The gender gap in occupational role attainment: A social dominance approach.

Investigated the evidence of a gender gap in occupational role attainment in 3 experiments with 316 undergraduates. The authors present archival evidence that men disproportionately hold occupational roles that enhance group-based inequality and that women disproportionately hold roles that attenuate group-based inequality. Evidence for 3 processes that may contribute to this pattern was found: self-selection that is based on gender-linked differences in support for group inequality (social dominance orientation), hiring biases that are based on matching job applicants' group equality values with the hierarchy function of the job, and gender-stereotyped hiring biases. These processes were found across a number of occupations and participant variables. The social systems nature of these processes and the implications of the results for theoretical understandings of gender roles, social inequality, and theories of stereotyping are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Medication Adherence and Diabetes Control in Urban African Americans With Type 2 Diabetes.

In 181 urban African Americans with Type 2 diabetes, medication adherence was assessed using a measure designed specifically for an urban, impoverished sociodemographic population. Hemoglobin A1c, blood pressure and cholesterol levels, medication-related beliefs, and depression were assessed. Seventy-four percent of the sample reported adherence to diabetes medication. Adherence, adjusted for age, was associated with lower hemoglobin A1c. The specific behaviors associated with poorer diabetes control were forgetting to take medications and running out of medications. Knowledge of blood glucose goals differed for adherers and nonadherers. Blood pressure and cholesterol medication adherence rates were not associated with actual levels of blood pressure or lipids, respectively. These data suggest that specific medication-taking behaviors are important to diabetes control and constitute logical targets for interventions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Technofunctional Properties of Films Made From Ethylene Vinyl Acetate/Whey Protein Isolate Compounds

One challenge faced by the plastics industry is that crude oil will become scarcer and more expensive in the future. Furthermore, an increase in plastic waste is leading to a strongly growing demand for sustainable alternatives to traditional, crude oil‐based polymers in the packaging sector. The aim of this study was to investigate the influence of the incorporation of whey protein isolates (WPIs) on the technofunctional properties of ethylene vinyl acetate (EVA) films. The compounding EVA with WPI was conducted in a co‐rotating twin‐screw extruder at varying processing temperatures. WPI and hydrolysed WPI with a degree of hydrolysis of 10% were used up to 35% (w/w) as filler. The tensile strength and elongation at break of the resulting EVA‐based films decreased significantly with increasing filler content. Because of the hydrophilicity of WPI, the water vapour permeability of the films increased. Advantageously, the oxygen barrier was enhanced by 50–80% compared with that of pure EVA films, which offered the potential of using whey proteins as a filler in compounds for packaging materials for their oxygen barrier properties. In addition, this study provides a promising perspective on the thermoplastic processing of whey protein formulations in the future. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Automated imaging, identification, and counting of similar cells from digital hologram reconstructions

This paper presents our method, which simultaneously combines automatic imaging, identification, and counting with the acquisition of morphological information for at least 1000 blood cells from several three-dimensional images of the same sample. We started with seeking parameters to differentiate between red blood cells that are similar but different with respect to their development stage, i.e., mature or immature. We highlight that these cells have different diffractive patterns with complementary central intensity distribution in a given plane along the propagation axis. We use the Fresnel approximation to simulate propagation through cells modeled as spheroid-shaped phase objects and to find the cell property that has the dominant influence on this behavior. Starting with images obtained in the reconstruction step of the digital holographic microscopy technique, we developed a code for automated simultaneous individual cell image separation, identification, and counting, even when the cells are partially overlapped on a slide, and accurate measuring of their morphological features. To find the centroids of each cell, we propose a method based on analytical functions applied at threshold intervals. Our procedure separates the mature from the immature red blood cells and from the white blood cells through a decision based on gradient and radius values.     

Process safety management of a fuel gas conditioning facility using fault tree analysis

This paper discusses a process hazard management study of a fuel gas conditioning facility based on stateof-the-art fault tree analysis techniques. This facility lowers the water and hydrocarbon dewpoints of a high pressure fuel gas exposed to frigid temperatures during distribution. Using hazards checklists and guidelines as well as internal reviews, various process hazards were identified for this facility. Computerized fault tree analysis techniques were used to identify the failure sequences which could lead to process hazards, and analysts used these results to evaluate the impact of specific hazards upon process safety. Through recommendations presented in the study, the facility owner gained an increased awareness of potential problems and made modifications to reduce the possibility of a hazardous condition and subsequent catastrophic failure.     

Racism, conservatism, Affirmative Action, and intellectual sophistication: A matter of principled conservatism or group dominance?

Using data from 3 different samples, the authors found that: (a) the relationships between political conservatism and racism generally increases as a function of educational sophistication; however, the relationship between political conservatism and anti-Black affect did not increase with educational sophistication. (b) The correlation between political conservatism and racism could be entirely accounted for by their mutual relationship with social dominance orientation. (c) Generally, the net effect of political conservatism, racism, and social dominance orientation on opposition to affirmative action increased with increasing education. These findings contradict much of the case for the principled conservatism hypothesis, which maintains that political values that are largely devoid of racism, especially among highly educated people, are the major source of White's opposition to affirmative action. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social dominance orientation: A personality variable predicting social and political attitudes.

Social dominance orientation (SDO), one's degree of preference for inequality among social groups, is introduced. On the basis of social dominance theory, it is shown that (1) men are more social dominance-oriented than women, (2) high-SDO people seek hierarchy-enhancing professional roles and low-SDO people seek hierarchy-attenuating roles, (3) SDO was related to beliefs in a large number of social and political ideologies that support group-based hierarchy (e.g., meritocracy and racism) and to support for policies that have implications for intergroup relations (e.g., war, civil rights, and social programs), including new policies. SDO was distinguished from interpersonal dominance, conservatism, and authoritarianism. SDO was negatively correlated with empathy, tolerance, communality, and altruism. The ramifications of SDO in social context are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bioactive polymers

Summary The immobilization of invertase on carboxymethyl cellulose acid chloride and the factors influencing the reaction (enzyme/support ratio, duration and pH) are studied. The activity of both coupled and free enzymes varies with temperature and pH of the incubation reaction. The values of the Michaelis-Menten constant are higher for the immobilized enzyme.