On reducing experimenter bias: The effects of forewarning.

Tested the hypothesis, with 67 male and 70 female undergraduates, that forewarning would reduce the effects of E bias. Es were given different expectations as to how Ss would perform on a person perception task. Each E then ran a number of Ss. 1/2 of each E's Ss were forewarned of the possibility of E bias and 1/2 were not forewarned. The hypothesis is supported among females (p     

High-volume aspiration as a supplemental scavenging method for reducing ambient nitrous oxide levels in the operatory: a laboratory study

Occupational exposure to low levels of nitrous oxide (N2O) have been associated with adverse health effects. The National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health has established a threshold guideline of 25 ppm N2O. The purpose of this laboratory study was to determine the effectiveness of a high-volume dental aspirator as a supplemental device to reduce ambient N2O levels in the operatory. The investigation evaluated four experimental groups that were assigned based on whether or not the aspirator was used and on the rate at which operatory ventilation was established (5 or 10 room air exchanges per hour). Ambient N2O levels were monitored at 30 cm from the nasal hood using an infrared spectrophotometer. The room air exchange rate was measured with a flow hood and then manipulated to the desired ventilation rate. N2O levels were detected with a spectrophotometer and data were recorded with a microprocessor that continuously collected data. The results demonstrated that both utilization of supplemental oral aspiration and increased operatory ventilation significantly reduced ambient N2O levels. It was concluded that a high-volume aspirator, when used in conjunction with the normal scavenging system, can significantly reduce ambient N2O levels to within the guidelines established by the National Institute for Occupational Safety and Health.     

铁矿煤球团内生还原气生产DRI工艺及估算

在高炉热风炉中用高炉煤气、垃圾制燃气、低热值煤气加热循环还原气,或用红焦、热DRI(直接还原铁)等热量加热循环还原气至1100℃,输入还原竖炉加热铁矿煤球团,生产DRI,从炉顶气中回收硫和CO₂,炉顶气净化后作为还原气循环使用.球团内煤干馏形成的半焦、焦炭起到了与高炉内焦炭不同的骨架作用.利用还原反应后气体余热来预热和干馏球团,利用铁精矿粉和煤粉的高比表面积,利用煤的干馏气化促进低温下碳的一次气化反应和直接还原反应,使DRI煤耗进一步降低.设炉顶气温度降到150℃,配煤218kg,高炉煤气消耗约947m³时,工艺能耗约333kg/t煤.比高炉工艺节能约52%,减排CO₂约83%.比MIDREX节能约84kg标准煤.该工艺简称为DRI-NHQ.     

Determination of urine saturation with computer program EQUIL 2 as a method for estimation of the risk of urolithiasis

Two measures of weight cycling and indexes of psychological functioning were examined in a large sample of dieters. History of weight cycling was assessed to include number of dieting attempts, total lifetime weight lost and regained, and number of weight cycles over 20 lb (9.1 kg). Experience of weight cycling measured perception of being a yo-yo dieter and perceived success at maintaining past weight losses. Experience was more strongly related than history to all psychological measures. Further, when controlling for the effects of age, body mass index, and experience, the relation between history and the psychological variables was nonsignificant. This finding suggests that an individual's perception of being a weight cycler may be more related to psychological problems than the actual number of pounds lost and regained over time.     

Participation in decision making as a strategy for reducing job-related strain.

Proposed a causal model that describes the effect of participation in decision making on perceived influence, role conflict, role ambiguity, personal and job-related communications, social support, emotional strain, overall job satisfaction, absenteeism, and turnover intention. The model was tested using a Solomon 4-group design and modified to include 2 posttests; it was conducted in a hospital outpatient facility with 95 nursing and clerical employees who were randomly assigned to an increased-participation or a control condition and to a pretest or no-pretest condition. Outcomes were assessed after 3 and 6 mo. Analysis provided support for a somewhat revised model. After 6 mo, participation was shown to have a significant, negative effect on role conflict and role ambiguity and a positive effect on perceived influence. Role conflict and ambiguity were, in turn, positively related to emotional strain and negatively related to job satisfaction. Emotional strain was positively related to absence frequency and turnover intention. Perceived influence was positively related to job satisfaction and positively related to turnover intention. Participation in decision making appeared to be an important causal determinant of role strains, which were, in turn, important precursors of both individual and organizational outcomes. (46 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Behavioral anchors as a source of bias in rating.

Behavioral anchors may affect the way that raters process information about ratees, and may in some cases be a source of bias in rating. This study tested the hypothesis that the presence of behavioral anchors that closely matched behaviors actually observed by raters would bias performance ratings. Subjects (N?=?180) viewed videotaped lectures and rated them, using scales that contained examples of either good or bad performance that had actually occurred on the tapes, but that were not representative of the ratee's overall performance. One half of the subjects read the scales before viewing the lectures; the remaining subjects read the scales only after viewing the lectures. There was a significant scale effect, but no Scale?×?Order interaction; ratings were biased in the direction of unrepresentative anchors. These results suggest that behavioral anchors can be a source of bias in ratings and they may lead to biased recall, but they probably do not bias the observation and encoding of ratee behavior. Our results suggest that behaviorally anchored scales are not necessarily more objective or less prone to bias than are scales without behavioral anchors. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Reducing the effects of juror bias.

Proposes a theoretical framework for relating bias to a juror's ultimate judgment. In this framework, bias, in the sense of positivity or negativity of a prejudgmental disposition, is integrated with the degree of guilt appearance of the evidential information. The 2 components, bias and evidence, are inversely weighted, so that increasing the importance of one decreases the effective importance of the other. In 2 experiments with 192 undergraduates, the effects of trait biases in simulated jurors, selected for their harshness or leniency toward criminals, were reduced by conditions that increased the reliability and trustworthiness of trial evidence. Situational biases were induced in a 3rd experiment with 96 undergraduates by trial conditions designed to annoy jurors, but their effects were ameliorated by a short period of deliberation. These bias-reducing procedures are interpreted as indirectly dealing with bias by increasing the salience of the information taken into account in judgment formation. Some implications regarding trial conditions that facilitate or inhibit manifestation of bias are discussed. (28 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Sandwich priming: A method for overcoming the limitations of masked priming by reducing lexical competitor effects.

An orthographically similar masked nonword prime facilitates responding in a lexical decision task (Forster & Davis, 1984). Recently, this masked priming paradigm has been used to evaluate models of orthographic coding—models that attempt to quantify prime-target similarity. One general finding is that priming effects often do not occur when prime-target similarity is moderate, a result that the authors interpret as being due to uncontrolled effects of lexical inhibition. In the present research, a new version of the masked priming paradigm, sandwich priming, was introduced in an effort to minimize the impact of lexical inhibition. Masked sandwich priming involves briefly presenting the target itself prior to the presentation of each prime. Results indicate that the new paradigm was successful. The predicted priming effects were observed for Guerrera and Forster’s (2008) T-All primes (e.g., avacitno–VACATION) and for primes differing from their targets at 3 letter positions (e.g., coshure–CAPTURE)—effects that are not found with the conventional masked priming paradigm. In addition to demonstrating the usefulness of the sandwich priming technique, these results also support the assumption that inhibitory processes play an important role in lexical processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Restriction sites as identification tags for lymphocyte cDNAs

A cDNA library was prepared from BW 5147 murine lymphoma cells in lambda ecc III phage and randomly partitioned into 291 sectors, each with 800-1000 recombinant phage plaques. One sector was chosen for further characterization in terms of sensitivity to restriction endonuclease cutting. Aliquots of DNA preparations from this sector were treated with XhoI, SmaI, NcoI, PvuII, PstI, HindIII, EcoRI, BamHI, and ApaLI before being used as templates in a cell-free expression system. The polypeptide products were separated by two-dimensional (2-D) gel electrophoresis and radiofluorographs of the gels were submitted to computer-aided image analysis. The matched patterns were inspected for the presence or absence of spots upon individual endonuclease treatments. Thereafter the results were integrated in a data matrix which served as a basis to construct "restriction tags" for all spots. These (restriction) tags are binary numbers termed "cut numbers" and are a representation of the set of recognition sequences which are (or are not) part of the coding sequence. From 493 sequences (visualized as 2-D gel spots), 12 were not cut by any of the nine enzymes, while 45 were cut by all of them. The percentages of sequences resistant to enzyme treatment ranged between 17% and 77% for NcoI and XhoI, respectively. The enzyme treatments led to the appearance of a certain portion of "new spots", probably products from truncated sequences. From 512 possible cut numbers, 136 were assigned to the 493 spots. Restriction tags are available to facilitate retrieval of cDNA clones from the (partitioned) cDNA library.     

Evidence for response bias as a source of error variance in applied assessment.

After 100 years of discussion, response bias remains a controversial topic in psychological measurement. The use of bias indicators in applied assessment is predicated on the assumptions that (a) response bias suppresses or moderates the criterion-related validity of substantive psychological indicators and (b) bias indicators are capable of detecting the presence of response bias. To test these assumptions, we reviewed literature comprising investigations in which bias indicators were evaluated as suppressors or moderators of the validity of other indicators. This review yielded only 41 studies across the contexts of personality assessment, workplace variables, emotional disorders, eligibility for disability, and forensic populations. In the first two contexts, there were enough studies to conclude that support for the use of bias indicators was weak. Evidence suggesting that random or careless responding may represent a biasing influence was noted, but this conclusion was based on a small set of studies. Several possible causes for failure to support the overall hypothesis were suggested, including poor validity of bias indicators, the extreme base rate of bias, and the adequacy of the criteria. In the other settings, the yield was too small to afford viable conclusions. Although the absence of a consensus could be used to justify continued use of bias indicators in such settings, false positives have their costs, including wasted effort and adverse impact. Despite many years of research, a sufficient justification for the use of bias indicators in applied settings remains elusive. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A method for investigating sources of rater bias.

Few studies in counseling and psychotherapy have investigated rater bias. The purpose of this study was to outline a method for studying rater bias. We studied three potential sources of rater bias: (a) characteristics of the rater, client, and therapist; (b) the similarity of characteristics between rater and therapist or client; and (c) perceived similarity between rater and therapist or client. We used a new rater-bias measure. The data for the study were ratings on the Collaborative Study Psychotherapy Rating Scale for 826 sessions of psychotherapy in the Treatment of Depression Collaborative Research Program. High interrater reliability was found for all scales of the measure. We found evidence of rater bias only on the facilitative conditions scale. Rater bias was not found for the other scales, perhaps because of the extensive development of the measure, careful selection of the raters, lengthy rater training, and continued contact with raters throughout the rating period. The rater-bias measure may be useful to other researchers as a means of testing the reactivity of their measures to rater bias. Finally, the method for investigating rater bias can be used by other researchers to evaluate rater bias. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A radio-enzymatic method for the estimation of L-leucine-specific radioactivity

A method is presented for the estimation of L-leucine concentration and radioactivity in biological samples. The sample L-leucine is specifically bound to tRNA and its radioactivity estimated in the presence of either added labelled L-leucine or cold L-leucine (in the same proportion), as well as in the presence of a large excess of cold L-leucine. The latter gave the measurement of non-leucine radioactivity present in the sample. The measurements in the presence and absence of labelled/cold L-leucine allowed the estimation of L-leucine levels and radioactivity by using a simple set of calculations and a standard curve built with known cold L-leucine concentrations in the presence of a fixed known amount of [14C]L-leucine.     

Hindsight bias in an application of the Angoff method for setting cutoff scores.

This study used the hindsight bias literature to examine the effects of providing test item answers on the level and predictive accuracy of Angoff cutoff score judgments. Subjects, randomly assigned to either an answers or a no-answers group, made Angoff judgments on items testing knowledge of driving law and vehicle operation. Items were categorized into subtests based on empirical difficulty. Results indicated that providing answers interacted with subtest difficulty to influence the level of Angoff judgments. On the easiest subtest, those in the answers group made higher judgments than did those in the no-answers group; the reverse effect was observed on the most difficult subtest. Subjects in the answers group more accurately predicted empirical item difficulties than did subjects in the no-answers group. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A hypothesis-confirming bias in labeling effects.

Examined the process leading to the confirmation of a perceiver's expectancies about another when the social label that created the expectancy provides poor or tentative evidence about another's true dispositions or capabilities. Ss were 67 undergraduates. One group was led to believe that a child came from a high SES background; the other group, that the child came from a low SES background. Nothing in the SES data conveyed information directly relevant to the child's ability level, and when asked, both groups reluctantly rated the child's ability level to be approximately at grade level. Two other groups received the SES information and then witnessed a videotape of the child taking an academic test. Although the videotaped series was identical for all Ss, those who had information that the child came from a high SES rated her abilities well above grade level, whereas those for whom the child was identified as coming from a lower-class background rated her abilities as below grade level. Both groups cited evidence from the ability test to support their conclusions. Findings are interpreted as suggesting that some "stereotype" information creates not certainties but hypotheses about the stereotyped individual. However, these hypotheses are often tested in a biased fashion that leads to their false confirmation. (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Searching beneath the shelf in macaque monkeys: Evidence for a gravity bias or a foraging bias?

The reasons underpinning search biases in 2 species of macaque monkeys (Macaca mulatta and Macaca arctoides) were explored over the course of 3 experiments requiring monkeys to search for a hidden food reward. The results reveal that monkeys are adept at exploiting perceptual cues to locate a food reward but are unable to use physical constraints such as solidity as cues to the reward's location. Monkeys prefer to search for a food reward beneath a solid shelf, not because they have an expectation that the reward should be there, but rather because, in the absence of usable cues, this bias emerges as a default search option. It is hypothesized that this bias may have its roots in a history of competition for food resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

D-xylose test of resorption as a method to determine radiation side effects in the small intestine

Microscopic papillary carcinoma of the thyroid gland (MPC) measuring < or = 1.0 cm in diameter has a generally benign outcome, but is often overtreated with additional surgery. Ninety cases of MPC and 77 cases of nonmicroscopic papillary carcinoma of the thyroid gland (non-MPC) from 1970 to 1980 were retrieved from the Endocrine Registry of the Armed Forces Institute of Pathology (AFIP), Washington, D.C. Histologic features and patient follow-up were analyzed. Twenty-one patients with MPC had multifocal disease within the affected thyroid lobe, while a further 15 had either bilateral or intraglandular spread. Four of 10 patients who had additional surgery were found to have additional foci of tumor. Fourteen patients with lymph node metastases at initial surgery had no subsequent nodal metastases. All patients were either alive without disease or had died of unrelated causes after an average follow-up period of 17.3 years. Of the 77 non-MPC patients, 13 developed lymph node metastases or local recurrences, and one died of metastatic disease. Sixty-four of these patients were alive without evidence of disease after an average follow-up of 22 years. Present findings show that while MPC may present with perithyroidal lymph node metastases (15.56%), patients do not develop clinical tumors in the remaining thyroid tissue. Our experience indicates that close clinical follow-up without additional surgery is the preferable management for patients with MPC.     

The scapular manipulation method for reducing anterior shoulder dislocations

Poly[2'-O-(2,4-dinitrophenyl)]poly(A)[DNP-poly(A)] has been found to be a potent inhibitor in solution for RNases A, B, S, T1, T2 and H as well as phosphodiesterases I and II. Kinetic measurements with RNase B and RNase T1 showed DNP-poly(A) to be a reversible competitive inhibitor with K1 equal to 1.03 and 1.05 microM, respectively. Data on the quenching of fluorescence of RNase T1 by DNP-poly(A) indicate the existence of more than one RNase-binding site in each DNP-poly(A) molecule. By attaching each DNP-poly(A) molecule at one end covalently to oxirane acrylic beads, an affinity column was prepared for selective removal of RNases from aqueous solutions by simple filtration. It was found that a 1000-fold reduction in RNase concentration can be obtained by passing either 7.0 microM or 7.0 nM RNase A solution through a 5-cm-long column. The column can be saturated by passing through a concentrated RNase solution and subsequently regenerated by washing with salt solution. The regenerated column can be used repeatedly with no significant decrease in RNase-binding affinity and capacity. By titration of the derivatized beads with RNase, the first dissociation constant (Kd) and binding capacity for the bound enzyme can be determined. The (Kd) was found to be 0.66 microM for RNase B and 0.48 microM for RNase T1; the corresponding binding capacities were found to be 21.0 x (10)-8 and 9.6 x (10)-8 mol/g, respectively.     

Development of a method for direct quantification of cytomegalovirus antigenemia by flow cytometry

Cytomegalovirus (CMV) antigenemia was directly detected in polymorphonuclear leukocytes (PMNLs) from transplant recipients by using flow cytometry (FC). Two fixation and permeabilization methods and seven anti-CMV monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) were evaluated. 1C3, SL20, and NEA-9221 MAbs were more efficacious. The antigenemia detection threshold of FC was 0.05% positive PMNLs, and percentages correlated well with DNA viral load and the appearance of clinical symptoms.