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There is a growing recognition that community engagement generates spillover effects, though few empirical analyses have accounted for these often intangible and nonlinear impacts. In the broader political economy of disaster risk reduction (DRR), spillovers present participatory research and practice with opportunities for leveling the resource arguments that currently favor deficit-based communications. A central, unexplored hypothesis of participatory research is as follows: If spillovers result from some forms of community engagement, affecting change in participants and non-participants, then the associated costs of community engagement may be justified by the value of changes that spillover. The possibility of spillovers, while enticing, is hampered by present gaps with regard to the ability to design, implement, and measure targeted spillovers. More simply, spillovers likely follow all social relations, but the ability to target specific outcomes following participation remains presently unknown. Focusing on flood risk reduction in Melbourne, Australia, the community engagement for disaster risk reduction (CEDRR) project utilized "relationship building" to test whether efforts to support flood risk reduction also resulted in spillovers to other aspects of participants' lives, including to non-participants. To analyze this theoretical possibility, we partnered with a senior citizens' organization: The University of the Third Age (U3A). Within DRR, senior citizens are often portrayed as inherently vulnerable; while within the aging literature, loneliness and isolation are shown to be key detriments to "successful aging". The relationship-building methodology, then, aligns with both community engagement and successful aging literatures, enabling an analysis of targeted spillovers related to risk reduction actions and successful aging. Engagements on the topic of flood risk were analyzed to determine whether they had spillover effects on participants' flood risk actions or on their successful aging outcomes. Findings from 45 remote survey-interviews and 30 follow-up engagements demonstrate that relationship building is an enjoyable form of community engagement able to promote learning, skill development, and intellectual risk-taking (i.e., elements of successful aging). In addition to successful aging, relationship building also contributed to household flood risk reduction behaviors, as well as initiating spillovers to non-participants. These exploratory findings suggest an under-accounted impact of participatory flood risk reduction, which suggests a need to broaden the measurement of "impacts" to include the benefits that spillover to other risk contexts and/or to other individuals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ring opening as practiced in hydrocracking of naphthenic molecules results from multiple cleavages of both endo- and exocyclic C–C bonds. Selective ring opening requires that only one endocyclic C–C bond per naphthene ring be severed, preserving thereby reactant molecular weight. The products of selective ring opening are alkanes and alkylnaphthenes. Over hydrocracking catalysts the yield of alkanes with the same number of carbon atoms as the reactant naphthenes is unacceptably low as a result of extensive dealkylation of alkylnaphthenes and secondary cracking of alkanes. Alkylcyclopentanes, in contrast, selectively ring open by hydrogenolysis over a number of noble metal catalysts. Under similar reaction conditions the selective ring-opening rates of alkylcyclohexanes are, however, one to two orders slower than those of alkylcyclopentanes. Addition of a ring-contraction acidity function converts alkylcyclohexanes into more easily ring-opened alkylcyclopentanes, greatly facilitating selective ring opening. Selective ring-opening rates and selectivities are optimum when ring isomerization occurs by a nonbranching ring contraction. Branching ring contraction, creating increased numbers of ring substituents, is detrimental to both ring-opening rates and selectivities. When an effective acidity function is coupled with a high-activity hydrogenolysis metal, such as iridium, the resulting bifunctional catalyst system greatly outperforms conventional hydrocracking catalysts for the selective conversion of naphthenes to alkanes. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Four experiments used a four-choice discrimination learning paradigm to explore the pigeon's recognition of line drawings of four objects (an airplane, a chair, a desk lamp, and a flashlight) that were rotated in depth. The pigeons reliably generalized discriminative responding to pictorial stimuli over all untrained depth rotations, despite the bird's having been trained at only a single depth orientation. These generalization gradients closely resembled those found in prior research that used other stimulus dimensions. Increasing the number of different vantage points in the training set from one to three broadened the range of generalized testing performance, with wider spacing of the training orientations more effectively broadening generalized responding. Template and geon theories of visual recognition are applied to these empirical results.

The status of Echinococcus granulosus equinus in farm dogs was examined in two valleys in South Powys, Wales. In one valley 76% of the dogs examined were infected, and there was at least one infected dog on every farm except one. In the second valley 49% of the dogs were infected. The structure of natural adult colonies of Echinococcus is described, and the population dynamics of the parasite in the U.K. is discussed. Every colony in the dogs, excepting the very smallest and the very youngest, consists of parasites at several stages of development. Most colonies comprise less than 20 worms. Colony density is greatest about the second or third eighth of the total length of the small intestine. The general characteristics of a colony (other than number) are reflected in the characteristics of the group of worms 'resident' in each successive eighth of the small intestine. Neither the age nor the sex of the host has any obvious effect on the incidence or the size of the colony, its development, or the ultimate infectivity of the colony. The parasites continue to grow throughout life, and growth may be largely independent of the worms' development. As a result, their length is very variable. The number of eggs in each gravid proglottid varies considerably, from 12-1626. All the evidence available and derived from the study of natural populations confirms that E. granulosus is an obligate self-fertilizing hermaphrodite, and that serial development of gravid proglottids does not occur.

The syndrome of tic convulsif consists of ipsilateral concurrent trigeminal neuralgia and hemifacial spasm. Since Cushing's 1920 description of this syndrome in three patients, 37 additional cases have been reported in the world literature. Of the 15 with adequate operative descriptions, 10 had vascular abnormalities and five had tumors. The authors report 11 cases of tic convulsif treated by microvascular decompression of both the fifth and seventh cranial nerves. At operation, 21 of 22 nerves were found to have root entry zone vascular compression. One trigeminal nerve was considered normal. One seventh nerve had a tumor displacing the anterior inferior cerebellar artery into its root entry zone. The average follow-up period in this series was 6 years 2 months (range 1 to 8 1/2 years). Eight patients (73%) were pain-free, two (18%) had frank recurrences, and one (9%) had mild discomfort. Eight patients (73%) were totally free of facial spasm, and two others (18%) had only a trace of residual spasm. These results are comparable to those achieved by treating the individual syndromes with microvascular decompression. Therefore, microvascular decompression of both the fifth and seventh cranial nerves is recommended as the treatment of choice in tic convulsif.