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Leaf structure plays an important role in photosynthesis. However, the causal relationship and the quantitative importance of any single structural parameter to the overall photosynthetic performance of a leaf remains open to debate. In this paper, we report on a mechanistic model, eLeaf, which successfully captures rice leaf photosynthetic performance under varying environmental conditions of light and CO

Cell-phone conversation is ubiquitous within public spaces. The current study investigates whether ignored cell-phone conversation impairs eyewitness memory for a perpetrator. Participants viewed a video of a staged crime in the presence of 1 side of a comprehensible cell-phone conversation (meaningful halfalogue), 2 sides of a comprehensible cell-phone conversation (meaningful dialogue), 1 side of an incomprehensible cell-phone conversation (meaningless halfalogue), or quiet. Between 24 and 28 hr later, participants freely described the perpetrator's face, constructed a single composite image of the perpetrator from memory, and attempted to identify the perpetrator from a sequential lineup. Further, participants rated the likeness of the composites to the perpetrator. Face recall and lineup identification were impaired when participants witnessed the staged crime in the presence of a meaningful halfalogue compared to a meaningless halfalogue, meaningful dialogue, or quiet. Moreover, likeness ratings showed that the composites constructed after ignoring the meaningful halfalogue resembled the perpetrator less than did those constructed after experiencing quiet or ignoring a meaningless halfalogue or a meaningful dialogue. The unpredictability of the meaningful content of the halfalogue, rather than its acoustic unexpectedness, produces distraction. The results are novel in that they suggest that an everyday distraction, even when presented in a different modality to target information, can impair the long-term memory of an eyewitness. (PsycINFO Database Record

Eyewitnesses are often invited to construct a facial composite, an image created of the person they saw commit a crime that is used by law enforcement to locate criminal suspects. In the current paper, the effectiveness of composite images was investigated from traditional feature systems (E-FIT and PRO-fit), where participants (face constructors) selected individual features to build the face, and a more recent holistic system (EvoFIT), where they ‘evolved' a composite by repeatedly selecting from arrays of complete faces. Further participants attempted to name these composites when seen as an unaltered image, or when blurred, rotated, linearly stretched or converted to a photographic negative. All of the manipulations tested reduced correct naming of the composites overall except (i) for a low level of blur, for which naming improved for holistic composites but reduced for feature composites, and (ii) for 100% linear stretch, for which a substantial naming advantage was observed. Results also indicated that both featural (facial elements) and configural (feature spacing) information was useful for recognition in both types of composite system, but highly-detailed information was more accurate in the feature-based than the holistic method. The naming advantage of linear stretch was replicated using a forensically more-practical procedure with observers viewing an unaltered ¬composite sideways. The work is valuable to police practitioners and designers of facial-composite systems.