Why Do People Need Self-Esteem? A Theoretical and Empirical Review.

Terror management theory (TMT; J. Greenberg, T. Pyszczynski, & S. Solomon, 1986) posits that people are motivated to pursue positive self-evaluations because self-esteem provides a buffer against the omnipresent potential for anxiety engendered by the uniquely human awareness of mortality. Empirical evidence relevant to the theory is reviewed showing that high levels of self-esteem reduce anxiety and anxiety-related defensive behavior, reminders of one's mortality increase self-esteem striving and defense of self-esteem against threats in a variety of domains, high levels of self-esteem eliminate the effect of reminders of mortality on both self-esteem striving and the accessibility of death-related thoughts, and convincing people of the existence of an afterlife eliminates the effect of mortality salience on self-esteem striving. TMT is compared with other explanations for why people need self-esteem, and a critique of the most prominent of these, sociometer theory, is provided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Locating group members in a mobile environment

The Internet Engineering Task Force lists multicasting as a desired service for our future mobile computing environment. To provide this service, location management of a group of users involved in a multicasting application needs to be addressed. In this paper, we propose two protocols that can be used by a group of mobile hosts to share their current location with other group members efficiently.     

Weight gain as a function of smoking cessation and 2-mg nicotine gum use among middle-aged smokers with mild lung impairment in the first 2 years of the Lung Health Study.

Assessed the extent and predictors of weight change among sustained nonsmoking special intervention participants in the Lung Health Study. The intervention included a 12-session group program and 2-mg nicotine gum. At 12 mo, female sustained quitters (SQs; n?=?248) had gained a mean of 8.4% (5.3 kg) of their baseline weight, whereas male SQs (n?=?443) had gained 6.7% (5.5 kg). By 24 mo, female SQs had gained 9.8% of their baseline weight compared with 6.9% for men. Nicotine gum usage delayed a portion of the weight gain. Multiple regression analysis showed that weight gain at 12 mo was associated with a higher baseline salivary cotinine level, a lower baseline body mass index, drinking less alcohol per week, and a lower cotinine level at 12 mo (indicating less or no nicotine gum use). Moderate weight gain may be a long-term consequence of smoking cessation, a portion of which can be delayed with 2-mg nicotine gum. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Determining the long-term potential for energy conservation and renewable energy in Canada

This paper summarizes the results of a 28-month study, funded by the Canadian government, which developed new methods for analysing the technical and economic potential for conservation and renewable energy alternatives in Canada to the year 2025. The results of the study show that under conditions of strong economic growth and moderate population growth, it would be technically feasible and cost-effective to operate the Canadian economy in 2025 with 12–34% less energy than it requires today and, over the same 47-year period, to shift from 16% reliance on renewable sources to over 77% (mostly biomass and hydro). Over the study period, energy use per capita falls to between one-half and two-fifths of its level in 1978, and energy use per dollar of GDP to just over one-quarter of its 1978 level.     

Graph-cut methods for grain boundary segmentation

This paper reviews the recent progress on using graph-cut methods for image segmentation, and discusses their applications to segmenting grain boundaries from materials science images.     

Extending the resource task network for industrial applications

The discrete time resource-task network (RTN) model is a generalized mixed-integer linear programming model used in scheduling optimization problems. This paper presents several extensions to the RTN that have been used at The Dow Chemical Company. One RTN extension allows for more realistic demand fulfillment: customer orders can be filled in their entirety at a distinct time point, rather than over several time periods. Modifications are proposed that allow tasks to interact not just with resources, but also with the bounds on those resources, which allows for an efficient method of modeling storage. The concept of multiple extents is introduced to extend the functionality of a single task and thereby reduce the overall size of the model and improve computation time. An alternative formulation of the RTN is also introduced in spatial rather than temporal coordinates, which allows applicability to a different class of problems such as payload optimization.     

The twisted tale of saturated fat

Recent research results mandate a careful re‐evaluation of the widespread belief that dietary saturated fat is harmful. Specifically, multiple recent reports find no association between dietary saturated fat intakes and cardiovascular disease (CVD). There is, however, a consistent pattern of increased risk for both CVD and type‐2 diabetes associated with increased levels of saturated fatty acids (SFA) in circulating lipids. This raises the important question as to what contributes to increased levels of saturated fat in the blood? Whereas dietary intake of saturated fats and serum levels of SFA show virtually no correlation, an increased intake of carbohydrate is associated with higher levels of circulating SFA. This leads to the paradoxical conclusion that dietary saturated fat is not the problem; rather it's the over‐consumption of carbohydrate relative to the individual's ability to metabolize glucose without resorting to de novo lipogenesis. From this perspective, insulin resistant states like metabolic syndrome and type‐2 diabetes can be viewed as carbohydrate intolerance, in which a high carbohydrate intake translates to increased serum SFA and therefore increased risk.