Refining the relationship between personality and subjective well-being.

Understanding subjective well-being (SWB) has historically been a core human endeavor and presently spans fields from management to mental health. Previous meta-analyses have indicated that personality traits are one of the best predictors. Still, these past results indicate only a moderate relationship, weaker than suggested by several lines of reasoning. This may be because of commensurability, where researchers have grouped together substantively disparate measures in their analyses. In this article, the authors review and address this problem directly, focusing on individual measures of personality (e.g., the Neuroticism-Extroversion-Openness Personality Inventory; P. T. Costa & R. R. McCrae, 1992) and categories of SWB (e.g., life satisfaction). In addition, the authors take a multivariate approach, assessing how much variance personality traits account for individually as well as together. Results indicate that different personality and SWB scales can be substantively different and that the relationship between the two is typically much larger (e.g., 4 times) than previous meta-analyses have indicated. Total SWB variance accounted for by personality can reach as high as 39% or 63% disattenuated. These results also speak to meta-analyses in general and the need to account for scale differences once a sufficient research base has been generated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

p53 hot-spot mutational analysis in advanced Western gallbladder carcinoma

In gallbladder carcinoma, studies on the prime target of genetic alterations and gene therapy in human gallbladder malignancies, the p53 tumor suppressor gene, have been focusing on this gene's immunohistochemical detection. From November 1991 to October 1993, seven patients suffering from gallbladder carcinoma underwent surgical resection. Cancerous and normal liver tissues were obtained immediately after surgery, snap-frozen in liquid nitrogen, and stored at -80 degrees C for immunohistochemistry and DNA isolation. Exons 5, 6, 7, and 8 of the p53 gene were completely sequenced following polymerase chain reaction (PCR) amplification of a 1574-bp fragment. Missense mutations were detected in the cancerous tissues of two patients: one transition each on codons 134 (Phe-->Leu) and 146 (Trp-->Arg). Immunohistochemical p53 staining was positive in the latter patient only. This is the first report on sequence analysis and mutagenesis of the p53 gene in Caucasian patients with gallbladder cancer. Both mutations were transitions and seem to represent a rather rare event. The possible impact of p53 mutagenesis on gallbladder tumorigenesis requires evaluation in larger studies.     

Building modular legal knowledge systems

A practical legal knowledge system must be versatile and capable of supporting many fundamentally different aspects of the lawyer's work. In this paper a general framework for building knowledge systems from distinct but communicating modules is proposed. There are currently three different kinds of modules: computation, data storage, and environmental interaction. These modules include inference engines, database managers, and hypertext. Several strategies for coupling these modules are discussed. This framework is used to construct expert systems for two distinct domains: a legal expert system for labour law and a real-time expert system for process control in a pulp plant. The legal application shows that this system can be used to construct an “intelligent library”, guiding the user to relevant documents, rather than merely retrieving documents on request.     

Fortschritte in der technischen Anwendung von Kunststoffverbundsystemen

Progresses in the application of plastic compound materials Plastics possess a number of various properties one cannot find in another material in this combination. Beyond that the desired properties can be reached by compounding several different materials. The best known example is the glass reinforced plastic. The arguments for the application of compound materials are very different: increase of strength and stiffness, cheaper injection moulded parts due to shorter cycle times, thinner wall-thicknesses and therefore less raw material consumption, lower distortion and thermal elongation for technical parts and excellent thermal insulation of the foams. Research on the topic of the bonding between the plastic and the carbon, glass and organic fibres led the way to an ever spreading field of the application of reinforced plastics.     

Dynamic precipitation and coarsening of niobium carbonitrides during the hot compression of HSLA steels

The size distribution of the static precipitates produced in unstrained austenite was determined at 900° C by the method of extraction replication. The effect of deformation on the rate of coarsening of the particles was established up to a true strain of 0.75. Size distributions were also measured in materials containing static precipitates which were undergoing dynamic precipitation at 900°C. The mean size in these materials decreased while dynamic precipitation was occurring and then increased due to dynamic coarsening. The rate of increase duringdynamic ripening was two to three orders of magnitude higher than the rate ofstatic Ostwald ripening reported in the literature. The effect of particle size on the initiation of dynamic recrystallization was also evaluated. The results confirm the general rule that fine particles (d ≃ 6 nm) are more effective than coarser ones (e.g. d ≃ 20 nm) with respect to the retardation of dynamic recrystallization. The necessary fine particles can be nucleated homogeneously in the alpha phase or heterogeneously on gamma phase dislocations. This paper is based on a presentation made at a symposium on “Precipitation Processes in Structural Steels” held at the annual meeting of the AIME, Denver, Colorado, February 27 to 28, 1978, under the sponsorship of the Ferrous Metallurgy Committee of The Metallurgical Society of AIME.     

A triangular finite element mesh generator for fluid dynamic systems of arbitrary geometry

A two-dimensional finite element mesh generator capable of discretizing arbitrarily shaped flow regions is described. This economical, interactive computer code, written in FORTRAN IV and employing PLOT 10 software together with TEKTRONIX graphics terminals (4000 series or similar devices), generates a triangular network of variable element density according to the geometry and local kinematic flow patterns of a given fluid flow problem. The algorithm is an easy-to-use preprocessor and mesh generator delivering for a particular source program suitable input data which contribute to a higher degree of accuracy, efficiency and flexibility of the numerical scheme. The code was tested for the triangularization of the confluence region of the Ohio and Tennessee rivers with two islands forming subchannels of different sizes.