Internal locus of control and choice in health service shift workers

This study examined the relationship between shift work-specific locus of control (SH-LOC), active choice of work schedule and health outcomes, personal initiatives and coping behaviours in 1611 Danish Health Service shift workers. The 20-item SH-LOC scale was administered as part of a battery of measures. Multivariate analysis of covariance (controlling for age, workplace experience and weekly work hours) tested for differential responses to shift working and coping strategies. Interactive effects of internality and type of work rota were examined. Higher internality was linked to better tolerance to shift work. This did not appear to be a result of greater personal action in higher internals. The importance of control as a potential moderating factor to shift work exposure and the possible use of this measure in the process of shift worker monitoring is highlighted.     

Simulation of cardiovascular system diseases by including the autonomic nervous system into a minimal model

Diagnosing cardiovascular system (CVS) diseases from clinically measured data is difficult, due to the complexity of the hemodynamic and autonomic nervous system (ANS) interactions. Physiological models could describe these interactions to enable simulation of a variety of diseases, and could be combined with parameter estimation algorithms to help clinicians diagnose CVS dysfunctions. This paper presents modifications to an existing CVS model to include a minimal physiological model of ANS activation. A minimal model is used so as to minimise the number of parameters required to specify ANS activation, enabling the effects of each parameter on hemodynamics to be easily understood. The combined CVS and ANS model is verified by simulating a variety of CVS diseases, and comparing simulation results with common physiological understanding of ANS function and the characteristic hemodynamics seen in these diseases. The model of ANS activation is required to simulate hemodynamic effects such as increased cardiac output in septic shock, elevated pulmonary artery pressure in left ventricular infarction, and elevated filling pressures in pericardial tamponade. This is the first known example of a minimal CVS model that includes a generic model of ANS activation and is shown to simulate diseases from throughout the CVS.     

Near-global validation of the SRTM DEM using satellite radar altimetry

This paper reports the results of a near-global validation of the SRTM DEM dataset, using a unique database of completely independent height measurements derived from satellite altimeter echoes, primarily gathered by ERS-1. These heights are obtained using a rule-based expert system which identifies each echo as 1 of 11 different characteristic shapes, and selects the optimal retracking algorithm to obtain best range to surface. The results of this comparison, which includes over 54 million altimeter derived heights, show generally very good agreement with the SRTM data, with global statistics for mean difference of 3 m and a standard deviation of 16 m. Quantitative validation results are given for each continent and are summarised here.

	Mean difference (m)	Standard deviation of differences (m)
Africa	1.86	15.62
Australia	1.09	11.49
Eurasia	2.54	16.09
North America	3.15	15.18
South America	12.22	18.51
Global	3.60	16.16

Full-size table

     

Learning and retention of associations between auditory icons and denotative referents: implications for the design of auditory warnings

OBJECTIVE: This study examined the way in which the type and preexisting strength of association between an auditory icon and a warning event affects the ease with which the icon/event pairing can be learned and retained. BACKGROUND: To be effective, an auditory warning must be audible, identifiable, interpretable, and heeded. Warnings consisting of familiar environmental sounds, or auditory icons, have potential to facilitate identification and interpretation. The ease with which pairings between auditory icons and warning events can be learned and retained is likely to depend on the type and strength of the preexisting icon/event association. METHOD: Sixty-three participants each learned eight auditory-icon/denotative-referent pairings and attempted to recall them 4 weeks later. Three icon/denotative-referent association types (direct, related, and unrelated) were employed. Participants rated the strength of the association for each pairing on a 7-point scale. RESULTS: The number of errors made while learning pairings was greater for unrelated than for either related or direct associations, whereas the number of errors made while attempting to recall pairings 4 weeks later was greater for unrelated than for related associations and for related than for direct associations. Irrespective of association type, both learning and retention performance remained at very high levels, provided the strength of the association was rated greater than 5. CONCLUSION: This suggests that strong preexisting associations are used to facilitate learning and retention of icon/denotative-referent pairings. APPLICATION: The practical implication of this study is that auditory icons having either direct or strong, indirect associations with warning events should be preferred.     

Acoustic environment as an indicator of social and physical context

Acoustic environments provide many valuable cues for context-aware computing applications. From the acoustic environment we can infer the types of activity, communication modes and other actors involved in the activity. Environmental or background noise can be classified with a high degree of accuracy using recordings from microphones commonly found in PDAs and other consumer devices. We describe an acoustic environment recognition system incorporating an adaptive learning mechanism and its use in a noise tracker. We show how this information is exploited in a mobile context framework. To illustrate our approach we describe a context-aware multimodal weather forecasting service, which accepts spoken or written queries and presents forecast information in several forms, including email, voice and sign languages.

Building the IBM 4758 secure coprocessor

Meeting the challenge of building a user-configurable secure coprocessor provided several lessons in hardware and software development and continues to spur further research. In developing the 4758, we met our major research security goals and provided the following features: (1) a lifetime-secure tamper-responding device, rather than one that is secure only between resets that deployment-specific security officers perform; (2) a secure booting process in which each layer progressively validates the next less-trusted layer, with hardware restricting access to its secrets before passing control to that layer; (3) an actual manufacturable product - a nontrivial accomplishment considering that we designed the device so that it does not have a personality until configured in the field; (4) the first FIPS 140-1 Level 4 validation, arguably the only general-purpose computational platform validated at this level so far; and (5) a multipurpose programmable device based on a 99-MHz 486 CPU internal environment, with a real operating system, a C language development environment and relatively high-speed cryptography     

Psychology for the public: A content analysis of Psychology Today..

Surveyed the extent to which Psychology Today (PT) has maintained an empirical basis for its articles and the degree to which psychologists and individuals with doctorates have been responsible for PT articles. Two samples of PT were selected for review by 2 raters (the present authors). Findings indicate that not only have PT articles significantly shifted away from a presentation of empirically based data, but the proportion of articles authored by psychologists, as well as the educational level of authors, has declined, particularly in the last 3 yrs. (4 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transport anomalies and magnetic properties of Sn x Eu1.2−x Mo6S8 alloys

We have measured the resistance R, magnetoresistance, and magnetization of sintered samples of the compounds Sn _x Eu_1.2–x Mo₆S₈, where x = 0, 0.12, 0.24, and 0.48. A large resistance anomaly beginning at T ~ 100 K and extending to low temperatures is found in all of the alloys except x = 0.48, which had a high superconducting transition temperature T _c ~ 11.3 K. The resistance anomaly, which appears to be correlated with the depression of T _c, is also correlated with a large negative magnetoresistance at temperatures T 12 K. For all samples except x = 0.48, that part of the magnetoresistance attributed to spin-flip scattering is proportional to the square of the magnetization M ² and is 30–40% of R (0) for some samples. Magnetization measurements are consistent with a spin-7/2 paramagnetic behavior of Eu²⁺ ions when allowance is made for a concentration of 20–30% nonmagnetic (J = 0) Eu³⁺ ions as determined from Mössbauer measurements. The experimental results are inconsistent with predictions of dilute magnetic alloy Kondo models. We speculate that the resistance anomaly and suppression of T _c for x 0.24 are associated with a semiconductor-like behavior.Work performed under the auspices of the U.S. DOE.Work supported by NSF Research Grant DMR 78-2428.