Integrity tests: Facts and unresolved issues.

Describes 2 independent reports, recently completed by the American Psychological Association (APA) and the US Congress Office of Technology Assessment, that examined many scientific and measurement issues concerning integrity testing (e.g., validity, criterion relevance). Background data are offered on a variety of tests collected by a survey of test publishers, providing a view of the industry's scope (e.g., test audience, user screening, score reporting) not available elsewhere. In the light of APA's Ethical Principles for Psychologists and Code of Conduct (APA, 1992), unresolved concerns are addressed that have a wide range of implications for the profession of psychology, the testing industry, and public policy (e.g., cutting scores, user screening and training, and test marketing practices). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A QoS management framework for distributed multimedia systems

This paper proposes a high‐performance connection management architecture to design a common QoS framework applied to an ATM network based on the Open Distributed Processing (ODP) concept. We design the QoS framework in accordance from the RM‐ODP information and computational viewpoints. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Aging, expertise, and narrative processing.

In a study of how aviation expertise influences age differences in narrative processing, young and older pilots and nonpilots read and recalled aviation and general narratives. They chose referents for sentences referring to a protagonist or minor character mentioned 1 sentence (recent character) or 3 sentences (distant character) before this target sentence. All groups chose referents less accurately for sentences about distant and minor characters than about recent and protagonist characters, perhaps because these referents were less likely to be in working memory. Young readers and pilots were more accurate for distant and minor character target sentences in aviation narratives and recalled aviation narratives more accurately. Expertise did not reduce age differences. Expertise differences may reflect decreased demands on working memory capacity, and age declines may reflect reduced capacity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancement of computed tomography liver contrast using iomeprol-containing liposomes and detection of small liver tumors in rats

RATIONALE AND OBJECTIVES: We evaluated iomeprol-containing liposomes (Lipiom), a new contrast medium for computed tomography (CT) liver scanning, in an animal model of chemically induced hepatocellular carcinomas and other liver tumors in rats. METHODS: Liver tumors were induced by administration of carcinogens to rats, either 0.55% (w/w) 1'-hydroxysafrole in the diet or induction by 3'-methyl-4-diethylaminoazobenzene followed by promotion with carbon tetrachloride. CT scanning was performed 1-3 hr after intravenous injection of iomeprol-containing liposomes. RESULTS: After injection of iomeprol-containing liposomes at a dose of 70 mg of liposome-entrapped iodine per kilogram of body weight, the normal liver parenchyma showed a contrast enhancement, in Hounsfield units, of more than 60% over the control value before bolus. Liver tumors with no or few Kupffer cells were not enhanced and appeared as dark areas within the normal parenchyma. Tumors and pretumoral lesions devoid of Kupffer cells, as small as 3 mm in diameter, could be distinguished using this non-invasive method. CONCLUSION: CT liver scanning after injection of iomeprol-containing liposomes appears to be promising method for detecting liver tumors and focal liver lesions.     

Analysis and optimization of weakly coupled thermoelastoplastic systems with applications to weldment design

A systematic approach for the design of weakly coupled thermoelastoplastic systems is presented. The Newton–Raphson iteration method is used in the solution process so that analytic design sensitivity formulations may be efficiently derived via the direct differentiation technique. The derived formulations are suitable for finite element implementations. Analysis and sensitivity analysis capabilities are combined with numerical optimization to form an optimum design algorithm. To demonstrate the algorithm, we optimally design a weldment with respect to manufacturing and service life aspects.     

Deconvolution methods for mitigation of transverse blurring in optical coherence tomography.

Imaging resolution in optical coherence tomography (OCT) is a key determinant for acquiring clinically useful optical biopsies of tissues. In contrast to light or confocal microscopy, the axial and transverse resolutions in OCT are independent and each can be analyzed individually. A method for mitigating transverse blurring and the apparent loss of transverse resolution in OCT by means of Gaussian beam deconvolution is presented. Such a method provides better representation of a specimen by using known physical parameters of a lens. To implement this method, deconvolution algorithms based on a focal-dependent kernel are investigated. First, the direct inverse problem is investigated using two types of regularization, truncated singular value decomposition, and Tikhonov. Second, an iterative expectation maximization algorithm, the Richardson-Lucy algorithm, with a beam-width-dependent iteration scheme is developed. A dynamically iterative Richardson-Lucy algorithm can reduce transverse blurring by providing an improvement in the transverse point-spread-function for sparse scattering samples in regions up to two times larger than the confocal region of the lens. These deblurring improvements inside and outside of the confocal region, which are validated experimentally, are possible without introducing new optical imaging hardware or acquiring multiple images of the same specimen. Implementation of this method in sparse scattering specimens, such as engineered tissues, has the potential to improve cellular detection and categorization.