Topical Editor Research Articles

Introduction to Volume 9, Issue 3 of topiCS.

This is a big issue with two interesting and important topics. We lead with Topic Editors Morten Christiansen and Inbal Arnon's introduction to their topic on More Than Words: The Role of Multiword Sequences in Language Learning and Use. These editors and their authors are leaders in the shift toward viewing “multiword linguistic units not as linguistic rarities, but as important building blocks for language acquisition and processing.” Our second topic is a first for our journal; namely, the first time that topiCS has published the papers from the Rumelhart Symposium in honor of a Rumelhart Prize winner. We are very pleased to have this honor come to topiCS and we are extremely pleased at the fine work the authors and the Topic Editors Jeffrey Loewenstein and Arthur Markman did in honoring the 2016 Rumelhart Prize winner, Dedre Gentner. In case you missed it … a brief mention of topics appearing in recent issues of topiCS. A year ago in July 2016 (volume 8, issue 3), Topic Editors Goldstone and Lupyan (2016) published the collection of papers “Discovering Psychological Principles by Mining Naturally Occurring Data Sets.” This collection is already attracting attention with 35 Google Scholar citations as of today (2017.05.02) across all of its papers. With nine citations, the highest cited paper is the work by Berger (2016) that accessed 25 years of journal citation data to conclude that an article's “mere serial position [in a journal issue] affects the prominence that research achieves.” The next most cited paper, with six citations, is Editors Goldstone and Lupyan's (2016) introduction to their topic. Having both read and used their introduction this past year in my own graduate seminar, I can vouch for its being a very brief and cogent introduction to the value of “naturally occurring data sets” (NODSs) to cognitive science research. That issue also saw the publication of a new paper in the “Visions of Cognitive Science” series, by Rouder, Morey, Verhagen, Province, and Wagenmakers (2016), which now has garnered 15 Google Scholar citations. As this retrospective is being written a mere 9 months after publication of the July 2016 issue, it is clear that these works are already having an impact on our field. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics, as well as proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1,000 words (maximum of two published pages) and will be published without abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Most commentaries would not have an abstract and would not include many references. The Executive Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to the Executive Editor (grayw@rpi.edu) or an SEB member (SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1756-8765/homepage/EditorialBoard.html).

Recent advances in the field of conducting polymers

On the occasion of the 20th anniversary of the Journal of Solid State Electrochemistry the Topical Editor of Polymer Modified Electrodes and Polyelectrolytes surveyed the fields belonging to his area. The review emphasizes the developments in the last 5 years.

Introduction to Volume 9, Issue 2 of topiCS.

This issue contains two very different and very interesting topics. We lead with the latest entry in our ongoing series, “Visions of Cognitive Science,” a paper by Robert Hamlin (University of Otago, New Zealand) titled, The gaze heuristic: Biography of an adaptively rational decision process. This is an unusual paper that must have been fun to write as it was exceedingly interesting and fun to read. Indeed, having read it straight through in one sitting, I immediately sent this to my friend and colleague Professor Gerd Gigerenzer to ask him to give it a fast “reality check” for me. His response was swift and his reaction was much the same as mine. We decided that not only was this a great paper for Topics in Cognitive Science but that we would write a short introduction that would frame the paper's contributions and help catch the eye of our busy colleagues with a somewhat whimsical title: A simple heuristic successfully used by humans, animals, and machines: The story of the RAF and Luftwaffe, hawks and ducks, dogs and frisbees, baseball outfielders and Sidewinder missiles – Oh My! After having been the Editor of topiCS for nine years, I am also happy that in this issue, I have published my own topic, Game-XP: Action Games as Experimental Paradigms for Cognitive Science. However, rather than saying more about that topic in this space, it seems more appropriate for me to refer you to the Topic Editor's introduction. In case you missed it …—a brief mention of topics appearing in recent issues of topiCS. A year ago in April 2016 (Volume 8, Issue 2), Topic Editor D. Kimbrough Oller published the collection of papers “New Frontiers in Language Evolution and Development.” This collection is already attracting attention with 10 ISI citations to date for the papers. Five of these citations are to the Lupyan and Bergen paper, “How Language Programs the Mind” with the other five citations evenly distributed among other papers. In our field, a year between when one paper is published and a second paper written, submitted, reviewed, revised, published, and indexed is not a long time. We commend this interesting, scholarly, and (at times) provocative collection of papers to our readers. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics, and proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1,000 words (maximum: two published pages) and will be published without abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Most commentaries would not have an abstract and would not include many references. The Executive Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to the Executive Editor ([email protected]) or an SEB member (SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1756-8765/homepage/EditorialBoard.html).

Seeking topical editors to expand our editorial board-and your career!: editorial.

Editor-in-Chief Ron Driggers describes the responsibilities of an Applied Optics topical editor, the traits of a good editorial candidate, and the career benefits of serving on the editorial board.

Image science at JOSA A: editorial.

Editor-in-Chief P. Scott Carney discusses the scope of image science in JOSA A and introduces new topical editor Amit Ashok.

Introduction to Volume 8, Issue 3 of topiCS.

We predict that years from now this issue of topiCS, “Discovering Psychological Principles by Mining Naturally Occurring Data Sets,” will be seen as the point at which the field of Cognitive Science realized that the ready availability of large quantities of human data in electronic format had and would continue to have a major impact on the nature, conduct, and definition of human cognitive research. From this point forward, the nature and definition of naturally occurring data sets (NODS) as a method for empirical research will reference, debate, redefine, and amend the definitions of NODS proposed in the Editors’ introduction and their collection of papers. As Topic Editors Robert L. Goldstone (Indiana University) and Gary Lupyan (University of Wisconsin) carefully discuss in their short and interesting introduction, NODS is not necessarily Big Data, and it is not necessarily data that was collected for other than research purposes (this point is clearly made in their discussion of Anderson and Schooler 1991). Equally important is their emphasis on the interplay between laboratory studies and NODS: namely, that “NODS should supplement not supplant experiments.” topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics, and proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1,000 words (maximum of two published pages) and will be published without abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Most commentaries will not have an abstract and will not include many references. The Executive Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to the Executive Editor (grayw@rpi.edu) or an SEB member (SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1756-8765/homepage/EditorialBoard.html).

Introduction

Animal-computer interaction (ACI) [1] is an emerging discipline concerned with studying the relationship between animals and technology, designing interactive technology to support animals, and developing methodologies that can enable animals to participate in the design process as legitimate stakeholders. By welcoming animals to the design table, ACI is delineating new frontiers for interaction design. However, if co-designing HCI artifacts is already fraught with misunderstanding, how might ACI researchers hope to design for and with other species? It is this key question that the contributions to this Special Topic on ACI address from different perspectives. Steve North and Clara Mancini , Special Topic Editors

Editorial: Mechanisms of Neuronal Migration during Corticogenesis.

Editorial: Mechanisms of Neuronal Migration during Corticogenesis.

Introduction to Volume 8, Issue 2 of topiCS.

Our topic for this issue is “New Frontiers in Language Evolution and Development,” and it was organized, proposed, and assembled by Topic Editors D. Kimbrough Oller (University of Memphis, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research), Rick Dale University of California, and Ulrike Griebel (University of Memphis, Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research). Theirs is an exciting topic that explores implications of new research on the interrelatedness between evolution and development of language—evo-devo. The researchers they have recruited are a scholarly group, and the collective implications of this research direction are important. It is certain to elicit excitement and to spark further research extending, refining, and defending the arguments in this increasingly important area of cognitive science. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics, and proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1,000 words (maximum: two published pages) and will be published without abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Most commentaries would not have an abstract and would not include many references. If you have a letter for topiCS, please send it directly to me at grayw@rpi.edu. If you have an idea for a commentary, you might wish to send me a short note first. The Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to me (grayw@rpi.edu) or an SEB member (SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS, http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1756-8765/homepage/EditorialBoard.html).

Graphemic Analysis and the Spoken Language Bias.

In the history of linguistics, the investigation of written language got off on the wrong foot. For a long time, writing was regarded as a secondary medium, its raison d'etre being the recording of spoken language. Spoken language in turn was regarded as the primary object of linguistic investigation. Consequently, there was no interest in an unbiased analysis of writing; if writing was analyzed at all, it was seen through the eyes of phonology. It took decades for things to improve, but written language was eventually accepted as a linguistic object in its own right. Yet the old spoken-language-bias is still influential, for example in the call for papers to this research topic. It is (as mostly nowadays) stated implicitly, which makes it harder to tackle. The topic editors state the importance of prosody for spoken language and the lack of its explicit marking in written language. On this basis they suggest that 'the informativeness of written text may seem astonishing.' This line of reasoning could be called the phonocentric fallacy: What is important in spoken language must be important in written language; moreover, there cannot be independent structures and relations in writing mediating between graphemic form and meaning, i.e., bypassing the phonological route.

Introduction to Volume 8, Issue 1 of topiCS

We begin our eighth year of publication with three themes. One is new to us, but the other two are variations on a theme introduced in our inaugural issue. Our new theme, “Global Challenges and Human Cognition,” was organized, proposed, and assembled by Topic Editor Stephan Lewandowsky (University of Bristol, UK). This theme is a first for this journal in several ways. It is the first topic devoted to an applied problem. Hence, many of its 11 papers have a Pasteur's Quadrant (Stokes, 1997) flavor of basic research in pursuit of understanding a significant applied problem. It is the first topic to address the problem of Science Denial (Lewandowsky, Mann, Bauld, Hastings, & Loftus, 2013). This problem would be bad enough if it were simply denial, but, as the APS Observer article (Lewandowsky et al., 2013) makes clear, it often turns into personal attacks on the scientists, their universities, and journals. And it is the first to address any aspect of climate science from a cognitive science perspective. The gap between the facts of the case and public perception creates an interesting cognitive and behavioral science research issue. This gap requires that the tools of cognitive science be brought to bear to understand problems of this nature; namely, the failure by a large part of the public to understand or accept the facts, the outright denial of established facts, and the demonization of science and scientists, which for different topics runs high among different segments of the population. Such gaps present an interesting challenge for cognitive scientists to grow our science and apply it in the form of policy recommendations, education initiatives, and so on to climate change and other issues (see van Linden, Maibach, and Leiserowitz 2015 for a related paper from the psychological science community). Our other two themes present two variations of our Best Of topic. First, Topic Editor Niels Taatgen presents us with the six best papers from the 2015 meeting of the International Conference on Cognitive Modeling. Second, we have one Best Of paper from this past year's Cognitive Science Conference. This one, “Attention modulates spatial precision in multiple object tracking” by Nisheeth Srivastava and Ed Vul, won the annual Higher-Level Cognition award. Not all prize-winning conference papers make good stand-alone journal papers. Indeed, members of the topiCS Senior Editorial Board read each paper to recommend to the Editor which one we should pursue. As is usually the case, many of the authors whose papers that pass that bar tell me that they are planning on significantly expanding their paper beyond that which was presented at the conference and decline our offer. Nevertheless, some conference papers become perfect journal papers with a bit more editing and a modest increase in word length—this definitely describes the Srivastava and Vul paper. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics and proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1,000 words (maximum of two published pages) and will be published without abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Most commentaries would not require an abstract nor include many references. If you have a letter for topiCS, please send it directly to me at grayw@rpi.edu. If you have an idea for a commentary, you might wish to send me a short note first. The Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to me (grayw@rpi.edu) or an SEB member. SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS (http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/ journal/10.1111/(ISSN)1756-8765/homepage/EditorialBoard.html).

Introduction to Volume 7, Issue 3 of topiCS

Topic Editors Wai-Tat Fu, Thomas Hills, and Peter Todd have put together an excellent topic titled: “Interfacing mind and environment: The central role of search in cognition.” Search is a broad topic that is claimed by many domains. The authors gathered by Fu, Hills, and Todd show why it is a cognitive science topic with a keen emphasis on how search, whether through memory or in the world, is adapted to the distribution of resources in the search environment and the resources which the searcher(s) may be able to bring to bear. In their introduction, the Editors situate the papers and provide an excellent overview of the issues discussed and papers included. If this is not enough to entice the curious, the collection also includes two solicited commentaries on two of the Topic papers. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics, and proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1,000 words (maximum two published pages) and will be published without abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Most commentaries would not have an abstract and would not include many references. If you have a letter for topiCS, please send it directly to me at grayw@rpi.edu. If you have an idea for a commentary, you might wish to send me a short note first. The Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to me or an SEB member (SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS) and be sure to consult the topiCS FAQ page, http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/topiCS/FAQs.html, for Preparing a Proposal for topiCS.

Methodology: Care of the Critically Ill and Injured During Pandemics and Disasters: CHEST Consensus Statement

Natural disasters, industrial accidents, terrorism attacks, and pandemics all have the capacity to result in large numbers of critically ill or injured patients. This supplement provides suggestions for all those involved in a disaster or pandemic with multiple critically ill patients, including front-line clinicians, hospital administrators, professional societies, and public health or government officials. The field of disaster medicine does not have the required body of evidence needed to undergo a traditional guideline development process. In result, consensus statement-development methodology was used to capture the highest-caliber expert opinion in a structured, scientific approach. Task Force Executive Committee members identified core topic areas regarding the provision of care to critically ill or injured patients from pandemics or disasters and subsequently assembled an international panel for each identified area. International disaster medicine experts were brought together to identify key questions (in a population, intervention, comparator, outcome [PICO]-based format) within each of the core topic areas. Comprehensive literature searches were then conducted to identify studies upon which evidence-based recommendations could be made. No studies of sufficient quality were identified. Therefore, the panel developed expert opinion-based suggestions that are presented in this supplement using a modified Delphi process. A total of 315 suggestions were drafted across all topic groups. After two rounds of a Delphi consensus-development process, 267 suggestions were chosen by the panel to include in the document and published in a total of 12 manuscripts composing the core chapters of this supplement. Draft manuscripts were prepared by the topic editor and members of the working groups for each of the topics, producing a total of 11 papers. Once the preliminary drafts were received, the Executive Committee (Writing Committee) then met to review, edit, and promote alignment of all of the primary drafts of the manuscripts prepared by the topic editors and their groups. The topic editors then revised their manuscripts based on the Executive Committee's edits and comments. The Writing Committee subsequently reviewed the updated drafts and prepared the final manuscripts for submission to the Guidelines Oversight Committee (GOC). The manuscripts subsequently underwent review by the GOC, including external review as well as peer review for the journal publication. The Writing Committee received the feedback from the reviewers and modified the manuscripts as required. Based on a robust and transparent process, this project used rigorous methodology to produce clinically relevant, trustworthy consensus statements, with the aim to provide needed guidance on treatment and procedures for practitioners, hospital administrators, and public health and government officials when addressing the care of critically ill or injured patients in disasters or pandemics.

Surge Capacity Logistics: Care of the Critically Ill and Injured During Pandemics and Disasters: CHEST Consensus Statement

Successful management of a pandemic or disaster requires implementation of preexisting plans to minimize loss of life and maintain control. Managing the expected surges in intensive care capacity requires strategic planning from a systems perspective and includes focused intensive care abilities and requirements as well as all individuals and organizations involved in hospital and regional planning. The suggestions in this article are important for all involved in a large-scale disaster or pandemic, including front-line clinicians, hospital administrators, and public health or government officials. Specifically, this article focuses on surge logistics-those elements that provide the capability to deliver mass critical care. The Surge Capacity topic panel developed 23 key questions focused on the following domains: systems issues; equipment, supplies, and pharmaceuticals; staffing; and informatics. Literature searches were conducted to identify studies upon which evidence-based recommendations could be made. The results were reviewed for relevance to the topic, and the articles were screened by two topic editors for placement within one of the surge domains noted previously. Most reports were small scale, were observational, or used flawed modeling; hence, the level of evidence on which to base recommendations was poor and did not permit the development of evidence-based recommendations. The Surge Capacity topic panel subsequently followed the American College of Chest Physicians (CHEST) Guidelines Oversight Committee's methodology to develop suggestion based on expert opinion using a modified Delphi process. This article presents 22 suggestions pertaining to surge capacity mass critical care, including requirements for equipment, supplies, and pharmaceuticals; staff preparation and organization; methods of mitigating overwhelming patient loads; the role of deployable critical care services; and the use of transportation assets to support the surge response. Critical care response to a disaster relies on careful planning for staff and resource augmentation and involves many agencies. Maximizing the use of regional resources, including staff, equipment, and supplies, extends critical care capabilities. Regional coalitions should be established to facilitate agreements, outline operational plans, and coordinate hospital efforts to achieve predetermined goals. Specialized physician oversight is necessary and if not available on site, may be provided through remote consultation. Triage by experienced providers, reverse triage, and service deescalation may be used to minimize ICU resource consumption. During a temporary loss of infrastructure or overwhelmed hospital resources, deployable critical care services should be considered.

Emotionality differences between a native and foreign language: theoretical implications.

The topic editors, Cornelia Herbert and colleagues, have noted that language has historically been assumed to be independent from emotions. The historical backdrop to this is the long reign of faculty psychology, which viewed the human mind as composed of discrete abilities (see discussion in Barrett, 2013). The mental modularity popularized by Chomsky (1965) and Fodor (1983) continued this view following the cognitive revolution of mid-century. Emotion had no role in information processing psychology, leading to its neglect in the cognitive sciences (Cromwell and Panksepp, 2011). Indeed, the classic emotion-cognition divide has been criticized in the past decades by theorists who are otherwise not natural allies (e.g., Damasio, 1994; Cromwell and Panksepp, 2011; Lindquist, 2013). An alternative to faculty psychology is psychological construction (Lindquist, 2013). On this view, mental abilities and mental states like emotions are constructed from the dynamic interaction of physiological states, situation-specific information, and conceptual knowledge. In the modular view of mind, emotion and language should have little overlap in their processes and representations. However, according to psychological constructivism, an emotional reaction can be influenced by any aspect of the on-going situation, such as the language being spoken, which is the topic of this commentary. I describe here findings on the emotionality differences between a native and a foreign language. Bilingual speakers 1 frequently report that swearing, praying, lying, and saying I love you feel differently when using a native rather than a foreign language (see, e.g., Pavlenko, 2005; Dewaele, 2010). My goal is to highlight the relevance of this body of work for the theoretical assumptions regarding language-emotion independence.

Introduction to Volume 6, Issue 3 of topiCS

Topic Editors Angelo Cangelosi (University of Plymouth, England) and Anna Borghi (University of Bologna, Italy) bring together a group of highly interdisciplinary (even by Cognitive Science standards) researchers who pursue the topic of “Action and Language Integration: From Humans to Cognitive Robots.” The breadth of work brought to bear on this topic is impressive as is the work itself. We heartily recommend the Topic Editors' introduction to their topic and suspect that many readers will go from there to some of the many fine papers in this issue of topiCS. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics, and proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1000 words (maximum of two published pages) and will be published without abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Most commentaries would not have an abstract and would not include many references. If you have a letter for topiCS, please send it directly to me at grayw@rpi.edu. If you have an idea for a commentary, you might wish to send me a short note first. The Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to me or an SEB member (SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS) and be sure to consult the topiCS FAQ page, http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/topiCS/FAQs.html, for Preparing a Proposal for topiCS.

DNA, statistics and the law: a cross-disciplinary approach to forensic inference.

The use of results of DNA analyses in the legal process is a highly ambivalent topic. On the one hand, scientists have never been in a better position to analyse biological matter of various natures, even in limited quantities and degraded conditions. On the other hand, the increasing amounts of scientific data that can be generated through modern analytical processes do not necessarily imply that evaluative questions that arise in the legal context are given more satisfactory answers. A fundamental question that has accompanied DNA analyses since the early days of their use in the legal process thus remains: how do we handle the challenges presented to us by the use of contemporary scientific and technological developments in the field of law? Under the general theme “DNA, statistics and the law,” the collection of articles in this Frontiers Research Topic pursues the goal of investigating this question from an interdisciplinary perspective, and with an emphasis on both current and future challenges. As pointed out by Gunn et al. (2014) and Leake (2013), the forensic interest in DNA goes well beyond the standard approaches to DNA profiling that represent the current state-of-the-art in many contemporary legal systems, and this raises questions as to how new forms of data ought to be dealt with in an operational perspective (Milot et al., 2013). Although these frontiers topics clarify the extent to which there is room for exciting future research in this area, it should not distract us from the fact that even in the current state of forensic practice, there are hurdles and pressing topics that ask for efficient answers. Controversies over legal cases, such as the Perugia case (Vecchiotti and Zoppis, 2013), reveal that the field is still facing difficulties in setting the meaning of DNA profiling results appropriately into context (Champod, 2013; McKenna, 2013). One might be tempted to conclude that this is an issue that is confined to (and could thus be resolved within) the intersection between forensic science and the law. This perspective might, however, fall short of further dimensions, such as commercialization (Jackson, 2013). The publication of opinion pieces on this topic helps raise awareness on this topic and address some of this deficit. On a methodological account, the field of statistics is often invoked as a remedy to deal with evaluative questions and many discussants tend to emphasize its traditional facet concerned with data processing. The case of statistics is more general, however, because it is a branch that involves an additional characterizing feature: reasoning coherently in the face of uncertainty (known in the context as forensic inference), using probability theory. Indeed, existing literature abounds in rigorous and coherent approaches to cope with intricate evaluative questions (Biedermann, 2013; Juchli, 2013) of the kind that are also encountered in connection with forensic DNA. It is with some frustration, however, that we note that discussions surrounding evaluative questions, using probability, are still fraught with problems that have debates for a very long time. Prior probabilities are one example for this (Thompson et al., 2013). In summary, the contributions in this Research Topic convince us that the extension of technical frontiers should also be accompanied by conceptual developments and understandings. Indeed, during personal discussions with the Topic Editors, one reviewer (Sheila Willis, Eolaiocht Fhoireinseach Eireann, Forensic Science Laboratory, Ireland) raised cultural understandings as a further relevant factor: “I think the problem is much deeper. The use of matching DNA as a heuristic for a definite link between person and place is embedded in the minds of scientists as well as jurors in spite of the scholarship to the contrary. The discriminating power of DNA has had a paradoxical effect in the development of forensic science. On one hand it prompted forensic science to be valued and used in a very widespread manner but on the other hand it promoted the commodisation of forensic science with the belief that the test result is all-important and the context irrelevant. This latter view prompts the approach that the test can be produced anywhere and loses sight for the need of the very evaluation (…). It is vital that we address this. It is mixed with the commercialization issues but to focus too much on that aspect is to ignore the wider issues that also need to be addressed by: the publication of high profile cases where this approach has unfortunate consequences; increased education; critical mass of scientific opinion in favor of the approach argued for (…).” We cannot but agree and hope that the collected papers in this Research Topic will be of interest to both scientists and other participants in the legal process. We thank all contributors and distinguished reviewers for their efforts to make this original collection timely and highly useful.

Introduction to Volume 6, Issue 2 of topiCS.

Topic Editors Andrew Howes (Birmingham), Richard L. Lewis (Michigan), and Satinder Singh (Michigan) bring together a group of distinguished researchers who ask the broad question of whether our current understanding of the bounds of cognition, when filtered through modeling approaches that emphasize utility maximization, can predict some of behavior's many adaptations to the task environment. Their set of six papers and two commentaries ranges widely over this terrain, and the various successes and failures shed light on common assumptions made by contemporary cognitive theories, methodology for testing those theories, assumptions embedded in various concepts of maximization, and more. topiCS encourages letters and commentaries on all topics, and proposals for new topics. Letters are typically 400–1,000 words (maximum of two published pages) and will be published without abstract or references (possibly 1–2 but usually none). Commentaries are often solicited by Topic Editors prior to the publication of their topic. However, commentaries after publication are also considered and should range between 1,000 and 2,000 words. Most commentaries would not have an abstract and would not include many references. If you have a letter for topiCS, please send it directly to me at grayw@rpi.edu. If you have an idea for a commentary, you might wish to send me a short note first. The Editor and the Senior Editorial Board (SEB) members are constantly searching for new and exciting topics for topiCS. Feel free to open communications with a short note to me or an SEB member (SEB members are listed under the Editorial Board heading on the publisher's homepage for topiCS) and be sure to consult the topiCS FAQ page, http://csjarchive.cogsci.rpi.edu/topiCS/FAQs.html, for Preparing a Proposal for topiCS.

Celebrating our 10 year anniversary!

Dear Colleagues and Friends, It has been 10 years since we started the Japan Journal of Nursing Science (JJNS) and I believe we can all be very proud of its accomplishments. Three cheers! The leadership and foresight demonstrated by the Board of Directors of the Japan Academy of Nursing Science (JANS) in 2002–2003 is impressive. It was a risk to invest such a significant amount of limited resources in an English journal. The Board recognized that English is the language of science and there was – and continues today – to be a strong interest in sharing the work of Japanese nurse scientists with the global world. Congratulations to these pioneers who had the vision to move Japanese nursing science into public view. Three cheers to the leadership of the Journal appointed by the JANS Board. The chairpersons (Table 1) of the journal have done an outstanding job securing topical editors and reviewers. The Editorial Board (Table 1) members of the Journal have also worked very hard to secure high quality and fair reviews of manuscripts in a timely fashion. Our International Advisory Board (Table 2 ) has added great depth to our capacity to provide expert reviews of the submitted manuscripts. We also wish to thank all the reviewers who have contributed to JJNS; a list or reviewers is at the end of this volume. I wish to express my profound gratitude to two individuals, Professor Hiromi Eto and Kunimi Tanaka, for their commitment and outstanding contributions to JJNS. Please enjoy the historical review prepared by Professor Murashima and the analysis of journal statistics by Professor Eto. We are expected to transition to the 11th year of publishing JJNS by taking it completely online. Please continue to support the journal and send us your good work! Warmly,

Letter from the new Editor-in-Chief

It is a pleasure and honor to introduce myself as the new Editor-in-Chief of Coral Reefs. Professor Rolf Bak has stepped down from the position after 5 years of extraordinary growth for the journal. Professor Bak, Assistant to the Editor Dr. Betsy Gladfelter, and the hard working Topic Editors who have worked with Rolf deserve a heartfelt thank you. Fortunately, much of that editorial team will continue on in their positions.