The extent to which the acquisition of expertise in knowledge-rich domains, such as chess, can be influenced by general individual characteristics, such as intelligence, has remained unclear. Some previous studies with children have documented significant correlations between chess skill and performance on some psychometric tests, such as performance IQ. However, we found no evidence for a corr...

In this paper we mention psychological insights in Spatial Abilities and Spatial Competence and into the process of the development of these mental abilities. We mention didactic tools available to help teach these abilities, plus the role and possibilities of the use of computer software in this process. It brings along a necessity of change of geometry curriculum. Much of this work is current...

We investigate the relationship between ageing, cognitive abilities and retirement using the Survey on Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE), a household panel that offers the possibility of comparing several European countries using nationally representative samples of the population aged 50þ . The human capital framework suggests that retirement may cause an increase in cognitive de...

One hundred and five normal subjects from 20 to 89 years old, and with a minimum of six years of formal education were selected. Subjects were divided into seven age ranges, with 15 subjects in each group. The following tests were individually administered: (1) Wechsler Memory Scale (WMS) (Wechsler, 1945); (2) Serial Verbal Learning (Ardila, Rosselli & Puente, 1994; Ardila & Ostrosky, 1991); (3...

CONTEXT Studies suggest that many survivors of critical illness experience long-term cognitive impairment but have not included premorbid measures of cognitive functioning and have not evaluated risk for dementia associated with critical illness. OBJECTIVES To determine whether decline in cognitive function was greater among older individuals who experienced acute care or critical illness hos...

To address the need for a flexible model of the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) that is also suitable for inversion, the FLAIR Model (Four-Scale Linear Model for AnIsotropic Reflectance) has been developed [1]. Based on the more detailed Four-Scale Model [2], FLAIR is a linear kernel-like model, developed with the aim of not being limited to specific canopy characteristic...

BACKGROUND Self-interviews, where the respondent rather than the interviewer enters answers to questions, have been proposed as a way to reduce social desirability bias associated with interviewer-led interviews. Computer-assisted self-interviews (CASI) are commonly proposed since the computer programme can guide respondents; however they require both language and computer literacy. We evaluate...

INTRODUCTION The primary objective was to identify the most common reasons for intending to cut back on alcohol use, in emergency department (ED) and trauma patient populations. The secondary objective was to determine the association between reason to cut back on alcohol and education level. METHODS We conducted the study at a level one trauma center in California between 2008 and 2012. This...

Remote sensing instruments generally regularize a continuous ground surface into a grid of similarly sized and shaped pixels. This regularization results in similarity of neighboring pixels which represent the same objects on the ground. The above ground organization of vegetation in a forest is considered the forest structure. At a high spatial resolution, at approximately 1m, the spatial info...

Almost universally, wealth is not distributed uniformly within societies or economies. Even though wealth data have been collected in various forms for centuries, the origins for the observed wealth-disparity and social inequality are not yet fully understood. Especially the impact and connections of human behavior on wealth could so far not be inferred from data. Here we study wealth data from...