Covert brain infarcts (CBIs) are five times more prevalent than symptomatic brain infarcts. CBIs are associated with cognitive impairment and therefore may be a target for preventing cognitive decline and dementia. This review focuses on strategies for preventing CBI-related cognitive impairment, either by preventing incident or recurrent CBI or by enhancing cognitive reserve. CBIs begin to become prevalent during midlife and are highly prevalent in later life. The distribution of vascular pathologies of CBI differs from those that cause symptomatic stroke; therefore, preventive treatments may need to differ as well. Only a few randomized clinical trials have provided data on CBI prevention, without conclusive results. Limited data suggest that higher early-life education, hypothesized to enhance cognitive reserve, can protect the brain from effects of CBI.

Utilizing a unique data set from the Italian Ministry of Justice reporting the transmission to the Chamber of Deputies of more than the thousand requests for the removal of parliamentary immunity from deputies suspected of criminal wrongdoing, the authors analyze the political careers of members of the Chamber during the first eleven postwar legislatures (1948–94). They find that judicial investigation typically did not discourage deputies from standing for reelection in Italy's large multimember electoral districts. They also show that voters did not punish allegedly malfeasant legislators with loss of office until the last (Eleventh) legislature in the sample. To account for the dramatic change in voter behavior that occurred in the early 1990s, the investigation focuses on the roles of the judiciary and the press. The results are consistent with a theory that a vigilant and free press is a necessary condition for political accountability in democratic settings. An independent judiciary alone is ineffective in ensuring electoral accountability if the public is not informed of political malfeasance.

We show that in a sample of Extremely Metal-Poor (EMP) giants (<[Fe/H]>=−3.1) all the stars with a luminosity higher than logL/L⊙ ≈ 2.6 present the characteristics of a mixing of the surface with the H-burning layer: low abundance of carbon and high abundance of nitrogen. In these “mixed stars” the lithium abundance and the ratio 12C/13C are very low. Some of these stars are also Na or/and Al rich.

As part of a study of the detailed abundance patterns in extremely metal-poor stars, we have compared our samples of giants and dwarfs with two samples of dwarfs measured by different teams. For most elements the abundances are in good agreement, but for C, Na, and Al we show that the atmospheric abundances are different in dwarfs and in giants. For C the difference could be explained by “atmospheric effects” or by the influence of the first dredge-up, but for Na and Al deep mixing inside the stars must be invoked. Until now, such deep mixing has not been observed in metal-poor field stars. An excess scatter in [Mg/Fe] in giants remains unexplained.

Experimental measurements of material effects induced by the passage of sharp shock fronts require techniques which provide high temporal resolution and high spatial resolution. Since typical shock velocities are a few microns per nanosecond, sub-nanosecond probing requires sub-micron spatial resolution. In our experiments, the required temporal resolution is furnished using picosecond laser generated shock waves and picosecond spectroscopy. The spatial resolution is furnished by engineering nanometer scale structures into our shock target arrays. In one technique, absorption transients in the spectrum of a thin layer of molecules, termed an optical nanogauge, are investigated. Shock-induced molecular energy transfer processes are observed in condensed matter for the first time. In a second technique, sub-micron particles of an energetic material are shocked and probed using ps coherent Raman spectroscopy. This probing technique permits the instantaneous measurement of the temperature, pressure and composition of an energetic material under dynamic shock loading.

We have measured the device characterisics of short and long channel inverted- staggered hydrogenated amorphous silicon thin film transistors (TFTs) with either Mo or Cr source/drain metal after annealing at temperatures from 225 C to 275 C. The TFT deposition temperature at the substrate surface was about 270 C. From the slope of the transfer characteristic an effective mobility is extracted. Devices with Mo source/drain metal exhibit an initial effective mobility increase at short times (within about 30 min), while those with Cr do not. At long times the mobility of all devices decreases. The mobility changes are greatest for short channel length devices because of contact effects. The channel length dependence of the behavior permits a separation of the device behavior into contact and intrinsic mobility components.