Psychological adjustment of children with sickle cell disease: Stability and change over a 10-month period.

Rates of poor psychological adjustment of children with sickle cell disease remained relatively constant over initial and follow-up assessment points. 50 children (aged 7–12 yrs) and their mothers completed the initial protocol. 30 children completed the follow-up plus 5 additional children and their mothers. These Ss were aged 7–24 yrs at follow-up. With initial levels of adjustment controlled, children's strategies for coping with pain accounted for a significant increment in child-reported symptoms and mother-reported internalizing behavior problems at follow-up beyond the contribution of illness and demographic parameters and follow-up interval. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effects of social skills curricula: Now you see them, now you don't.

Discusses the generalization effects of 7 commercially available student social-skills training (SST) curricula. A table listing strategy, curricula, S characteristics, and results is given. Maintenance of improved behavior was seen as least successful when the "train and hope" strategy was used. The combination of SST and alteration of consequences in the classroom led to the most significant maintenance of results. The most effective programs were those that combined a variety of techniques. Improvement of behavior was obtained more often with withdrawn students than with aggressive students. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of The chemically dependent: Phases of treatment and recovery.

Reviews the book, The chemically dependent: Phases of treatment and recovery edited by Barbara C. Wallace (see record 1992-98403-000). While this book is ambitious, interesting, educational, and useful, it is also disappointing, repetitious, and incomplete. Because it tries to accomplish so much, it may appear to have succeeded too little. This book is organized around, and explicative of, several basic ideas which might have been controversial if not heretical had this book been published ten years ago. Section I, purporting to link specific "phases of recovery" to particular forms and functions of treatment, will certainly be useful for novice clinicians but falls short of its overstated goals and is thereby disappointing. Section II is a collection of moderately redundant chapters describing the etiology and treatment of substance abusers from the viewpoints of psychoanalytic, psychodynamic, ego psychology, and object-relations theorists and therapists. Section III focuses on cognitive-behavioral, self-help, and relapse-prevention treatments. Section IV is quite uneven in quality of writing and applicability of content, and could have benefited from closer editorial scrutiny or selectivity. The final section focuses on special needs of particular subpopulations of substance abusers: African-Americans, prison inmates, HIV/AIDS patients, persons who are homeless, those who have been sexually and physically abused, and others. According to the reviewer this is not the best book on substance abuse treatment, but it does present some clinically useful ideas and it is worth reading. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of four maintenance programs on the long-term management of obesity.

This study evaluated the effectiveness of four posttreatment programs designed to enhance the long-term maintenance of weight loss. Mildly and moderately obese adults (N?=?123) were randomly assigned to one of the following five conditions: (a) behavior therapy only; (b) behavior therapy plus a posttreatment therapist-contact maintenance program; (c) behavior therapy plus posttreatment therapist contact plus a social influence maintenance program; (d) behavior therapy plus posttreatment therapist contact plus an aerobic exercise maintenance program; or (e) behavior therapy plus posttreatment therapist contact plus both the aerobic exercise and social influence maintenance programs. All posttreatment programs were conducted in 26 biweekly sessions during the year following behavioral treatment for obesity. At an 18-month follow-up evaluation, all four conditions that combined behavior therapy with a posttreatment maintenance program yielded significantly greater long-term weight losses than behavior therapy alone. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dual frequency miniature microstrip antenna

A single-feed dual frequency compact microstrip antenna with a shorting pin is described. This new antenna configuration gives a large variation in frequency ratio of the two operating frequencies, without increasing the overall size of the antenna     

Comparison of the MMPI and the MMPI-2 for a sample of peace officers.

166 peace officers completed the MMPI and the MMPI-2 in one sitting. Results showed an overall concordance of 78% for the 2 tests when normal, high-point, and 2-point code types were grouped together and compared. A subset of well-defined profiles produced a concordance rate of 90%. Comparison of profile characteristics showed that half of the Ss produced the same high-point code type, one-third produced the same 2-point code type, 70% produced normal profiles on both tests, and all MMPI and MMPI-2 scales were highly correlated. These figures are highly similar to those found previously for 2 administrations of the MMPI. When the MMPI was compared to the MMPI-2 scored on original norms, 2 scales were found to differ significantly: Men and women both scored lower on Scale D (Depression) of the revised test; on Scale Mf (Masculinity-Femininity) of the MMPI-2, women scored higher and men scored lower. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Microwave cavity perturbation technique: Part I: Principles

This report reviews the analysis used to extract the complex conductivity of a compound from a microwave cavity perturbation measurement. We intend to present a generalized treatment valid for any spheroidally shaped sample of arbitrary conductivity which is placed at either the electric or magnetic field antinode of the cavity. To begin with, we establish the relationship between the measured parameters and the conductivity for a spherical sample. Next, we extend these results to the case of spheroids; and for the first time, we cover all different configurations that one can possibly use to study an arbitrary conducting sample inside a cavity: in particular, all possible orientations of the sample with respect to the applied field are solved.     

Thermophysical Properties of Binary Mixtures of Methyl Methacrylate+Di-Ethers (Ethyl, Isopropyl, and Butyl) at 298.15 and 308.15 K

Experimental data for the densities, dynamic viscosities, sound speeds, and relative permittivities and for three binary systems of methyl methacrylate (MMA)+di-ethers (ethyl, isopropyl, and butyl) at 298.15 and 308.15 K and at atmospheric pressure are reported. The mixture viscosities are correlated by Grunberg–Nissan, McAllister, and Auslander equations over the complete composition range. The sound speeds for the mixtures are also calculated by using free length and collision factor theories, and Nomoto and Junjie equations. From the measured primary properties, deviation functions such as deviations in viscosities, sound speeds, relative permittivities, molar polarizations, excess isentropic compressibilities, and molar electrical susceptibilities were calculated, and the compositional dependence of each of the functions was expressed with a Redlich–Kister type equation. The variation of the Kirkwood correlation factor was determined over the complete composition range.     

Beyond Wiener–Askey Expansions: Handling Arbitrary PDFs

In this paper we present a Multi-Element generalized Polynomial Chaos (ME-gPC) method to deal with stochastic inputs with arbitrary probability measures. Based on the decomposition of the random space of the stochastic inputs, we construct numerically a set of orthogonal polynomials with respect to a conditional probability density function (PDF) in each element and subsequently implement generalized Polynomial Chaos (gPC) locally. Numerical examples show that ME-gPC exhibits both p- and h-convergence for arbitrary probability measures