Publication and citation of alcohol and drug articles in journals of the American Psychological Association.

Examined publishing practices of the American Psychological Association (APA) in the alcohol and drug area. Although the total number of articles published by APA increased only 7.6% between 1984 and 1990, the number of alcohol and drug articles more than doubled. Despite the disproportionate growth of alcohol and drug articles between 1984 and 1990, only 3.8% of 1,408 APA articles published in 1990 addressed alcohol and drug use issues. An earlier investigation by M. O. Howard and D. A. Howard (1992) reported that 541 articles published in 1984 in 12 alcohol and drug specialty journals received an average of 3.48 citations by the end of 1988. Alcohol and drug articles published by APA in 1984 received more than 4 times as many citations during this period. Also, alcohol and drug articles published by APA received significantly more citations between 1984 and 1988 than those published in specialty journals. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Road to Next-Generation Broadband

Next-generation broadband promises to usher in a digital future in which it will be possible, for instance, to have a high-definition videoconference examination with your doctor from the comfort of your own home. Japan and Korea in particular are much closer to this sort of digital future than most countries, including the US. Public policy must play an important role in making tomorrow's broadband a reality in America.     

Train Tracks and Confluent Drawings

Confluent graphs capture the connection properties of train tracks, offering a very natural generalization of planar graphs, and—as the example of railroad maps shows—are an important tool in graph visualization. In this paper we continue the study of confluent graphs, introducing strongly confluent graphs and tree-confluent graphs. We show that strongly confluent graphs can be recognized in NP (the complexity of recognizing confluent graphs remains open). We also give a natural elimination ordering characterization of tree-confluent graphs, and we show that this class coincides with the (6,2)-chordal bipartite graphs. Finally, we define outerconfluent graphs and identify the bipartite permutation graphs as a natural subclass.     

Synthesis and degradation of hyaluronate by synovia from patients with rheumatoid arthritis

OBJECTIVE: Hyaluronate degradation was analyzed in cultures of healthy tissue and tissue obtained from patients with rheumatoid arthritis. METHODS: Arthritic and healthy synovial tissues were incubated in culture with [3H]glucosamine. Labelled hyaluronate was extracted and its size determined by gel filtration. The production of low molecular weight hyaluronate was analyzed by pulse-chase experiments. Radical production was measured by a cytochrome C reduction assay. RESULTS: Healthy tissues and some arthritic tissues that did not contain significant amounts of granulocytes produced high molecular weight hyaluronate. In contrast, arthritic tissue infiltrated with granulocytes released low molecular weight hyaluronate. Pulse-chase experiments suggested that hyaluronate was degraded in these arthritic tissues. Exogenous hyaluronate was degraded only by intact tissue, but not by cells in culture obtained from synovial membranes of synovial fluids. Hyaluronate degradation was accompanied by massive oxygen radical production. Radical scavengers protected hyaluronate from degradation in synovial tissue. Some protection was achieved by superoxide and catalase or by methionine and complete protection by the iron chelators diethyltriaminepentacetic acid or deferoxamine mesylate. CONCLUSION: Degradation of hyaluronate in arthritic synovial tissue may be inhibited in tissue culture by radical scavengers.     

Transmission line analysis of nonlinear slot coupled microstrip antenna

The transmission line method is used for the analysis of microstrip antennas fed by several nonlinear slots with 'H' shapes or new geometries. This analysis allows the input impedance of nonlinear slot coupled microstrip antennas to be calculated for the four different structures.<>     

Isothermal Titration Calorimetry and Fluorescence Spectroscopy Study of Asphaltene Self-Association in Toluene and Interaction with a Model Resin

This article collects the work performed by Isothermal Titration Calorimetry (ITC) in the study of the self-association of asphaltenes in toluene solutions. Calorimetric experiments show that asphaltenes start self-associating at very low concentrations and that the existence of a Critical Micellar Concentration is rather improbable. The influence of the water dissolved in the toluene has been studied but the difficulties in keeping the water concentration low hinder the discussion of the results. The calorimetry data have been treated with a simple dimer dissociation model and compared with the results of the titration of three model molecules: nonylphenol, which associates by means of hydrogen bond formation, and coronene and pyrene, which associates by stacking. The results obtained leave open the question about the model-stacking molecules, as it was not possible to elucidate whether they do not associate or the dilution effect does not break the aggregates. The fluorescence spectroscopy results support the results of calorimetry with respect to the self-association at low concentrations. ITC has been applied for the first time to the study of the interaction between asphaltenes and a model resin, namely nonylphenol.     

Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning.

Humans appear to reason using two processing styles: System 1 processes that are quick, intuitive, and effortless and System 2 processes that are slow, analytical, and deliberate that occasionally correct the output of System 1. Four experiments suggest that System 2 processes are activated by metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency during the process of reasoning. Incidental experiences of difficulty or disfluency--receiving information in a degraded font (Experiments 1 and 4), in difficult-to-read lettering (Experiment 2), or while furrowing one's brow (Experiment 3)--reduced the impact of heuristics and defaults in judgment (Experiments 1 and 3), reduced reliance on peripheral cues in persuasion (Experiment 2), and improved syllogistic reasoning (Experiment 4). Metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency appear to serve as an alarm that activates analytic forms of reasoning that assess and sometimes correct the output of more intuitive forms of reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)