Causality, agency, and control beliefs in East versus West Berlin children: A natural experiment on the role of context.

Beliefs about factors that affect school performance (means-ends or causality beliefs) and about self-efficacy and control (agency and control beliefs) were assessed in 313 East Berlin children before unification and in 516 West Berlin children (all in Grades 2–6) shortly after unification. Multiple-group analyses of mean and covariance structures yielded 2 major differences: (1) East Berlin Ss showed lower agency and control beliefs than West Berlin Ss and (2) their agency and control beliefs were more highly correlated with school grades than West Berlin Ss', with strong correlations already emerging in East Berlin 2nd graders. Findings were consistent with differences between East and West Berlin school systems. East Berlin regulations emphasized public performance feedback and public self-evaluation and enforced unidimensional teaching strategies. Results point to a risk factor for development in East Berlin children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Homeostasis--the key concept to physiological control

Water in the body forms the fluid compartments inside and outside cells, but it is more than just a space filler. A continuous exchange of water between the compartments partly facilitates regulation of the compartment volume but also permits the exchange of substances dissolved within it. Some of these latter are ions that form the electrolyte environment in which cells must operate. Body fluid physiology is concerned with the actions and regulation of the major electrolyte constituents. The use of infusions provides clinicians with the means of supporting this physiology when homeostatic mechanisms have failed or are insufficient to meet demands.     

Homeostasis--the key concept to physiological control

The maintenance of body water content is a classic example of homeostasis at work. Water is continuously lost and added to the systems. The regulation of a balance between the factors involved demonstrates the dynamic nature of homeostatic processes. Surgery places additional demands on such processes, partly because there are additional factors in the balance equation and partly because of the hormonal responses to trauma which also affect water balance. Promoting the return to a balance state and maintaining it, during and after surgery, is important to patient well-being and may even facilitate recovery. The risks associated with a disturbance in water balance are of potentially greater consequence if there is water overload, particularly if the patient has underlying cardiovascular or respiratory problems. Slight dehydration is probably a better target to aim for in order to reduce such risk but there are no easy ways to achieve this state as individuals will vary in their responses to surgery. The hydration, and electrolyte, needs, will vary between patients so fluid therapies should be individualised. Whilst a patient's fluid balance chart provides a means of assessing water balance, the interpretation is complicated after surgery. An awareness of other signs is therefore essential.     

Dento-ergonomics: the key to energy-saving performance

The application of ergonomics to dentistry, or dento-ergonomics, can increase efficiency and prevent injury. Among the factors that need to be considered are the height and reach of staff members, the equipment being used and the distribution of tasks. By implementing the theories of ergonomics, dental care providers can prolong their interest and commitment to dentistry by making difficult or even painful tasks less stressful.     

Automation of data acquisition and of experiment control: application to the study of sleep-wake cycles and behavioral paradigms

The low cost of microcomputers allows them to be dedicated full time to data acquisition and analysis of experimental paradigms. The usual interfaces required for such interaction with the experiment are briefly explained, namely, analog-to-digital converters, input-output control lines and real time clocks. Some basic concepts on the use of microcomputers for the automation of data acquisition and control are summarized, including the characterization of waveshapes, the structure of data storage and on-line data reduction. Off-line, the matrices generated by the data acquisition program become the input for ad-hoc processing programs. Precision, flexibility and fluidity of analysis are outstanding advantages of computer controlled setups. A system for automation of sleep studies and a system for automation of scheduled-controlled behavior are presented as working examples.     

Persistence: the key to nursing diagnosis development

Respiratory system evaluation and diagnosis is one basis of physiological assessment. Nurses perform independently and collaboratively in all areas of respiratory nursing, and there is a need to describe what it is they diagnose and how the diagnosis relates to the selected nursing interventions. Nursing diagnosis is an appropriate method to describe patients' responses to illness. Respiratory nurses in all educational, practice, and professional arenas have an opportunity to be involved in research that validates existing respiratory nursing diagnoses and promotes development of specific diagnoses that patients experience.     

Soft tissue models: the key to esthetic success

OBJECTIVE: To seek a kind of Chinese traditional medicine to treat the bleomycin-induced pulmonary fibrosis. METHODS: SD rats with bleomycin A(s) induced pulmonary fibrosis, were divided into 4 groups. Normal control group (10 rats), untreated model group (35 rats), ligustrazini group (10 rats), Angelica sinensis group (10 rats). Both ligustrazini and angelica sinensis were given intraperitoneally by injection daily for 28 days. Then all rats were put to death and took out the lungs for examination. Using histopathological examination and image processing computer assisted to evaluate the result of treatments. RESULTS: Ligustrazini could obviously reduced alveolitis and fibrosis and Angelica sinensis had the similar but lesser result. CONCLUSION: Ligustrazini and angelica sinensis have successful result of treatment for pulmonary fibrosis.     

Causality and cross-modal integration.

Schutz and Lipscomb (2007) reported an audiovisual illusion in which the length of the gesture used to produce a sound altered the perception of that sound’s duration. This contradicts the widely accepted claim that the auditory system generally dominates temporal tasks because of its superior temporal acuity. Here, in the first of 4 experiments, we show that impact gestures influence duration ratings of percussive but not sustained sounds. In the 2nd, we show that the illusion is present even if the percussive sound occurs up to 700 ms after the visible impact, but disappears if the percussive sound precedes the visible impact. In the 3rd experiment, we show that only the motion after the visible impact influences perceived tone duration. The 4th experiment (replacing the impact gestures with the written text long and short) suggests that the phenomenon is not due to response bias. Given that visual influence in this paradigm is dependent on the presence of an ecologically plausible audiovisual relationship, we conclude that cross-modal causality plays a key role in governing the integration of sensory information. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ribosomal RNA: a key to phylogeny

Subjects studied a list of words (e.g., cheetah) and received an implicit word fragment completion test (complete -h-t-h). On the test, the ratio of studied to nonstudied items (proportion overlap) was 0, 25, 50, 75, or 100%. Subjects were administered the identical test twice. Proportion overlap did not affect priming in word fragment completion, on either the first or second test. Also, the completion of studied and nonstudied fragments increased over repeated tests, but priming (the studied-nonstudied rate) remained unchanged. The proportion overlap of items between study and test does not affect performance on primed word fragment completion.     

Self-regulation: the true key to success of physician-directed networks

The purpose of regulation is to promote uniformly high quality health care at a reasonable cost. The purpose of self-regulation is to make regulation more acceptable to the network physicians and create an atmosphere of continual improvement in bedside care. Interviews with medical directors of group practices, independent physician associations, managed care plans, national specialty networks, and physician-hospital organizations were used to learn what methods of self-regulation are popular and effective.     

Causality and the allocation of attention during comprehension.

Recent research has suggested that each statement in a narrative text is understood by relating it to its causal antecedents and consequences and that the text as a whole is understood by finding a causal path linking its opening to its final outcome. C. R. Fletcher and C. P. Bloom (see record 1989-10829-001) have proposed that in order to accomplish this goal, while minimizing the number of times long-term memory has to be searched, readers focus their attention on the last clause of a narrative that has causal antecedents but no consequences in the preceding text. As a result, a statement that is followed by a causal antecedent should remain the focus of attention, while the same statement followed by a consequence should not. This prediction was tested and confirmed in three experiments which show that when a target statement is followed by a sentence that includes only causal antecedents (a) continuation sentences related to it are read more quickly, (b) target words drawn from it are easier to recognize, and (c) subject-generated continuations are more likely to be causally related to it. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Advocacy: The key to the survival and growth of professional psychology.

Active participation in professional advocacy activities is essential for psychology to have a viable future. Advocacy efforts thus far in professional psychology are reviewed, and a discussion of how strong advocacy efforts will be required to advance the interests of the profession in the future is presented. Making psychology a true health profession, securing legislative authority to prescribe in all states, confronting and overcoming business and regulatory constraints on practice, and providing sufficient services to meet the growing diversity of the general population are discussed as examples of professional issues whose resolution will require significant advocacy efforts. Recommended steps are provided for developing a strong, national advocacy program. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Birthdate and success in minor hockey: The key to the NHL.

Analyzed the birthdates of 7,313 young Canadian hockey players in the 1983–1984 season. It was found that players possessing a relative age advantage (born in the months of January–June) were more likely to participate in minor hockey and more likely to play for top teams than players born in July–December and thereby disadvantaged by their relative age. Proposals for reducing these relative age effects are considered. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ethics committees: time to experiment with standards

Ethics committees now exist in most hospitals. Their recent establishment in many institutions was a response to a 1991 mandate by the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO). Proposed or new legislation in a few states is elevating the status of these committees, either requiring their use in certain cases, allowing them to substitute for judicial review, or granting immunity to those who follow their advice. Despite these recent JCAHO and legislative developments, it is widely recognized that there is a significant lack of data on the effectiveness of these committees and that committee members often lack the requisite education and skills for effective participation in case consultation. We argue that before granting ethics committees additional authority, there is a need for more research on their performance and a period of experimentation with quality standards governing their membership and operations.     

键合丝生产重点和工序控制

键合丝的生产不断向低成本发展,目前市场上存在的键合丝种类繁多,但不同类型键合丝的生产流程大致相同,而各流程工序细节控制不尽相同。文中分别从拉丝、退火和绕线工序阐述了不同类型键合丝生产过程中应注意的重点和细节问题。