Developing independence in a life transition: Investing the self in the concerns of the day.

Developing independence involves mastering the tasks of each life transition. Those more anxious about developing independence will become more invested in the normative tasks of each transition, and this anxiety will spread to the domain represented by these tasks. In Study 1, Honors College students expressed their anxiety about developing independence in academic performance at the beginning of college when this was the normative task and in social relationships after college when this was the normative task. This anxiety could be distinguished from other (e.g., academic) anxiety. In Study 2, sorority women expressed anxiety about developing independence in family and sorority relationships. Data demonstrate the social construction of anxiety and the dynamics of personality change. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Influence of different process and material parameters on chemical foaming of fluorinated ethylene propylene copolymers

In this article, the chemical foaming of fluorinated ethylene propylene copolymers (FEP) is investigated. For the laboratory scale foam extrusion process, a chemical blowing agent adapted to the high melting temperature of FEP had to be found. Foaming experiments were carried out varying process and material parameters. Foam densities as well as cellular structures were analyzed to characterize how the parameters influence the foaming behavior of the FEP melt. An increasing rate of the foam extrusion caused an augmentation of cell numbers at a simultaneous decrease of their diameters. Moreover, a pronounced reduction of the foam density with increasing output rate could be observed. Changing the temperature of the foam extrusion, an optimum in density reduction and homogeneity of the cell size was found. Furthermore, the influence of an appropriate nucleation agent on the resulting geometry and amount of cells was investigated. Though the chemical blowing agent itself can act as an implement for nucleating cell growth, an addition of 10 wt% of calcium fluoride particles showed a significant augmentation in cell quantity. For the chemical foam extrusion process, three FEP with different viscosities were characterized. With decreasing viscosity, a reduction in foam density could be observed for all temperatures. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 47:1740–1749, 2007. © 2007 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Personal construal of life tasks: Those who struggle for independence.

Life tasks serve as an avenue for individuals to give personal meaning to their lives and to organize personal effort and activities. The present data, from a longitudinal study of the transition to college life, demonstrate how construals of life tasks can help to illuminate individuals' activity choices and affective experience of daily life activities. Ss who were absorbed in the task of "being on my own, away from family," also invested their academic activities with special significance. They experienced more stress and less satisfaction from their (considerable) academic accomplishments than did those who framed their tasks in more concrete terms. Experience-sampling data showed that activity choices followed from life task concerns, even when such activities were particularly anxiety-provoking. Discussion considers how similar life task themes may be enacted differently in other contexts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Optimized Preparation of Elastically Soft,Highly Piezoelectric,Cellular Ferroelectrets from Nonvoided Poly(ethylene Terephthalate) Films

Electrically charged cellular polymer films can exhibit very high piezoelectric activity and are therefore more and more often employed in advanced electromechanical and electro‐acoustical transducers. In this paper, we report an optimized sequence of steps for preparing such ferroelectrets from commercial nonvoided poly(ethylene terephthalate) (PETP) films by means of foaming with CO₂, biaxial mechanical stretching, controlled void inflation, and bipolar electric charging. The nonvoided PETP films were foamed with supercritical CO₂ at a suitably high pressure and subsequently annealed for stabilization. The cellular foam structure was further optimized by means of well‐controlled biaxial stretching in a commercial stretcher and sometimes subsequent inflation in a pressure chamber. Bipolar electric charging of the internal voids was achieved through the application of high electric fields in an SF₆ atmosphere. The new optimized PETP ferroelectrets exhibit quite large piezoelectric coefficients up to almost 500 pC N^–1, for which unusually low elastic stiffnesses of only around 0.3 MPa are essential. The PETP‐foam ferroelectrets possess unclamped thickness‐extension resonance frequencies between approximately 120 and 250 kHz, and are thus highly suitable for several established as well as novel ultrasonic‐transducer applications.     

Brushing abrasion of eroded dentin after application of sodium fluoride solutions

OBJECTIVE: To examine the relationship between immunological variables and the different types and severity of malnutrition in Ghanaian children. DESIGN: Case-control study. SETTING: The study was done at Princess Marie Louise Hospital, Accra, Ghana. SUBJECTS: One hundred and seventy children, aged 8-36 months, were recruited at the clinical ward and public health service section of the hospital: 61 normal children, 49 moderately malnourished (underweight) children and 60 severely malnourished children (19 kwashiorkor, 30 marasmus, and 11 marasmic kwashiorkor children). METHOD: The children underwent clinical observations, anthropometric measurements and blood sampling for biochemical analysis to evaluate their nutritional and immunological status. Serum immunoglobulins (IgA subclasses, IgG subclasses and IgM), complements (C3 and C4) and lymphocyte subpopulations (T cells, B cells, CD4+, CD8+, NK cells and HLADR) were determined for the assessment of humoral and cell-mediated immunity. RESULTS: Serum levels of IgA1, IgA2 and C4 tended to be higher in severely malnourished children than in normal children, while serum level of C3 and the proportion of B cells were significantly lower in the severely malnourished children than in the normal children (P < 0.05). There were no notable differences in most immunological parameters among the three severely malnourished groups. No differences were observed in the immunological parameters except for the proportion of B cells between normal and moderately malnourished children. Factor analysis revealed that C3 levels were positively correlated with a factor which was strongly associated with weight-for-height z-score and biochemical indicators for evaluating protein nutrition. In addition, IgA2, IgG1 and IgM levels were positively correlated with a factor which was associated with C-reactive protein. CONCLUSION: Several immunological variables responded positively or negatively with the different levels of severity of malnutrition, but most variables did not on the different types of malnutrition. The changes of C3 level were more associated with the severity of malnutrition.     

Cell migration analysis: Segmenting scratch assay images with level sets and support vector machines

Cell migration assessment is often done by scratch assay experiments for which quantitative evaluations are usually performed manually. Here we present an automatic analysis pipeline detecting scratch boundaries and measuring areas based on level sets. We extend non-PDE level sets for topology-preservation and use an entropy-based energy functional. This approach by design segments a scratch in every image, hence, we employ support vector machines to identify images showing no scratch at all. Compared to other algorithms our approach, implemented as ImageJ plugin, relies on a minimal set of parameters. Experimental evaluations show the high quality of results and their suitability for biomedical investigations.     

Legal research techniques: What the psychologist needs to know.

Discusses the increasing importance of legal research for psychologists, the structure of the US judicial system, and the means by which relevant legal decisions can be retrieved. The use of 3 categories of legal materials is described: primary sources on case, statutory, and administrative law; finding tools such as case digests, computerized search services, and law journals; and secondary sources such as encyclopedias, texts, and specialized law/psychology or law/mental health journals. (10 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Das Temperaturfeld und die WÄrmeabgabe in senkrechten Kühlschlitzen von Transformatoren mit natürlicher Luftkühlung

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