Hypnosis and the influence of most recently perceived events.

Tested the hypothesis that the expectancy of the hypnotist is especially significant in determining the nature of the response of susceptible Ss. Three studies were conducted, using a total of 126 undergraduates. Using E. G. Boring's ambiguous Wife/Mother-in-Law figure and procedures first isolated by W. Epstein and I. Rock (1960), unique waking conditions were established under which the events most recently seen, rather than what was expected, reliably influenced subsequent perception. The effects of these same conditions were then studied for task-motivated, hypnotized, and waking (imagination only) Ss in formal application of T. X. Barber's (1969) model of hypnosis. Results support the hypothesis showing that susceptible hypnotic Ss exclusively demonstrated expectancy rather than recency behavior in the trance test setting; however, Barber's task-motivation instructions were ineffective in reproducing the suggested response. (34 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assimilation and tonal structure: Comment on Castellano, Bharucha, and Krumhansl.

In response to the study of tonal hierarchies in North Indian music by M. Castellano et al (see record 1985-16424-001), the present author considers the issues of (a) assimilation, noting that it occurs most often in production tasks, in tasks with facilitating context, and in tasks where there is little encoding time provided; and (b) representativeness of stimuli in laboratory experiments. It is suggested that the Castellano studies strike a good balance between controlled simplicity and real-world complexity. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychotherapy outcome: Smith and Glass' conclusions stand up under scrutiny.

Selected a sample of the original set of psychotherapy outcome studies analyzed by M. L. Smith and G. V. Glass (see record 1978-10341-001) for reanalysis to address criticisms of the methodological quality of the studies in the original sample. Results uphold the positive conclusions regarding psychotherapeutic efficacy originally drawn by Smith and Glass. (37 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A critical overview of acceptance testing using various measured indices

It is a requirement of the new European directive on health protection of individuals against the dangers of ionising radiation in relation to medical exposure (97/43/EURATOM), that acceptance testing is carried out on all radiological equipment before its first use for clinical purposes. This directive must be implemented into member state law. In accordance with this requirement, thirteen digital fluorography systems were acceptance tested by the Department of Medical Physics and Bioengineering, St James's Hospital, Dublin. The equipment tested was in six Irish hospitals and included nine systems intended for interventional use, two of which were dedicated cardiac catheterisation laboratories and two of which were dedicated vascular laboratories. Testing was performed in line with current published international guidelines and standards and involved the measurement and analysis of various indices including X ray tube and generator performance, operating dose levels, image quality and electrical, mechanical and radiation safety aspects. The results are presented and compared with international standards and recommendations. Problems were identified with all systems tested with approximately 70% of all systems demonstrating significant problems. This study emphasises the importance of acceptance testing radiological equipment.     

Tenderness of pork m. longissimus thoracis et lumborum after accelerated boning. Part I. Effect of temperature conditioning

This research investigated the effect on tenderness and meat quality of temperature conditioning at 0, 7, 14 or 21?°C of pork longissimus muscle after accelerated boning (removal from the carcass within 30 min post slaughter). The conditioning temperature had no effect (P>0.05) on tenderness at the end of the conditioning period (i.e. at the onset of rigor) but had a significant effect (P<0.05) after the muscles were aged for four days at 2?°C. After aging, the muscles conditioned at 14?°C were more tender than muscles conditioned at the other three temperatures; the muscles conditioned at 0?°C were tougher than the muscles conditioned at the higher three temperatures. Conditioning at 14?°C produced muscles that had lighter surface colour and lower drip loss due to prevention of cold toughening which occurred at lower temperatures or protein denaturation at the higher temperatures.     

Tenderness of pork m. longissimus thoracis et lumborum after accelerated boning. Part II. Effect of post-slaughter ageing

This research investigated the effect of ageing time (0-10 days) at 2?°C on tenderness of pork longissimus muscle after either rigor boning (RB) or accelerated boning (removal from carcass within 30 min post slaughter) and temperature conditioning at either 0 or 14?°C. Ageing occurred most rapidly in muscles conditioned at 14?°C- maximum tenderization occurred by 4 days post-mortem. RB muscles and muscles conditioned at 0?°C aged more slowly and took 8 and 10 days, respectively, to reach a comparable level of tenderness. Temperature conditioning at 14?°C, produced muscles which had lower drip loss and lighter surface colour.     

Provably secure hybrid key agreement protocols in cluster-based wireless ad hoc networks

Wireless ad hoc networks support rapid on-demand and adaptive communication among the nodes due to their self-configurable and autonomous nature and lack of fixed infrastructure. Security is a crucial factor for such systems. Since ad hoc networks rely on the collaboration principle, the issue of key distribution and efficient group key management in such networks represents two of the most important problems. We describe hybrid solutions to the problem of key distribution and key management by reflecting ad hoc networks in a topology composed of a set of clusters. To date no security proofs exist for these types of protocols. We present two dynamically efficient schemes. We show that both our hybrid schemes are provably secure in the standard model under Decision Diffie–Hellman (DDH) assumption. The proposed protocols avoid the use of a trusted third party (TTP) or a central authority, eliminating a single point of attack. We analyse the complexity of the schemes and differentiate between the two approaches based on performance in a wireless setting. In comparison with the existing cluster-based hybrid key agreement protocols, our proposed approaches individually provide better performance in terms of both communication and computation, handle dynamic events efficiently, and are supported by sound security analysis in formal security models under standard cryptographic assumptions.