Psychology as an ambiguous attitude stimulus.

College freshmen and their parents applied each of 3 methods for assessing public image (a naturalistic approach, a listing of adjectives, and a Likert scale) to 6 professions. A rank ordering was obtained and ranks were compared across methods. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychophysiological stress reactions in female and male urban bus drivers.

Male and female urban bus drivers were studied at work during everyday bus driving in urban traffic (work condition) and watching educational programs (comparison condition). The results showed that (a) both sexes had significantly higher adrenaline, noradrenaline, and cortisol excretion levels during work than during the comparison session; (b) during work and inactivity, there were no significant sex differences in hormone excretion for either hormone; (c) the percentage increase during work compared with control levels for all hormones was equally high in the female group as in the male group; and (d) there were no significant sex differences in self-reported mood (distress, well-being, control) during bus driving. The results are discussed in terms of type and intensity of stressors, gender differences in costs of adaptation, preventive measures, and the role of social influences in psychoneuroendocrine regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Use of an Azur-A–NTA system in a photogalvanic cell for solar energy conversion

Nitrilotriacetic acid (NTA) and Azur-A were used as the reductant and photosensitizer, respectively, for the photo-generation of electrical current. The photocurrent and photopotential generated by the cell were 60 μA and 362 mV, respectively. The effects of various parameters on the electrical output of the cell were also observed. The mechanism for the generation of photocurrent in this cell has been proposed. The maximum power obtained from this cell is 17.82 μW.     

Diffusion of toluene sulfonic acid in nylon film

The permeation of p-toluene sulfonic acid through nylon 66 film has been studied at different concentrations of sulfonic acid. The ordinary diffusion coefficient in the membrane was found to increase with increasing concentration in nylon, moderately at low concentration but very rapidly when approaching the Langmuir saturation concentration.     

Operationalizing multicultural training in doctoral programs and internships.

The purpose of this study was to describe an operational definition of multicultural training through dialogue with experts in the field via a modified Delphi method. A list of 91 experts was identified from their publication records during 1980–1991. Fifty-one of the identified experts (56%) elected to participate in this study. In Phase 1 of the study, the participants were sent an open-ended questionnaire that asked them to specify 10 attributes important for both doctoral programs and internships to be considered "multicultural." In Phase 2, the participants were asked to rank order the compiled list of the attributes according to perceived importance. The results of this investigation may provide guidance to doctoral programs and internships as they attempt to train multiculturally competent psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Biochemical basis of insect resistance in Vigna unguiculata

The bruchid beetle Callosobruchus maculatus (F.) causes extensive damage to seeds of the cowpea, Vigna unguiculata (L.) (Walp.), when this important tropical foodstuff is stored. A variety of cowpea resistant to attack by this pest has been described. In the present work seeds of a number of cowpea varieties, including the resistant one, were tested for the presence of a physical resistance to C. maculatus, in terms of repulsion of oviposition or of failure of larvae to enter the seeds. No evidence to suggest the presence of a physical resistance was found. When seeds of cowpea varieties were tested for the presence of various antimetabolic secondary compounds, only inhibitory activity against trypsin and, to a much lesser extent, chymotrypsin, could be detected. The resistant variety of cowpea contained a significantly higher level of inhibitors, about twice as much as any other variety. A proteinase inhibitor active against trypsin was purified from cowpea varieties by affinity chromatography on trypsin-Sepharose. The purified inhibitor was shown to inhibit chyraotrypsin also, in such proportions as to account for chymotrypsin inhibition by seed extracts. The inhibitor was shown to consist of a number of isoinhibitors by gel electrophoresis and isoelectric focusing, but no qualitative differences in the inhibitor between varieties could be detected. The antimetabolic nature of the cowpea trypsin inhibitor was confirmed by insect feeding trials in which various protein fractions were added to a basic meal and the effect on larval survival noted. The albumin proteins of cowpea (containing the trypsin inhibitors) at a level of 10% were toxic to larvae of C. maculatus whereas the globulin fractions were not. Further, if cowpea trypsin inhibitor was removed from the albumin proteins they ceased to be toxic. When purified cowpea trypsin inhibitor was added to the basic meal it was shown that a level slightly less than that found in the resistant variety of cowpea caused complete mortality of larvae, whereas lower levels had lesser or no effect. It is concluded that this example of insect resistance in the cowpea is due to an elevated level of trypsin inhibitor.     

Effect of empty comb on defensive behavior of honeybees

Honeybees in colonies with 6.36-m² surface area of empty comb responded faster to moving targets and stung the targets more often than bees from colonies with 3.18-m² surface area of empty honeycomb. The two groups did not differ significantly in speed of response to alarm pheromone or in number of bees defending the colony. Volatiles from the comb are suggested as primer pheromones for defensive behavior.     

Appraisal, coping, health status, and psychological symptoms.

Examined the relation between personality factors (mastery and interpersonal trust), primary appraisal (the stakes a person has in a stressful encounter), secondary appraisal (options for coping), 8 forms of problem- and emotion-focused coping, and somatic health status and psychological symptoms among 75 married couples (aged 26–54 yrs). Measures included the Hopkins Symptom Checklist, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and items from the Rotter Trust Scale. It was assumed that appraisal and coping processes should be characterized by a moderate degree of stability across stressful encounters for them to have an effect on somatic health status and psychological symptoms. These processes were assessed in 5 stressful situations that Ss experienced in their day-to-day lives. Certain processes (e.g., secondary appraisal) were highly variable, whereas others (e.g., emotion-focused forms of coping) were moderately stable. Mastery and interpersonal trust, primary appraisal, and coping variables (aggregated over 5 occasions) explained a significant amount of the variance in psychological symptoms but not somatic health status. (49 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recognition algorithms for the connection machine

This paper describes an object recognition algorithm both on a sequential machine and on a single instruction multiple data (SIMD) parallel processor such as the MIT connection machine. The problem, in the way it is presently formulated on a sequential machine, is essentially a propagation of constraints through a tree of possibilities in an attempt to prune the tree to a small number of leaves. The tree can become excessively large, however, and so implementations on massively parallel machines are sought in order to speed up the problem. Two fast parallel algorithms are described here, a static algorithm and a dynamic algorithm. The static algorithm reformulates the problem by assigning every leaf in the completely expanded unpruned tree to a separate processor in the connection machine. Then pruning is done in nearly constant time by broadcasting constraints to the entire SIMD array. This parallel version is shown to run three to four orders of magnitude faster than the sequential version. For large recognition problems which would exceed the capacity of the machine, a dynamic algorithm is described which performs a series of loading and pruning steps, dynamically allocating and deallocating processors through the use of the connection machine's global router communications mechanism.