment in working memory. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Short-Term Contract Work in Adult Education (I) and (II).

Science.gov (United States)

Hall, Dorothea; McMath, Patricia

1986-01-01

This two-part article discusses short-term project contracts for adult education staff. Part one covers implications of this trend for the service and for the staff involved. Part two looks at short-term contracts from the management viewpoint. (CH)

Short-term Memory of Deep RNN

OpenAIRE

Gallicchio, Claudio

2018-01-01

The extension of deep learning towards temporal data processing is gaining an increasing research interest. In this paper we investigate the properties of state dynamics developed in successive levels of deep recurrent neural networks (RNNs) in terms of short-term memory abilities. Our results reveal interesting insights that shed light on the nature of layering as a factor of RNN design. Noticeably, higher layers in a hierarchically organized RNN architecture results to be inherently biased ...

Saccadic Eye Movements Impose a Natural Bottleneck on Visual Short-Term Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Ohl, Sven; Rolfs, Martin

2017-01-01

Visual short-term memory (VSTM) is a crucial repository of information when events unfold rapidly before our eyes, yet it maintains only a fraction of the sensory information encoded by the visual system. Here, we tested the hypothesis that saccadic eye movements provide a natural bottleneck for the transition of fragile content in sensory memory…

Long-Term Capital Goods Importation and Minimum Wage Relationship in Turkey: Bounds Testing Approach

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tastan Serkan

2015-04-01

Full Text Available In order to examine the long-term relationship between capital goods importation and minimum wage, autoregressive distributed lag (ARDL bounds testing approach to the cointegration is used in the study. According to bounds test results, a cointegration relation exists between the capital goods importation and the minimum wage. Therefore an ARDL(4,0 model is estimated in order to determine the long and short term relations between variables. According to the empirical analysis, there is a positive and significant relationship between the capital goods importation and the minimum wage in Turkey in the long term. A 1% increase in the minimum wage leads to a 0.8% increase in the capital goods importation in the long term. The result is similar for short term coefficients. The relationship observed in the long term is preserved in short term, though in a lower level. In terms of error correction model, it can be concluded that error correction mechanism works as the error correction term is negative and significant. Short term deviations might be resolved with the error correction mechanism in the long term. Accordingly, approximately 75% of any deviation from equilibrium which might arise in the previous six month period will be resolved in the current six month period. This means that returning to long term equilibrium progresses rapidly.

Randomized controlled trial evaluating the temporal effects of high-intensity exercise on learning, short-term and long-term memory, and prospective memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Frith, Emily; Sng, Eveleen; Loprinzi, Paul D

2017-11-01

The broader purpose of this study was to examine the temporal effects of high-intensity exercise on learning, short-term and long-term retrospective memory and prospective memory. Among a sample of 88 young adult participants, 22 were randomized into one of four different groups: exercise before learning, control group, exercise during learning, and exercise after learning. The retrospective assessments (learning, short-term and long-term memory) were assessed using the Rey Auditory Verbal Learning Test. Long-term memory including a 20-min and 24-hr follow-up assessment. Prospective memory was assessed using a time-based procedure by having participants contact (via phone) the researchers at a follow-up time period. The exercise stimulus included a 15-min bout of progressive maximal exertion treadmill exercise. High-intensity exercise prior to memory encoding (vs. exercise during memory encoding or consolidation) was effective in enhancing long-term memory (for both 20-min and 24-h follow-up assessments). We did not observe a differential temporal effect of high-intensity exercise on short-term memory (immediate post-memory encoding), learning or prospective memory. The timing of high-intensity exercise may play an important role in facilitating long-term memory. © 2017 Federation of European Neuroscience Societies and John Wiley & Sons Ltd.

Learning to perceive in the sensorimotor approach: Piaget's theory of equilibration interpreted dynamically

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ezequiel Alejandro Di Paolo

2014-07-01

Full Text Available Learning to perceive faces a classical paradox: if understanding is required for perception, how can we learn to perceive something new, something we do not yet understand? According to the sensorimotor approach, perception involves mastery of regular sensorimotor co-variations that depend on the agent and the environment, also known as the ‘laws’ of sensorimotor contingencies. In this sense, perception involves enacting relevant sensorimotor skills in each situation. It is important for this proposal that such skills can be learned and refined with experience and yet up to this date, the sensorimotor approach has had no explicit theory of perceptual learning. The situation is made more complex if we acknowledge the open-ended nature of human learning. In this paper we propose Piaget’s theory of equilibration as a potential candidate to fulfill this role. This theory highlights the importance of intrinsic sensorimotor norms, in terms of the closure of sensorimotor schemes. It also explains how the equilibration of a sensorimotor organization faced with novelty or breakdowns proceeds by re-shaping pre-existing structures in coupling with dynamical regularities of the world. This way learning to perceive is guided by the equilibration of emerging forms of skillful coping with the world. We demonstrate the compatibility between Piaget’s theory and the sensorimotor approach by providing a dynamical formalization of equilibration to give an explicit micro-genetic account of sensorimotor learning and, by extension, of how we learn to perceive. This allows us to draw important lessons in the form of general principles for open-ended sensorimotor learning, including the need for an intrinsic normative evaluation by the agent itself. We also explore implications of our micro-genetic account at the personal level.

The left superior temporal gyrus is a shared substrate for auditory short-term memory and speech comprehension: evidence from 210 patients with stroke

OpenAIRE

Leff, Alexander P.; Schofield, Thomas M.; Crinion, Jennifer T.; Seghier, Mohamed L.; Grogan, Alice; Green, David W.; Price, Cathy J.

2009-01-01

Competing theories of short-term memory function make specific predictions about the functional anatomy of auditory short-term memory and its role in language comprehension. We analysed high-resolution structural magnetic resonance images from 210 stroke patients and employed a novel voxel based analysis to test the relationship between auditory short-term memory and speech comprehension. Using digit span as an index of auditory short-term memory capacity we found that the structural integrit...

Analysis of recurrent neural networks for short-term energy load forecasting

Science.gov (United States)

Di Persio, Luca; Honchar, Oleksandr

2017-11-01

Short-term forecasts have recently gained an increasing attention because of the rise of competitive electricity markets. In fact, short-terms forecast of possible future loads turn out to be fundamental to build efficient energy management strategies as well as to avoid energy wastage. Such type of challenges are difficult to tackle both from a theoretical and applied point of view. Latter tasks require sophisticated methods to manage multidimensional time series related to stochastic phenomena which are often highly interconnected. In the present work we first review novel approaches to energy load forecasting based on recurrent neural network, focusing our attention on long/short term memory architectures (LSTMs). Such type of artificial neural networks have been widely applied to problems dealing with sequential data such it happens, e.g., in socio-economics settings, for text recognition purposes, concerning video signals, etc., always showing their effectiveness to model complex temporal data. Moreover, we consider different novel variations of basic LSTMs, such as sequence-to-sequence approach and bidirectional LSTMs, aiming at providing effective models for energy load data. Last but not least, we test all the described algorithms on real energy load data showing not only that deep recurrent networks can be successfully applied to energy load forecasting, but also that this approach can be extended to other problems based on time series prediction.

Prefrontal θ-Burst Stimulation Disrupts the Organizing Influence of Active Short-Term Retrieval on Episodic Memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Marin, Bianca M; VanHaerents, Stephen A; Voss, Joel L; Bridge, Donna J

2018-01-01

Dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) is thought to organize items in working memory and this organizational role may also influence long-term memory. To causally test this hypothesized role of DLPFC in long-term memory formation, we used θ-burst noninvasive stimulation (TBS) to modulate DLPFC involvement in a memory task that assessed the influence of active short-term retrieval on later memory. Human subjects viewed three objects on a grid and then either actively retrieved or passively restudied one object's location after a brief delay. Long-term memory for the other objects was assessed after a delay to evaluate the beneficial role of active short-term retrieval on subsequent memory for the entire set of object locations. We found that DLPFC TBS had no significant effects on short-term memory. In contrast, DLPFC TBS impaired long-term memory selectively in the active-retrieval condition but not in the passive-restudy condition. These findings are consistent with the hypothesized contribution of DLPFC to the organizational processes operative during active short-term retrieval that influence long-term memory, although other regions that were not stimulated could provide similar contributions. Notably, active-retrieval and passive-restudy conditions were intermixed, and therefore nonspecific influences of stimulation were well controlled. These results suggest that DLPFC is causally involved in organizing event information during active retrieval to support coherent long-term memory formation.

Photon production in an expanding and chemically equilibrating gluon-enriched plasma

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Kaempfer, B.; Technische Univ. Dresden; Pavlenko, O.P.; AN Ukrainskoj SSR, Kiev

1993-12-01

Photon production in a longitudinally and transversely expanding gluon plasma with initially little quark admixture is considered. Chemical equilibration of quarks and gluons is followed by rate equations. The yields of hard photons with E ≥ 2 GeV are insensitive to chemical equilibration and depend mainly on the initial thermalized state. Medium-energy photons with E ∼ 1 GeV are more frequently produced in case of faster equilibration, despite of faster cooling. For an assumed fast equilibration we follow the evolution of matter through mixed and hadron phases. The transverse momentum kick, due to transverse expansion, of photons from hadron matter is shown to be reduced for an equation of state with reduced latent heat. The photon yield in the region E > 1 GeV from deconfined matter dominates for conditions, estimated to be achieved at RHIC, in case of a weakly first-order confinement transition. (orig.)

Cardioprotective Signature of Short-Term Caloric Restriction.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Hossein Noyan

Full Text Available To understand the molecular pathways underlying the cardiac preconditioning effect of short-term caloric restriction (CR.Lifelong CR has been suggested to reduce the incidence of cardiovascular disease through a variety of mechanisms. However, prolonged adherence to a CR life-style is difficult. Here we reveal the pathways that are modulated by short-term CR, which are associated with protection of the mouse heart from ischemia.Male 10-12 wk old C57bl/6 mice were randomly assigned to an ad libitum (AL diet with free access to regular chow, or CR, receiving 30% less food for 7 days (d, prior to myocardial infarction (MI via permanent coronary ligation. At d8, the left ventricles (LV of AL and CR mice were collected for Western blot, mRNA and microRNA (miR analyses to identify cardioprotective gene expression signatures. In separate groups, infarct size, cardiac hemodynamics and protein abundance of caspase 3 was measured at d2 post-MI.This short-term model of CR was associated with cardio-protection, as evidenced by decreased infarct size (18.5±2.4% vs. 26.6±1.7%, N=10/group; P=0.01. mRNA and miR profiles pre-MI (N=5/group identified genes modulated by short-term CR to be associated with circadian clock, oxidative stress, immune function, apoptosis, metabolism, angiogenesis, cytoskeleton and extracellular matrix (ECM. Western blots pre-MI revealed CR-associated increases in phosphorylated Akt and GSK3ß, reduced levels of phosphorylated AMPK and mitochondrial related proteins PGC-1α, cytochrome C and cyclooxygenase (COX IV, with no differences in the levels of phosphorylated eNOS or MAPK (ERK1/2; p38. CR regimen was also associated with reduced protein abundance of cleaved caspase 3 in the infarcted heart and improved cardiac function.

Get the gist? The effects of processing depth on false recognition in short-term and long-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Flegal, Kristin E; Reuter-Lorenz, Patricia A

2014-07-01

Gist-based processing has been proposed to account for robust false memories in the converging-associates task. The deep-encoding processes known to enhance verbatim memory also strengthen gist memory and increase distortions of long-term memory (LTM). Recent research has demonstrated that compelling false memory illusions are relatively delay-invariant, also occurring under canonical short-term memory (STM) conditions. To investigate the contributions of gist to false memory at short and long delays, processing depth was manipulated as participants encoded lists of four semantically related words and were probed immediately, following a filled 3- to 4-s retention interval, or approximately 20 min later, in a surprise recognition test. In two experiments, the encoding manipulation dissociated STM and LTM on the frequency, but not the phenomenology, of false memory. Deep encoding at STM increases false recognition rates at LTM, but confidence ratings and remember/know judgments are similar across delays and do not differ as a function of processing depth. These results suggest that some shared and some unique processes underlie false memory illusions at short and long delays.

The stability of the international oil trade network from short-term and long-term perspectives

Science.gov (United States)

Sun, Qingru; Gao, Xiangyun; Zhong, Weiqiong; Liu, Nairong

2017-09-01

To examine the stability of the international oil trade network and explore the influence of countries and trade relationships on the trade stability, we construct weighted and unweighted international oil trade networks based on complex network theory using oil trading data between countries from 1996 to 2014. We analyze the stability of international oil trade network (IOTN) from short-term and long-term aspects. From the short-term perspective, we find that the trade volumes play an important role on the stability. Moreover, the weighted IOTN is stable; however, the unweighted networks can better reflect the actual evolution of IOTN. From the long-term perspective, we identify trade relationships that are maintained during the whole sample period to reveal the situation of the whole international oil trade. We provide a way to quantitatively measure the stability of complex network from short-term and long-term perspectives, which can be applied to measure and analyze trade stability of other goods or services.

Dissociating Measures of Consciousness from Measures of Short-Term Memory

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Thomas Alrik; Ásgeirsson, Árni Gunnar; Staugaard, Camilla Funch

Often, the contents of consciousness are equated with the contents of short-term memory (or working memory), sometimes to a point where they are treated as identical entities. In the present study we aimed to investigate whether they may be modulated independently and thus dissociated from each...... if conscious content simply can be reduced to a cognitive process like short-term memory. In two experiments, we combined two different measures of short-term memory capacity to investigate how manipulations of set-size affect performance in observers with the Perceptual Awareness Scale (PAS) to measure...... conscious experience of the stimulus in every trial (Ramsøy & Overgaard, 2004; Overgaard & Sørensen, 2004). We trained observers to report their experience of a visual target stimulus on the four-point PAS scale; ranging from “no experience” to “clear experience”. To measure short-term memory we used...

Applicability of short-term accelerated biofouling studies to predict long-term biofouling accumulation in reverse osmosis membrane systems

KAUST Repository

Sanawar, Huma

2018-02-02

Biofouling studies addressing biofouling control are mostly executed in short-term studies. It is unclear whether data collected from these experiments are representative for long-term biofouling as occurring in full-scale membrane systems. This study investigated whether short-term biofouling studies accelerated by biodegradable nutrient dosage to feed water were predictive for long-term biofouling development without nutrient dosage. Since the presence of a feed spacer has an strong effect on the degree of biofouling, this study employed six geometrically different feed spacers. Membrane fouling simulators (MFSs) were operated with the same (i) membrane, (ii) feed flow and (iii) feed water, but with feed spacers varying in geometry. For the short-term experiment, biofilm formation was enhanced by nutrient dosage to the MFS feed water, whereas no nutrient dosage was applied in the long-term experiment. Pressure drop development was monitored to characterize the extent of biofouling, while the accumulated viable biomass content at the end of the experimental run was quantified by adenosine triphosphate (ATP) measurements. Impact of feed spacer geometry on biofouling was compared for the short-term and long-term biofouling study. The results of the study revealed that the feed spacers exhibited the same biofouling behavior for (i) the short-term (9-d) study with nutrient dosage and (ii) the long-term (96-d) study without nutrient dosage. For the six different feed spacers, the accumulated viable biomass content (pg ATP.cm) was roughly the same, but the biofouling impact in terms of pressure drop increase in time was significantly different. The biofouling impact ranking of the six feed spacers was the same for the short-term and long-term biofouling studies. Therefore, it can be concluded that short-term accelerated biofouling studies in MFSs are a representative and suitable approach for the prediction of biofouling in membrane filtration systems after long-term

The role of short-term memory impairment in nonword repetition, real word repetition, and nonword decoding: A case study.

Science.gov (United States)

Peter, Beate

2018-01-01

In a companion study, adults with dyslexia and adults with a probable history of childhood apraxia of speech showed evidence of difficulty with processing sequential information during nonword repetition, multisyllabic real word repetition and nonword decoding. Results suggested that some errors arose in visual encoding during nonword reading, all levels of processing but especially short-term memory storage/retrieval during nonword repetition, and motor planning and programming during complex real word repetition. To further investigate the role of short-term memory, a participant with short-term memory impairment (MI) was recruited. MI was confirmed with poor performance during a sentence repetition and three nonword repetition tasks, all of which have a high short-term memory load, whereas typical performance was observed during tests of reading, spelling, and static verbal knowledge, all with low short-term memory loads. Experimental results show error-free performance during multisyllabic real word repetition but high counts of sequence errors, especially migrations and assimilations, during nonword repetition, supporting short-term memory as a locus of sequential processing deficit during nonword repetition. Results are also consistent with the hypothesis that during complex real word repetition, short-term memory is bypassed as the word is recognized and retrieved from long-term memory prior to producing the word.

Short-term fasting alters cytochrome P450-mediated drug metabolism in humans

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Lammers, Laureen A.; Achterbergh, Roos; de Vries, Emmely M.; van Nierop, F. Samuel; Klümpen, Heinz-Josef; Soeters, Maarten R.; Boelen, Anita; Romijn, Johannes A.; Mathôt, Ron A. A.

2015-01-01

Experimental studies indicate that short-term fasting alters drug metabolism. However, the effects of short-term fasting on drug metabolism in humans need further investigation. Therefore, the aim of this study was to evaluate the effects of short-term fasting (36 h) on P450-mediated drug

False memory for face in short-term memory and neural activity in human amygdala.

Science.gov (United States)

Iidaka, Tetsuya; Harada, Tokiko; Sadato, Norihiro

2014-12-03

Human memory is often inaccurate. Similar to words and figures, new faces are often recognized as seen or studied items in long- and short-term memory tests; however, the neural mechanisms underlying this false memory remain elusive. In a previous fMRI study using morphed faces and a standard false memory paradigm, we found that there was a U-shaped response curve of the amygdala to old, new, and lure items. This indicates that the amygdala is more active in response to items that are salient (hit and correct rejection) compared to items that are less salient (false alarm), in terms of memory retrieval. In the present fMRI study, we determined whether the false memory for faces occurs within the short-term memory range (a few seconds), and assessed which neural correlates are involved in veridical and illusory memories. Nineteen healthy participants were scanned by 3T MRI during a short-term memory task using morphed faces. The behavioral results indicated that the occurrence of false memories was within the short-term range. We found that the amygdala displayed a U-shaped response curve to memory items, similar to those observed in our previous study. These results suggest that the amygdala plays a common role in both long- and short-term false memory for faces. We made the following conclusions: First, the amygdala is involved in detecting the saliency of items, in addition to fear, and supports goal-oriented behavior by modulating memory. Second, amygdala activity and response time might be related with a subject's response criterion for similar faces. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Short term efficacy of interventional therapy for hilar biliary obstruction

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Zhai Renyou; Dai Dingke; Wang Jianfeng; Yu Ping; Wei Baojie

2006-01-01

Objective: To analyze the method and short term efficacy of interventional therapy for hilar biliary obstructive jaundice. Methods: 100 consecutive patients with perihilar biliary obstruction admitted before May 2004 were treated with percutaneous transhepatic biliary drainage (PTBD) or placement of metallic stents. Among them, 39 patients were found with bile duct cancer, 6 with adenocarcinoma of gallbladder, 22 with metastatic carcinoma, 15 with primary liver carcinoma and 18 with bile duct strait after liver transplantation. Serum total bilirubin before operation and 3-7 days, 8-14 days after procedure were analysed by t test. Results: 79 patients with PTBD (including simple external drainage and combined internal and external drainage), and 21 patients with stents placement (including 31 stents of 4 different kinds) were all carried out successfully. There were significant differences in serum total bilirubin before and 3-7 days, 8-14 days after the procedure, P<0.05 vs P<0.01. Conclusion: Interventional therapy is simple, safe, and effective for hilar biliary obstruction, the latter showed more significance than the former with short term satisfaction. (authors)

Morning-evening difference of team-handball-related short-term maximal physical performances in female team handball players.

Science.gov (United States)

Mhenni, Thouraya; Michalsik, Lars Bojsen; Mejri, Mohamed Arbi; Yousfi, Narimen; Chaouachi, Anis; Souissi, Nizar; Chamari, Karim

2017-05-01

This study investigated the two different time-of-day effect on team-handball-related short-term maximal physical performances. At two different time-of-day, fifteen young female team handball players performed different physical tests: HandGrip (HG) test, Ball-Throwing Velocity (BTV) test, Modified Agility T-test (MAT) and Repeated Shuttle-Sprint and Jump Ability (RSSJA) test. Rating of perceived exertion (RPE) scale was determined following the termination of the last test. Measurements were performed at two separate testing sessions (i.e., in the morning (7:00-8:30 h) and in the early evening (17:00-18:30 h)) in a randomised and counter-balanced setting on non-consecutive days. The results showed that HG (P = 0.0013), BTV (P = 0.0027) and MAT (P handball players, team-handball-related short-term maximal physical performances were better in the afternoon than in the morning.

Ultra-Short-Term Heart Rate Variability is Sensitive to Training Effects in Team Sports Players.

Science.gov (United States)

Nakamura, Fabio Y; Flatt, Andrew A; Pereira, Lucas A; Ramirez-Campillo, Rodrigo; Loturco, Irineu; Esco, Michael R

2015-09-01

The aim of this study was to test the possibility of the ultra-short-term lnRMSSD (measured in 1-min post-1-min stabilization period) to detect training induced adaptations in futsal players. Twenty-four elite futsal players underwent HRV assessments pre- and post-three or four weeks preseason training. From the 10-min HRV recording period, lnRMSSD was analyzed in the following time segments: 1) from 0-5 min (i.e., stabilization period); 2) from 0-1 min; 1-2 min; 2-3 min; 3-4 min; 4-5 min and; 3) from 5-10 min (i.e., criterion period). The lnRMSSD was almost certainly higher (100/00/00) using the magnitude-based inference in all periods at the post- moment. The correlation between changes in ultra-short-term lnRMSSD (i.e., 0-1 min; 1-2 min; 2-3 min; 3-4 min; 4-5 min) and lnRMSSDCriterion ranged between 0.45-0.75, with the highest value (p = 0.75; 90% CI: 0.55 - 0.85) found between ultra-short-term lnRMDSSD at 1-2 min and lnRMSSDCriterion. In conclusion, lnRMSSD determined in a short period of 1-min is sensitive to training induced changes in futsal players (based on the very large correlation to the criterion measure), and can be used to track cardiac autonomic adaptations. Key pointsThe ultra-short-term (1 min) natural log of the root-mean-square difference of successive normal RR intervals (lnRMSSD) is sensitive to training effects in futsal playersThe ultra-short-term lnRMSSD may simplify the assessment of the cardiac autonomic changes in the field compared to the traditional and lengthier (10 min duration) analysisCoaches are encouraged to implement the ultra-short-term heart rate variability in their routines to monitor team sports athletes.

Dissociating Contents of Consciousness from Contents of Short-Term Memory

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sørensen, Thomas Alrik; Ásgeirsson, Árni Gunnar; Staugaard, Camilla Funch

2014-01-01

The contents of consciousness and of short-term memory are hard to disentangle. As it seems intuitive that we represent attended objects in short-term memory and in experience, to many, it also seems intuitive to equate this content. Here we investigated memory resolution for orientation......” to a “clear experience” of a probed target. To assess memory resolution we used a Landolt-variation on the visual short-term memory (VSTM) resolution paradigm (e.g. Wilken & Ma, 2004). Set-sizes in the memory display were varied between 1, 2, or 4 elements. With increasing set-size we found that both...

Some risks related to the short-term trading of natural gas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Ahmed El Hachemi Mazighi

2004-01-01

Traditionally guided by long-term contracts, the international natural gas trade is experiencing new methods of operating, based on the short term and more flexibility. Today, indeed, the existence of uncommitted quantities of natural gas, combined with gas price discrepancies among different regions of the world, gives room for the expansion of the spot-trading of gas. The main objective of this paper is to discuss three fundamental risks related to the short-term trading of natural gas: volume risk, price risk and infrastructure risk. The defenders Of globalisation argue that the transition from the long-term to the short-term trading of natural gas is mainly a question of access to gas reserves, decreasing costs of gas liquefaction, the building of liquefied natural gas (LNG) fleets and regasification facilities and third-party access to the infrastructure. This process needs to be as short as possible, so that the risks related to the transition process will disappear rapidly. On the other hand, the detractors of globalisation put the emphasis on the complexity of the gas value chain and on the fact that eliminating long- term contracts increases the risks inherent to the international natural gas business. In this paper, we try to untangle and assess the risks related to the short-term trading of natural gas. Our main conclusions are: the short-term trading of gas is far from riskless; volume risk requires stock-building in both consuming and producing countries. (author)

Are narcissists sexy? Zeroing in on the effect of narcissism on short-term mate appeal.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Dufner, M.; Rauthmann, J.F.; Czarna, A.Z.; Denissen, J.J.A.

2013-01-01

This research was aimed to provide a comprehensive test of the classic notion that narcissistic individuals are appealing as short-term romantic or sexual partners. In three studies, we tested the hypotheses that narcissism exerts a positive effect on an individual’s mate appeal and that this effect

Holding multiple items in short term memory: a neural mechanism.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Edmund T Rolls

Full Text Available Human short term memory has a capacity of several items maintained simultaneously. We show how the number of short term memory representations that an attractor network modeling a cortical local network can simultaneously maintain active is increased by using synaptic facilitation of the type found in the prefrontal cortex. We have been able to maintain 9 short term memories active simultaneously in integrate-and-fire simulations where the proportion of neurons in each population, the sparseness, is 0.1, and have confirmed the stability of such a system with mean field analyses. Without synaptic facilitation the system can maintain many fewer memories active in the same network. The system operates because of the effectively increased synaptic strengths formed by the synaptic facilitation just for those pools to which the cue is applied, and then maintenance of this synaptic facilitation in just those pools when the cue is removed by the continuing neuronal firing in those pools. The findings have implications for understanding how several items can be maintained simultaneously in short term memory, how this may be relevant to the implementation of language in the brain, and suggest new approaches to understanding and treating the decline in short term memory that can occur with normal aging.

Holding multiple items in short term memory: a neural mechanism.

Science.gov (United States)

Rolls, Edmund T; Dempere-Marco, Laura; Deco, Gustavo

2013-01-01

Human short term memory has a capacity of several items maintained simultaneously. We show how the number of short term memory representations that an attractor network modeling a cortical local network can simultaneously maintain active is increased by using synaptic facilitation of the type found in the prefrontal cortex. We have been able to maintain 9 short term memories active simultaneously in integrate-and-fire simulations where the proportion of neurons in each population, the sparseness, is 0.1, and have confirmed the stability of such a system with mean field analyses. Without synaptic facilitation the system can maintain many fewer memories active in the same network. The system operates because of the effectively increased synaptic strengths formed by the synaptic facilitation just for those pools to which the cue is applied, and then maintenance of this synaptic facilitation in just those pools when the cue is removed by the continuing neuronal firing in those pools. The findings have implications for understanding how several items can be maintained simultaneously in short term memory, how this may be relevant to the implementation of language in the brain, and suggest new approaches to understanding and treating the decline in short term memory that can occur with normal aging.

Holding Multiple Items in Short Term Memory: A Neural Mechanism

Science.gov (United States)

Rolls, Edmund T.; Dempere-Marco, Laura; Deco, Gustavo

2013-01-01

Human short term memory has a capacity of several items maintained simultaneously. We show how the number of short term memory representations that an attractor network modeling a cortical local network can simultaneously maintain active is increased by using synaptic facilitation of the type found in the prefrontal cortex. We have been able to maintain 9 short term memories active simultaneously in integrate-and-fire simulations where the proportion of neurons in each population, the sparseness, is 0.1, and have confirmed the stability of such a system with mean field analyses. Without synaptic facilitation the system can maintain many fewer memories active in the same network. The system operates because of the effectively increased synaptic strengths formed by the synaptic facilitation just for those pools to which the cue is applied, and then maintenance of this synaptic facilitation in just those pools when the cue is removed by the continuing neuronal firing in those pools. The findings have implications for understanding how several items can be maintained simultaneously in short term memory, how this may be relevant to the implementation of language in the brain, and suggest new approaches to understanding and treating the decline in short term memory that can occur with normal aging. PMID:23613789

Verification of responses of Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) to anti-androgens, vinclozolin and flutamide, in short-term assays.

Science.gov (United States)

Nakamura, Ataru; Takanobu, Hitomi; Tamura, Ikumi; Yamamuro, Masumi; Iguchi, Taisen; Tatarazako, Norihisa

2014-05-01

Various testing methods for the detection of the endocrine disruptive activities of chemicals have been developed in freshwater fish species. However, a few relatively easier specific methods for detecting anti-androgenic activities are available for fish. The aim of this study was to verify the papillary process in Japanese medaka (Oryzias latipes) as an indicator of the anti-androgenic activity of chemicals. Japanese medaka were exposed to two types of anti-androgenic compounds, vinclozolin and flutamide, using two short-term assays; one was conformed to the existing short-term reproduction assay using adult fish (adult test) and the other was a test based on the same methods but using juvenile fish at the beginning of exposure (juvenile test). Significant decreases in male papillary processes were observed in the juvenile test treated with the highest concentration of both antiandrogens (640 µg l(-1) vinclozolin and 1000 µg l(-1) flutamide); however, no significant effects were observed in the adult test. Consequently, our results indicate that papillary processes in Japanese medaka can be used as the end-point for screening the anti-androgenic activity of chemicals using juvenile fish for a specific period based on the existing short-term reproduction assay. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A Spiking Working Memory Model Based on Hebbian Short-Term Potentiation

Science.gov (United States)

Fiebig, Florian

2017-01-01

A dominant theory of working memory (WM), referred to as the persistent activity hypothesis, holds that recurrently connected neural networks, presumably located in the prefrontal cortex, encode and maintain WM memory items through sustained elevated activity. Reexamination of experimental data has shown that prefrontal cortex activity in single units during delay periods is much more variable than predicted by such a theory and associated computational models. Alternative models of WM maintenance based on synaptic plasticity, such as short-term nonassociative (non-Hebbian) synaptic facilitation, have been suggested but cannot account for encoding of novel associations. Here we test the hypothesis that a recently identified fast-expressing form of Hebbian synaptic plasticity (associative short-term potentiation) is a possible mechanism for WM encoding and maintenance. Our simulations using a spiking neural network model of cortex reproduce a range of cognitive memory effects in the classical multi-item WM task of encoding and immediate free recall of word lists. Memory reactivation in the model occurs in discrete oscillatory bursts rather than as sustained activity. We relate dynamic network activity as well as key synaptic characteristics to electrophysiological measurements. Our findings support the hypothesis that fast Hebbian short-term potentiation is a key WM mechanism. SIGNIFICANCE STATEMENT Working memory (WM) is a key component of cognition. Hypotheses about the neural mechanism behind WM are currently under revision. Reflecting recent findings of fast Hebbian synaptic plasticity in cortex, we test whether a cortical spiking neural network model with such a mechanism can learn a multi-item WM task (word list learning). We show that our model can reproduce human cognitive phenomena and achieve comparable memory performance in both free and cued recall while being simultaneously compatible with experimental data on structure, connectivity, and

Qualitative similarities in the visual short-term memory of pigeons and people.

Science.gov (United States)

Gibson, Brett; Wasserman, Edward; Luck, Steven J

2011-10-01

Visual short-term memory plays a key role in guiding behavior, and individual differences in visual short-term memory capacity are strongly predictive of higher cognitive abilities. To provide a broader evolutionary context for understanding this memory system, we directly compared the behavior of pigeons and humans on a change detection task. Although pigeons had a lower storage capacity and a higher lapse rate than humans, both species stored multiple items in short-term memory and conformed to the same basic performance model. Thus, despite their very different evolutionary histories and neural architectures, pigeons and humans have functionally similar visual short-term memory systems, suggesting that the functional properties of visual short-term memory are subject to similar selective pressures across these distant species.

Short- and long-term black tea consumption reverses endothelial dysfunction in patients with coronary artery disease.

Science.gov (United States)

Duffy, S J; Keaney , J F; Holbrook, M; Gokce, N; Swerdloff, P L; Frei, B; Vita, J A

2001-07-10

Epidemiological studies suggest that tea consumption decreases cardiovascular risk, but the mechanisms of benefit remain undefined. Endothelial dysfunction has been associated with coronary artery disease and increased oxidative stress. Some antioxidants have been shown to reverse endothelial dysfunction, and tea contains antioxidant flavonoids. Methods and Results-- To test the hypothesis that tea consumption will reverse endothelial dysfunction, we randomized 66 patients with proven coronary artery disease to consume black tea and water in a crossover design. Short-term effects were examined 2 hours after consumption of 450 mL tea or water. Long-term effects were examined after consumption of 900 mL tea or water daily for 4 weeks. Vasomotor function of the brachial artery was examined at baseline and after each intervention with vascular ultrasound. Fifty patients completed the protocol and had technically suitable ultrasound measurements. Both short- and long-term tea consumption improved endothelium- dependent flow-mediated dilation of the brachial artery, whereas consumption of water had no effect (Peffect on endothelium-independent nitroglycerin-induced dilation. An equivalent oral dose of caffeine (200 mg) had no short-term effect on flow-mediated dilation. Plasma flavonoids increased after short- and long-term tea consumption. Short- and long-term black tea consumption reverses endothelial vasomotor dysfunction in patients with coronary artery disease. This finding may partly explain the association between tea intake and decreased cardiovascular disease events.

An investigation of the genetic toxicology of irradiated foodstuffs using short-term systems

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Phillips, B.J.; Kranz, E.; Elias, P.S.; Muenzner, R.

1980-01-01

The genetic toxicology of irradiated foodstuffs has been investigated by the use of a battery of short-term tests for genetic damage. Appropriate methods are discussed for the preparation of food samples for testing by techniques involving micro-organisms and mammalian cells in culture. A new method of sample preparation by enzymatic digestion in vitro is described and its use in the testing of three irradiated foodstuffs by the Salmonella typhimurium reverse mutation test is reported. The results of the mutation tests provide further evidence of the lack of genetic toxicity of irradiated foods. (author)

Short-term hydropower production planning by stochastic programming

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Fleten, Stein-Erik; Kristoffersen, Trine

2008-01-01

-term production planning a matter of spatial distribution among the reservoirs of the plant. Day-ahead market prices and reservoir inflows are, however, uncertain beyond the current operation day and water must be allocated among the reservoirs in order to strike a balance between current profits and expected......Within the framework of multi-stage mixed-integer linear stochastic programming we develop a short-term production plan for a price-taking hydropower plant operating under uncertainty. Current production must comply with the day-ahead commitments of the previous day which makes short...

Short-term variability of CYG X-1

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Oda, M.; Doi, K.; Ogawara, Y.; Takagishi, K.; Wada, M.

1975-01-01

The short-term X-ray variability distinguishes Cyg X-1, which is the most likely candidate of the black hole, from other X-ray sources. Present status of our knowledge on this short-term variation mainly from the Uhuru, the MIT and the GSFC observations is reviewed. The nature of impulsive variations which compose the time variation exceeding the statistical fluctuation is discussed. There are indications that the energy spectrum of large pulses is harder than the average spectrum or the large pulses are the characteristics of the hard component of the spectrum if it is composed of two, soft and hard, components. Features of the variations may be partly simulated by the superposition of random short-noise pulses with a fraction of a second duration. However, the autocorrelation analysis and the dynamic spectrum analysis indicate that the correlation lasts for several seconds and in the variation buried are some regularities which exhibit power concentrations in several frequency bands; 0.2 -- 0.3, 0.4 -- 0.5, 0.8, 1.2 -- 1.5 Hz. There are several possible interpretation of these results in terms of: e.g. a) a mixture of short-noise pulses with two or more constant durations, b) the shape of the basic shot-noise pulse, c) bunching of the pulses, d) superposition of wave-packets or temporal oscillations. But we have not yet reached any definite understandings in the nature of the variabilities. The sub-structure of the fluctuations on a time scale of milli-second suggested by two investigations is also discussed. (auth.)

Some risks related to the short-term trading of natural gas

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Mazighi, Ahmed El Hachemi

2004-01-01

Traditionally guided by long-term contracts, the international natural gas trade is experiencing new methods of operating, based on the short term and more flexibility. Today, indeed, the existence of uncommitted quantities of natural gas, combined with gas price discrepancies among different regions of the world, gives room for the expansion of the spot-trading of gas. The main objective of this paper is to discuss three fundamental risks related to the short-term trading of natural gas: volume risk, price risk and infrastructure risk. The defenders of globalisation argue that the transition from the long-term to the short-term trading of natural gas is mainly a question of access to gas reserves, decreasing costs of gas liquefaction, the building of liquefied natural gas (LNG) fleets and regasification facilities and third-party access to the infrastructure. This process needs to be as short as possible, so that the risks related to the transition process will disappear rapidly. On the other hand, the detractors of globalisation put the emphasis on the complexity of the gas value chain and on the fact that eliminating long-term contracts increases the risks inherent to the international natural gas business. In this paper, we try to untangle and assess the risks related to the short-term trading of natural gas. Our main conclusions are: the short-term trading of gas is far from riskless; volume risk requires stock-building in both consuming and producing countries; price risk, through the high volatility for gas, induces an increase in options prices; there is no evidence to suggest that money-lenders' appetite for financing gas infrastructure projects will continue in a short-term trading system. This would be a threat to consumers' security of supply. (Author)

Visuospatial and Verbal Short-Term Memory Correlates of Vocabulary Ability in Preschool Children

Science.gov (United States)

Stokes, Stephanie F.; Klee, Thomas; Kornisch, Myriam; Furlong, Lisa

2017-01-01

Background: Recent studies indicate that school-age children's patterns of performance on measures of verbal and visuospatial short-term memory (STM) and working memory (WM) differ across types of neurodevelopmental disorders. Because these disorders are often characterized by early language delay, administering STM and WM tests to toddlers could…

The Impact of Pointing on the Short-Term Memory (STM) of Heterophonic Homographs

Science.gov (United States)

Vaknin-Nusbaum, Vered; Miller, Paul

2014-01-01

This study entailed two short-term memory (STM) experiments investigating the importance of vowel diacritics for the temporary retention of three distinct Hebrew word list types: heterophonic homographs, non-homographs and homophonic homographs. Eighty university students participated in each experiment, with half of them tested with word lists…

Social cognitive markers of short-term clinical outcome in first-episode psychosis.

Science.gov (United States)

Montreuil, Tina; Bodnar, Michael; Bertrand, Marie-Claude; Malla, Ashok K; Joober, Ridha; Lepage, Martin

2010-07-01

In psychotic disorders, impairments in cognition have been associated with both clinical and functional outcome, while deficits in social cognition have been associated with functional outcome. As an extension to a recent report on neurocognition and short-term clinical outcome in first-episode psychosis (FEP), the current study explored whether social cognitive deficits could also identify poor short-term clinical outcome among FEP patients. We defined the social-cognition domain based on the scores from the Hinting Task and the Four Factor Tests of Social Intelligence. Data were collected in 45 FEP patients and 26 healthy controls. The patients were divided into good- and poor-outcome groups based on clinical data at six months following initiation of treatment. Social cognition was compared among 27 poor-outcome, 18 good-outcome, and 26 healthy-control participants. Outcome groups significantly differed in the social cognition domain (z-scores: poor outcome=-2.0 [SD=1.4]; good outcome=-1.0 [SD=1.0]; p=0.005), with both groups scoring significantly lower than the control group (psocial cognition appears to be compromised in all FEP patients compared to healthy controls. More interestingly, significant differences in social cognitive impairments exist between good and poor short-term clinical outcome groups, with the largest effect found in the Cartoon Predictions subtest.

Neurotrophins play differential roles in short and long-term recognition memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Callaghan, Charlotte K; Kelly, Aine M

2013-09-01

The neurotrophin family of proteins are believed to mediate various forms of synaptic plasticity in the adult brain. Here we have assessed the roles of these proteins in object recognition memory in the rat, using icv infusions of function-blocking antibodies or the tyrosine kinase antagonist, tyrphostin AG879, to block Trk receptors. We report that tyrphostin AG879 impairs both short-term and long-term recognition memory, indicating a requirement for Trk receptor activation in both processes. The effect of inhibition of each of the neurotrophins with activity-blocking neutralising antibodies was also tested. Treatment with anti-BDNF, anti-NGF or anti-NT4 had no effect on short-term memory, but blocked long-term recognition memory. Treatment with anti-NT3 had no effect on either process. We also assessed changes in expression of neurotrophins and their respective receptors in the hippocampus, dentate gyrus and perirhinal cortex over a 24 h period following training in the object recognition task. We observed time-dependent changes in expression of the Trk receptors and their ligands in the dentate gyrus and perirhinal cortex. The data are consistent with a pivotal role for neurotrophic factors in the expression of recognition memory. Copyright © 2013 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Independence of long-term contextual memory and short-term perceptual hypotheses: Evidence from contextual cueing of interrupted search.

Science.gov (United States)

Schlagbauer, Bernhard; Mink, Maurice; Müller, Hermann J; Geyer, Thomas

2017-02-01

Observers are able to resume an interrupted search trial faster relative to responding to a new, unseen display. This finding of rapid resumption is attributed to short-term perceptual hypotheses generated on the current look and confirmed upon subsequent looks at the same display. It has been suggested that the contents of perceptual hypotheses are similar to those of other forms of memory acquired long-term through repeated exposure to the same search displays over the course of several trials, that is, the memory supporting "contextual cueing." In three experiments, we investigated the relationship between short-term perceptual hypotheses and long-term contextual memory. The results indicated that long-term, contextual memory of repeated displays neither affected the generation nor the confirmation of short-term perceptual hypotheses for these displays. Furthermore, the analysis of eye movements suggests that long-term memory provides an initial benefit in guiding attention to the target, whereas in subsequent looks guidance is entirely based on short-term perceptual hypotheses. Overall, the results reveal a picture of both long- and short-term memory contributing to reliable performance gains in interrupted search, while exerting their effects in an independent manner.

Questioning short-term memory and its measurement: Why digit span measures long-term associative learning.

Science.gov (United States)

Jones, Gary; Macken, Bill

2015-11-01

Traditional accounts of verbal short-term memory explain differences in performance for different types of verbal material by reference to inherent characteristics of the verbal items making up memory sequences. The role of previous experience with sequences of different types is ostensibly controlled for either by deliberate exclusion or by presenting multiple trials constructed from different random permutations. We cast doubt on this general approach in a detailed analysis of the basis for the robust finding that short-term memory for digit sequences is superior to that for other sequences of verbal material. Specifically, we show across four experiments that this advantage is not due to inherent characteristics of digits as verbal items, nor are individual digits within sequences better remembered than other types of individual verbal items. Rather, the advantage for digit sequences stems from the increased frequency, compared to other verbal material, with which digits appear in random sequences in natural language, and furthermore, relatively frequent digit sequences support better short-term serial recall than less frequent ones. We also provide corpus-based computational support for the argument that performance in a short-term memory setting is a function of basic associative learning processes operating on the linguistic experience of the rememberer. The experimental and computational results raise questions not only about the role played by measurement of digit span in cognition generally, but also about the way in which long-term memory processes impact on short-term memory functioning. Copyright © 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Dynamic visual noise reduces confidence in short-term memory for visual information.

Science.gov (United States)

Kemps, Eva; Andrade, Jackie

2012-05-01

Previous research has shown effects of the visual interference technique, dynamic visual noise (DVN), on visual imagery, but not on visual short-term memory, unless retention of precise visual detail is required. This study tested the prediction that DVN does also affect retention of gross visual information, specifically by reducing confidence. Participants performed a matrix pattern memory task with three retention interval interference conditions (DVN, static visual noise and no interference control) that varied from trial to trial. At recall, participants indicated whether or not they were sure of their responses. As in previous research, DVN did not impair recall accuracy or latency on the task, but it did reduce recall confidence relative to static visual noise and no interference. We conclude that DVN does distort visual representations in short-term memory, but standard coarse-grained recall measures are insensitive to these distortions.

Hippocampal size is related to short-term true and false memory, and right fusiform size is related to long-term true and false memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Zhu, Bi; Chen, Chuansheng; Loftus, Elizabeth F; He, Qinghua; Lei, Xuemei; Dong, Qi; Lin, Chongde

2016-11-01

There is a keen interest in identifying specific brain regions that are related to individual differences in true and false memories. Previous functional neuroimaging studies showed that activities in the hippocampus, right fusiform gyrus, and parahippocampal gyrus were associated with true and false memories, but no study thus far has examined whether the structures of these brain regions are associated with short-term and long-term true and false memories. To address that question, the current study analyzed data from 205 healthy young adults, who had valid data from both structural brain imaging and a misinformation task. In the misinformation task, subjects saw the crime scenarios, received misinformation, and took memory tests about the crimes an hour later and again after 1.5 years. Results showed that bilateral hippocampal volume was associated with short-term true and false memories, whereas right fusiform gyrus volume and surface area were associated with long-term true and false memories. This study provides the first evidence for the structural neural bases of individual differences in short-term and long-term true and false memories.

Graph Theoretical Analysis of Functional Brain Networks: Test-Retest Evaluation on Short- and Long-Term Resting-State Functional MRI Data

Science.gov (United States)

Wang, Jin-Hui; Zuo, Xi-Nian; Gohel, Suril; Milham, Michael P.; Biswal, Bharat B.; He, Yong

2011-01-01

Graph-based computational network analysis has proven a powerful tool to quantitatively characterize functional architectures of the brain. However, the test-retest (TRT) reliability of graph metrics of functional networks has not been systematically examined. Here, we investigated TRT reliability of topological metrics of functional brain networks derived from resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging data. Specifically, we evaluated both short-term (5 months apart) TRT reliability for 12 global and 6 local nodal network metrics. We found that reliability of global network metrics was overall low, threshold-sensitive and dependent on several factors of scanning time interval (TI, long-term>short-term), network membership (NM, networks excluding negative correlations>networks including negative correlations) and network type (NT, binarized networks>weighted networks). The dependence was modulated by another factor of node definition (ND) strategy. The local nodal reliability exhibited large variability across nodal metrics and a spatially heterogeneous distribution. Nodal degree was the most reliable metric and varied the least across the factors above. Hub regions in association and limbic/paralimbic cortices showed moderate TRT reliability. Importantly, nodal reliability was robust to above-mentioned four factors. Simulation analysis revealed that global network metrics were extremely sensitive (but varying degrees) to noise in functional connectivity and weighted networks generated numerically more reliable results in compared with binarized networks. For nodal network metrics, they showed high resistance to noise in functional connectivity and no NT related differences were found in the resistance. These findings provide important implications on how to choose reliable analytical schemes and network metrics of interest. PMID:21818285

Impact of Short-Term Training in Social Cognition in Preschoolers with Externalizing Behavior

Science.gov (United States)

Houssa, Marine; Jacobs, Emilie; Nader-Grosbois, Nathalie

2017-01-01

In two experimental and exploratory studies, we wanted to test the differentiated effects on preschoolers with externalizing behavior (EB) of two short-term social information processing (SIP) and Theory of Mind (ToM) training sessions, in comparison with typically developing (TD) preschoolers or with preschoolers with EB whom didn't receive…

Modelling the short-term response of the Greenland ice-sheet to global warming

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Wal, R.S.W. van de; Oerlemans, J.

1997-01-01

A two-dimensional vertically integrated ice flow model has been developed to test the importance of various processes and concepts used for the prediction of the contribution of the Greenland ice-sheet to sea-level rise over the next 350 y (short-term response). The mass balance is modelled by the

Short-Term Memory as an Additional Predictor of School Achievement for Immigrant Children?

Science.gov (United States)

te Nijenhuis, Jan; Resing, Wilma; Tolboom, Elsbeth; Bleichrodt, Nico

2004-01-01

The predictive validity and utility of assessment procedures can be increased by adding predictors to the prediction supplied by general ability tests. Of Jensen's early work comes the suggestion of focusing on the cognitive ability short-term memory (STM), especially for low-"g" Black children. Meta-analysis convincingly shows high…

Unmasking Stem/Progenitor Cell Properties in Differentiated Epithelial Cells Using Short-term Transplantation

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Lewis, Michael T

2006-01-01

...) To determine the range of mammary stem cell types participating in gland regeneration. 2) To develop the short-term transplantation assay as a means by which critical regulators of stem and progenitor cell behavior can be discovered and evaluated. Relevance: Studies will provide a direct test of prevailing stem cell models.

Unmasking Stem/Progenitor Cell Properties in Differentiated Epithelial Cells Using Short-term Transplantation

National Research Council Canada - National Science Library

Lewis, Michael T

2007-01-01

...) To determine the range of mammary stem cell types participating in gland regeneration. 2) To develop the short-term transplantation assay as a means by which critical regulators of stem and progenitor cell behavior can be discovered and evaluated. Relevance: Studies will provide a direct test of prevailing stem cell models.

Short-term risk of falling after cochlear implantation.

Science.gov (United States)

Stevens, Madelyn N; Baudhuin, Jacqueline E; Hullar, Timothy E

2014-01-01

Cochlear implantation is a highly effective intervention for hearing loss, but insertion of an implant into the cochlea is often accompanied by loss of residual hearing function. Sometimes, postoperative testing also shows loss of function in the semicircular canals or otolith organs. The effect of this loss on equilibrium, particularly in the short term following surgery, and the risk of falling due to this loss is unknown. We prospectively measured balance in 16 consecutive adult cochlear implant patients before and 2 weeks after surgery. Subjects stood on a foam pad with eyes closed, feet together and arms at the side. The length of time over which this posture could be maintained was recorded up to a maximum value of 30 s indicating normal performance. Ten of 16 subjects reached a maximal time on preoperative testing. Nine of 16 subjects lost balance function after surgery. Four of the 10 subjects with normal preoperative balance function lost function. Subjects older than the age of 60 were more likely to lose balance function than younger subjects. We used previously published values relating balance performance on foam to risk of falling to calculate the fall risk among our subjects. The relative risk of falling increased after surgery by more than threefold in some patients. Imbalance after cochlear implantation may be much more common, particularly in the short term, than previously appreciated. This imbalance is accompanied by an increased risk of falling in many patients. Careful preoperative counseling before implantation and postoperative therapeutic intervention to improve comfort and reduce the chance of falling may be warranted, particularly in patients at a risk for injuries from falls (level of evidence: 2b). © 2014 S. Karger AG, Basel.

Ordered Short-Term Memory Differs in Signers and Speakers: Implications for Models of Short-Term Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Bavelier, Daphne; Newport, Elissa L.; Hall, Matt; Supalla, Ted; Boutla, Mrim

2008-01-01

Capacity limits in linguistic short-term memory (STM) are typically measured with forward span tasks in which participants are asked to recall lists of words in the order presented. Using such tasks, native signers of American Sign Language (ASL) exhibit smaller spans than native speakers ([Boutla, M., Supalla, T., Newport, E. L., & Bavelier, D.…

Short-term energy outlook: Quarterly projections, Third quarter 1992

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1992-08-01

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) prepares quarterly, short-term energy supply, demand, and price projections for publication in February, May, August, and November in the Short-Term Energy Outlook (Outlook). An annual supplement analyzes the performance of previous forecasts, compares recent cases with those of other forecasting services, and discusses current topics related to the short-term energy markets. (See Short-Term Energy Outlook Annual Supplement, DOE/EIA-0202.) The principal users of the Outlook are managers and energy analysts in private industry and government. The forecast period for this issue of the Outlook extends from the third quarter of 1992 through the fourth quarter of 1993. Values for the second quarter of 1992, however, are preliminary EIA estimates (for example, some monthly values for petroleum supply and disposition are derived in part from weekly data reported in the Weekly Petroleum Status Report) or are calculated from model simulations using the latest exogenous information available (for example, electricity sales and generation are simulated using actual weather data). The historical energy data are EIA data published in the Monthly Energy Review, Petroleum Supply Monthly, and other EIA publications. Minor discrepancies between the data in these publications and the historical data in this Outlook are due to independent rounding

Auditory-Cortex Short-Term Plasticity Induced by Selective Attention

Science.gov (United States)

Jääskeläinen, Iiro P.; Ahveninen, Jyrki

2014-01-01

The ability to concentrate on relevant sounds in the acoustic environment is crucial for everyday function and communication. Converging lines of evidence suggests that transient functional changes in auditory-cortex neurons, “short-term plasticity”, might explain this fundamental function. Under conditions of strongly focused attention, enhanced processing of attended sounds can take place at very early latencies (~50 ms from sound onset) in primary auditory cortex and possibly even at earlier latencies in subcortical structures. More robust selective-attention short-term plasticity is manifested as modulation of responses peaking at ~100 ms from sound onset in functionally specialized nonprimary auditory-cortical areas by way of stimulus-specific reshaping of neuronal receptive fields that supports filtering of selectively attended sound features from task-irrelevant ones. Such effects have been shown to take effect in ~seconds following shifting of attentional focus. There are findings suggesting that the reshaping of neuronal receptive fields is even stronger at longer auditory-cortex response latencies (~300 ms from sound onset). These longer-latency short-term plasticity effects seem to build up more gradually, within tens of seconds after shifting the focus of attention. Importantly, some of the auditory-cortical short-term plasticity effects observed during selective attention predict enhancements in behaviorally measured sound discrimination performance. PMID:24551458

The loss of short-term visual representations over time: decay or temporal distinctiveness?

Science.gov (United States)

Mercer, Tom

2014-12-01

There has been much recent interest in the loss of visual short-term memories over the passage of time. According to decay theory, visual representations are gradually forgotten as time passes, reflecting a slow and steady distortion of the memory trace. However, this is controversial and decay effects can be explained in other ways. The present experiment aimed to reexamine the maintenance and loss of visual information over the short term. Decay and temporal distinctiveness models were tested using a delayed discrimination task, in which participants compared complex and novel objects over unfilled retention intervals of variable length. Experiment 1 found no significant change in the accuracy of visual memory from 2 to 6 s, but the gap separating trials reliably influenced task performance. Experiment 2 found evidence for information loss at a 10-s retention interval, but temporally separating trials restored the fidelity of visual memory, possibly because temporally isolated representations are distinct from older memory traces. In conclusion, visual representations lose accuracy at some point after 6 s, but only within temporally crowded contexts. These findings highlight the importance of temporal distinctiveness within visual short-term memory. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Swarm Intelligence-Based Hybrid Models for Short-Term Power Load Prediction

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Jianzhou Wang

2014-01-01

Full Text Available Swarm intelligence (SI is widely and successfully applied in the engineering field to solve practical optimization problems because various hybrid models, which are based on the SI algorithm and statistical models, are developed to further improve the predictive abilities. In this paper, hybrid intelligent forecasting models based on the cuckoo search (CS as well as the singular spectrum analysis (SSA, time series, and machine learning methods are proposed to conduct short-term power load prediction. The forecasting performance of the proposed models is augmented by a rolling multistep strategy over the prediction horizon. The test results are representative of the out-performance of the SSA and CS in tuning the seasonal autoregressive integrated moving average (SARIMA and support vector regression (SVR in improving load forecasting, which indicates that both the SSA-based data denoising and SI-based intelligent optimization strategy can effectively improve the model’s predictive performance. Additionally, the proposed CS-SSA-SARIMA and CS-SSA-SVR models provide very impressive forecasting results, demonstrating their strong robustness and universal forecasting capacities in terms of short-term power load prediction 24 hours in advance.

Short-Term Effects of Midseason Coach Turnover on Team Performance in Soccer

Science.gov (United States)

Balduck, Anne-Line; Buelens, Marc; Philippaerts, Renaat

2010-01-01

The present study addressed the issue of short-term performance effects of midseason coach turnover in soccer. The goal of this study was to examine this effect on subsequent short-term team performance. The purposes of this study were to (a) examine whether midseason coach turnover improved results in the short term, and (b) examine how team…

Short-term Forecasting Tools for Agricultural Nutrient Management.

Science.gov (United States)

Easton, Zachary M; Kleinman, Peter J A; Buda, Anthony R; Goering, Dustin; Emberston, Nichole; Reed, Seann; Drohan, Patrick J; Walter, M Todd; Guinan, Pat; Lory, John A; Sommerlot, Andrew R; Sharpley, Andrew

2017-11-01

The advent of real-time, short-term farm management tools is motivated by the need to protect water quality above and beyond the general guidance offered by existing nutrient management plans. Advances in high-performance computing and hydrologic or climate modeling have enabled rapid dissemination of real-time information that can assist landowners and conservation personnel with short-term management planning. This paper reviews short-term decision support tools for agriculture that are under various stages of development and implementation in the United States: (i) Wisconsin's Runoff Risk Advisory Forecast (RRAF) System, (ii) New York's Hydrologically Sensitive Area Prediction Tool, (iii) Virginia's Saturated Area Forecast Model, (iv) Pennsylvania's Fertilizer Forecaster, (v) Washington's Application Risk Management (ARM) System, and (vi) Missouri's Design Storm Notification System. Although these decision support tools differ in their underlying model structure, the resolution at which they are applied, and the hydroclimates to which they are relevant, all provide forecasts (range 24-120 h) of runoff risk or soil moisture saturation derived from National Weather Service Forecast models. Although this review highlights the need for further development of robust and well-supported short-term nutrient management tools, their potential for adoption and ultimate utility requires an understanding of the appropriate context of application, the strategic and operational needs of managers, access to weather forecasts, scales of application (e.g., regional vs. field level), data requirements, and outreach communication structure. Copyright © by the American Society of Agronomy, Crop Science Society of America, and Soil Science Society of America, Inc.

An Artificial Neural Network Based Short-term Dynamic Prediction of Algae Bloom

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Yao Junyang

2014-06-01

Full Text Available This paper proposes a method of short-term prediction of algae bloom based on artificial neural network. Firstly, principal component analysis is applied to water environmental factors in algae bloom raceway ponds to get main factors that influence the formation of algae blooms. Then, a model of short-term dynamic prediction based on neural network is built with the current chlorophyll_a values as input and the chlorophyll_a values in the next moment as output to realize short-term dynamic prediction of algae bloom. Simulation results show that the model can realize short-term prediction of algae bloom effectively.

DYNAMICS OF THE ANXIETY DISORDERS IN THE COURSE OF SHORT-TERM PSYCHOTHERAPY

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

T.N. Hmylova

2008-06-01

Full Text Available The tendency of psychotherapy modern concepts referring to the short-term forms having been taken into account, we carried out the research aimed at the study of short-term form personality-oriented psychotherapy effect on the anxiety disorder dynamics. 103 patients with neurotic disorders were examined in the neurosis and psychotherapy department of the Bekhterev Psychoneurological Research Institute. The findings revealed the situational and personal anxiety level to be objectively decreased in the short-term group psychotherapy course. The short-term group psychotherapy was proved to bean effective method in anxiety disorders treatment considering indications and limitations.

Measurement of plant and soil water isotope composition by direct equilibration methods

Science.gov (United States)

Scrimgeour, C. M.

1995-11-01

Water contained in plant and soil samples can be analysed for 2H and 18O content by direct equilibration while contained within the sample matrix. Methods for this are described and compared with the commonly used azeotropic distillation of samples before isotope analysis. For δ18O, direct equilibration with CO 2 gives results in good agreement with azeotropic distillation, i.e. within 0.5%o at natural abundance. Direct equilibration is a practical method for individual twig samples containing less than 0.5 ml of water, and offers significant operator time savings compared with azeotropic distillation. Batches of up to 100 samples can be prepared in less time than required for a single azeotropic distillation, and analysis by automated continuous-flow isotope ratio mass spectrometry after equilibration for 3 days again requires a minimum of operator time. Complete equilibration of plant water with H 2 for δ2H measurement occurs only after the plant material has been heated to 100°C under vacuum. The method described here is barely precise enough for natural abundance measurements ( δ 2H ± 15‰ ) but is well suited to field tracer studies with deuterium oxide.

Laboratory and Field-Based Evaluation of Short-Term Effort with Maximal Intensity in Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Lencse-Mucha Judit

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Results of previous studies have not indicated clearly which tests should be used to assess short-term efforts of people with intellectual disabilities. Thus, the aim of the present study was to evaluate laboratory and field-based tests of short-term effort with maximal intensity of subjects with intellectual disabilities. Twenty four people with intellectual disability, who trained soccer, participated in this study. The 30 s Wingate test and additionally an 8 s test with maximum intensity were performed on a bicycle ergometer. The fatigue index, maximal and mean power, relative maximal and relative mean power were measured. Overall, nine field-based tests were conducted: 5, 10 and 20 m sprints, a 20 m shuttle run, a seated medicine ball throw, a bent arm hang test, a standing broad jump, sit-ups and a hand grip test. The reliability of the 30 s and 8 s Wingate tests for subjects with intellectual disability was confirmed. Significant correlation was observed for mean power between the 30 s and 8 s tests on the bicycle ergometer at a moderate level (r >0.4. Moreover, significant correlations were indicated between the results of laboratory tests and field tests, such as the 20 m sprint, the 20 m shuttle run, the standing long jump and the medicine ball throw. The strongest correlation was in the medicine ball throw. The 30 s Wingate test is a reliable test assessing maximal effort in subjects with intellectual disability. The results of this research confirmed that the 8 s test on a bicycle ergometer had a moderate correlation with the 30 s Wingate test in this population, thus, this comparison needs further investigation to examine alternativeness of the 8 s to 30 s Wingate tests. The non-laboratory tests could be used to indirectly assess performance in short-term efforts with maximal intensity.

Laboratory and Field-Based Evaluation of Short-Term Effort with Maximal Intensity in Individuals with Intellectual Disabilities

Science.gov (United States)

Lencse-Mucha, Judit; Molik, Bartosz; Marszałek, Jolanta; Kaźmierska-Kowalewska, Kalina; Ogonowska-Słodownik, Anna

2015-01-01

Results of previous studies have not indicated clearly which tests should be used to assess short-term efforts of people with intellectual disabilities. Thus, the aim of the present study was to evaluate laboratory and field-based tests of short-term effort with maximal intensity of subjects with intellectual disabilities. Twenty four people with intellectual disability, who trained soccer, participated in this study. The 30 s Wingate test and additionally an 8 s test with maximum intensity were performed on a bicycle ergometer. The fatigue index, maximal and mean power, relative maximal and relative mean power were measured. Overall, nine field-based tests were conducted: 5, 10 and 20 m sprints, a 20 m shuttle run, a seated medicine ball throw, a bent arm hang test, a standing broad jump, sit-ups and a hand grip test. The reliability of the 30 s and 8 s Wingate tests for subjects with intellectual disability was confirmed. Significant correlation was observed for mean power between the 30 s and 8 s tests on the bicycle ergometer at a moderate level (r >0.4). Moreover, significant correlations were indicated between the results of laboratory tests and field tests, such as the 20 m sprint, the 20 m shuttle run, the standing long jump and the medicine ball throw. The strongest correlation was in the medicine ball throw. The 30 s Wingate test is a reliable test assessing maximal effort in subjects with intellectual disability. The results of this research confirmed that the 8 s test on a bicycle ergometer had a moderate correlation with the 30 s Wingate test in this population, thus, this comparison needs further investigation to examine alternativeness of the 8 s to 30 s Wingate tests. The non-laboratory tests could be used to indirectly assess performance in short-term efforts with maximal intensity. PMID:26834874

An ethics curriculum for short-term global health trainees

OpenAIRE

DeCamp, Matthew; Rodriguez, Joce; Hecht, Shelby; Barry, Michele; Sugarman, Jeremy

2013-01-01

Background Interest in short-term global health training and service programs continues to grow, yet they can be associated with a variety of ethical issues for which trainees or others with limited global health experience may not be prepared to address. Therefore, there is a clear need for educational interventions concerning these ethical issues. Methods We developed and evaluated an introductory curriculum, ?Ethical Challenges in Short-term Global Health Training.? The curriculum was deve...

Narcissism and the Strategic Pursuit of Short-Term Mating

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Schmitt, David P.; Alcalay, Lidia; Allik, Jüri

2017-01-01

Previous studies have documented links between sub-clinical narcissism and the active pursuit of short-term mating strategies (e.g., unrestricted sociosexuality, marital infidelity, mate poaching). Nearly all of these investigations have relied solely on samples from Western cultures. In the curr...... limitations of these cross-culturally universal findings and presents suggestions for future research into revealing the precise psychological features of narcissism that facilitate the strategic pursuit of short-term mating....

Cash Management and Short-Term Investments for Colleges and Universities.

Science.gov (United States)

Haag, Leonard H.

Effective cash management and short-term investing are discussed in this "how to" guide designed to benefit most institutions of higher education. The following premises are examined: proper compensation for effective cash management is not an expense but an investment; effective cash management and short-term investment programs do not depend on…

Long- and short-term exposure to PM2.5 and mortality: using novel exposure models.

Science.gov (United States)

Kloog, Itai; Ridgway, Bill; Koutrakis, Petros; Coull, Brent A; Schwartz, Joel D

2013-07-01

Many studies have reported associations between ambient particulate matter (PM) and adverse health effects, focused on either short-term (acute) or long-term (chronic) PM exposures. For chronic effects, the studied cohorts have rarely been representative of the population. We present a novel exposure model combining satellite aerosol optical depth and land-use data to investigate both the long- and short-term effects of PM2.5 exposures on population mortality in Massachusetts, United States, for the years 2000-2008. All deaths were geocoded. We performed two separate analyses: a time-series analysis (for short-term exposure) where counts in each geographic grid cell were regressed against cell-specific short-term PM2.5 exposure, temperature, socioeconomic data, lung cancer rates (as a surrogate for smoking), and a spline of time (to control for season and trends). In addition, for long-term exposure, we performed a relative incidence analysis using two long-term exposure metrics: regional 10 × 10 km PM2.5 predictions and local deviations from the cell average based on land use within 50 m of the residence. We tested whether these predicted the proportion of deaths from PM-related causes (cardiovascular and respiratory diseases). For short-term exposure, we found that for every 10-µg/m increase in PM 2.5 exposure there was a 2.8% increase in PM-related mortality (95% confidence interval [CI] = 2.0-3.5). For the long-term exposure at the grid cell level, we found an odds ratio (OR) for every 10-µg/m increase in long-term PM2.5 exposure of 1.6 (CI = 1.5-1.8) for particle-related diseases. Local PM2.5 had an OR of 1.4 (CI = 1.3-1.5), which was independent of and additive to the grid cell effect. We have developed a novel PM2.5 exposure model based on remote sensing data to assess both short- and long-term human exposures. Our approach allows us to gain spatial resolution in acute effects and an assessment of long-term effects in the entire population rather than a

Errors in nonword repetition: bridging short- and long-term memory

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

F.H. Santos

2006-03-01

Full Text Available According to the working memory model, the phonological loop is the component of working memory specialized in processing and manipulating limited amounts of speech-based information. The Children's Test of Nonword Repetition (CNRep is a suitable measure of phonological short-term memory for English-speaking children, which was validated by the Brazilian Children's Test of Pseudoword Repetition (BCPR as a Portuguese-language version. The objectives of the present study were: i to investigate developmental aspects of the phonological memory processing by error analysis in the nonword repetition task, and ii to examine phoneme (substitution, omission and addition and order (migration errors made in the BCPR by 180 normal Brazilian children of both sexes aged 4-10, from preschool to 4th grade. The dominant error was substitution [F(3,525 = 180.47; P < 0.0001]. The performance was age-related [F(4,175 = 14.53; P < 0.0001]. The length effect, i.e., more errors in long than in short items, was observed [F(3,519 = 108.36; P < 0.0001]. In 5-syllable pseudowords, errors occurred mainly in the middle of the stimuli, before the syllabic stress [F(4,16 = 6.03; P = 0.003]; substitutions appeared more at the end of the stimuli, after the stress [F(12,48 = 2.27; P = 0.02]. In conclusion, the BCPR error analysis supports the idea that phonological loop capacity is relatively constant during development, although school learning increases the efficiency of this system. Moreover, there are indications that long-term memory contributes to holding memory trace. The findings were discussed in terms of distinctiveness, clustering and redintegration hypotheses.

Sublethal effects of the herbicide glufosinate ammonium on crops and wild plants: short-term effects compared to vegetative recovery and plant reproduction.

Science.gov (United States)

Carpenter, David; Boutin, Céline

2010-10-01

Current guidelines for phytotoxicity testing rely heavily on short-term testing of primarily crop species to predict the sensitivity of non-target, wild plants to herbicides. However, little is known on how plants recover following initial growth inhibitions in standard 14-28 day greenhouse tests conducted for pesticide assessment and registration. The objectives of this study were to assess the ability of plant species to recover (biomass and reproduction) when tested at the juvenile stage (routine regulatory testing), comparing crop and wild species and using the herbicide glufosinate ammonium. Ten crops and 10 wild species were tested with a one-time exposure to glufosinate ammonium in a greenhouse. Half the plants of each species (9 doses × 6 replicates) were harvested 3 weeks after being sprayed (short-term). The remaining plants were harvested several weeks later, coinciding with seed set or natural senescence (long-term). Total aboveground biomass and several endpoints related to crop production and plant reproduction were measured. Calculated IC50 values (dosage that results in a 50% decrease in the biomass of a plant as compared to the untreated controls) based solely on aboveground biomass, for species harvested in the long-term were generally higher than those obtained in the short-term (with two exceptions), indicating recovery over time. Crop species did not differ from wild species in terms of sensitivity. However, in seven out of 12 cases where reproduction was measurable, reproductive endpoints were more sensitive than either short or long-term biomass endpoints, indicating the importance of examining these parameters in phytotoxicity testing. Glufosinate ammonium was found to be phytotoxic at low doses (2.64-7.74% g ai/ha of the label rate).

MK-801 and memantine act differently on short-term memory tested with different time-intervals in the Morris water maze test

Czech Academy of Sciences Publication Activity Database

Duda, W.; Wesierska, M.; Ostaszewski, P.; Valeš, Karel; Nekovářová, Tereza; Stuchlík, Aleš

2016-01-01

Roč. 311, Sep 15 (2016), s. 15-23 ISSN 0166-4328 R&D Projects: GA MŠk(CZ) LH14053; GA ČR(CZ) GA14-03627S Institutional support: RVO:67985823 Keywords : short-term memory * spatial working memory * memantine * dizocilpine * Morris water maze Subject RIV: FH - Neurology Impact factor: 3.002, year: 2016

Computational Bench Testing to Evaluate the Short-Term Mechanical Performance of a Polymeric Stent.

Science.gov (United States)

Bobel, A C; Petisco, S; Sarasua, J R; Wang, W; McHugh, P E

2015-12-01

Over the last decade, there has been a significant volume of research focussed on the utilization of biodegradable polymers such as poly-L-lactide-acid (PLLA) for applications associated with cardiovascular disease. More specifically, there has been an emphasis on upgrading current clinical shortfalls experienced with conventional bare metal stents and drug eluting stents. One such approach, the adaption of fully formed polymeric stents has led to a small number of products being commercialized. Unfortunately, these products are still in their market infancy, meaning there is a clear non-occurrence of long term data which can support their mechanical performance in vivo. Moreover, the load carry capacity and other mechanical properties essential to a fully optimized polymeric stent are difficult, timely and costly to establish. With the aim of compiling rapid and representative performance data for specific stent geometries, materials and designs, in addition to reducing experimental timeframes, Computational bench testing via finite element analysis (FEA) offers itself as a very powerful tool. On this basis, the research presented in this paper is concentrated on the finite element simulation of the mechanical performance of PLLA, which is a fully biodegradable polymer, in the stent application, using a non-linear viscous material model. Three physical stent geometries, typically used for fully polymeric stents, are selected, and a comparative study is performed in relation to their short-term mechanical performance, with the aid of experimental data. From the simulated output results, an informed understanding can be established in relation to radial strength, flexibility and longitudinal resistance, that can be compared with conventional permanent metal stent functionality, and the results show that it is indeed possible to generate a PLLA stent with comparable and sufficient mechanical performance. The paper also demonstrates the attractiveness of FEA as a tool

Short-term plasticity as a neural mechanism supporting memory and attentional functions.

Science.gov (United States)

Jääskeläinen, Iiro P; Ahveninen, Jyrki; Andermann, Mark L; Belliveau, John W; Raij, Tommi; Sams, Mikko

2011-11-08

Based on behavioral studies, several relatively distinct perceptual and cognitive functions have been defined in cognitive psychology such as sensory memory, short-term memory, and selective attention. Here, we review evidence suggesting that some of these functions may be supported by shared underlying neuronal mechanisms. Specifically, we present, based on an integrative review of the literature, a hypothetical model wherein short-term plasticity, in the form of transient center-excitatory and surround-inhibitory modulations, constitutes a generic processing principle that supports sensory memory, short-term memory, involuntary attention, selective attention, and perceptual learning. In our model, the size and complexity of receptive fields/level of abstraction of neural representations, as well as the length of temporal receptive windows, increases as one steps up the cortical hierarchy. Consequently, the type of input (bottom-up vs. top down) and the level of cortical hierarchy that the inputs target, determine whether short-term plasticity supports purely sensory vs. semantic short-term memory or attentional functions. Furthermore, we suggest that rather than discrete memory systems, there are continuums of memory representations from short-lived sensory ones to more abstract longer-duration representations, such as those tapped by behavioral studies of short-term memory. Copyright © 2011 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Cellular activation of hypothalamic hypocretin/orexin neurons facilitates short-term spatial memory in mice.

Science.gov (United States)

Aitta-Aho, Teemu; Pappa, Elpiniki; Burdakov, Denis; Apergis-Schoute, John

2016-12-01

The hypothalamic hypocretin/orexin (HO) system holds a central role in the regulation of several physiological functions critical for food-seeking behavior including mnemonic processes for effective foraging behavior. It is unclear however whether physiological increases in HO neuronal activity can support such processes. Using a designer rM3Ds receptor activation approach increasing HO neuronal activity resulted in improved short-term memory for novel locations. When tested on a non-spatial novelty object recognition task no significant difference was detected between groups indicating that hypothalamic HO neuronal activation can selectively facilitate short-term spatial memory for potentially supporting memory for locations during active exploration. Copyright © 2016 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

Short- and long-term reproducibility of radioisotopic examination of gastric emptying

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Jonderko, K. (Silesian School of Medicine, Katowice (Poland). Dept. of Gastroenterology)

1990-01-01

Reproducibility of gastric emptying (GE) of a radiolabelled solid meal was assessed. The short-term reproducibility was evaluated on the basis of 12 paired GE examinations performed 1-3 days apart. Twelve paired GE examinations taken 3-8 months apart enabled long-term reproducibility assessment. Reproducibility of GE parameters was expressed in terms of the coefficient of variation, CV. No significant between-day variation of solid GE was found either regarding the short-term or the long-term reproducibility. Although slightly higher CV values characterized the long-term reproducibility of the GE parameters considered, the variations of the differences between repeated GE examinations did not differ significantly between short- and long-term GE reproducibility. The results obtained justify the use of radioisotopic GE measurement for the assessment of early and late results of pharmacologic or surgical management. (author).

Short-term and long-term effects of GDP on traffic deaths in 18 OECD countries, 1960-2011.

Science.gov (United States)

Dadgar, Iman; Norström, Thor

2017-02-01

Research suggests that increases in gross domestic product (GDP) lead to increases in traffic deaths plausibly due to the increased road traffic induced by an expanding economy. However, there also seems to exist a long-term effect of economic growth that is manifested in improved traffic safety and reduced rates of traffic deaths. Previous studies focus on either the short-term, procyclical effect, or the long-term, protective effect. The aim of the present study is to estimate the short-term and long-term effects jointly in order to assess the net impact of GDP on traffic mortality. We extracted traffic death rates for the period 1960-2011 from the WHO Mortality Database for 18 OECD countries. Data on GDP/capita were obtained from the Maddison Project. We performed error correction modelling to estimate the short-term and long-term effects of GDP on the traffic death rates. The estimates from the error correction modelling for the entire study period suggested that a one-unit increase (US$1000) in GDP/capita yields an instantaneous short-term increase in the traffic death rate by 0.58 (pGDP leads to an immediate increase in traffic deaths. However, after the mid-1970s this short-term effect is more than outweighed by a markedly stronger protective long-term effect, whereas the reverse is true for the period before the mid-1970s. Published by the BMJ Publishing Group Limited. For permission to use (where not already granted under a licence) please go to http://www.bmj.com/company/products-services/rights-and-licensing/.

Short-term uranium price formation: a methodology

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hsieh, L.Y.; de Graffenried, C.L.

1987-01-01

One of the major problems in analyzing the short-term uranium market is the lack of a well-defined spot market price. The two primary sources of price data covering the US uranium market are the series published by the US Dept. of Energy (DOE) and by the Nuclear Exchange Corporation (NUEXCO), a private brokerage firm. Because of the differences in both definition and coverage, these two series are not directly comparable. In this study, an econometric model was developed for analyzing the interrelationship between short-term uranium price (NUEXCO exchange value), supply, demand, and future price expectations formed by market participants. The validity of this model has been demonstrated by the fact that all simulation statistics derived are highly significant. Three forecasting scenarios were developed in this study

Persistent long-term facilitation at an identified synapse becomes labile with activation of short-term heterosynaptic plasticity.

Science.gov (United States)

Hu, Jiang-Yuan; Schacher, Samuel

2014-04-02

Short-term and long-term synaptic plasticity are cellular correlates of learning and memory of different durations. Little is known, however, how these two forms of plasticity interact at the same synaptic connection. We examined the reciprocal impact of short-term heterosynaptic or homosynaptic plasticity at sensorimotor synapses of Aplysia in cell culture when expressing persistent long-term facilitation (P-LTF) evoked by serotonin [5-hydroxytryptamine (5-HT)]. Short-term heterosynaptic plasticity induced by 5-HT (facilitation) or the neuropeptide FMRFa (depression) and short-term homosynaptic plasticity induced by tetanus [post-tetanic potentiation (PTP)] or low-frequency stimulation [homosynaptic depression (HSD)] of the sensory neuron were expressed in both control synapses and synapses expressing P-LTF in the absence or presence of protein synthesis inhibitors. All forms of short-term plasticity failed to significantly affect ongoing P-LTF in the absence of protein synthesis inhibitors. However, P-LTF reversed to control levels when either 5-HT or FMRFa was applied in the presence of rapamycin. In contrast, P-LTF was unaffected when either PTP or HSD was evoked in the presence of either rapamycin or anisomycin. These results indicate that synapses expressing persistent plasticity acquire a "new" baseline and functionally express short-term changes as naive synapses, but the new baseline becomes labile following selective activations-heterosynaptic stimuli that evoke opposite forms of plasticity-such that when presented in the presence of protein synthesis inhibitors produce a rapid reversal of the persistent plasticity. Activity-selective induction of a labile state at synapses expressing persistent plasticity may facilitate the development of therapies for reversing inappropriate memories.

Behavioural Models of Motor Control and Short-Term Memory

OpenAIRE

Imanaka, Kuniyasu; Funase, Kozo; Yamauchi, Masaki

1995-01-01

We examined in this review article the behavioural and conceptual models of motor control and short-term memory which have intensively been investigated since the 1970s. First, we reviewed both the dual-storage model of short-term memory in which movement information is stored and a typical model of motor control which emphasizes the importance of efferent factors. We then examined two models of preselection effects: a cognitive model and a cognitive/ efferent model. Following this we reviewe...

Gummed-up memory: Chewing gum impairs short-term recall

OpenAIRE

Kozlov, Michail D; Hughes, Robert W; Jones, Dylan M

2012-01-01

Several studies have suggested that short-term memory is generally improved by chewing gum. However, we report the first studies to show that chewing gum impairs short-term memory for both item order and item identity. Experiment 1 showed that chewing gum reduces serial recall of letter lists. Experiment 2 indicated that chewing does not simply disrupt vocal-articulatory planning required for order retention: Chewing equally impairs a matched task that required retention of list item identity...

Exposure to and recall of violence reduce short-term memory and cognitive control.

Science.gov (United States)

Bogliacino, Francesco; Grimalda, Gianluca; Ortoleva, Pietro; Ring, Patrick

2017-08-08

Previous research has investigated the effects of violence and warfare on individuals' well-being, mental health, and individual prosociality and risk aversion. This study establishes the short- and long-term effects of exposure to violence on short-term memory and aspects of cognitive control. Short-term memory is the ability to store information. Cognitive control is the capacity to exert inhibition, working memory, and cognitive flexibility. Both have been shown to affect positively individual well-being and societal development. We sampled Colombian civilians who were exposed either to urban violence or to warfare more than a decade earlier. We assessed exposure to violence through either the urban district-level homicide rate or self-reported measures. Before undertaking cognitive tests, a randomly selected subset of our sample was asked to recall emotions of anxiety and fear connected to experiences of violence, whereas the rest recalled joyful or emotionally neutral experiences. We found that higher exposure to violence was associated with lower short-term memory abilities and lower cognitive control in the group recalling experiences of violence, whereas it had no effect in the other group. This finding demonstrates that exposure to violence, even if a decade earlier, can hamper cognitive functions, but only among individuals actively recalling emotional states linked with such experiences. A laboratory experiment conducted in Germany aimed to separate the effect of recalling violent events from the effect of emotions of fear and anxiety. Both factors had significant negative effects on cognitive functions and appeared to be independent from each other.

The retention and disruption of color information in human short-term visual memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Nemes, Vanda A; Parry, Neil R A; Whitaker, David; McKeefry, Declan J

2012-01-27

Previous studies have demonstrated that the retention of information in short-term visual perceptual memory can be disrupted by the presentation of masking stimuli during interstimulus intervals (ISIs) in delayed discrimination tasks (S. Magnussen & W. W. Greenlee, 1999). We have exploited this effect in order to determine to what extent short-term perceptual memory is selective for stimulus color. We employed a delayed hue discrimination paradigm to measure the fidelity with which color information was retained in short-term memory. The task required 5 color normal observers to discriminate between spatially non-overlapping colored reference and test stimuli that were temporally separated by an ISI of 5 s. The points of subjective equality (PSEs) on the resultant psychometric matching functions provided an index of performance. Measurements were made in the presence and absence of mask stimuli presented during the ISI, which varied in hue around the equiluminant plane in DKL color space. For all reference stimuli, we found a consistent mask-induced, hue-dependent shift in PSE compared to the "no mask" conditions. These shifts were found to be tuned in color space, only occurring for a range of mask hues that fell within bandwidths of 29-37 deg. Outside this range, masking stimuli had little or no effect on measured PSEs. The results demonstrate that memory masking for color exhibits selectivity similar to that which has already been demonstrated for other visual attributes. The relatively narrow tuning of these interference effects suggests that short-term perceptual memory for color is based on higher order, non-linear color coding. © ARVO

An exemplar-familiarity model predicts short-term and long-term probe recognition across diverse forms of memory search.

Science.gov (United States)

Nosofsky, Robert M; Cox, Gregory E; Cao, Rui; Shiffrin, Richard M

2014-11-01

Experiments were conducted to test a modern exemplar-familiarity model on its ability to account for both short-term and long-term probe recognition within the same memory-search paradigm. Also, making connections to the literature on attention and visual search, the model was used to interpret differences in probe-recognition performance across diverse conditions that manipulated relations between targets and foils across trials. Subjects saw lists of from 1 to 16 items followed by a single item recognition probe. In a varied-mapping condition, targets and foils could switch roles across trials; in a consistent-mapping condition, targets and foils never switched roles; and in an all-new condition, on each trial a completely new set of items formed the memory set. In the varied-mapping and all-new conditions, mean correct response times (RTs) and error proportions were curvilinear increasing functions of memory set size, with the RT results closely resembling ones from hybrid visual-memory search experiments reported by Wolfe (2012). In the consistent-mapping condition, new-probe RTs were invariant with set size, whereas old-probe RTs increased slightly with increasing study-test lag. With appropriate choice of psychologically interpretable free parameters, the model accounted well for the complete set of results. The work provides support for the hypothesis that a common set of processes involving exemplar-based familiarity may govern long-term and short-term probe recognition across wide varieties of memory- search conditions. PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2014 APA, all rights reserved.

Intact Acquisition and Short-Term Retention of Non-Motor Procedural Learning in Parkinson's Disease.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Muriel T N Panouillères

Full Text Available Procedural learning is a form of memory where people implicitly acquire a skill through repeated practice. People with Parkinson's disease (PD have been found to acquire motor adaptation, a form of motor procedural learning, similarly to healthy older adults but they have deficits in long-term retention. A similar pattern of normal learning on initial exposure with a deficit in retention seen on subsequent days has also been seen in mirror-reading, a form of non-motor procedural learning. It is a well-studied fact that disrupting sleep will impair the consolidation of procedural memories. Given the prevalence of sleep disturbances in PD, the lack of retention on following days seen in these studies could simply be a side effect of this well-known symptom of PD. Because of this, we wondered whether people with PD would present with deficits in the short-term retention of a non-motor procedural learning task, when the test of retention was done the same day as the initial exposure. The aim of the present study was then to investigate acquisition and retention in the immediate short term of cognitive procedural learning using the mirror-reading task in people with PD. This task involved two conditions: one where triads of mirror-inverted words were always new that allowed assessing the learning of mirror-reading skill and another one where some of the triads were presented repeatedly during the experiment that allowed assessing the word-specific learning. People with PD both ON and OFF their normal medication were compared to healthy older adults and young adults. Participants were re-tested 50 minutes break after initial exposure to probe for short-term retention. The results of this study show that all groups of participants acquired and retained the two skills (mirror-reading and word-specific similarly. These results suggest that neither healthy ageing nor the degeneration within the basal ganglia that occurs in PD does affect the mechanisms

Provision or Good Genes? Menstrual Cycle Shifts in Women's Preferences for Short-Term and Long-Term Mates' Altruistic Behavior

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Ryo Oda

2014-04-01

Full Text Available Men's altruism may have evolved, via female choice, as a signal of either their genetic quality or their willingness to allocate resources to offspring. The possibility that men display altruism to signal their genetic quality may be tested by examining women's preference for men's altruism across the stages of the menstrual cycle. Because women can maximize reproductive benefits by mating with men who have “good genes” on high-fertility versus low-fertility days, women should show a heightened preference for male altruism on high-fertility days compared to low-fertility days, and this heightened preference should be more apparent when women evaluate men for short-term sexual relationships than for long-term committed relationships. The possibility that men display altruism to signal their willingness to provision, as opposed to their genetic quality, may be tested by examining women's preference for men's altruism toward different recipients. More specifically, altruistic behavior toward family members may reflect a willingness to provide resources for kin and, hence, willingness to provision, whereas altruistic behavior toward strangers may function as an honest signal of genetic quality. In two samples of young women (TVs = 131 and 481, we found no differences between high- and low-fertility participants in preference for men's altruism, and women preferred men's altruism more in long-term than short-term relationships. The findings suggest that men's altruistic behavior functions as a signal of willingness to provide resources rather than genetic quality.

Pro short-term procurement - Broker/trader

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Hoellen, E.E.

1990-01-01

The author presents his opinion on the issue of short-term versus long-term procurement of uranium and enrichment and the impact on reliability of supply. The progression of the market has been one of increasing commoditization. Utility buyers have moved towards purchasing uranium on the spot market and linking long-term contracts to spot-market pricing. There is some logic to the argument that utilities and the industry in general would be best served by this approach. Inventories would be worked off much more quickly, and unnecessary supply would be shut off until prices recovered to profitable levels. The result would be a healthier market with no detriment to the reliability of supply

Short-term memory in the service of executive control functions

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Farshad Alizadeh Mansouri

2015-12-01

Full Text Available Short-term memory is a crucial cognitive function for supporting on-going and upcoming behaviours, allowing storage of information across delay periods. The content of this memory may typically include tangible information about features such as the shape, colour or texture of an object, its location and motion relative to the body, or phonological information. The neural correlate of these short-term memories has been found in different brain areas involved in organizing perceptual or motor functions. In particular, neuronal activity in different prefrontal areas encodes task-related information corresponding to short-term memory across delay periods, and lesions in the prefrontal cortex severely affect the ability to hold this type of memory. Recent studies have further expanded the scope and possible role of short-term memory by showing that information of abstract entities such as a behaviour-guiding rule, or the occurrence of a conflict in information processing; can also be maintained in short-term memory and used for adjusting the allocation of executive control in dynamic environments. It has also been shown that neuronal activity in the dorsolateral prefrontal and orbitofrontal cortices encodes information about such abstract entities. These findings suggest that the prefrontal cortex plays crucial roles in organizing goal-directed behaviour by supporting various mnemonic processes that maintain a wide range of information in the service of executive control of on-going or upcoming behaviour.

A direct comparison of short-term audiomotor and visuomotor memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Ward, Amanda M; Loucks, Torrey M; Ofori, Edward; Sosnoff, Jacob J

2014-04-01

Audiomotor and visuomotor short-term memory are required for an important variety of skilled movements but have not been compared in a direct manner previously. Audiomotor memory capacity might be greater to accommodate auditory goals that are less directly related to movement outcome than for visually guided tasks. Subjects produced continuous isometric force with the right index finger under auditory and visual feedback. During the first 10 s of each trial, subjects received continuous auditory or visual feedback. For the following 15 s, feedback was removed but the force had to be maintained accurately. An internal effort condition was included to test memory capacity in the same manner but without external feedback. Similar decay times of ~5-6 s were found for vision and audition but the decay time for internal effort was ~4 s. External feedback thus provides an advantage in maintaining a force level after feedback removal, but may not exclude some contribution from a sense of effort. Short-term memory capacity appears longer than certain previous reports but there may not be strong distinctions in capacity across different sensory modalities, at least for isometric force.

Implicit short- and long-term memory direct our gaze in visual search.

Science.gov (United States)

Kruijne, Wouter; Meeter, Martijn

2016-04-01

Visual attention is strongly affected by the past: both by recent experience and by long-term regularities in the environment that are encoded in and retrieved from memory. In visual search, intertrial repetition of targets causes speeded response times (short-term priming). Similarly, targets that are presented more often than others may facilitate search, even long after it is no longer present (long-term priming). In this study, we investigate whether such short-term priming and long-term priming depend on dissociable mechanisms. By recording eye movements while participants searched for one of two conjunction targets, we explored at what stages of visual search different forms of priming manifest. We found both long- and short- term priming effects. Long-term priming persisted long after the bias was present, and was again found even in participants who were unaware of a color bias. Short- and long-term priming affected the same stage of the task; both biased eye movements towards targets with the primed color, already starting with the first eye movement. Neither form of priming affected the response phase of a trial, but response repetition did. The results strongly suggest that both long- and short-term memory can implicitly modulate feedforward visual processing.

Achieving swift equilibration of a Brownian particle using flow-fields

Science.gov (United States)

Patra, Ayoti; Jarzynski, Christopher

Can a system be driven to a targeted equilibrium state on a timescale that is much shorter than its natural equilibration time? In a recent experiment, the swift equilibration of an overdamped Brownian particle was achieved by use of an appropriately designed, time-dependent optical trap potential. Motivated by these results, we develop a general theoretical approach for guiding an ensemble of Brownian particles to track the instantaneous equilibrium distribution of a desired potential U (q , t) . In our approach, we use flow-fields associated with the parametric evolution of the targeted equilibrium state to construct an auxiliary potential U (q , t) , such that dynamics under the composite potential U (t) + U (t) achieves the desired evolution. Our results establish a close connection between the swift equilibration of Brownian particles, quantum shortcuts to adiabaticity, and the dissipationless driving of a classical, Hamiltonian system.

Short-term memory impairment and arithmetical ability.

Science.gov (United States)

Butterworth, B; Cipolotti, L; Warrington, E K

1996-02-01

We document the dissociation of preserved calculation skills in a patient with impaired auditory short-term memory. The patient (MRF) had a memory span of three digits. Furthermore, he showed rapid decrement in performance of single digits and letters with both auditory and visual presentation in the Brown-Peterson forgetting task. Analysis of his calculation skills revealed a normal ability to solve auditorily presented multidigit addition and subtraction problems such as 173 + 68 and to execute the Paced Auditory Serial Addition Task (Sampson, 1956, 1958; Gronwall, 1977). In addition, his performance on other tests, including arithmetic manipulation of natural numbers, decimals and fractions, approximation, magnitude, ratio, and percentage, appeared to be normal (Hitch, 1978b). It is argued that these findings require a revision of Baddeley and Hitch's (1974) concept of the function of working memory.

Identity modulates short-term memory for facial emotion.

Science.gov (United States)

Galster, Murray; Kahana, Michael J; Wilson, Hugh R; Sekuler, Robert

2009-12-01

For some time, the relationship between processing of facial expression and facial identity has been in dispute. Using realistic synthetic faces, we reexamined this relationship for both perception and short-term memory. In Experiment 1, subjects tried to identify whether the emotional expression on a probe stimulus face matched the emotional expression on either of two remembered faces that they had just seen. The results showed that identity strongly influenced recognition short-term memory for emotional expression. In Experiment 2, subjects' similarity/dissimilarity judgments were transformed by multidimensional scaling (MDS) into a 2-D description of the faces' perceptual representations. Distances among stimuli in the MDS representation, which showed a strong linkage of emotional expression and facial identity, were good predictors of correct and false recognitions obtained previously in Experiment 1. The convergence of the results from Experiments 1 and 2 suggests that the overall structure and configuration of faces' perceptual representations may parallel their representation in short-term memory and that facial identity modulates the representation of facial emotion, both in perception and in memory. The stimuli from this study may be downloaded from http://cabn.psychonomic-journals.org/content/supplemental.

Independent and Combined Effects of Socioeconomic Status (SES) and Bilingualism on Children's Vocabulary and Verbal Short-Term Memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Meir, Natalia; Armon-Lotem, Sharon

2017-01-01

The current study explores the influence of socioeconomic status (SES) and bilingualism on the linguistic skills and verbal short-term memory of preschool children. In previous studies comparing children of low and mid-high SES, the terms "a child with low-SES" and "a child speaking a minority language" are often interchangeable, not enabling differentiated evaluation of these two variables. The present study controls for this confluence by testing children born and residing in the same country and attending the same kindergartens, with all bilingual children speaking the same heritage language (HL-Russian). A total of 120 children (88 bilingual children: 44 with low SES; and 32 monolingual children: 16 with low SES) with typical language development, aged 5; 7-6; 7, were tested in the societal language (SL-Hebrew) on expressive vocabulary and three repetition tasks [forward digit span (FWD), nonword repetition (NWR), and sentence repetition (SRep)], which tap into verbal short-term memory. The results indicated that SES and bilingualism impact different child abilities. Bilingualism is associated with decreased vocabulary size and lower performance on verbal short-term memory tasks with higher linguistic load in the SL-Hebrew. The negative effect of bilingualism on verbal short-term memory disappears once vocabulary is accounted for. SES influences not only linguistic performance, but also verbal short-term memory with lowest linguistic load. The negative effect of SES cannot be solely attributed to lower vocabulary scores, suggesting that an unprivileged background has a negative impact on children's cognitive development beyond a linguistic disadvantage. The results have important clinical implications and call for more research exploring the varied impact of language and life experience on children's linguistic and cognitive skills.

Short-term cognitive improvement in schizophrenics treated with typical and atypical neuroleptics.

Science.gov (United States)

Rollnik, Jens D; Borsutzky, Marthias; Huber, Thomas J; Mogk, Hannu; Seifert, Jürgen; Emrich, Hinderk M; Schneider, Udo

2002-01-01

Atypical neuroleptics seem to be more beneficial than typical ones with respect to long-term neuropsychological functioning. Thus, most studies focus on the long-term effects of neuroleptics. We were interested in whether atypical neuroleptic treatment is also superior to typical drugs over relatively short periods of time. We studied 20 schizophrenic patients [10 males, mean age 35.5 years, mean Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS) score at entry 58.9] admitted to our hospital with acute psychotic exacerbation. Nine of them were treated with typical and 11 with atypical neuroleptics. In addition, 14 healthy drug-free subjects (6 males, mean age 31.2 years) were enrolled in the study and compared to the patients. As neuropsychological tools, a divided attention test, the Vienna reaction time test, the Benton visual retention test, digit span and a Multiple Choice Word Fluency Test (MWT-B) were used during the first week after admission, within the third week and before discharge (approximately 3 months). Patients scored significantly worse than healthy controls on nearly all tests (except Vienna reaction time). Clinical ratings [BPRS and Positive and Negative Symptom Scale for Schizophrenia (PANSS)] improved markedly (p divided attention task (r = 0.705, p = 0.034). Neuropsychological functioning (explicit memory, p divided attention, p < 0.05) moderately improved for both groups under treatment but without a significant difference between atypical and typical antipsychotic drugs. Over short periods of time (3 months), neuropsychological disturbances in schizophrenia seem to be moderately responsive to both typical and atypical neuroleptics. Copyright 2002 S. Karger AG, Basel

Visual short-term memory guides infants' visual attention.

Science.gov (United States)

Mitsven, Samantha G; Cantrell, Lisa M; Luck, Steven J; Oakes, Lisa M

2018-08-01

Adults' visual attention is guided by the contents of visual short-term memory (VSTM). Here we asked whether 10-month-old infants' (N = 41) visual attention is also guided by the information stored in VSTM. In two experiments, we modified the one-shot change detection task (Oakes, Baumgartner, Barrett, Messenger, & Luck, 2013) to create a simplified cued visual search task to ask how information stored in VSTM influences where infants look. A single sample item (e.g., a colored circle) was presented at fixation for 500 ms, followed by a brief (300 ms) retention interval and then a test array consisting of two items, one on each side of fixation. One item in the test array matched the sample stimulus and the other did not. Infants were more likely to look at the non-matching item than at the matching item, demonstrating that the information stored rapidly in VSTM guided subsequent looking behavior. Copyright © 2018 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Hippocampal Protein Kinase C Signaling Mediates the Short-Term Memory Impairment Induced by Delta9-Tetrahydrocannabinol.

Science.gov (United States)

Busquets-Garcia, Arnau; Gomis-González, Maria; Salgado-Mendialdúa, Victòria; Galera-López, Lorena; Puighermanal, Emma; Martín-García, Elena; Maldonado, Rafael; Ozaita, Andrés

2018-04-01

Cannabis affects cognitive performance through the activation of the endocannabinoid system, and the molecular mechanisms involved in this process are poorly understood. Using the novel object-recognition memory test in mice, we found that the main psychoactive component of cannabis, delta9-tetrahydrocannabinol (THC), alters short-term object-recognition memory specifically involving protein kinase C (PKC)-dependent signaling. Indeed, the systemic or intra-hippocampal pre-treatment with the PKC inhibitors prevented the short-term, but not the long-term, memory impairment induced by THC. In contrast, systemic pre-treatment with mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 inhibitors, known to block the amnesic-like effects of THC on long-term memory, did not modify such a short-term cognitive deficit. Immunoblot analysis revealed a transient increase in PKC signaling activity in the hippocampus after THC treatment. Thus, THC administration induced the phosphorylation of a specific Ser residue in the hydrophobic-motif at the C-terminal tail of several PKC isoforms. This significant immunoreactive band that paralleled cognitive performance did not match in size with the major PKC isoforms expressed in the hippocampus except for PKCθ. Moreover, THC transiently enhanced the phosphorylation of the postsynaptic calmodulin-binding protein neurogranin in a PKC dependent manner. These data demonstrate that THC alters short-term object-recognition memory through hippocampal PKC/neurogranin signaling.

Language familiarity effects in short-term memory: the role of output delay and long-term knowledge.

Science.gov (United States)

Thorn, Annabel S C; Gathercole, Susan E; Frankish, Clive R

2002-10-01

Four experiments examined the origins of language familiarity effects in bilingual short-term recall. In Experiments 1A and 1B, bilingual adults were tested on serial recall and probed serial recall of words and nonwords in their first and second languages. A first-language advantage was obtained on both measures, indicating that the beneficial effects of language familiarity are not exclusively attributable to lesser output delay during overt recall. In Experiments 2A and 2B, the same group of bilinguals was tested on serial recall and serial recognition of word lists in both languages. Although a sizeable first-language advantage was obtained on the serial recall measure, recognition performance was comparable in the two languages. On the basis of these results it is suggested that language differences in bilingual immediate memory arise in large part as a consequence of the differential availability of language-specific long-term knowledge with which to support retrieval processes in serial recall.

Monkeys Rely on Recency of Stimulus Repetition When Solving Short-Term Memory Tasks

Science.gov (United States)

Wittig, John H., Jr.; Richmond, Barry J.

2014-01-01

Seven monkeys performed variants of two short-term memory tasks that others have used to differentiate between selective and nonselective memory mechanisms. The first task was to view a list of sequentially presented images and identify whether a test matched any image from the list, but not a distractor from a preceding list. Performance was best…

Free recall in Williams syndrome: is there a dissociation between short- and long-term memory?

Science.gov (United States)

Brock, Jon; Brown, Gordon D A; Boucher, Jill

2006-04-01

Two experiments used the free recall paradigm to investigate verbal memory abilities in Williams syndrome (WS)--a rare genetic disorder. In an earlier free recall study, Vicari et al. (1996a) reported that, unlike TD controls, children with WS showed a recency effect but failed to show a primacy effect. These authors interpreted their findings as evidence for a dissociation between relatively strong verbal short-term memory and relatively impaired verbal long-term memory. In Experiment 1 of the current study, children with WS and TD controls showed comparable improvements in performance with repeated testing of the same material, indicating similar long-term learning of the test items. Neither group showed evidence of primacy effects. However, the extent of primacy effects in free recall is known to depend on the rehearsal strategy that participants adopt. In Experiment 2, therefore, participants were encouraged to engage in overt cumulative rehearsal. This manipulation resulted in significant and comparable primacy effects in both groups, although neither group demonstrated a significant change in overall performance. There was therefore no evidence from either experiment for a dissociation between short- and long-term verbal memory in WS.

Distribution of Short-Term and Lifetime Predicted Risks of Cardiovascular Diseases in Peruvian Adults

Science.gov (United States)

Quispe, Renato; Bazo-Alvarez, Juan Carlos; Burroughs Peña, Melissa S; Poterico, Julio A; Gilman, Robert H; Checkley, William; Bernabé-Ortiz, Antonio; Huffman, Mark D; Miranda, J Jaime

2015-01-01

Background Short-term risk assessment tools for prediction of cardiovascular disease events are widely recommended in clinical practice and are used largely for single time-point estimations; however, persons with low predicted short-term risk may have higher risks across longer time horizons. Methods and Results We estimated short-term and lifetime cardiovascular disease risk in a pooled population from 2 studies of Peruvian populations. Short-term risk was estimated using the atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease Pooled Cohort Risk Equations. Lifetime risk was evaluated using the algorithm derived from the Framingham Heart Study cohort. Using previously published thresholds, participants were classified into 3 categories: low short-term and low lifetime risk, low short-term and high lifetime risk, and high short-term predicted risk. We also compared the distribution of these risk profiles across educational level, wealth index, and place of residence. We included 2844 participants (50% men, mean age 55.9 years [SD 10.2 years]) in the analysis. Approximately 1 of every 3 participants (34% [95% CI 33 to 36]) had a high short-term estimated cardiovascular disease risk. Among those with a low short-term predicted risk, more than half (54% [95% CI 52 to 56]) had a high lifetime predicted risk. Short-term and lifetime predicted risks were higher for participants with lower versus higher wealth indexes and educational levels and for those living in urban versus rural areas (PPeruvian adults were classified as low short-term risk but high lifetime risk. Vulnerable adults, such as those from low socioeconomic status and those living in urban areas, may need greater attention regarding cardiovascular preventive strategies. PMID:26254303

Short term depression unmasks the ghost frequency.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Tjeerd V Olde Scheper

Full Text Available Short Term Plasticity (STP has been shown to exist extensively in synapses throughout the brain. Its function is more or less clear in the sense that it alters the probability of synaptic transmission at short time scales. However, it is still unclear what effect STP has on the dynamics of neural networks. We show, using a novel dynamic STP model, that Short Term Depression (STD can affect the phase of frequency coded input such that small networks can perform temporal signal summation and determination with high accuracy. We show that this property of STD can readily solve the problem of the ghost frequency, the perceived pitch of a harmonic complex in absence of the base frequency. Additionally, we demonstrate that this property can explain dynamics in larger networks. By means of two models, one of chopper neurons in the Ventral Cochlear Nucleus and one of a cortical microcircuit with inhibitory Martinotti neurons, it is shown that the dynamics in these microcircuits can reliably be reproduced using STP. Our model of STP gives important insights into the potential roles of STP in self-regulation of cortical activity and long-range afferent input in neuronal microcircuits.

Stochastic Optimal Wind Power Bidding Strategy in Short-Term Electricity Market

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Hu, Weihao; Chen, Zhe; Bak-Jensen, Birgitte

2012-01-01

Due to the fluctuating nature and non-perfect forecast of the wind power, the wind power owners are penalized for the imbalance costs of the regulation, when they trade wind power in the short-term liberalized electricity market. Therefore, in this paper a formulation of an imbalance cost...... minimization problem for trading wind power in the short-term electricity market is described, to help the wind power owners optimize their bidding strategy. Stochastic optimization and a Monte Carlo method are adopted to find the optimal bidding strategy for trading wind power in the short-term electricity...... market in order to deal with the uncertainty of the regulation price, the activated regulation of the power system and the forecasted wind power generation. The Danish short-term electricity market and a wind farm in western Denmark are chosen as study cases due to the high wind power penetration here...

Short-term regulation of hydro powerplants. Studies on the environmental effects

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Sinisalmi, T.; Riihimaeki, J.; Vehanen, T.; Yrjaenae, T.

1997-01-01

The publication is a final report on a project studying effects of short-term regulation of hydro power plants. The project consists of two parts: (1) examining and developing methods for evaluation, (2) applying methods in a case study at the Oulujoki River. The economic value of short-term regulation was studied with a model consisting of an optimization model and a river simulation model. Constraints on water level or discharge variations could be given to the power plants and their economical influence could be studied. Effects on shoreline recreation use due to water level fluctuation were studied with a model where various effects are made commensurable and expressed in monetary terms. A literature survey and field experiments were used to study the methods for assessing effects of short-term regulation on river habitats. The state and development needs of fish stocks and fisheries in large regulated rivers were studied and an environmental classification was made. Remedial measures for the short-term regulated rivers were studied with a literature survey and enquiries. A comprehensive picture of the various effects of short-term regulation was gained in the case study in Oulujoki River (110 km long, 7 power plants). Harmful effects can be reduced with the given recommendations of remedial measures on environment and the usage of the hydro power plants. (orig.) 52 refs

Short-term regulation of hydro powerplants. Studies on the environmental effects

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Sinisalmi, T. [ed.; Forsius, J.; Muotka, J.; Soimakallio, H. [Imatran Voima Oy, Vantaa (Finland); Riihimaeki, J. [VTT, Espoo (Finland); Vehanen, T. [Finnish Game and Fisheries Research Inst. (Finland); Yrjaenae, T. [North Ostrobothnia Regional Environmental Centre, Oulu (Finland)

1997-12-31

The publication is a final report on a project studying effects of short-term regulation of hydro power plants. The project consists of two parts: (1) examining and developing methods for evaluation, (2) applying methods in a case study at the Oulujoki River. The economic value of short-term regulation was studied with a model consisting of an optimization model and a river simulation model. Constraints on water level or discharge variations could be given to the power plants and their economical influence could be studied. Effects on shoreline recreation use due to water level fluctuation were studied with a model where various effects are made commensurable and expressed in monetary terms. A literature survey and field experiments were used to study the methods for assessing effects of short-term regulation on river habitats. The state and development needs of fish stocks and fisheries in large regulated rivers were studied and an environmental classification was made. Remedial measures for the short-term regulated rivers were studied with a literature survey and enquiries. A comprehensive picture of the various effects of short-term regulation was gained in the case study in Oulujoki River (110 km long, 7 power plants). Harmful effects can be reduced with the given recommendations of remedial measures on environment and the usage of the hydro power plants. (orig.) 52 refs.

Visual dot interaction with short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Etindele Sosso, Faustin Armel

2017-06-01

Many neurodegenerative diseases have a memory component. Brain structures related to memory are affected by environmental stimuli, and it is difficult to dissociate effects of all behavior of neurons. Here, visual cortex of mice was stimulated with gratings and dot, and an observation of neuronal activity before and after was made. Bandwidth, firing rate and orientation selectivity index were evaluated. A primary communication between primary visual cortex and short-term memory appeared to show an interesting path to train cognitive circuitry and investigate the basics mechanisms of the neuronal learning. The findings also suggested the interplay between primary visual cortex and short-term plasticity. The properties inside a visual target shape the perception and affect the basic encoding. Using visual cortex, it may be possible to train the memory and improve the recovery of people with cognitive disabilities or memory deficit.

Pro short-term procurement - U.S. utility

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Thompson, R.D.

1990-01-01

The author expresses the opinion that rather than focusing market discussions around short-term versus long-term procurement strategies, the parties need to be focusing on how long it is going to take to get to a predominantly market-based price both in uranium and enrichment. Long-term contracts are going to be around and will always be an important part of buyers' and sellers' strategies. It is evident that the annual term contract price renegotiations around the world are resulting in continually lower prices. When these price negotiations finally arrive in the range of the market price, a commodity market that resembles other energy commodity markets can be obtained

Short-Term Memory in Habituation and Dishabituation

Science.gov (United States)

Whitlow, Jesse William, Jr.

1975-01-01

The present research evaluated the refractorylike response decrement, as found in habituation of auditory evoked peripheral vasoconstriction in rabbits, to determine whether or not it represents a short-term habituation process distinct from effector fatigue or sensory adaptation. (Editor)

Short-Term Dosage Regimen for Stimulation-Induced Long-Lasting Desynchronization

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Thanos Manos

2018-04-01

Full Text Available In this paper, we computationally generate hypotheses for dose-finding studies in the context of desynchronizing neuromodulation techniques. Abnormally strong neuronal synchronization is a hallmark of several brain disorders. Coordinated Reset (CR stimulation is a spatio-temporally patterned stimulation technique that specifically aims at disrupting abnormal neuronal synchrony. In networks with spike-timing-dependent plasticity CR stimulation may ultimately cause an anti-kindling, i.e., an unlearning of abnormal synaptic connectivity and neuronal synchrony. This long-lasting desynchronization was theoretically predicted and verified in several pre-clinical and clinical studies. We have shown that CR stimulation with rapidly varying sequences (RVS robustly induces an anti-kindling at low intensities e.g., if the CR stimulation frequency (i.e., stimulus pattern repetition rate is in the range of the frequency of the neuronal oscillation. In contrast, CR stimulation with slowly varying sequences (SVS turned out to induce an anti-kindling more strongly, but less robustly with respect to variations of the CR stimulation frequency. Motivated by clinical constraints and inspired by the spacing principle of learning theory, in this computational study we propose a short-term dosage regimen that enables a robust anti-kindling effect of both RVS and SVS CR stimulation, also for those parameter values where RVS and SVS CR stimulation previously turned out to be ineffective. Intriguingly, for the vast majority of parameter values tested, spaced multishot CR stimulation with demand-controlled variation of stimulation frequency and intensity caused a robust and pronounced anti-kindling. In contrast, spaced CR stimulation with fixed stimulation parameters as well as singleshot CR stimulation of equal integral duration failed to improve the stimulation outcome. In the model network under consideration, our short-term dosage regimen enables to robustly induce

Short-Term Dosage Regimen for Stimulation-Induced Long-Lasting Desynchronization.

Science.gov (United States)

Manos, Thanos; Zeitler, Magteld; Tass, Peter A

2018-01-01

In this paper, we computationally generate hypotheses for dose-finding studies in the context of desynchronizing neuromodulation techniques. Abnormally strong neuronal synchronization is a hallmark of several brain disorders. Coordinated Reset (CR) stimulation is a spatio-temporally patterned stimulation technique that specifically aims at disrupting abnormal neuronal synchrony. In networks with spike-timing-dependent plasticity CR stimulation may ultimately cause an anti-kindling, i.e., an unlearning of abnormal synaptic connectivity and neuronal synchrony. This long-lasting desynchronization was theoretically predicted and verified in several pre-clinical and clinical studies. We have shown that CR stimulation with rapidly varying sequences (RVS) robustly induces an anti-kindling at low intensities e.g., if the CR stimulation frequency (i.e., stimulus pattern repetition rate) is in the range of the frequency of the neuronal oscillation. In contrast, CR stimulation with slowly varying sequences (SVS) turned out to induce an anti-kindling more strongly, but less robustly with respect to variations of the CR stimulation frequency. Motivated by clinical constraints and inspired by the spacing principle of learning theory, in this computational study we propose a short-term dosage regimen that enables a robust anti-kindling effect of both RVS and SVS CR stimulation, also for those parameter values where RVS and SVS CR stimulation previously turned out to be ineffective. Intriguingly, for the vast majority of parameter values tested, spaced multishot CR stimulation with demand-controlled variation of stimulation frequency and intensity caused a robust and pronounced anti-kindling. In contrast, spaced CR stimulation with fixed stimulation parameters as well as singleshot CR stimulation of equal integral duration failed to improve the stimulation outcome. In the model network under consideration, our short-term dosage regimen enables to robustly induce long-term

Short-Term Wind Power Interval Forecasting Based on an EEMD-RT-RVM Model

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Haixiang Zang

2016-01-01

Full Text Available Accurate short-term wind power forecasting is important for improving the security and economic success of power grids. Existing wind power forecasting methods are mostly types of deterministic point forecasting. Deterministic point forecasting is vulnerable to forecasting errors and cannot effectively deal with the random nature of wind power. In order to solve the above problems, we propose a short-term wind power interval forecasting model based on ensemble empirical mode decomposition (EEMD, runs test (RT, and relevance vector machine (RVM. First, in order to reduce the complexity of data, the original wind power sequence is decomposed into a plurality of intrinsic mode function (IMF components and residual (RES component by using EEMD. Next, we use the RT method to reconstruct the components and obtain three new components characterized by the fine-to-coarse order. Finally, we obtain the overall forecasting results (with preestablished confidence levels by superimposing the forecasting results of each new component. Our results show that, compared with existing methods, our proposed short-term interval forecasting method has less forecasting errors, narrower interval widths, and larger interval coverage percentages. Ultimately, our forecasting model is more suitable for engineering applications and other forecasting methods for new energy.

What do short-term and long-term relationships look like? Building the relationship coordination and strategic timing (ReCAST) model.

Science.gov (United States)

Eastwick, Paul W; Keneski, Elizabeth; Morgan, Taylor A; McDonald, Meagan A; Huang, Sabrina A

2018-05-01

Close relationships research has examined committed couples (e.g., dating relationships, marriages) using intensive methods that plot relationship development over time. But a substantial proportion of people's real-life sexual experiences take place (a) before committed relationships become "official" and (b) in short-term relationships; methods that document the time course of relationships have rarely been applied to these contexts. We adapted a classic relationship trajectory-plotting technique to generate the first empirical comparisons between the features of people's real-life short-term and long-term relationships across their entire timespan. Five studies compared long-term and short-term relationships in terms of the timing of relationship milestones (e.g., flirting, first sexual intercourse) and the occurrence/intensity of important relationship experiences (e.g., romantic interest, strong sexual desire, attachment). As romantic interest was rising and partners were becoming acquainted, long-term and short-term relationships were indistinguishable. Eventually, romantic interest in short-term relationships plateaued and declined while romantic interest in long-term relationships continued to rise, ultimately reaching a higher peak. As relationships progressed, participants evidenced more features characteristic of the attachment-behavioral system (e.g., attachment, caregiving) in long-term than short-term relationships but similar levels of other features (e.g., sexual desire, self-promotion, intrasexual competition). These data inform a new synthesis of close relationships and evolutionary psychological perspectives called the Relationship Coordination and Strategic Timing (ReCAST) model. ReCAST depicts short-term and long-term relationships as partially overlapping trajectories (rather than relationships initiated with distinct strategies) that differ in their progression along a normative relationship development sequence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c

A Spiking Working Memory Model Based on Hebbian Short-Term Potentiation.

Science.gov (United States)

Fiebig, Florian; Lansner, Anders

2017-01-04

A dominant theory of working memory (WM), referred to as the persistent activity hypothesis, holds that recurrently connected neural networks, presumably located in the prefrontal cortex, encode and maintain WM memory items through sustained elevated activity. Reexamination of experimental data has shown that prefrontal cortex activity in single units during delay periods is much more variable than predicted by such a theory and associated computational models. Alternative models of WM maintenance based on synaptic plasticity, such as short-term nonassociative (non-Hebbian) synaptic facilitation, have been suggested but cannot account for encoding of novel associations. Here we test the hypothesis that a recently identified fast-expressing form of Hebbian synaptic plasticity (associative short-term potentiation) is a possible mechanism for WM encoding and maintenance. Our simulations using a spiking neural network model of cortex reproduce a range of cognitive memory effects in the classical multi-item WM task of encoding and immediate free recall of word lists. Memory reactivation in the model occurs in discrete oscillatory bursts rather than as sustained activity. We relate dynamic network activity as well as key synaptic characteristics to electrophysiological measurements. Our findings support the hypothesis that fast Hebbian short-term potentiation is a key WM mechanism. Working memory (WM) is a key component of cognition. Hypotheses about the neural mechanism behind WM are currently under revision. Reflecting recent findings of fast Hebbian synaptic plasticity in cortex, we test whether a cortical spiking neural network model with such a mechanism can learn a multi-item WM task (word list learning). We show that our model can reproduce human cognitive phenomena and achieve comparable memory performance in both free and cued recall while being simultaneously compatible with experimental data on structure, connectivity, and neurophysiology of the underlying

A method for short term electricity spot price forecasting

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Koreneff, G.; Seppaelae, A.; Lehtonen, M.; Kekkonen, V.; Laitinen, E.; Haekli, J.; Antila, E.

1998-01-01

In Finland, the electricity market was de-regulated in November 1995. For the electricity purchase of power companies this has caused big changes, since the old tariff based contracts of bulk power supply have been replaced by negotiated bilateral short term contracts and by power purchase from the spot market. In the spot market, in turn, there are at the present two strong actors: The electricity exchange of Finland and the Nordic power pool which is run by the Swedish and Norwegian companies. Today, the power companies in Finland have short term trade with both of the electricity exchanges. The aim of this chapter is to present methods for spot price forecasting in the electricity exchange. The main focus is given to the Finnish circumstances. In the beginning of the presentation, the practices of the electricity exchange of Finland are described, and a brief presentation is given on the different contracts, or electricity products, available in the spot market. For comparison, the practices of the Nordic electricity exchange are also outlined. A time series technique for spot price forecasting is presented. The structure of the model is presented, and its validity is tested using real case data obtained from the Finnish power market. The spot price forecasting model is a part of a computer system for distribution energy management (DEM) in a de-regulated power market

A method for short term electricity spot price forecasting

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Koreneff, G; Seppaelae, A; Lehtonen, M; Kekkonen, V [VTT Energy, Espoo (Finland); Laitinen, E; Haekli, J [Vaasa Univ. (Finland); Antila, E [ABB Transmit Oy (Finland)

1998-08-01

In Finland, the electricity market was de-regulated in November 1995. For the electricity purchase of power companies this has caused big changes, since the old tariff based contracts of bulk power supply have been replaced by negotiated bilateral short term contracts and by power purchase from the spot market. In the spot market, in turn, there are at the present two strong actors: The electricity exchange of Finland and the Nordic power pool which is run by the Swedish and Norwegian companies. Today, the power companies in Finland have short term trade with both of the electricity exchanges. The aim of this chapter is to present methods for spot price forecasting in the electricity exchange. The main focus is given to the Finnish circumstances. In the beginning of the presentation, the practices of the electricity exchange of Finland are described, and a brief presentation is given on the different contracts, or electricity products, available in the spot market. For comparison, the practices of the Nordic electricity exchange are also outlined. A time series technique for spot price forecasting is presented. The structure of the model is presented, and its validity is tested using real case data obtained from the Finnish power market. The spot price forecasting model is a part of a computer system for distribution energy management (DEM) in a de-regulated power market

Augmented Reality in Informal Learning Environments: Investigating Short-term and Long-term Effects

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Sommerauer, Peter; Müller, Oliver

2018-01-01

field experiment with 24 participants at a mathematics exhibition to measure the effect of AR on acquiring and retaining mathematical knowledge in an informal learning environment, both short-term (i.e., directly after visiting the exhibition) and long-term (i.e., two months after the museum visit). Our...

Neighbourhood Characteristics and Long-Term Air Pollution Levels Modify the Association between the Short-Term Nitrogen Dioxide Concentrations and All-Cause Mortality in Paris.

Science.gov (United States)

Deguen, Séverine; Petit, Claire; Delbarre, Angélique; Kihal, Wahida; Padilla, Cindy; Benmarhnia, Tarik; Lapostolle, Annabelle; Chauvin, Pierre; Zmirou-Navier, Denis

2015-01-01

While a great number of papers have been published on the short-term effects of air pollution on mortality, few have tried to assess whether this association varies according to the neighbourhood socioeconomic level and long-term ambient air concentrations measured at the place of residence. We explored the effect modification of 1) socioeconomic status, 2) long-term NO2 ambient air concentrations, and 3) both combined, on the association between short-term exposure to NO2 and all-cause mortality in Paris (France). A time-stratified case-crossover analysis was performed to evaluate the effect of short-term NO2 variations on mortality, based on 79,107 deaths having occurred among subjects aged over 35 years, from 2004 to 2009, in the city of Paris. Simple and double interactions were statistically tested in order to analyse effect modification by neighbourhood characteristics on the association between mortality and short-term NO2 exposure. The data was estimated at the census block scale (n=866). The mean of the NO2 concentrations during the five days prior to deaths were associated with an increased risk of all-cause mortality: overall Excess Risk (ER) was 0.94% (95%CI=[0.08;1.80]. A higher risk was revealed for subjects living in the most deprived census blocks in comparison with higher socioeconomic level areas (ER=3.14% (95%CI=[1.41-4.90], ppollution episodes. There is also an indication that people living in these disadvantaged census blocks might experience even higher risk following short-term air pollution episodes, when they are also chronically exposed to higher NO2 levels.

Task set induces dynamic reallocation of resources in visual short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Sheremata, Summer L; Shomstein, Sarah

2017-08-01

Successful interaction with the environment requires the ability to flexibly allocate resources to different locations in the visual field. Recent evidence suggests that visual short-term memory (VSTM) resources are distributed asymmetrically across the visual field based upon task demands. Here, we propose that context, rather than the stimulus itself, determines asymmetrical distribution of VSTM resources. To test whether context modulates the reallocation of resources to the right visual field, task set, defined by memory-load, was manipulated to influence visual short-term memory performance. Performance was measured for single-feature objects embedded within predominantly single- or two-feature memory blocks. Therefore, context was varied to determine whether task set directly predicts changes in visual field biases. In accord with the dynamic reallocation of resources hypothesis, task set, rather than aspects of the physical stimulus, drove improvements in performance in the right- visual field. Our results show, for the first time, that preparation for upcoming memory demands directly determines how resources are allocated across the visual field.

Distribution of Short-Term and Lifetime Predicted Risks of Cardiovascular Diseases in Peruvian Adults.

Science.gov (United States)

Quispe, Renato; Bazo-Alvarez, Juan Carlos; Burroughs Peña, Melissa S; Poterico, Julio A; Gilman, Robert H; Checkley, William; Bernabé-Ortiz, Antonio; Huffman, Mark D; Miranda, J Jaime

2015-08-07

Short-term risk assessment tools for prediction of cardiovascular disease events are widely recommended in clinical practice and are used largely for single time-point estimations; however, persons with low predicted short-term risk may have higher risks across longer time horizons. We estimated short-term and lifetime cardiovascular disease risk in a pooled population from 2 studies of Peruvian populations. Short-term risk was estimated using the atherosclerotic cardiovascular disease Pooled Cohort Risk Equations. Lifetime risk was evaluated using the algorithm derived from the Framingham Heart Study cohort. Using previously published thresholds, participants were classified into 3 categories: low short-term and low lifetime risk, low short-term and high lifetime risk, and high short-term predicted risk. We also compared the distribution of these risk profiles across educational level, wealth index, and place of residence. We included 2844 participants (50% men, mean age 55.9 years [SD 10.2 years]) in the analysis. Approximately 1 of every 3 participants (34% [95% CI 33 to 36]) had a high short-term estimated cardiovascular disease risk. Among those with a low short-term predicted risk, more than half (54% [95% CI 52 to 56]) had a high lifetime predicted risk. Short-term and lifetime predicted risks were higher for participants with lower versus higher wealth indexes and educational levels and for those living in urban versus rural areas (PPeruvian adults were classified as low short-term risk but high lifetime risk. Vulnerable adults, such as those from low socioeconomic status and those living in urban areas, may need greater attention regarding cardiovascular preventive strategies. © 2015 The Authors. Published on behalf of the American Heart Association, Inc., by Wiley Blackwell.

Does exercise habit strength moderate the relationship between emotional distress and short-term memory in Malaysian primary school children?

Science.gov (United States)

Zainol, Nurul Ain; Hashim, Hairul Anuar

2015-01-01

We examined the moderating effects of exercise habit strength on the relationship between emotional distress and short-term memory in primary school children. The sample consisted of 165 primary school students (10-12 years old). Participants completed measures of emotional distress, exercise habit strength, and the Digit Span Test. Mid-year exam results were used as an indicator of academic performance. Structural equation modelling (SEM) was used to analyse the data. The results of SEM revealed an acceptable fit for the hypothesised model. Exercise habit was positively associated with short-term memory, and better short-term memory was associated with better academic performance. However, although an inverse relationship was found between emotional distress and short-term memory, a positive association was found between exercise habit strength and emotional distress. The findings indicate that exercise habit is positively associated with cognitive ability and mediates the negative effect of distress.

Short-term synaptic plasticity and heterogeneity in neural systems

Science.gov (United States)

Mejias, J. F.; Kappen, H. J.; Longtin, A.; Torres, J. J.

2013-01-01

We review some recent results on neural dynamics and information processing which arise when considering several biophysical factors of interest, in particular, short-term synaptic plasticity and neural heterogeneity. The inclusion of short-term synaptic plasticity leads to enhanced long-term memory capacities, a higher robustness of memory to noise, and irregularity in the duration of the so-called up cortical states. On the other hand, considering some level of neural heterogeneity in neuron models allows neural systems to optimize information transmission in rate coding and temporal coding, two strategies commonly used by neurons to codify information in many brain areas. In all these studies, analytical approximations can be made to explain the underlying dynamics of these neural systems.

Perceptions of short-term medical volunteer work: a qualitative study in Guatemala.

Science.gov (United States)

Green, Tyler; Green, Heidi; Scandlyn, Jean; Kestler, Andrew

2009-02-26

Each year medical providers from wealthy countries participate in short-term medical volunteer work in resource-poor countries. Various authors have raised concern that such work has the potential to be harmful to recipient communities; however, the social science and medical literature contains little research into the perceptions of short-term medical volunteer work from the perspective of members of recipient communities. This exploratory study examines the perception of short-term medical volunteer work in Guatemala among groups of actors affected by or participating in these programs. The researchers conducted in-depth, semi-structured interviews with 72 individuals, including Guatemalan healthcare providers and health authorities, foreign medical providers, non-medical personnel working on health projects, and Guatemalan parents of children treated by a short-term volunteer group. Detailed notes and summaries of these interviews were uploaded, coded and annotated using Atlas.ti (Scientific Software Development GmbH, Berlin) to identify recurrent themes from the interviews. Informants commonly identified a need for increased access to medical services in Guatemala, and many believed that short-term medical volunteers are in a position to offer improved access to medical care in the communities where they serve. Informants most frequently cited appropriate patient selection and attention to payment systems as the best means to avoid creating dependence on foreign aid. The most frequent suggestion to improve short-term medical volunteer work was coordination with and respect for local Guatemalan healthcare providers and their communities, as insufficient understanding of the country's existing healthcare resources and needs may result in perceived harm to the recipient community. The perceived impact of short-term medical volunteer projects in Guatemala is highly variable and dependent upon the individual project. In this exploratory study, project

Equilibrating high-molecular-weight symmetric and miscible polymer blends with hierarchical back-mapping

Science.gov (United States)

Ohkuma, Takahiro; Kremer, Kurt; Daoulas, Kostas

2018-05-01

Understanding properties of polymer alloys with computer simulations frequently requires equilibration of samples comprised of microscopically described long molecules. We present the extension of an efficient hierarchical backmapping strategy, initially developed for homopolymer melts, to equilibrate high-molecular-weight binary blends. These mixtures present significant interest for practical applications and fundamental polymer physics. In our approach, the blend is coarse-grained into models representing polymers as chains of soft blobs. Each blob stands for a subchain with N b microscopic monomers. A hierarchy of blob-based models with different resolution is obtained by varying N b. First the model with the largest N b is used to obtain an equilibrated blend. This configuration is sequentially fine-grained, reinserting at each step the degrees of freedom of the next in the hierarchy blob-based model. Once the blob-based description is sufficiently detailed, the microscopic monomers are reinserted. The hard excluded volume is recovered through a push-off procedure and the sample is re-equilibrated with molecular dynamics (MD), requiring relaxation on the order of the entanglement time. For the initial method development we focus on miscible blends described on microscopic level through a generic bead-spring model, which reproduces hard excluded volume, strong covalent bonds, and realistic liquid density. The blended homopolymers are symmetric with respect to molecular architecture and liquid structure. To parameterize the blob-based models and validate equilibration of backmapped samples, we obtain reference data from independent hybrid simulations combining MD and identity exchange Monte Carlo moves, taking advantage of the symmetry of the blends. The potential of the backmapping strategy is demonstrated by equilibrating blend samples with different degree of miscibility, containing 500 chains with 1000 monomers each. Equilibration is verified by comparing

Qualitative similarities in the visual short-term memory of pigeons and people

OpenAIRE

Gibson, Brett; Wasserman, Edward; Luck, Steven J.

2011-01-01

Visual short-term memory plays a key role in guiding behavior, and individual differences in visual short-term memory capacity are strongly predictive of higher cognitive abilities. To provide a broader evolutionary context for understanding this memory system, we directly compared the behavior of pigeons and humans on a change detection task. Although pigeons had a lower storage capacity and a higher lapse rate than humans, both species stored multiple items in short-term memory and conforme...

How to Say No: Single- and Dual-Process Theories of Short-Term Recognition Tested on Negative Probes

Science.gov (United States)

Oberauer, Klaus

2008-01-01

Three experiments with short-term recognition tasks are reported. In Experiments 1 and 2, participants decided whether a probe matched a list item specified by its spatial location. Items presented at study in a different location (intrusion probes) had to be rejected. Serial position curves of positive, new, and intrusion probes over the probed…

Chemical equilibration of antihyperons

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Greiner, C.

2002-01-01

Rapid chemical equilibration of antihyperons by means of the interplay between strong annihilation on baryons and the corresponding backreactions of multi-mesonic (fusion-type) processes in the later, hadronic stage of an ultrarelativistic heavy ion collision will be discussed. Explicit rate calculations for a dynamical setup are presented. At maximum SPS energies yields of each antihyperon specie are obtained which are consistent with chemical saturated populations of T∼150-160 MeV. The proposed picture supports dynamically the popular chemical freeze-out parameters extracted within thermal models. (orig.)

Short-term versus long-term contracting for uranium enrichment services

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Rudy, G.P.

1990-01-01

The US Department of Energy (US DOE) is the world's largest and most experienced supplier of uranium enrichment services. Through the late 1970s and early 1980s, emerging market forces transformed what was once a monopoly into a highly competitive industry. In the early 1980's the DOE lost market share. But as we enter the 1990s, new market forces have emerged. The US DOE believes a responsible balance between long-term and short-term contracting will be the key to success and the key to assuring the long-term health and reliability of the nuclear fuel industry. The US DOE intends to be in this nuclear business for a long time and will continue to offer reliable and responsive services second to none

Memory timeline: Brain ERP C250 (not P300) is an early biomarker of short-term storage.

Science.gov (United States)

Chapman, Robert M; Gardner, Margaret N; Mapstone, Mark; Dupree, Haley M; Antonsdottir, Inga M

2015-04-16

Brain event-related potentials (ERPs) offer a quantitative link between neurophysiological activity and cognitive performance. ERPs were measured while young adults performed a task that required storing a relevant stimulus in short-term memory. Using principal components analysis, ERP component C250 (maximum at 250 ms post-stimulus) was extracted from a set of ERPs that were separately averaged for various task conditions, including stimulus relevancy and stimulus sequence within a trial. C250 was more positive in response to task-specific stimuli that were successfully stored in short-term memory. This relationship between C250 and short-term memory storage of a stimulus was confirmed by a memory probe recall test where the behavioral recall of a stimulus was highly correlated with its C250 amplitude. ERP component P300 (and its subcomponents of P3a and P3b, which are commonly thought to represent memory operations) did not show a pattern of activation reflective of storing task-relevant stimuli. C250 precedes the P300, indicating that initial short-term memory storage may occur earlier than previously believed. Additionally, because C250 is so strongly predictive of a stimulus being stored in short-term memory, C250 may provide a strong index of early memory operations. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Human short-term spatial memory: precision predicts capacity.

Science.gov (United States)

Banta Lavenex, Pamela; Boujon, Valérie; Ndarugendamwo, Angélique; Lavenex, Pierre

2015-03-01

Here, we aimed to determine the capacity of human short-term memory for allocentric spatial information in a real-world setting. Young adults were tested on their ability to learn, on a trial-unique basis, and remember over a 1-min interval the location(s) of 1, 3, 5, or 7 illuminating pads, among 23 pads distributed in a 4m×4m arena surrounded by curtains on three sides. Participants had to walk to and touch the pads with their foot to illuminate the goal locations. In contrast to the predictions from classical slot models of working memory capacity limited to a fixed number of items, i.e., Miller's magical number 7 or Cowan's magical number 4, we found that the number of visited locations to find the goals was consistently about 1.6 times the number of goals, whereas the number of correct choices before erring and the number of errorless trials varied with memory load even when memory load was below the hypothetical memory capacity. In contrast to resource models of visual working memory, we found no evidence that memory resources were evenly distributed among unlimited numbers of items to be remembered. Instead, we found that memory for even one individual location was imprecise, and that memory performance for one location could be used to predict memory performance for multiple locations. Our findings are consistent with a theoretical model suggesting that the precision of the memory for individual locations might determine the capacity of human short-term memory for spatial information. Copyright © 2015 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

[Impulsiveness Among Short-Term Prisoners with Antisocial Personality Disorder].

Science.gov (United States)

Lang, Fabian U; Otte, Stefanie; Vasic, Nenad; Jäger, Markus; Dudeck, Manuela

2015-07-01

The study aimed to investigate the correlation between impulsiveness and the antisocial personality disorder among short-term prisoners. The impulsiveness was diagnosed by the Barratt Impulsiveness Scale (BIS). Short-term prisoners with antisocial personality disorder scored significant higher marks on the BIS total scale than those without any personality disorder. In detail, they scored higher marks on each subscale regarding attentional, motor and nonplanning impulsiveness. Moderate and high effects were calculated. It is to be considered to regard impulsivity as a conceptual component of antisociality. © Georg Thieme Verlag KG Stuttgart · New York.

Effect of active warm-up duration on morning short-term maximal performance during Ramadan.

Science.gov (United States)

Baklouti, Hana; Chtourou, Hamdi; Aloui, Asma; Chaouachi, Anis; Souissi, Nizar

2015-01-01

To examine the effect of active warm-up duration on short-term maximal performance assessed during Ramadan in the morning. Twelve healthy active men performed four Wingate tests for measurement of peak power and mean power before and during Ramadan at 09:00 a.m. The tests were performed on separate days, after either a 5-min or a 15-min warm-up. The warm-up consisted in pedaling at 50% of the power output obtained at the last stage of a submaximal multistage cycling test. Oral temperature was measured at rest and after warming-up. Furthermore, ratings of perceived exertion were obtained immediately after the Wingate test. Oral temperature was higher after the 15-min warm-up than the 5-min warm-up throughout the study. Moreover, peak power and mean power were higher after the 15-min warm-up than the 5-min warm-up before Ramadan. However, during Ramadan, there was no significant difference between the two warm-up durations. In addition, ratings of perceived exertion were higher after the 15-min warm-up than the 5-min warm-up only during Ramadan. There is no need to prolong the warm-up period before short-term maximal exercise performed during Ramadan in the morning.

Visual short-term memory for sequential arrays.

Science.gov (United States)

Kumar, Arjun; Jiang, Yuhong

2005-04-01

The capacity of visual short-term memory (VSTM) for a single visual display has been investigated in past research, but VSTM for multiple sequential arrays has been explored only recently. In this study, we investigate the capacity of VSTM across two sequential arrays separated by a variable stimulus onset asynchrony (SOA). VSTM for spatial locations (Experiment 1), colors (Experiments 2-4), orientations (Experiments 3 and 4), and conjunction of color and orientation (Experiment 4) were tested, with the SOA across the two sequential arrays varying from 100 to 1,500 msec. We find that VSTM for the trailing array is much better than VSTM for the leading array, but when averaged across the two arrays VSTM has a constant capacity independent of the SOA. We suggest that multiple displays compete for retention in VSTM and that separating information into two temporally discrete groups does not enhance the overall capacity of VSTM.

Short-term glucagon stimulation test of C-peptide effect on glucose utilization in patients with type 1 diabetes mellitus.

Science.gov (United States)

Mojto, Viliam; Rausova, Zuzana; Chrenova, Jana; Dedik, Ladislav

2015-12-01

This work aimed to evaluate the use of a four-point glucagon stimulation test of C-peptide effect on glucose utilization in type 1 diabetic patients using a new mathematical model. A group of 32 type 1 diabetic patients and a group of 10 healthy control subjects underwent a four-point glucagon stimulation test with blood sampling at 0, 6, 15 and 30 min after 1 mg glucagon bolus intravenous administration. Pharmacokinetic and pharmacokinetic/pharmacodynamic models of C-peptide effect on glucose utilization versus area under curve (AUC) were used. A two-sample t test and ANOVA with Bonferroni correction were used to test the significance of differences between parameters. A significant difference between control and patient groups regarding the coefficient of whole-body glucose utilization and AUC C-peptide/AUC glucose ratio (p ≪ 0.001 and p = 0.002, respectively) was observed. The high correlation (r = 0.97) between modeled coefficient of whole-body glucose utilization and numerically calculated AUC C-peptide/AUC glucose ratio related to entire cohort indicated the stability of used method. The short-term four-point glucagon stimulation test allows the numerically calculated AUC C-peptide/AUC glucose ratio and/or the coefficient of whole-body glucose utilization calculated from model to be used to diagnostically identify type 1 diabetic patients.

Reinsurance by short-term reinsurers in South Africa

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Fernhout, C. L. R.

2016-02-01

Full Text Available The short-term reinsurance process usually involves three parties, namely the insurer, the reinsurer and the original policyholder, as the insurer cedes a part of the covered risk of the policyholder to the reinsurer. This research however addresses the perceptions of reinsurers regarding their reinsurance activities, where the reinsurer sells reinsurance to other insurance entities (viz. insurers and reinsurers, as well as buys reinsurance from other insurance entities. The crux of short-term reinsurance is therefore mutually loss sharing between the various insurance entities. The objective of this research focuses on the improvement of financial decision-making regarding the reinsurance operations of the reinsurers. To achieve this objective a literature study was undertaken to provide adequate background to compile a questionnaire for the empirical survey. The primary study embodies the perceptions of the South African short-term reinsurers regarding the following aspects: the various reasons why reinsurance occurs; the contracts / methods of reinsurance; the bases / forms of reinsurance; and the factors which determine the retention levels of a reinsurer. South Africa is classified as a developing economy, is a member of the BRICS countries and has an emerging market economy. The empirical results should therefore also be valuable to other countries which are classified similarly

Rapid deterioration of pain sensory-discriminative information in short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Rainville, Pierre; Doucet, Jean-Charles; Fortin, Marie-Chantale; Duncan, Gary H

2004-08-01

The assessment of pain and analgesic efficacy sometimes relies on the retrospective evaluation of pain felt in the immediate, recent or distant past, yet we have a very limited understanding of the processes involved in the encoding, maintenance and intentional retrieval of pain. We examine the properties of the short-term memory of thermal and pain sensation intensity with a delayed-discrimination task using pairs of heat pain, warm and cool stimulation in healthy volunteers. Performance decreased as a function of the inter-stimulus interval (ISI), indicating a robust deterioration of sensory information over the test period of 4-14 s. As expected, performance also decreased with smaller temperature differences (Delta-T) and shorter stimulus durations (6-2 s). The relation between performance and Delta-T was adequately described by a power function, the exponent of which increased linearly with longer ISI. Importantly, performance declined steadily with increasing ISI (from 6 to 14 s)--but only for pairs of heat pain stimuli that were relatively difficult to discriminate (Delta-T short-term memory for pain and temperature sensation intensity relies on a transient analog representation that is quickly degraded and transformed into a more resistant but less precise categorical format. This implies that retrospective pain ratings obtained even after very short delays may be rather inaccurate but relatively reliable.

Short-term memory in zebrafish (Danio rerio).

Science.gov (United States)

Jia, Jason; Fernandes, Yohaan; Gerlai, Robert

2014-08-15

Learning and memory represent perhaps the most complex behavioral phenomena. Although their underlying mechanisms have been extensively analyzed, only a fraction of the potential molecular components have been identified. The zebrafish has been proposed as a screening tool with which mechanisms of complex brain functions may be systematically uncovered. However, as a relative newcomer in behavioral neuroscience, the zebrafish has not been well characterized for its cognitive and mnemonic features, thus learning and/or memory screens with adults have not been feasible. Here we study short-term memory of adult zebrafish. We show animated images of conspecifics (the stimulus) to the experimental subject during 1 min intervals on ten occasions separated by different (2, 4, 8 or 16 min long) inter-stimulus intervals (ISI), a between subject experimental design. We quantify the distance of the subject from the image presentation screen during each stimulus presentation interval, during each of the 1-min post-stimulus intervals immediately following the stimulus presentations and during each of the 1-min intervals furthest away from the last stimulus presentation interval and just before the next interval (pre-stimulus interval), respectively. Our results demonstrate significant retention of short-term memory even in the longest ISI group but suggest no acquisition of reference memory. Because in the employed paradigm both stimulus presentation and behavioral response quantification is computer automated, we argue that high-throughput screening for drugs or mutations that alter short-term memory performance of adult zebrafish is now becoming feasible. Copyright © 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

Combinations of glycerol percent, glycerol equilibration time, and thawing rate upon freezability of bull spermatozoa in plastic straws.

Science.gov (United States)

Wiggin, H B; Almquist, J O

1975-03-01

Twelve ejaculates were used in a central composite experiment to test 15 combinations of glycerol (7, 9, 11, 13, or 15%), glycerol equilibration times (1, 2, 4, 8, or 16 h) and thawing rates (water at 35 C for 15 s, 50 C for 13 s, 65 C for 11 s, 80 C for 9 s, or 95 C for 7 s). Semen was diluted in heated skim milk-glycerol, packaged in .3-ml. Continental U.S. straws and frozen in liquid nitrogen vapor. Based on post-thaw progressive sperm motility after storage at -196 C for 9 to 11 days, estimated optima from multiple regression were 10.7% for glycerol, 2.0 h for glycerol equilibration time, and 76 C for thawing bath temperature. Only the linear effect for each variable was significant. Much faster thawing rates and shorter glycerol equilibration times than those for freezing bull spermatozoa in glass ampules should be used for maximum post-thaw sperm motility in straws.

34 CFR 664.11 - What is a short-term seminar project?

Science.gov (United States)

2010-07-01

... short-term seminar project is— (a) Designed to help integrate international studies into an institution... 34 Education 3 2010-07-01 2010-07-01 false What is a short-term seminar project? 664.11 Section 664.11 Education Regulations of the Offices of the Department of Education (Continued) OFFICE OF...

Monkeys have a limited form of short-term memory in audition.

Science.gov (United States)

Scott, Brian H; Mishkin, Mortimer; Yin, Pingbo

2012-07-24

A stimulus trace may be temporarily retained either actively [i.e., in working memory (WM)] or by the weaker mnemonic process we will call passive short-term memory, in which a given stimulus trace is highly susceptible to "overwriting" by a subsequent stimulus. It has been suggested that WM is the more robust process because it exploits long-term memory (i.e., a current stimulus activates a stored representation of that stimulus, which can then be actively maintained). Recent studies have suggested that monkeys may be unable to store acoustic signals in long-term memory, raising the possibility that they may therefore also lack auditory WM. To explore this possibility, we tested rhesus monkeys on a serial delayed match-to-sample (DMS) task using a small set of sounds presented with ~1-s interstimulus delays. Performance was accurate whenever a match or a nonmatch stimulus followed the sample directly, but it fell precipitously if a single nonmatch stimulus intervened between sample and match. The steep drop in accuracy was found to be due not to passive decay of the sample's trace, but to retroactive interference from the intervening nonmatch stimulus. This "overwriting" effect was far greater than that observed previously in serial DMS with visual stimuli. The results, which accord with the notion that WM relies on long-term memory, indicate that monkeys perform serial DMS in audition remarkably poorly and that whatever success they had on this task depended largely, if not entirely, on the retention of stimulus traces in the passive form of short-term memory.

Aspects if stochastic models for short-term hydropower scheduling and bidding

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

Belsnes, Michael Martin [Sintef Energy, Trondheim (Norway); Follestad, Turid [Sintef Energy, Trondheim (Norway); Wolfgang, Ove [Sintef Energy, Trondheim (Norway); Fosso, Olav B. [Dep. of electric power engineering NTNU, Trondheim (Norway)

2012-07-01

This report discusses challenges met when turning from deterministic to stochastic decision support models for short-term hydropower scheduling and bidding. The report describes characteristics of the short-term scheduling and bidding problem, different market and bidding strategies, and how a stochastic optimization model can be formulated. A review of approaches for stochastic short-term modelling and stochastic modelling for the input variables inflow and market prices is given. The report discusses methods for approximating the predictive distribution of uncertain variables by scenario trees. Benefits of using a stochastic over a deterministic model are illustrated by a case study, where increased profit is obtained to a varying degree depending on the reservoir filling and price structure. Finally, an approach for assessing the effect of using a size restricted scenario tree to approximate the predictive distribution for stochastic input variables is described. The report is a summary of the findings of Work package 1 of the research project #Left Double Quotation Mark#Optimal short-term scheduling of wind and hydro resources#Right Double Quotation Mark#. The project aims at developing a prototype for an operational stochastic short-term scheduling model. Based on the investigations summarized in the report, it is concluded that using a deterministic equivalent formulation of the stochastic optimization problem is convenient and sufficient for obtaining a working prototype. (author)

Why wait if you can switch? A short term testing effect in cross-language recognition.

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Verkoeijen, Peter; Bouwmeester, Samantha; Camp, Gino

2018-01-01

Taking a memory test after an initial study phase produces better long-term retention than restudying the items, a phenomenon known as the testing effect. We propose that this effect emerges because testing strengthens semantic features of items’ memory traces, whereas restudying strengthens surface

22 CFR 62.21 - Short-term scholars.

Science.gov (United States)

2010-04-01

... 22 Foreign Relations 1 2010-04-01 2010-04-01 false Short-term scholars. 62.21 Section 62.21 Foreign Relations DEPARTMENT OF STATE PUBLIC DIPLOMACY AND EXCHANGES EXCHANGE VISITOR PROGRAM Specific... programs, confer on common problems and projects, and promote professional relationships and communications...

Scalable data-driven short-term traffic prediction

NARCIS (Netherlands)

Friso, K.; Wismans, L. J.J.; Tijink, M. B.

2017-01-01

Short-term traffic prediction has a lot of potential for traffic management. However, most research has traditionally focused on either traffic models-which do not scale very well to large networks, computationally-or on data-driven methods for freeways, leaving out urban arterials completely. Urban

Language Identification in Short Utterances Using Long Short-Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks.

Science.gov (United States)

Zazo, Ruben; Lozano-Diez, Alicia; Gonzalez-Dominguez, Javier; Toledano, Doroteo T; Gonzalez-Rodriguez, Joaquin

2016-01-01

Long Short Term Memory (LSTM) Recurrent Neural Networks (RNNs) have recently outperformed other state-of-the-art approaches, such as i-vector and Deep Neural Networks (DNNs), in automatic Language Identification (LID), particularly when dealing with very short utterances (∼3s). In this contribution we present an open-source, end-to-end, LSTM RNN system running on limited computational resources (a single GPU) that outperforms a reference i-vector system on a subset of the NIST Language Recognition Evaluation (8 target languages, 3s task) by up to a 26%. This result is in line with previously published research using proprietary LSTM implementations and huge computational resources, which made these former results hardly reproducible. Further, we extend those previous experiments modeling unseen languages (out of set, OOS, modeling), which is crucial in real applications. Results show that a LSTM RNN with OOS modeling is able to detect these languages and generalizes robustly to unseen OOS languages. Finally, we also analyze the effect of even more limited test data (from 2.25s to 0.1s) proving that with as little as 0.5s an accuracy of over 50% can be achieved.

Short-Term Saved Leave Scheme

CERN Multimedia

2007-01-01

As announced at the meeting of the Standing Concertation Committee (SCC) on 26 June 2007 and in http://Bulletin No. 28/2007, the existing Saved Leave Scheme will be discontinued as of 31 December 2007. Staff participating in the Scheme will shortly receive a contract amendment stipulating the end of financial contributions compensated by save leave. Leave already accumulated on saved leave accounts can continue to be taken in accordance with the rules applicable to the current scheme. A new system of saved leave will enter into force on 1 January 2008 and will be the subject of a new implementation procedure entitled "Short-term saved leave scheme" dated 1 January 2008. At its meeting on 4 December 2007, the SCC agreed to recommend the Director-General to approve this procedure, which can be consulted on the HR Department’s website at the following address: https://cern.ch/hr-services/services-Ben/sls_shortterm.asp All staff wishing to participate in the new scheme a...

Short-Term Saved Leave Scheme

CERN Multimedia

HR Department

2007-01-01

As announced at the meeting of the Standing Concertation Committee (SCC) on 26 June 2007 and in http://Bulletin No. 28/2007, the existing Saved Leave Scheme will be discontinued as of 31 December 2007. Staff participating in the Scheme will shortly receive a contract amendment stipulating the end of financial contributions compensated by save leave. Leave already accumulated on saved leave accounts can continue to be taken in accordance with the rules applicable to the current scheme. A new system of saved leave will enter into force on 1 January 2008 and will be the subject of a new im-plementation procedure entitled "Short-term saved leave scheme" dated 1 January 2008. At its meeting on 4 December 2007, the SCC agreed to recommend the Director-General to approve this procedure, which can be consulted on the HR Department’s website at the following address: https://cern.ch/hr-services/services-Ben/sls_shortterm.asp All staff wishing to participate in the new scheme ...

Maternal haemoglobin and short-term neonatal outcome in preterm neonates.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Elodie Savajols

Full Text Available To determine whether there is a significant association between maternal haemoglobin measured before delivery and short-term neonatal outcome in very preterm neonates.We included prospectively all live births occurring from 25 to 32+6 weeks of gestation in a tertiary care centre between January 1(st 2009 and December 31(st 2011. Outborn infants and infants presenting with lethal malformations were excluded. Three hundred and thirty-nine mothers and 409 infants met the inclusion criteria. For each mother-infant pair a prospective record of epidemiologic data was performed and maternal haemoglobin concentration recorded within 24 hours before delivery was retrospectively researched. Maternal haemoglobin was divided into quartiles with the second and the third one regarded as reference as they were composed of normal haemoglobin values. Short-term outcome was defined as poor in case of death during hospital stay and/or grades III/IV intraventricular haemorrhage and/or periventricular leukomalacia and/or necessity of ventriculoperitoneal shunt.The global rate of poor short-term neonatal outcome was 11.4% and was significantly associated with low maternal haemoglobin values. This association remained significant after adjustment for antenatal corticosteroids therapy, gestational age, parity, mechanism of preterm birth, mode of delivery and birth weight (aOR = 2.97 CI 95% [1.36-6.47]. There was no relation between short-term neonatal outcome and high maternal haemoglobin concentration values.We show that low maternal haemoglobin concentration at delivery is an independent risk factor for poor short-term neonatal outcome in very preterm neonates. This study is one of the first to show such an association within the preterm population.

Transfer of Information from Short- to Long-Term Memory

Science.gov (United States)

Modigliani, Vito; Seamon, John G.

1974-01-01

The present study examined current hypotheses concerning information transfer from short-term memory (STM) to long-term memory (LTM) using a Peterson STM task with word triplets presented over retention intervals of 0, 3, 6, 9, and 18 sec. (Editor)

Short-term energy outlook, July 1998

Energy Technology Data Exchange (ETDEWEB)

NONE

1998-07-01

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) prepares The Short-Term Energy Outlook (energy supply, demand, and price projections) monthly for distribution on the internet at: www.eia.doe.gov/emeu/steo/pub/contents.html. In addition, printed versions of the report are available to subscribers in January, April, July and October. The forecast period for this issue of the Outlook extends from July 1998 through December 1999. Values for second quarter of 1998 data, however, are preliminary EIA estimates (for example, some monthly values for petroleum supply and disposition are derived in part from weekly data reported in EIA`s Weekly Petroleum Status Report) or are calculated from model simulations that use the latest exogenous information available (for example, electricity sales and generation are simulated by using actual weather data). The historical energy data, compiled in the July 1998 version of the Short-Term Integrated Forecasting System (STIFS) database, are mostly EIA data regularly published in the Monthly Energy Review, Petroleum Supply Monthly, and other EIA publications. Minor discrepancies between the data in these publications and the historical data in this Outlook are due to independent rounding. 28 figs., 19 tabs.

Short- and long-term memory: differential involvement of neurotransmitter systems and signal transduction cascades

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

MÔNICA R.M. VIANNA

2000-09-01

Full Text Available Since William James (1890 first distinguished primary from secondary memory, equivalent to short- and long-term memory, respectively, it has been assumed that short-term memory processes are in charge of cognition while long-term memory is being consolidated. From those days a major question has been whether short-term memory is merely a initial phase of long-term memory, or a separate phenomena. Recent experiments have shown that many treatments with specific molecular actions given into the hippocampus and related brain areas after one-trial avoidance learning can effectively cancel short-term memory without affecting long-term memory formation. This shows that short-term memory and long-term memory involve separate mechanisms and are independently processed. Other treatments, however, influence both memory types similarly, suggesting links between both at the receptor and at the post-receptor level, which should not be surprising as they both deal with nearly the same sensorimotor representations. This review examines recent advances in short- and long-term memory mechanisms based on the effect of intra-hippocampal infusion of drugs acting upon neurotransmitter and signal transduction systems on both memory types.

Equilibration of particles with abelian charges

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Redlich, K.; Tounsi, A.

2002-01-01

We formulate the kinetic equation for time evolution and chemical equilibration of particles that carries an abelian charge. We show that dependently on the thermal conditions inside a fireball the system approaches to different chemical equilibrium limits. The role of exact conservation of quantum numbers in the kinetic description of rarely produced particles is explained. (orig.)

An Untargeted Metabolomics Approach to Characterize Short-Term and Long-Term Metabolic Changes after Bariatric Surgery.

Directory of Open Access Journals (Sweden)

Sophie H Narath

Full Text Available Bariatric surgery is currently one of the most effective treatments for obesity and leads to significant weight reduction, improved cardiovascular risk factors and overall survival in treated patients. To date, most studies focused on short-term effects of bariatric surgery on the metabolic profile and found high variation in the individual responses to surgery. The aim of this study was to identify relevant metabolic changes not only shortly after bariatric surgery (Roux-en-Y gastric bypass but also up to one year after the intervention by using untargeted metabolomics. 132 serum samples taken from 44 patients before surgery, after hospital discharge (1-3 weeks after surgery and at a 1-year follow-up during a prospective study (NCT01271062 performed at two study centers (Austria and Switzerland. The samples included 24 patients with type 2 diabetes at baseline, thereof 9 with diabetes remission after one year. The samples were analyzed by using liquid chromatography coupled to high resolution mass spectrometry (LC-HRMS, HILIC-QExactive. Raw data was processed with XCMS and drift-corrected through quantile regression based on quality controls. 177 relevant metabolic features were selected through Random Forests and univariate testing and 36 metabolites were identified. Identified metabolites included trimethylamine-N-oxide, alanine, phenylalanine and indoxyl-sulfate which are known markers for cardiovascular risk. In addition we found a significant decrease in alanine after one year in the group of patients with diabetes remission relative to non-remission. Our analysis highlights the importance of assessing multiple points in time in subjects undergoing bariatric surgery to enable the identification of biomarkers for treatment response, cardiovascular benefit and diabetes remission. Key-findings include different trend pattern over time for various metabolites and demonstrated that short term changes should not necessarily be used to identify

VAN method of short-term earthquake prediction shows promise

Science.gov (United States)

Uyeda, Seiya

Although optimism prevailed in the 1970s, the present consensus on earthquake prediction appears to be quite pessimistic. However, short-term prediction based on geoelectric potential monitoring has stood the test of time in Greece for more than a decade [VarotsosandKulhanek, 1993] Lighthill, 1996]. The method used is called the VAN method.The geoelectric potential changes constantly due to causes such as magnetotelluric effects, lightning, rainfall, leakage from manmade sources, and electrochemical instabilities of electrodes. All of this noise must be eliminated before preseismic signals are identified, if they exist at all. The VAN group apparently accomplished this task for the first time. They installed multiple short (100-200m) dipoles with different lengths in both north-south and east-west directions and long (1-10 km) dipoles in appropriate orientations at their stations (one of their mega-stations, Ioannina, for example, now has 137 dipoles in operation) and found that practically all of the noise could be eliminated by applying a set of criteria to the data.

Insensitivity of visual short-term memory to irrelevant visual information

OpenAIRE

Andrade, Jackie; Kemps, Eva; Werniers, Yves; May, Jon; Szmalec, Arnaud

2002-01-01

Several authors have hypothesised that visuo-spatial working memory is functionally analogous to verbal working memory. Irrelevant background speech impairs verbal short-term memory. We investigated whether irrelevant visual information has an analogous effect on visual short-term memory, using a dynamic visual noise (DVN) technique known to disrupt visual imagery (Quinn & McConnell, 1996a). Experiment 1 replicated the effect of DVN on pegword imagery. Experiments 2 and 3 showed no effect of ...

Distraction in Verbal Short-Term Memory: Insights from Developmental Differences

OpenAIRE

Elliott, Emily; Hughes, Robert W.; Briganti, A; Joseph, Tanya Nicolette; Marsh, John Everett; Macken, William J.

2016-01-01

The contribution of two mechanisms of auditory distraction in verbal serial short-term memory-interference with the serial rehearsal processes used to support short-term recall and general attentional diversion-was investigated by exploiting differences in auditory distraction in children and adults. Experiment 1 showed that serial rehearsal plays a role in children's as well as adults' distractibility: Auditory distraction from irrelevant speech was greater for both children and adults as th...

Short-Term and Long-Term Educational Mobility of Families: A Two-Sex Approach.

Science.gov (United States)

Song, Xi; Mare, Robert D

2017-02-01

We use a multigenerational perspective to investigate how families reproduce and pass their educational advantages to succeeding generations. Unlike traditional mobility studies that have typically focused on one-sex influences from fathers to sons, we rely on a two-sex approach that accounts for interactions between males and females-the process in which males and females mate and have children with those of similar educational statuses and jointly determine the educational status attainment of their offspring. Using data from the Panel Study of Income Dynamics, we approach this issue from both a short-term and a long-term perspective. For the short term, grandparents' educational attainments have a direct association with grandchildren's education as well as an indirect association that is mediated by parents' education and demographic behaviors. For the long term, initial educational advantages of families may benefit as many as three subsequent generations, but such advantages are later offset by the lower fertility of highly educated persons. Yet, all families eventually achieve the same educational distribution of descendants because of intermarriages between families of high- and low-education origin.

The suitability of short-term measurements of radon in the built environment

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Denman, A.R.; Groves-Kirkby, C.J.; Phillips, P.S.; Crockett, R.G.M.; Woolridge, A.C.

2008-01-01

Although domestic and workplace radon concentration levels often show marked diurnal/short-term variation, overall health risk is determined by the long-term average level, and many national protocols advocate the use of long exposure periods, usually three months, to assess long-term risk. Simple passive measurement techniques, e.g. track-etch, activated charcoal and electret, can, however, provide reasonably accurate determinations with exposures as short as one week, and there is pressure from users and stake holders for assessments within this time period. We report evaluation of the effectiveness of one-week, one-month and three-month exposures over a period of one year in a designated Radon Affected Area in the United Kingdom (UK). Although short-term exposures did not compromise measurement accuracy, short-term radon variability rendered one-week measurements less reliable in predicting annual average radon levels via the conventional methodology. Analysis permitted estimation of the maximum and minimum short-term measured domestic radon concentrations at which there was 95% probability of the predicted annual average being below or above the UK Action Level of 200 Bq·m -3 respectively. Between these limits, the short-term result is equivocal, requiring repetition, and the 'equivocal range' for one-week measurements is significantly wider than for three-month exposures. In any geographical area, domestic radon concentrations are distributed log normally, with many properties having low average levels; a small number exhibit excessive levels, and this distribution must be considered when defining exposures for a radon measurement programme. In low-radon areas, where 1% of houses might exceed the Action Level, a one-week assessment will find that fewer outcomes are equivocal. For high-radon areas, with 20% or more houses over the Action Level, more than 50% of one-week outcomes will be equivocal, requiring repeats. The results of this work will be presented

Insight into the short- and long-term effects of Cu(II) on denitrifying biogranules

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

Chen, Hui; Chen, Qian-Qian; Jiang, Xiao-Yan; Hu, Hai-Yan; Shi, Man-Ling; Jin, Ren-Cun

2016-01-01

Highlights: • It is the first time to evaluate the effect of Cu"2"+ on denitrifying biogranules. • A high level of Cu(II) was investigated during batch assays and continuous tests. • Mechanisms of the effects of Cu"2"+ on denitrifying biogranules were discussed. • Effects of pre-exposure to Cu"2"+ and starvation treatments were investigated. - Abstract: This study aimed to investigate the short- and long-term effects of Cu"2"+ on the activity and performance of denitrifying bacteria. The short-term effects of various concentrations of Cu"2"+ on the denitrifying bacteria were evaluated using batch assays. The specific denitrifying activity (SDA) decreased from 14.3 ± 2.2 (without Cu"2"+) to 6.1 ± 0.1 mg N h"−"1 g"−"1 VSS (100 mgCu"2"+ L"−"1) when Cu"2"+ increased from 0 to 100 mg L"−"1 with an increment of 10 mgCu"2"+ L"−"1. A non-competitive inhibition model was used to calculate the 50% inhibition concentration (IC_5_0) of Cu"2"+ on denitrifying sludge (30.6 ± 2.5 mg L"−"1). Monod and Luong models were applied to investigate the influence of the initial substrate concentration, and the results suggested that the maximum substrate removal rate would be reduced with Cu"2"+ supplementation. Pre-exposure to Cu"2"+ could lead to an 18.2–46.2% decrease in the SDA and decreasing percentage of the SDA increased with both exposure time and concentration. In the continuous-flow test, Cu"2"+ concentration varied from 1 to 75 mg L"−"1; however, no clear deterioration was observed in the reactor, and the reactor was kept stable, with the total nitrogen removal efficiency and total organic carbon efficiency greater than 89.0 and 85.0%, respectively. The results demonstrated the short-term inhibition of Cu"2"+ upon denitrification, and no notable adversity was observed during the continuous-flow test after long-term acclimation.

A neuromorphic circuit mimicking biological short-term memory.

Science.gov (United States)

Barzegarjalali, Saeid; Parker, Alice C

2016-08-01

Research shows that the way we remember things for a few seconds is a different mechanism from the way we remember things for a longer time. Short-term memory is based on persistently firing neurons, whereas storing information for a longer time is based on strengthening the synapses or even forming new neural connections. Information about location and appearance of an object is segregated and processed by separate neurons. Furthermore neurons can continue firing using different mechanisms. Here, we have designed a biomimetic neuromorphic circuit that mimics short-term memory by firing neurons, using biological mechanisms to remember location and shape of an object. Our neuromorphic circuit has a hybrid architecture. Neurons are designed with CMOS 45nm technology and synapses are designed with carbon nanotubes (CNT).

Short-term depression and transient memory in sensory cortex.

Science.gov (United States)

Gillary, Grant; Heydt, Rüdiger von der; Niebur, Ernst

2017-12-01

Persistent neuronal activity is usually studied in the context of short-term memory localized in central cortical areas. Recent studies show that early sensory areas also can have persistent representations of stimuli which emerge quickly (over tens of milliseconds) and decay slowly (over seconds). Traditional positive feedback models cannot explain sensory persistence for at least two reasons: (i) They show attractor dynamics, with transient perturbations resulting in a quasi-permanent change of system state, whereas sensory systems return to the original state after a transient. (ii) As we show, those positive feedback models which decay to baseline lose their persistence when their recurrent connections are subject to short-term depression, a common property of excitatory connections in early sensory areas. Dual time constant network behavior has also been implemented by nonlinear afferents producing a large transient input followed by much smaller steady state input. We show that such networks require unphysiologically large onset transients to produce the rise and decay observed in sensory areas. Our study explores how memory and persistence can be implemented in another model class, derivative feedback networks. We show that these networks can operate with two vastly different time courses, changing their state quickly when new information is coming in but retaining it for a long time, and that these capabilities are robust to short-term depression. Specifically, derivative feedback networks with short-term depression that acts differentially on positive and negative feedback projections are capable of dynamically changing their time constant, thus allowing fast onset and slow decay of responses without requiring unrealistically large input transients.

Short-term energy outlook. Quarterly projections, first quarter 1995

International Nuclear Information System (INIS)

1995-02-01

The Energy Information Administration (EIA) prepares quarterly, short-term energy supply, demand, and price projections for publication in February, May, August, and November in the Short-Term Energy Outlook (Outlook). The forecast period for this issue of the Outlook extends from the first quarter of 1995 through the fourth quarter of 1996. Values for the fourth quarter of 1994, however, are preliminary EIA estimates or are calculated from model simulations using the latest exogenous information available (for example, electricity sales and generation are simulated using actual weather data). The historical energy data, compiled into the first quarter 1995 version of the Short-Term Integrated Forecasting System (STIFS) database, are mostly EIA data regularly published in the Monthly Energy Review, Petroleum Supply Monthly, and other EIA publications. Minor discrepancies between the data in these publications and the historical data in this Outlook are due to independent rounding. The STIFS database is archived quarterly and is available from the National Technical Information Service. The cases are produced using the Short-Term Integrated Forecasting System (STIFS). The STIFS model is driven principally by three sets of assumptions or inputs: estimates of key macroeconomic variables, world oil price assumptions, and assumptions about the severity of weather. Macroeconomic estimates are produced by DRI/McGraw-Hill but are adjusted by EIA to reflect EIA assumptions about the world price of crude oil, energy product prices, and other assumptions which may affect the macroeconomic outlook. The EIA model is available on computer tape from the National Technical Information Service