The visual control of reaching and grasping: Binocular disparity and motion parallax.

The primary visual sources of depth and size information are binocular cues and motion parallax. Here, the authors determine the efficacy of these cues to control prehension by presenting them in isolation from other visual cues. When only binocular cues were available, reaches showed normal scaling of the transport and grasp components with object distance and size. However, when only motion parallax was available, only the transpont component scaled reliably. No additional increase in scaling was found when both cues were available simultaneously. Therefore, although equivalent information is available from binocular and motion parallax information, the latter may be of relatively limited use for the control of the grasp. Binocular disparity appears selectively important for the control of the grasp. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of ethanol on platelet phospholipase A2

Platelet aggregation is known to be inhibited by ethanol, and this has been suggested to be one of the attenuating effects of ethanol in cardiovascular disease. Recent studies have implicated an inhibition of phospholipase A₂ induced arachidonic acid release, since the production of prostanoids that are formed from arachidonic acid and are involved in the aggregation process has been shown to be diminished by ethanol. Phospholipase A₂ is found in platelets in both a cytosolic form, from where it may translocate to the plasma membrane to release arachidonic acid, and in a secretory form which is released extracellularly upon activition. In the present study, the effect of ethanol on the secretion of phospholipase A₂ and on its activity was determined. It was found that ethanol inhibited trast, the activity of the cytosolic form of phospholipase A₂ was inhibited by ethanol.     

Erp Implementation Failure: A Case Study

While it is true that successful implementation of an enterprise resource planning (ERP) system is a task of Herculean proportions, it is not impossible. If your organization is to reap the benefits of ERP, it must first develop a plan for success. But “prepare to see your organization reengineered, your staff disrupted, and your productivity drop before the payoff is realized.” Implementing ERP must be viewed and undertaken as a new business endeavor and a team mission, not just a software installation. Companies must involve all employees, and unconditionally and completely sell them on the concept of ERP for it to be a success. A successful implementation means involving, supervising, recognizing, and retaining those who have worked or will work closely with the system. Without a team attitude and total backing by everyone involved, an ERP implementation will end in less than an ideal situation. This was the situation for a soft drink bottler that tried to cut corners and did not recognize the importance of the people so heavily involved and depended on.     

Constructing a short form of the Smoking Consequences Questionnaire with adolescents and young adults.

The goal of the present studies was to construct and validate a short form of the 50-item Smoking Consequences Questionnaire (SCQ; T. H. Brandon & T. B. Baker, 1991), a measure of smoking outcome expectancies. In Study 1, a 21-item short form (S-SCQ) was derived from a sample of 107 young adults previously treated for substance abuse. In Study 2, the measure was cross-validated on 125 adolescents in treatment for substance abuse. Confirmatory factor analyses revealed good model fit and factorial invariance for the 4 S-SCQ subscales across both samples. Validation analyses on each sample found that subscale scores generally correlated significantly with smoking-related variables. The present studies provide initial evidence for the utility of the S-SCQ when used with young adults and adolescents. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

IEEE 802.11 roaming and authentication in wireless LAN/cellular mobile networks

A wireless LAN service integration architecture based on current wireless LAN hot spots is proposed so that migration to a new service becomes easier and cost effective. The proposed architecture offers wireless LAN seamless roaming in wireless LAN/cellular mobile networks. In addition, a link-layer-assisted mobile IP handoff mechanism is introduced to improve the network/domain switching quality in terms of handoff delay and packet loss. An application layer end-to-end authentication and key negotiation scheme is proposed to overcome the open-air connection problem existing in wireless LAN deployment. The scheme provides a general solution for Internet applications running on a mobile station under various authentication scenarios and keeps the communications private to other wireless LAN users and foreign network. A functional demonstration of the scheme is given. The research results can contribute to rapid deployment of wireless LANs.     

Reprocessing of Microcrystalline Cellulose Spheres with Low Drug Concentrations

Spherical dosage forms have been reported to be an efficient and effective method for delivering drugs into the body and controlling their dissolution rate. Substantial work has been conducted in these laboratories illustrating the advantages of microcrystalline cellulose-based spheres for these purposes. Through various methodologies, but most routinely the extrusion and marumerization technique, it has been determined by Funck, et al. that not more than 50% drug can be incorporated into a sphere formulation without the addition of other binders.

Because of the nature of the extrusion and marumerization manufacturing process, the type of drug being processed and the resultant particle size requirements of the spheres, the percent of spheres falling outside the desired particle size can range from between 3% and 20%. For this reason and the possibility of operator errors, our objective was to determine the parameters which needed monitoring when reprocessing was necessary.     

Gelling of alginate fibres

Equipment was developed to measure the time for complete gelling of sodium alginate fibres in calcium chloride solution, taken as the time to achieve maximum tensile strength. The effects of fibre diameter, alginate concentration, alginate composition and calcium chloride concentration on gelling time were investigated. A diffusional model, developed to predict the gelling time, agreed with experimental results except for the effect of calcium ion concentration which was modelled empirically.     

Applications of Telos

EuLisp has an integrated object system with reflective capabilities. We discuss some example applications which use these facilities to experiment with some advanced and powerful concepts, namely, finalization, virtual shared memory and persistence. A secondary goal is to attempt to illustrate the additional possibilities of metaobject programming over non-metalevel techniques.     

Location of Aluminum in Substituted Calcium Silicate Hydrate (C-S-H) Gels as Determined by 29Si and 27Al NMR and EELS

Solid-state ²⁷Al and ²⁹Si magic angle spinning NMR spectroscopy has been combined with electron energy loss spectroscopy carried out in the transmission electron microscope to determine the location of Al substituting in a semicrystalline C-S-H gel present in a hydrated synthetic slag glass. The gel is found to contain mainly pentameric silicate chains in which the central silicon is substituted by aluminum.     

Flow reversal in the descending aorta: a guide to intraoperative assessment of aortic regurgitation with transesophageal echocardiography

This study assessed the value of biplane transesophageal echocardiographic assessment of diastolic flow reversal in the descending aorta as an alternative to Doppler color flow imaging in determining severity of aortic regurgitation. In 45 patients undergoing cardiac operations, the severity of aortic regurgitation was assessed by semiquantitative grading of the width of the Doppler color flow regurgitant jet relative to the left ventricular outflow tract, and the presence of diastolic flow reversal was assessed with pulsed-wave Doppler measurements at three sites in the descending aorta. In four patients, the diastolic flow reversal method was the only available form of assessment because of inadequate visualization of the left ventricular outflow tract beneath a mitral valve prosthesis. Diastolic flow reversal in the descending aorta was not observed in patients without aortic regurgitation and was always present in patients with severe aortic regurgitation. Aortic valve replacement successfully eliminated descending aortic flow reversal in all 19 patients in whom it was present before valve replacement. Identification of diastolic flow reversal at multiple sites in the descending aorta with biplane transesophageal echocardiography helps to confirm the presence of severe aortic regurgitation and can serve as an alternative method of assessment when visualization of the left ventricular outflow tract is impaired.