Stress reaction of school-age children to the bombardment by SCUD missiles.

Stress reactions of 5th-, 7th-, and 10th-grade children (N?=?492) exposed to missile attacks during the Persian Gulf War were examined a month after the war by a questionnaire that assessed level of exposure to trauma and psychological symptoms. Higher stress responses were obtained in areas hit and were influenced by proximity to sites or individuals involved in actual damage. Gender, age, and region interacted such that 5th-grade boys reported the highest stress reactions regardless of region, whereas 5th-grade girls reported the highest stress responses only in regions hit. Gender, age, and objective and subjective stress correctly identified 75% of the children as potential clinical or nonclinical candidates. The possible mediating coping responses and applications for high-risk groups are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Submolecular potential profiling across organic monolayers

Potential profiles across molecular layers are constructed by means of noncontact electrically stimulated photoelectron spectroscopy, probing for the first time the molecule-substrate interface potential and resolving local screening effects across inner phenyl groups.     

Enhancing portability with multilingual ontology-based knowledge management

Information systems in multilingual environments, such as the EU, suffer from low portability and high deployment costs. In this paper we propose an ontology-based model for multilingual knowledge management in information systems. Our unique feature is a lightweight mechanism, dubbed context, that is associated with ontological concepts and specified in multiple languages. We use contexts to assist in resolving cross-language and local variation ambiguities. Equipped with such a model, we next provide a four-step procedure for overcoming the language barrier in deploying a new information system. We also show that our proposed solution can overcome differences that stem from local variations that may accompany multilingual information systems deployment. The proposed mechanism was tested in an actual multilingual eGovernment environment and by using real-world news syndication traces. Our empirical results serve as a proof-of-concept of the viability of the proposed model. Also, our experiments show that news items in different languages can be identified by a single ontology concept using contexts. We also evaluated the local interpretations of concepts of a language in different geographical locations.     

Representation of highly-complex knowledge in a database

This paper presents a unified framework for representing highly-complex knowledge in a database as a new paradigm for handling large and complex information in an easy and efficient manner. The framework provides a database with the capabilities to support next generation databases for decision support systems through the use of derivation rules, temporal information, knowledge from multiple sources with different measures of quality and epistemic knowledge. The model integrates concepts from both thedatabase and theartificial intelligence disciplines.     

Plane frame analysis of laterally loaded asymmetric buildings—an uncoupled solution

It is shown that for a class of asymmetric building structures, a lateral load analysis can be performed by means of analogous plane frames rather than by a three-dimensional procedure. Based on a co-ordinate transformation, the technique is applicable to structures with two types of framing systems each comprising several vertical planar assemblages having similar stiffness properties and a common variation thereof along the height.     

Tuning the ensemble selection process of schema matchers

Schema matching is the task of providing correspondences between concepts describing the meaning of data in various heterogeneous, distributed data sources. It is recognized to be one of the basic operations required by the process of data and schema integration and its outcome serves in many tasks such as targeted content delivery and view integration. Schema matching research has been going on for more than 25 years now. An interesting research topic, that was largely left untouched involves the automatic selection of schema matchers to an ensemble, a set of schema matchers. To the best of our knowledge, none of the existing algorithmic solutions offer such a selection feature. In this paper we provide a thorough investigation of this research topic. We introduce a new heuristic, Schema Matcher Boosting (SMB). We show that SMB has the ability to choose among schema matchers and to tune their importance. As such, SMB introduces a new promise for schema matcher designers. Instead of trying to design a perfect schema matcher, a designer can instead focus on finding better than random schema matchers. For the effective utilization of SMB, we propose a complementary approach to the design of new schema matchers. We separate schema matchers into first-line and second-line matchers. First-line schema matchers were designed by-and-large as applications of existing works in other areas (e.g., machine learning and information retrieval) to schemata. Second-line schema matchers operate on the outcome of other schema matchers to improve their original outcome. SMB selects matcher pairs, where each pair contains a first-line matcher and a second-line matcher. We run a thorough set of experiments to analyze SMB ability to effectively choose schema matchers and show that SMB performs better than other, state-of-the-art ensemble matchers.     

TEM studies on Al4C3·3 Be2 C

X-ray diffraction studies and TEM investigations of the binary Al₄C₃·3Be₂ C alloy (prepared at 1860° C) revealed that besides the matrix platelets of Be₂ C and an additional third phase are also present. From XRD the lattice parameter of the cubic phase was found to be 0.4612 nm. Small additions of SiC stabilize the cubic phase forming solid solution by partial replacement of Al³⁺ by Si⁴⁺. This replacement causes a decrease of the lattice parameter to 0.4565 nm.     

Atmospheric correction of remotely sensed data at a desert site with the aid of surface humidity data

Atmospheric water vapour content is an important variable in any atmospheric correction procedure and especially for time series analysis of remotely sensed data. However, data matching image acquisition times are often unavailable. We calculated water vapour partial pressure at ground level from standard dry and wet bulb temperatures and quantified its relationship with the total atmospheric water vapour content as measured by a sun-photometer. Reasonably high coefficients of determination demonstrate that such a procedure can be used when atmospheric data are not available.