Behavioral treatment of "nightfears" in children: Maintenance of improvement at 2?- to 3-year follow-up.

Subsequent to a 3-wk, behaviorally oriented self-control training program for families, 39 of the 40 participating children (aged 6–13 yrs) had significantly reduced or completely overcome their severe, chronic nighttime fears. Maintenance of improvement from 2? to 3 yrs, without additional treatment and without the occurrence of new problems, was demonstrated in 31 of the 34 follow-up Ss. (2 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hyperthermia and AIDS: a critical review

Torsade de pointes in the congenital long QT syndrome (LQTS) is often pause dependent. Thus, the main goal of pacemaker treatment in the LQTS may be the prevention of pauses that facilitate the onset of torsade de pointes. A pause prevention pacing algorithm (rate smoothing) was used for arrhythmia prevention in a 14 year old girl with congenital LQTS. By temporarily increasing the pacing rate after spontaneous premature beats, rate smoothing down of 18% prevented postextrasystolic pauses, pause related T-U changes, and recurrence of pause induced torsade de pointes. Rate smoothing is a potentially useful tool that ought to be evaluated for the prevention of torsade de pointes in the LQTS.     

Second-order effects in mental health treatment.

Argues that mental health clients are typically processed through a fairly standardized, complex professional system which, in its pursuit of salutary "helping" goals may also be occasioning serious, negative 2nd-order effects for its clients. Clinicians have paid little attention to this possibility, and negative 2nd-order effects are thus not typically monitored in therapy or studied in research. A model for identifying and evaluating treatment effects is proposed. The important professional implications of treatment-contingent negative 2nd-order effects are discussed. (35 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Standards of fair play in same-age and mixed-age groups of children.

Investigated the hypothesis that children do not use the same standards of fair play in mixed-age situations as in same-age situations. In mixed-age encounters, younger children were hypothesized to use cues associated with older children (i. e., physical size) as a basis for reward deservingness, while older children would base their reward distribution primarily on task performance. 96 1st- and 3rd-grade children were asked to distribute rewards to 2 other children when the relative age, size, and task performance of the other children were independently manipulated. Data support the hypotheses; 1st-grade children were less likely to follow a task-based fair-play rule than were 3rd graders when one of the other children was larger and older. When dealing with same-size age-mates, however, 1st graders were no less likely to follow a task-based rule than were 3rd graders. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Experimental investigation on foam formation through deformable porous media

Foam formation in porous media is a topic of growing scientific and industrial interest due to its range of applications, from daily life consumer products to oil recovery. Despite the work done so far on foams flowing through complex structures, such as rigid porous media, this subject still needs to be fully elucidated. An additional complexity to the problem arises when the porous medium is deformable, a situation which has only been faced, to our knowledge, from a modelling point of view. In this work, the investigation of foam formation in deformable porous media is carried out by using commercial sponges as a deformable porous media system, with special emphasis on the effect of confinement on foam bubble size distribution. Foam is formed by wetting the sponge with an aqueous surfactant solution and then squeezing the sponge either between two glass cover slides or between a plastic net and a cover slide. Our experimental data reveal that the latter system allows the formation of drier foams (ie, with lower liquid fraction, f_L < 0.3), more similar to the ones obtained in dish-washing applications. Moreover, the effect of sponge type, in terms of material and microstructure, on final foam is presented. Our results are of potential interest for the optimization of foams in complex structures, such as in deformable porous media.     

Efficient Generation of Stimuli for Functional Verification by Backjumping Across Extended FSMs

Extended finite state machines (EFSMs) can be efficiently adopted to model the functionality of complex designs without incurring the state explosion problem typical of the more traditional FSMs. However, traversing an EFSM can be more difficult than an FSM because the guards of EFSM transitions involve both primary inputs and registers. This paper first analyzes the hardness of traversing an EFSM according to the characteristics of its transitions. Then, it presents a methodology to generate an EFSM which is easy to be traversed. Finally, it proposes a functional deterministic automatic test pattern generation (ATPG) approach that exploits such EFSMs for functional verification. In particular, the ATPG approach joins backjumping, learning, and constraint solving to (i) early identify possible symptoms of design errors by efficiently exploring the whole state space of the design under verification (DUV), and (ii) generate effective input sequences to be used in further verification steps which require to stimulate the DUV. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is confirmed in the experimental result section, where it is compared with both genetic and pseudo-deterministic techniques.     

Nociceptin (ORL-1) and mu-opioid receptors mediate mitogen-activated protein kinase activation in CHO cells through a Gi-coupled signaling pathway: evidence for distinct mechanisms of agonist-mediated desensitization

The recently identified 17-amino acid peptide nociceptin (orphanin FQ) is the endogenous ligand for the opioid receptor-like-1 (ORL-1) receptor. A physiologic role for nociceptin (OFQ) activation of the ORL-1 receptor (OFQR) may be to modulate opioid-induced analgesia. The molecular mechanism by which nociceptin (OFQ) and ORL-1 (OFQR) modify opioid-stimulated effects, however, is unclear. Both ORL-1 (OFQR) and opioid receptors mediate pertussis toxin (PTX)-sensitive signal transduction, indicating these receptors are capable of coupling to Gi/Go proteins. This study determines that nociceptin stimulates an intracellular signaling pathway, leading to activation of mitogen-activated protein (MAP) kinase in CHO cells expressing ORL-1 receptor (OFQR). Nociceptin (OFQ)-stimulated MAP kinase activation was inhibited by PTX or by expression of the carboxyl terminus of beta-adrenergic receptor kinase (betaARKct), which specifically blocks Gbetagamma-mediated signaling. Expression of the proline-rich domain of SOS (SOS-PRO), which inhibits SOS interaction with p21ras, also attenuated nociceptin (OFQ)-stimulated MAP kinase activation. The phosphatidylinositol 3-kinase (PI-3K) inhibitors wortmannin and LY294002 reduced nociceptin (OFQ)-stimulated MAP kinase activation, whereas inhibition of protein kinase C (PKC) activity by bisindolylmaleimide I or cellular depletion of PKC had no effect. In a similar manner, in cells expressing mu-opioid receptor, [D-Ala2,N-Me-Phe4,Gly-ol]-enkephalin (DAMGO; a mu-opioid receptor-selective agonist) stimulated PTX-sensitive MAP kinase activation that was inhibited by wortmannin, LY294002, betaARKct expression, or SOS-PRO expression but not affected by inhibition of PKC activity. These results indicate that both ORL-1 (OFQR) and mu-opioid receptors mediate MAP kinase activation via a signaling pathway using the betagamma-subunit of Gi, a PI-3K, and SOS, independent of PKC activity. In cells expressing both ORL-1 (OFQR) and mu-opioid receptors, pretreatment with nociceptin decreased subsequent nociceptin (OFQ)- or DAMGO-stimulated MAP kinase activation. In contrast, pretreatment of cells with DAMGO decreased subsequent DAMGO-stimulated MAP kinase but had no effect on subsequent nociceptin (OFQ)-stimulated MAP kinase activation. These results demonstrate that nociceptin (OFQ) activation of ORL-1 (OFQR) can modulate mu-opioid receptor signaling in a cellular system.     

Characterization of the human mitochondrial aconitase gene (ACO2)

We have cloned and characterized the ACO2 gene on human chromosome 22q13, which encodes the essential iron-dependent metabolic enzyme mitochondrial aconitase. We determined that the ACO2 gene comprises 18 translated exons distributed over approximately 35 kilobasepairs (kbp) of DNA. We have shown that the ACO2 mRNA is 2.7kb in length and is expressed ubiquitously, and we can detect multiple isoforms of the ACO2 protein. As others had reported the existence of biochemically active electrophoretic variants of mitochondrial aconitase, we wished to find common ACO2 gene allozymes, functional polymorphisms that might be associated with susceptibility to human genetic diseases. We looked for ACO2 allozymes by DNA sequencing and genotyping in a population of 217 subjects, many of which had idiopathic Parkinson's disease (IPD). We studied patients with IPD because this movement disorder is thought to arise from defects in neuronal iron and energy metabolism, two properties with which aconitase is involved. Furthermore, reports of associations between alleles of the CYP2D6 locus (nearby on 22q13) and IPD, although inconsistent, indicated that an IPD susceptibility locus might be in strong linkage disequilibrium with CYP2D6. We found three functionally silent single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) present in transcribed sequences that exist in similar frequencies in IPD patients and healthy controls. These ACO2 SNPs are in linkage disequilibrium with each other, providing evidence for distinct ACO2 haplotypes. We have, as yet, not detected polymorphisms that would lead to ACO2 allozymes, nor have we observed differences in ACO2 isoform prevalence or distribution in our population of IPD patients and controls. We conclude it is unlikely that polymorphism in the ACO2 gene or post-translational modification of the enzyme predispose to IPD.     

B. Richard Bugelski (1913-1995).

B. Richard Bugelski, a scholar known for his contributions to learning theory in psychology, died on March 3, 1995, in Cheektowaga, New York, following a short illness. He was 81 years old. Bugelski is survived by his wife, Sadie Locurto Bugelski; two daughters, Victoria Stearns and Catherine Labuta; a sister, Victoria Schwartz, and four grandchildren. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)