Cowan’s review shows that a short-term memory limit of four items is consistent with a wide range of phenomena in the field. However he does not explain that limit, whereas an existing theory does offer an explanation for capacity limitations. Furthermore processing capacity limits cannot be reduced to storage limits as Cowan claims. In his excellent review, Cowan concludes that short term memo...

BACKGROUND Ethnic differences in lung function (LF) are recognised in adults and children. Most prediction equations for LF are derived from whites, so non-whites are at risk of erroneous assessment. It was hypothesised that differences in chest dimensions would explain differences in LF between Asian (Indian) and white schoolchildren. AIMS To quantify the impact of chest dimensions on LF, wh...

Several studies have demonstrated that language encodes geographical information. That is, the relative longitude and latitude of city locations can be extracted from language. Whether people actually rely on these linguistic features is less clear. Recent studies have suggested that language statistics plays a role in geographical estimates, but these studies rely on map drawings, a fundamenta...