It is believed that the attentional engagement of language learners may reinforce deeper neuronal processing and promote later retrieval. To address language learners’ needs and facilitate language learning, we used audio-visual entertainment (AVE) and cranio-electro stimulation (CES), in addition to multisensory-based instruction, to modify attention and retention processes. Thus, we taught a set of words with the common procedure of audio-visual instruction to 32 English language learners in the control group, CES, and AVE sessions. However, they received five sensory involvements (i.e., auditory, visual, tactile, olfactory, and gustatory) for the target words in the multisensory session. Following each instruction, a pragmatic-Stroop task and a true/false test were conducted to examine the subjects’ attention and retention processes, respectively. Analyzing the response times acquired from the pragmatic-Stroop task, it was found that multisensory-based instruction led to quicker responses in comparison to the audio-visual method preceded by AVE and CES stimulations. The response accuracy results from the retention test also revealed that the subjects provided more accurate responses to the words taught during the multisensory session. The implication is that the enriched multisensory inputs can improve L2 learners’ mental agility and facilitate successful retention and retrieval of information after a short interval period.

Long-term health and developmental impact after in utero opioid and other substance exposures is unclear. There is an urgent need for well-designed, prospective, long-term observational studies. The HEALthy Brain and Child Development Study aims to address this need. It will require optimizing recruitment and retention of caregivers and young children in long-term research. Therefore, a scoping review of original research articles, indexed in the PubMed database and published in English between January 1, 2010, and November 23, 2023, was conducted on recruitment and retention strategies of caregiver–child (≤6 years old) dyads in observational, cohort studies. Among 2,902 titles/abstracts reviewed, 37 articles were found eligible. Of those, 29 (78%) addressed recruitment, and 18 (49%) addressed retention. Thirty-four (92%) articles focused on strategies for facilitating recruitment and/or retention, while 18 (49%) described potentially harmful approaches. Recruitment and retention facilitators included face-to-face and regular contact, establishing a relationship with study personnel, use of technology and social platforms, minimizing inconveniences, and promoting incentives. This review demonstrates that numerous factors can affect engagement of caregivers and their children in long-term cohort studies. Better understanding of these factors can inform researchers about optimal approaches to recruitment and retention of caregiver–child dyads in longitudinal research.

High variability phonetic training using perceptual tasks such as identification and discrimination tasks has often been reported to improve L2 perception. However, studies comparing the efficacy of different tasks on different measures are rare. Forty-four Catalan/Spanish bilingual learners of English were trained with identification or categorical discrimination tasks and were tested on both measures. Results showed that both methods were successful in improving the identification and discrimination of English vowels. Training with nonword stimuli generalized to new nonwords and real word stimuli, and improvement was maintained four months later. Cross-task effects may be related to the categorical nature of the discrimination task, which may entail a level of processing similar to that of identification training. Interestingly, whereas identification training improved identification more than discrimination training, discrimination training did not enhance discrimination more than identification training. This asymmetry may be explained by task differences in the amount and type of feedback used.

Off-target movement of growth regulator herbicides can cause severe injury to susceptible plants. Apart from not spraying on windy days or at excessive boom heights, making herbicide applications using nozzles that produce large droplets is the preferred method for reducing herbicide drift. Although large droplets maintain a higher velocity and are more likely to reach the leaf surface in windy conditions, their ability to remain on the leaf surface is poorly understood. Upon impact with the leaf surface, droplets may shatter, bounce, roll off, or be retained on the leaf surface. We examined how different nozzles, pressures, and adjuvants impact spray droplet adsorption on the leaf surface of common lambsquarters and soybean. Plants were grown in a greenhouse and sprayed in a spray chamber. Three nozzles (XR, AIXR, and TTI) were evaluated at 138, 259, and 379 kPa, respectively. Dicamba (0.14 kg ae ha−1) was applied alone and with methylated seed oil (MSO), a non-ionic surfactant, silicone-based adjuvant, crop oil concentrate, or a drift reduction adjuvant. A 1,3,6,8-pyrene tetra sulfonic acid tetra sodium salt was added as a tracer. Dicamba spray droplet adsorption when using the XR nozzle, which produced the smallest spray droplets, was 1.75 times greater than when applied with the TTI nozzle with the largest spray droplets. Applying dicamba with MSO increased adsorption on leaf surfaces nearly 4 times the amount achieved without an adjuvant. The lowest application pressure (138 kPa) increased dicamba spray volume adsorbed more than 10% compared to the higher pressures of 259 and 379 kPa. By understanding the impacts of these application parameters on dicamba spray droplet adsorption, applicators can select application parameters, equipment, and adjuvants that will maximize the amount of dicamba spray volume retained on the target leaf surface while minimizing dicamba spray drift.

During vocabulary instruction, it is important to teach words until their representations are robust enough to be retained. For adults, the number of training sessions a target item is successfully retrieved during training predicts the likelihood of post-training retention. To assess this relationship in children, we reanalyzed data from Gordon et al. (2021b, 2022). Four- to six-year-old children completed six training days with word form-object pairs and were tested one month later. Results indicate that the number of training sessions that a word form was retrieved was positively related to post-training retention. We discuss implications for vocabulary instruction and interventions.

The aim of this paper is to investigate the usefulness of examples that show typical learner errors in online pedagogical dictionaries of English for the accuracy of error correction as well as immediate and delayed retention of usage. The optimal positioning of examples of errors in entries is also researched. In an online experiment, participants did a sentence correction exercise with the help of purpose-built monolingual dictionary entries, where the provision and positioning of examples showing errors were controlled. Two test versions were created, which differed only in the presence of examples of errors in the entries. Usage retention was observed immediately after the test and two weeks later. The results indicate that it is worthwhile to include examples of errors in online learners’ dictionaries because they contribute greatly to the retention of usage in the long run. They also help to rectify errors, though the effect is not statistically significant. The positioning of examples showing errors in entries has no influence on error correction accuracy or usage retention. The study reveals examples of errors to be a valuable induction-oriented stand-alone dictionary component placed outside warning boxes, which typically include explicit grammar rules and promote deduction.

To get a better understanding of the mechanisms of selective retention of cations by clay minerals, we have studied the physicochemical state and the location of immobilized cations. The approach developed is based on the concomitant study of the exchange isotherms and the compensating cations/clay structure interactions, using far infrared (FIR) spectroscopy. For that, cations are used as spectroscopic probes to characterize the selective sites.

Exchanged K, Rb-, K, Cs-, K, NH4- and NH4, Cs-Llano vermiculite samples were prepared. The exchange isotherms illustrate the higher selectivity of Llano vermiculite in the following order: K+ < Rb+ < Cs+. Desorption experiments show that a 2 N MgCl2 solution can extract a small fraction of immobilized Cs+. The concomitant analyses of the exchange phenomena at microscopic (X-ray diffraction) and molecular (far and middle IR spectroscopy) levels show that: (1) only ∼65% of the interlamellar hydrated Mg2+ of Llano vermiculite is exchanged; (2) cations are randomly distributed in the interlamellar spaces; and (3) retention is strongly related to the distance between compensating cations and oxygen atoms of the ditrigonal cavity.

The low hydration energy of selectively retained cations induces strong cation/clay interactions, which give FIR absorption bands of compensating cations. The FIR absorption bands of smaller cations shift towards lower wavenumbers when the proportion of the larger cations increases, whereas the wavenumber of the larger ones is constant. This reproducible scenario shows that larger cations act as wedges and expand layers, thus increasing the distance between the smaller cations and the layers. Calculation of the distances dM-O inner and dM-O outer shows that selectively-retained cations are six-coordinated in these dehydrated systems. The decrease of the difference between dM-O outer and dM-O inner from K+ to Cs+ may explain the observed selectivity of Llano vermiculite.

We conducted a literature review to identify commonly used recruitment and retention strategies in research among adolescent and young adult (AYA) cancer survivors 15-39 years of age and examine the effectiveness of these strategies based on the reported recruitment and retention rates. We identified 18 publications published after 2010, including 14 articles describing recruitment strategies and four articles discussing retention strategies and addressing reasons for AYA cancer patients dropping out of the studies. In terms of recruitment, Internet and social networking strategies were used most frequently and resulted in higher participation rates of AYA cancer survivors compared to other conventional methods, such as hospital-based outreach, mailings, and phone calls. In terms of retention, investigators used monetary incentives in all four studies and regular emails in two studies. There was no association between the number of strategies employed and the overall recruitment (p = 0.09) and retention rates (p = 0.33). Future research and planned studies testing recruitment and retention strategies are needed to identify optimal, modern communication procedures to increase AYA participation and adherence. More education should be provided to AYAs to increase their knowledge of research studies and strengthen the connection between AYA cancer survivors and their health providers.

Patient recruitment, diversity, and retention continue to impede successful and representative clinical studies. This systematic review aims to assess the impact of decentralized methods on recruitment, retention, and diversity in recent clinical studies. A systematic search of literature reporting on recruitment in decentralized clinical studies was performed. Studies were reviewed for those reporting the primary outcome of recruitment in decentralized clinical trials, observational studies, or those covering the topic of clinical trials. Secondary outcomes included retention, participant diversity, and participant satisfaction. This systematic search returned 13 studies highlighting the role of decentralized methods impacting participant recruitment, retention, and diversity in clinical studies. Eleven reported improved recruitment using decentralized methods. Seven of these reported improvements directly compared to traditional methods. Seven studies reported positive retention outcomes, with four directly comparing decentralized methods with traditional methods. Six studies were reported to have trended toward increased diversity in the demographics of the sample population, including race or geographic location. Related reviews have stated a lack of published comparable data to determine if decentralized clinical methods improved recruitment and retention. Results suggest this review addresses such a gap, providing data on how decentralized methods such as virtual visits can positively impact recruitment and retention.

Clinical trials face many challenges with meeting projected enrollment and retention goals. A study’s recruitment materials and messaging convey necessary key information and therefore serve as a critical first impression with potential participants. Yet study teams often lack the resources and skills needed to develop engaging, culturally tailored, and professional-looking recruitment materials. To address this gap, the Recruitment Innovation Center recently developed a Recruitment & Retention Materials Content and Design Toolkit, which offers research teams guidance, actionable tips, resources, and customizable templates for creating trial-specific study materials. This paper seeks to describe the creation and contents of this new toolkit.

An impediment to Malaysia’s drive for knowledge economy status is thought to be a very high rate of labour mobility — overseas, to Singapore, and inter-firm — by knowledge workers, particularly engineers. While a strong external labour market may be a sign of economic dynamism, very high turnover rates may indicate a failure of the sort of organisational attachment among professionals that is needed to foster organisational learning. Moreover a ‘brain drain’ from the country of Malaysian-educated engineers remains an ongoing concern. Although this phenomenon is popularly attributed to the ‘job-hopping’ propensities of young Malaysians, it is argued here that firms, through their human resource management (HRM) practices, have an important role to play in encouraging stronger rates of knowledge worker retention. The article reports on research findings indicating varying levels of organisational commitment by a sample of Malaysian engineers. It examines possible links between high turnover and HRM approaches that afford employees few other forms of voice than exiting the firm. Evidence is provided that employee participation in decision-making, particularly relating to training and development, and the perceived fairness of performance appraisal practices, contribute to feelings of perceived organisational support (POS), and that this sense of support influences engineers’ commitment and thus turnover intentions.

Racially and ethnically minoritized populations have been historically excluded and underrepresented in research. This paper will describe best practices in multicultural and multilingual awareness-raising strategies used by the Recruitment Innovation Center to increase minoritized enrollment into clinical trials. The Passive Immunity Trial for Our Nation will be used as a primary example to highlight real-world application of these methods to raise awareness, engage community partners, and recruit diverse study participants.

In recent years, the number of studies investigating the effectiveness of using digital games for incidental second language (L2) vocabulary learning has been rapidly increasing; however, there is still a lack of research identifying the factors that affect incidental L2 vocabulary learning. Hence, the current study examined vocabulary-related (word level, exposure frequency, salience) and learner-related (language proficiency, interest, viewing captions) variables and investigated factors affecting EFL students’ incidental vocabulary learning in the use of a vernacular (noneducational) murder mystery game (N = 59). The study employed a quantitative research method and descriptive and inferential statistics (repeated measures ANOVA and multiple linear regression). The results showed that playing the game greatly facilitated L2 vocabulary acquisition and retention. Among the vocabulary-related variables, the study found that only salience significantly influenced vocabulary acquisition. Regarding the learner-related variables, the students’ interest and viewing captions were positively related to vocabulary learning, whereas their language proficiency levels were negatively correlated. The study found that the students’ conscious attention, in conjunction with salience of the word, was the main facilitating factor in incidental vocabulary acquisition and retention in the game-enhanced language learning environment. The study suggested pedagogical implications for incidental vocabulary learning through game play based on the results of the study.