A large-scale study of microplastic abundance in sediment cores from the UK continental shelf and slope.

To inform risk assessments, reliable, time efficient and affordable quantification methods are required for creating a microplastic (MP) pollution baseline in the world's oceans. To facilitate this, MP abundance was investigated in sediments of three contrasting areas of the UK continental shelf: North West of Jones Bank, the Canyons in the Celtic Sea and Dogger Bank in the North Sea, utilising the Nile Red tagging method to assess its time efficiency and cost. Average MP abundance in the top 10 cm was 1050-2700 MP kg-1. MP abundance decreased with increasing sediment depth and increased with increasing water depth. The findings emphasise the extent of MP pollution and illustrate the value of Nile Red for large scale mapping at relatively low cost.

Misconceptions and misuse of the MMPI-2 in assessing personal injury claimants.

The MMPI-2 enjoys widespread popularity in the psychological assessment of personal injury claimants, in part due to its long history, massive research literature, strong empirical basis, and the availability of commercial interpretative and scoring services. However, the relative paucity of studies examining the forensic role of the MMPI-2, raises concerns about the applicability of traditional interpretative guidelines in the medicolegal arena. This paper analyses MMPI-2 protocols of 2080 cases derived from a forensic psychiatric practice in Brisbane, Australia. The data presented here challenges these traditional MMPI-2 interpretations and calls into question assumptions and commonly employed techniques when applied in this setting. In particular, the validity of codetype-based interpretations, the role the MMPI-2 plays in differential diagnosis, and assumptions regarding diagnostically-specific patterns on the test are challenged. MMPI-2 interpretative cookbooks, computer report-writers, adherence to the intent of the test-developers, and appeals to authority are inadequate substitutes for empirical accuracy, and an active hypothesis-testing interpretative approach, based upon setting-specific base-rate data, is recommended.

Infants' recognition of contour-deleted figures.

Infants' recognition of contour-deleted figures was investigated in four experiments using a habituation procedure. The results indicate that 12-month-old infants could recognize line drawings of figures that were missing 33%, 50%, or even as much as 66% of their contour. This was so whether the contour-deleted versions were used on habituation or on test: Intact figures were recognized after habituation to contour-deleted exemplars, and in most cases contour-deleted ones were recognized after habituation to the intact figure. The single failure appeared to be due to difficulty in discriminating between two extremely impoverished test stimuli. Findings from the final experiment, in which infants recognized complements of contour-deleted stimuli but not scrambled versions, suggested that they fill in the gaps of the contour-deleted figures so as to create a figural whole.

Rate of information processing in patients with Wilson's disease.

This study investigated the rate of information processing, independent of motor speed, in neurologically affected Wilson's disease (WD) patients. Two scanning tasks based on the Sternberg item-recognition paradigm were administered to 17 neurologically symptomatic WD patients and 17 normal control (NC) subjects. Although WD subjects do have longer response latencies than NC subjects, their rate of information processing is the same as the rate of the NC subjects. The longer response latencies are attributable to their motor deficits. The clear impact of motor impairment on test performance underlines the necessity for specialized assessment measures that can accurately reflect the cognitive abilities of motor-impaired patients. These findings suggest that Wilson's disease is not characterized by slowed information processing.

Proportional slowing and addition speed in old and young adults.

An addition and copying task was used to compare processing speed in young and old adults. Consistent with previous studies, no age differences in the problem-size effect were observed (Geary & Wiley, 1991). However, the old adults were slower overall, and an analysis of the distributions of old and young individuals indicated that the form of this slowing was proportional. These analyses also demonstrated that proportional slowing was uniform in the old adults, such that the fastest and slowest old individuals were slowed by the same factor. Because the regression of old-young mean response times can be insensitive to differential age effects, comparisons of old and young distributions are recommended to support claims regarding proportional slowing and uniformity of age effects across individuals. Finally, the results suggest that requiring Ss to initiate a new operation produced a larger age effect than requiring Ss to repeat an operation.

The feasibility of low dose barbiturate administration by intra-carotid infusion to achieve EEG burst suppression--a preliminary report.

More than 10 years have elapsed since the introduction of high dose barbiturate administration in the management of patients with severe head injuries. Barbiturate therapy became an accepted method of treatment for increased intracranial pressure when other measures fail. One of the major limiting factors in the use of high dose barbiturate therapy is its significant hypotensive effect on the systemic arterial blood pressure. In seeking ways and means of minimising this hypotensive effect, we designed a study in which the systemic administration of barbiturates is avoided and replaced by selective perfusion of the concerned hemisphere with the drug utilising the intra-carotid route. Twenty-two rats, divided into two groups, were used in the study. Since monitoring of electroencephalographic (EEG) burst suppression serves as a good indicator of the lowest level of cerebral metabolic activity, we used this as the method for determining the desired endpoint of sodium amytal administration in both groups of animals. Group I, the intravenous group, consisted of eleven animals who received sodium amytal intravenously until burst suppression on the EEG was documented. Group II, the intra-carotid group, comprised eleven animals who received intra-carotid sodium amytal until EEG burst suppression was induced. In the intravenous group, a mean dose of 35 mg/kg of sodium amytal was administered before EEG burst suppression was achieved. This dose, however, was accompanied by an almost 50% reduction in systemic blood pressure compared to the pretreatment level. The intra-carotid group required a mean dose of 3.8 mg/kg sodium amytal and this was accompanied by only minor changes in systemic arterial pressure.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)