Lethal vs nonlethal suicide attempts in jail

The rate of suicide in jails has been found to be 11 to 14 times greater than suicide within the general population. The purpose of the present study is to compare the demographic, offense, and situational characteristics of 665 adult male and 89 female jail inmates who attempted suicide by either hanging (lethal) or wrist or arm-cutting (nonlethal). Hanging attempts occurred at twice the rate of cutting attempts. Further, the mortality rate of inmates' attempts by hanging (52 deaths in 602 attempts) was 19 times greater than inmates who cut themselves (1 death in 275 attempts). Of all hanging suicide deaths 63% occurred on the inmate's first day of jail. The inmate's race, condition at arrest, hours after booking, type of charge, and size of jail differentiated lethal from nonlethal suicide attempts. Implications of these data for assessment of jail suicide risk and prevention are discussed.     

A solution to the binding problem? Information processing

The brain effortlessly recombines information about the shape, colour, motion and so on of objects in the visual scene, but how it does so is not known. Synchronous neuronal firing has seemed an attractive solution to this problem, but new results and theoretical insights cast doubt on its functional role.     

A mass spectrometric solution to the address problem of combinatorial libraries

The molecular weights of femtomole quantities of small peptides attached to polystyrene beads have been determined with imaging time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry. The analysis is made possible by the selective clipping of the bond linking the peptide to a bead with trifluoroacetic acid vapor before the secondary ion mass spectrometry assay. The approach can be applied to large numbers of 30- to 60-micrometer polystyrene beads for the direct characterization of massive combinatorial libraries.     

Expandable rings. A new solution to an old problem

A number of solutions are presented for the problem of over-tight rings particularly in patients with deforming arthropathies of the hand. Rings can be adapted by various methods to allow them to be worn on deformed fingers. An illustrative case is reported.     

A quick solution to the psychologist's problem of defining "psychological maltreatment."

Comments that the definition of psychological maltreatment is not an appropriate task for psychologists as scientists or researchers. Psychologists should leave the determination of benefit and harm to the fields of law, ethics, and religion. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

生产中解决镍基合金挤压荒管内壁橘皮问题的途径

在热挤压生产镍基合金荒管的过程中,挤压工艺和润滑的不匹配常常会造成荒管内壁橘皮以及凹坑等。对生产中所应用的具有不同物理特性的四种玻璃润滑剂按照不同比例进行混合,使得混合后的玻璃润滑剂具有不同于单一润滑剂的物理特性,最终通过现场实验效果验证,选出了与当前挤压工艺正确匹配的玻璃粉,解决了长期存在的内壁橘皮问题。实验均是在工厂生产中进行,其结果在实际生产中得到了应用。     

DNA solution of the maximal clique problem

The maximal clique problem has been solved by means of molecular biology techniques. A pool of DNA molecules corresponding to the total ensemble of six-vertex cliques was built, followed by a series of selection processes. The algorithm is highly parallel and has satisfactory fidelity. This work represents further evidence for the ability of DNA computing to solve NP-complete search problems.     

Development of a general solution to the problem of validity generalization.

Personnel psychologists have traditionally believed that employment test validities are situation specific. This study presents a Bayesian statistical model that is based on the alternate hypothesis that variation in validity outcomes from study to study for similar jobs and tests is artifactual in nature. Certain outcomes using this model permit validity generalization to new settings without carrying out a validation study of any kind. Where such generalization is not justified, the procedure is considered to provide an improved method of data analysis and decision making for the necessary situational validity study. Application to 4 distributions of empirical validity coefficients is presented to demonstrate the power of the model. (22 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Primary medical care. The cooperative solution to the volume problem

Neisseria gonorrhoeae were isolated from 1,019 (39.8%) of 2,558 male patients examined in a venereal disease clinic. Three specimens per patient were plated on Thayer-Martin medium. One plate was placed in a C02 -enriched environment and incubated immediately. The other two were held at room temperature in a standard atmosphere for 1-4 hours before similar processing. A statistically significant loss of N. gonorrhoeae was found when placement in a candle jar and incubation was delayed 2 or more hours. Morever, the appearance of colonies was delayed and colonial size and number were significantly reduced in specimens held 2 hours or longer before incubation in a candle jar.     

热传导两点边值问题的通用数值解法

根据一维稳态导热的肋片问题为一个两点边值问题的数值解法通用性不强、不易理解情况,通过引入“边界函数”给出了一种通用性强也易于理解的通用数值解法．这种解法逻辑简单,使用方便,且无需修改算法程序主体．     

A clinical trial of a financial incentive to go to the tuberculosis clinic for isoniazid after release from jail

PURPOSE: To assess the effect of insurance status on the probability of admission and subsequent health status of patients presenting to emergency departments. SUBJECTS AND METHODS: We performed a prospective cohort study of patients with common medical problems at five urban, academic hospital emergency departments in Boston and Cambridge, Massachusetts. The outcome measure for the study was admission to the hospital from the emergency department and functional health status at baseline and follow-up. RESULTS: During a 1-month period, 2,562 patients younger than 65 years of age presented with either abdominal pain (52%), chest pain (19%) or shortness of breath (29%). Of the 1,368 patients eligible for questionnaire, 1,162 (85%) completed baseline questionnaires, and of these, 964 (83%) completed telephone follow-up interviews 10 days later. Fifteen percent of patients were uninsured and 34% were admitted to the hospital from the emergency department. Uninsured patients were significantly less likely than insured patients to be admitted, both when adjusting for urgency, chief complaint, age, gender and hospital (odds ratio = 0.5, 95% confidence interval 0.3 to 0.7), and when additionally adjusting for comorbid conditions, lack of a regular physician, income, employment status, education and race (odds ratio = 0.4, 95% confidence interval 0.2 to 0.8). However, there were no differences in adjusted functional health status between admitted and nonadmitted patients by insurance status, either at baseline or at 10-day follow-up. CONCLUSIONS: Uninsured patients with one of three common chief complaints appear to be less frequently admitted to the hospital than are insured patients, although health status does not appear to be affected. Whether these results reflect underutilization among uninsured patients or overutilization among insured patients remains to be determined.     

A logical empirical approach to the study of suicide notes.

Conducted 3 studies using R. Carnap's (1932 [1959]) logical and empirical procedures to investigate suicide notes as an archival source. The notes were scrutinized according to control hypotheses derived from the works of L. Binswanger (1944 [1958], 1963), Freud (in The Complete Works of S. Freud, edited and translated by J. Strachey, 1974), and G. Kelly (1955, 1965). In Study 1, 3 clinical psychology graduates compared 33 genuine suicide notes and 33 simulated notes (written by White, Protestant, married, native-born males matched for age and occupation to the genuine note writers) to protocol sentences from the control hypotheses. Only the protocol sentences derived from Freud discriminated as a set in favor of genuine notes. In Study 2, 3 clinical psychologists judged whether the content of 25 protocol sentences derived from Freud occurred in the notes from Study 1. Results indicate that the protocol set was verified significantly more often in the genuine notes. Study 3 required 2 clinical psychologists to distinguish between genuine and simulated notes. They were able to identify 76.5% of the notes correctly. (French abstract) (21 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Jungles: a new solution to the host/parasite phylogeny reconciliation problem

The problem of finding least-cost reconstructions of past host/parasite associations, given the phylogenetic histories of a set of host taxa and of their associated parasites, is known to be complex. I provide in this article a new method of implicitly listing all the potentially optimal solutions to the problem, by considering each hypothesised past association individually, in a structure I have termed a Jungle. These structures are demonstrated to enable fast acquisition of globally optimal solutions under general weighting schemes, including minimisation of total number of postulated events and maximization of postulated cospeciation events. A simple example is given, and the pocket gopher/chewing louse system investigated by Hafner and Nadler [Hafner and Nadler, Nature 332 (1988) 258] is re-examined.