Moral value transfer from regulatory fit: What feels right is right and what feels wrong is wrong.

People experience regulatory fit (E. T. Higgins, 2000) when the strategic manner of their goal pursuit suits their regulatory orientation, and this regulatory fit feels right. Fit violation feels wrong. Four studies tested the proposal that experiences of fit can transfer to moral evaluations. The authors examined transfer of feeling wrong from fit violation by having participants in a promotion or prevention focus recall transgressions of commission or omission (Studies 1 and 2). Both studies found that when the type of transgression was a fit violation, participants expressed more guilt. Studies 3 and 4 examined transfer of feeling right from regulatory fit. Participants evaluated conflict resolutions (Study 3) and public policies (Study 4) as more right when the means pursued had fit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modeling and sensitivity analysis of fire emissions in southern Africa during SAFARI 2000

This paper uses three recently generated southern African satellite burned area products for the month of September 2000 in a sensitivity study of regional biomass burning emissions for a number of trace gases and particulates. Differences in the extent and location of areas burned among products generated from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS), Systeme Pour l'Observation de la Terre (SPOT-VEGETATION), and Along Track Scanning Radiometer (ATSR-2) data are significant and result in different emissions estimates for woodland and grassland land cover types. Due to the different emission profiles in woodlands and grasslands, favoring relatively more products of incomplete combustion in woodlands compared with products of complete combustion in grasslands in the late dry season, these changes are not proportional to the differences in the burned area amounts. The importance of accurate burned area information not just in terms of the total area but also in terms of its spatial distribution becomes apparent from our modeling results. This paper highlights the urgent need for satellite data producers to provide accuracy assessments associated with satellite-derived products. Preferably, these accuracy data will be spatially explicit, or defined in a way that can be applied in a spatially explicit modeling context, to enable emissions uncertainties to be defined with respect to different landscape units in support of greenhouse gas emissions reporting.     

Social environmental selection as a mediator of gender, ethnic, and personality effects on college student drinking.

Structural equation modeling was used to test the mediational role of social environmental selection on alcohol use in cross-sectional samples of 447 students from a rural state university and 421 students from an urban private university. Results showed that male gender, White ethnicity, and sensation seeking were uniquely associated with greater alcohol use. Mediational analyses indicated that socioenvironmental factors (i.e., Greek involvement, friends' approval of drinking/getting drunk) were positively associated with alcohol use and significantly accounted for parts of the effects of ethnicity and sensation seeking, but not gender, on alcohol use. Results suggest that White students and those high on sensation seeking may drink more heavily in college, in part because they select social environments in which alcohol use is encouraged. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparative analysis of urban reflectance and surface temperature

Urban environmental conditions are strongly dependent on the biophysical properties and radiant thermal field of the land cover elements in the urban mosaic. Observations of urban reflectance and surface temperature provide valuable constraints on the physical properties that are determinants of mass and energy fluxes in the urban environment. Consistencies in the covariation of surface temperature with reflectance properties can be parameterized to represent characteristics of the surface energy flux associated with different land covers and physical conditions. Linear mixture models can accurately represent Landsat ETM+ reflectances as fractions of generic spectral endmembers that correspond to land surface materials with distinct physical properties. Modeling heterogeneous land cover as mixtures of rock and/or soil Substrate, Vegetation and non-reflective Dark surface (SVD) generic endmembers makes it possible to quantify the dependence of aggregate surface temperature on the relative abundance of each physical component of the land cover, thereby distinguishing the effects of vegetation abundance, soil exposure, albedo and shadowing. Comparing these covariations in a wide variety of urban settings and physical environments provides a more robust indication of the global variability in these parameter spaces than could be inferred from a single study area. A comparative analysis of 24 urban areas and their non-urban peripheries illustrates the variability in the urban thermal fields and its dependence on biophysical land surface components. Contrary to expectation, moderate resolution intra-urban variations in surface temperature are generally as large as regional surface heat island signatures in these urban areas. Many of the non-temperate urban areas did not have surface heat island signatures at all. However, the multivariate distributions of surface temperature and generic endmember fractions reveal consistent patterns of thermal fraction covariation resulting from land cover characteristics. The Thermal-Vegetation (TV) fraction space illustrates the considerable variability in the well-known inverse correlation between surface temperature and vegetation fraction at moderate (< 100 m) spatial resolutions. The Thermal-Substrate (TS) fraction space reveals energetic thresholds where competing effects of albedo, illumination and soil moisture determine the covariation of maximum and minimum temperature with illuminated substrate fraction. The dark surface endmember fraction represents a fundamental ambiguity in the radiance signal because it can correspond to either absorptive (e.g. low albedo asphalt), transmissive (e.g. deep clear water) or shadowed (e.g. tree canopy shadow) surfaces. However, in areas where dark surface composition can be inferred from spatial context, the different responses of these surfaces may still allow them to be distinguished in the thermal fraction space.     

Optimizing the design of railway tank cars to minimize accident-caused releases

The design of vehicles transporting hazardous materials has important public safety and economic implications. Conventional wisdom among industry and government has held that a thicker tank on railroad tank cars and trucks reduces risk. However, a thicker tank increases vehicle weight and thus leads to an increase in the number of shipments required to transport the same amount of product and consequently greater exposure to accidents. In this research we develop a model that analyzes the tradeoff between increased damage resistance and greater exposure to accidents in which the objective function is minimization of the probability of release. The model accounts for the reduction in tank car release probability as a function of tank thickness, and the increased exposure to accidents that occurs due to the increased number of shipments needed for the heavier car. Three variables affecting this optimal thickness are considered in this paper: the volumetric capacity of the tank, the probability of release from other, non-tank sources, and the weight capacity of the car. Sensitivity analyses using the model indicate that for any particular configuration of tank car there is an optimal thickness. This optimal thickness is affected by several factors and there is no single optimum for all tank cars.     

Partner violence before and after individually based alcoholism treatment for male alcoholic patients.

This study examined partner violence in the year before and the year after individually based, outpatient alcoholism treatment for 301 married or cohabiting male alcoholic patients and used a demographically matched nonalcoholic comparison sample. In the year before treatment, 56% of the alcoholic patients had been violent toward their female partner, 4 times the rate of 14% in the comparison sample. In the year after treatment, violence decreased significantly to 25% of the alcoholic sample but remained higher than in the comparison group. Among remitted alcoholics after treatment, violence prevalence of 15% was nearly identical to the comparison sample and half the rate among relapsed patients (32%). Thus, partner violence decreased after alcoholism treatment, and clinically significant violence reductions occurred for patients whose alcoholism was remitted after treatment. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Properties and Performance of Cation-Doped Ceria Electrolyte Materials in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Applications

Cation-doped CeO₂ electrolyte has been evaluated in single-cell and short-stack tests in solid oxide fuel cell environments and applications. These results, along with conductivity measurements, indicate that an ionic transference number of ∼0.75 can be expected at 800°C. Single cells have shown a power density >350 mW/cm². Multicell stacks have demonstrated a peak performance of >100 mW/cm² at 700°C using metallic separators.     

Comprehension of arithmetic word problems: A comparison of successful and unsuccessful problem solvers.

It is proposed that when solving an arithmetic word problem, unsuccessful problem solvers base their solution plan on numbers and keywords that they select from the problem (the direct translation strategy), whereas successful problem solvers construct a model of the situation described in the problem and base their solution plan on this model (the problem-model strategy). Evidence for this hypothesis was obtained in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, the eye fixations of successful and unsuccessful problem solvers on words and numbers in the problem statement were compared. In Experiment 2, the degree to which successful and unsuccessful problem solvers remember the meaning and exact wording of word problems was examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of ethanol on platelet phospholipase A2

Platelet aggregation is known to be inhibited by ethanol, and this has been suggested to be one of the attenuating effects of ethanol in cardiovascular disease. Recent studies have implicated an inhibition of phospholipase A₂ induced arachidonic acid release, since the production of prostanoids that are formed from arachidonic acid and are involved in the aggregation process has been shown to be diminished by ethanol. Phospholipase A₂ is found in platelets in both a cytosolic form, from where it may translocate to the plasma membrane to release arachidonic acid, and in a secretory form which is released extracellularly upon activition. In the present study, the effect of ethanol on the secretion of phospholipase A₂ and on its activity was determined. It was found that ethanol inhibited trast, the activity of the cytosolic form of phospholipase A₂ was inhibited by ethanol.