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New specimens ofCooksoniaandHostinellaare described from the Bertie Group of Ontario and New York State, which is dated by faunas as latest Silurian (Přídolí). The rare plant fossils are unusual in that they are preserved in fine-grained, slightly argillaceous dolostones (‘waterlime’) rather than clastic rocks. At least two species ofCooksoniaare present, one with± globular sporangial morphology close toC. hemisphaericaLang. Those with ellipsoidal/discoidal sporangia are compared withC. pertoniLang,C. paranensisGerrienneet al. andC. bohemicaSchweitzer, the latter represented by a single specimen from the Přídolí of the Czech Republic. However, the paucity of specimens, which prevents assessment of taphonomic influences on shape, combined with the absence of any anatomical features and the gross morphological simplicity of the fossils, precludes specific assignment. Specimens ofHostinellainclude one in which apices and a lateral basal structure resembling a root are preserved. It is concluded that the Laurentian assemblage of Ontario and New York State is less diverse and disparate than coeval assemblages, which are also preserved in marine rocks. Its preservation in limestones may have been facilitated by the hypersalinity inferred from various sedimentary features, which would restrict the activity of many decomposers. © 2004 The Linnean Society of London,Botanical Journal of the Linnean Society, 2004,146, 399–413. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Sleep apnea (SA), a modifiable risk factor in - atrial fibrillation (AF), is associated with worse outcomes in AF. We aimed to assess the prevalence and severity of SA in patients with AF, and, subsequently, to assess the positive predictive value (PPV) of moderate to severe SA by a home-monitoring device in comparison to cardio-respiratory monitoring (CRM) in consecutive patients with AF., Methods: This cross-sectional study recruited unselected patients with AF without known SA from an out-patient clinic at Department of Cardiology, Herlev-Gentofte University Hospital. Participants underwent four consecutive nights of sleep-recording with the home-monitoring device NightOwl™ (NO). Moderate SA was defined as an Apnea-Hypopnea Index (AHI) of 15-29 and severe SA as ≥ 30 AHI. Participants with moderate to severe SA was offered CRM for validation of the diagnosis., Results: We included 126 patients with AF with a median age of 68 (interquartile range: 60-75) years, 42 (33 %) women, 70 (56 %) hypertension, 61 (48 %) hyperlipidemia and 49 (39 %) heart failure. NO detected severe SA in 36 (29 %) of patients with AF, moderate SA in 35 (28 %), mild SA in 45 (36 %) and no SA in 10 (8 %). Of 71 patients with moderate to severe SA by NO, 38 patients underwent CRM and the PPV of NO was 0.82 (31/38) to diagnose moderate SA and 0.92 (22/24) to diagnose severe SA by CRM., Conclusion: Moderate to severe SA by NO was highly prevalent in patients with AF without known SA. A home-monitoring device such as NO could be an easy and feasible SA screening tool in patients with AF., Competing Interests: The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (© 2023 The Author(s).)

Binding theories assume that features of stimuli and executed responses can be integrated together in one event file (Hommel, Visual Cognition, 5, 183-216, 1998; Hommel, Cognitive Sciences, 8, 494-500, 2004). Every reencounter with one or more of the stored features leads to an automatic retrieval of the previously constructed event file and hence of the response-even the repetition of a task-irrelevant distractor stimulus can retrieve a previously encoded response. This so-called distractor-response binding effect is typically investigated using a sequential prime-probe design that allows the orthogonal variation of response relation (response repetition vs. resporrevertnse change) and distractor relation (distractor repetition vs. distractor change), while probe response times and error rates are measured as dependent variable. Previous research has shown that task-relevant stimuli can be represented at different levels (e.g., perceptual and conceptual; see Henson et al., Trends in Cognitive Sciences, 18, 376-384, 2014), yet it is not clear at which level of representation distractor stimuli are processed. In the present study, we focused on the level of representation of response-irrelevant distractor stimuli. To this end, a crossmodal distractor-response binding paradigm was used that enables the differentiation between the perceptual and conceptual representation of the distractor by allowing the systematic repetition and change of conceptual distractor features independent of perceptual repetitions. The results suggest that the repetition of perceptual distractor features is indispensable for the initiation of the retrieval process while the sole repetition of conceptual distractor features is not sufficient to start the retrieval process.

The intensity of a stimulus has been found to have a distinct impact upon response processes (e.g., response speed, response force, & response selection). For instance, reaction times are faster to bright than to dim stimuli (e.g., Kohfeld, 1971). In the present study, we investigated the possible influence of stimulus intensity on binding processes. According to binding theories, stimulus and response features are integrated together in short-lived memory traces, called event files (Hommel, 1998). Any re-encounter with one of these integrated features leads to the automatic retrieval of the previously constructed event file and thus of the response. Thereby bindings between stimuli (relevant and irrelevant) and responses have a direct impact on behavior. In the present experiment, we presented distractors with increasing stimulus intensity and found that intensity did exert an influence on binding processes. However, our results suggest that distractor intensity per se has no direct influence on the binding effect (the more intense a distractor is, the larger the binding effect), but that distractor intensity has an indirect effect on binding via grouping due to similarity between target and distractor intensity., (Copyright © 2020 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

If a target stimulus is presented together with a response irrelevant distractor stimulus, both stimuli can be encoded together with the response in an event file [see Hommel (Trends Cogn Sci 8:494-500, 2004)]. The repetition of the distractor can retrieve the encoded response. This kind of distractor-based retrieval is an important mechanism in action control. In the present experiment, we investigate whether and how distractor-based retrieval of event files is influenced by encoding specificity-a retrieval principle that has been suggested to affect retrieval in short-term and long-term memory. Using a prime-probe design, the number of identical distractors on each display was varied. The results showed that the distractor-based retrieval process is modulated by encoding specificity, in that only high (low) number of distractors retrieves former event files with high (low) number of distractors. Taken together, distractor-based retrieval in action control follows principles known from short-term memory and long-term memory retrieval.