Screening for malnutrition.

This article recommends that screening for malnutrition is used in both primary care and hospital settings. The authors also outline how nurses are ideally placed to screen patients for evidence of malnutrition and to offer first line nutritional advice and care.

Nutrition and wound healing.

This paper reviews evidence that suggests malnutrition exists among the sick population in hospital and at home, a situation that has not improved in 20 years. It examines the consequences of malnutrition in broad terms and its effect on wound healing. The role of specific nutrients for wound healing is discussed, and finally the barriers which prevent nurses from delivering adequate patient nutrition are exposed.

A freshwater bioprobe: Periostracum of the Asian Clam, Corbicula fluminea (Müller) combined with laser microprobe mass spectrometer.

A freshwater bioprobe, combining the Asiatic Clam, Corbicula fluminea (Müller) and the laser microprobe mass spectrometer (LAMMA), can determine anthropogenic chemical contamination of freshwater systems. Laser generated mass spectra from the periostracal layers of clams contaminated with either a salt, potassium bromide, or an aromatic compound, phenol, produce distinctive mass spectral signatures that are different from uncontaminated clams. Uncontaminated clams have characteristic signatures with distinctive spectral peaks less than m/z 41; while exposed clams have many strong peaks well above this m/z. This freshwater bioprobe, using LAMMA to analyze the surface of clams, can be used as a screening tool for monitoring the water-treatment systems, for determining the source of contaminated baseflow and return flow discharge to streams, and for monitoring the water chemistry of a body of water. This system exploits the facility of using the shell instead of soft tissue with the LAMMA and has potential to detect anthropogenically-derived chemical stress.

Reproductive memory for diagonal and nondiagonal patterns in chimpanzees.

Two male juvenile chimpanzees were trained to reproduce from memory geometric patterns composed of lighted cells in a 3 x 3 matrix. In Experiment I, subjects reproduced 3-cell horizontal, vertical and diagonal patterns with either 0- or 5-second delay between stimulus offset and response. Diagonals were more difficult and were more affected by delay than were nondiagonal patterns. The sequence of response to diagonals was less structured than to nondiagonals. In Experiment II, more complex 4-cell patterns were used and, following training, subjects were tested for transfer to new patterns. Again, diagonals were more difficult to reproduce than nondiagonals. Transfer of training to new patterns requiring different motoric responses was successful. Similar to Experiment I, organization of responding was greater for nondiagonals than for diagonals. These results are discussed with regard to the presence of internal representation of visual information in nonhuman primates.

Processing of words presented simultaneously to eye and ear.

The simultaneous processing of auditorily and visually presented messages was examined in three experiments. Subjects searched lists of words for a target word while processing auditorily presented information. Across conditions, subjects searched for (a) target words in a list of words presented auditorily, (b) the same target words in lists presented visually, (c) a member of a taxonomic category in a visually presented list, and (d) a rhyme in a list of words presented visually. The level of processing of a simultaneous auditory message varied across experiments. In experiment 1, subjects shadowed lists of digits. In Experiment 2, subjects reported the antonym of each word in a list. In Experiment 3, subjects named the taxonomic category of each word in a list. In all three experiments, subject had high detection rates for target words presented visually and for category targets but low detection rates for target words presented auditorily and for rhyme targets. These results suggest that processing the semantic properties, but not the acoustic properties, of words presented to the visual modality is independent of simultaneous processing in the auditory modality. Implication for models of selective attention are discussed.

Auditory versus visual processing of three sets of simultaneous digit pairs.

Two experiments were conducted to determine whether the auditory and visual systems process simultaneously presented pairs of alphanumeric information differently. In Experiment 1, different groups of subjects were given extensive practice recalling pairs of superimposed visual or auditory digits in simultaneous order (the order of arrival) or successive order (one member of each digit pair in turn, followed by the other pair member). For auditory input, successive order of recall was more accurate, particularly for the last two of three pairs presented, whereas for visual input, simultaneous order of recall was more accurate. In Experiment 2, subjects were cued to recall in one or the other order either immediately before or after stimulus input. Recall order results were the same as for Experiment 1, and precuing did not facilitate recall in either order for both modalities. These results suggest that processing in the auditory system can only occur successively across time, whereas as in the visual system processing can only occur simultaneously in space.

The effects of auditory shadowing on recognition of information received visually.

When Ss attend to one auditory message, they have no permanent memory for a second auditory message received simultaneously. Generally, it has been argued that a similar effect would occur crossmodally. This hypothesis was tested in the present experiment for messages presented to visual and auditory modalities. All Ss were tested for recognition of information presented either while shadowing or while hearing but not shadowing a passage of prose presented to one ear. One group heard a list of concrete nouns in their other ear. Three other groups received (1) printed words. (2) pictures of objects easily labeled, or (3) pictures of objects difficult to label. The shadowing task produced a decrement m recognition scores for the first three groups but not for the group receiving pictures of objects difficult to label. Further, the shadowing task interfered more with information received auditorily than with any form of visual information. These results suggest that information received visually is stored in a long-term modality-specific memory that may operate independently of the auditory modality.