"The cenral role of restricted normal activities in adjustment to illness and disability: A model of depressed affect": Correction.

Reports a correction in the original article by Gail M. Williamson (Rehabilitation Psychology, 1998, Vol 43(4), 327–347). The article should have been identified as a Commentary. (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1999-00481-005). Research has consistently indicated that health-related stressors affect depressive symptoms largely to the extent that they restrict routine activities. Beyond the impact of illness severity, psychosocial variables (age, income adequacy, social support, and personality) also contribute to restricted activities. Moreover, after controlling for illness severity and psychosocial factors, activity restriction explains significant portions of the variance in symptoms of depression. Thus, depressed affect is at least partially a function of restricted activities. Further specifying the processes through which activities come to be restricted should not only provide clues about points of intervention but also aid in early identification of individuals at risk for poor adaptation. In addition to treating illness symptoms and depression, interventions can be designed to increase participation in routine activities, even in the presence of illness symptoms, depression, or both. Implications of activity restriction… (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Field validation of the ASTER Temperature-Emissivity Separation algorithm

The Advanced Spaceborne Thermal Emission and Reflection Radiometer (ASTER) has operated since 19 December 1999 from NASA's Terra Earth-orbiting, sun-synchronous satellite. The Temperature-Emissivity Separation (TES) algorithm is used to calculate surface temperature and emissivity standard products, predicted to be within +1.5 K and +0.015 of correct values, respectively. Analyses of time sequences of ASTER images showing validation sites at Lake Tahoe, California, the Salton Sea, California, Railroad Valley Nevada, and the island of Hawai?i demonstrate that TES generally performs within these limits. The validation experiments also demonstrate that, under unusual atmospheric conditions of anomalously high humidity or spatial variability, atmospheric compensation can be incomplete and errors in temperature and emissivity images can be larger than anticipated.     

Detecting a moorland wildfire scar in the Peak District,UK, using synthetic aperture radar from ERS-2 and Envisat ASAR

Wildfires occur annually in UK moorland environments, especially in drought years. They can be severely damaging to the ecosystem when they burn deep into the peat, killing ground-nesting birds and releasing CO₂ into the atmosphere. Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) was evaluated for detecting the 18 April 2003 Bleaklow wildfire scar (7.4 km²). SAR’s ability to penetrate cloud is advantageous in this inherently overcast area. SAR can provide fire scar boundary information which is otherwise labour intensive to collect in the field using a global positioning system (GPS). This article evaluates the potential of SAR intensity and InSAR coherence to detect a large peat moorland wildfire scar in the Peak District of northern England. A time-series of pre-fire and post-fire ERS-2 and advanced synthetic aperture radar (ASAR) Single Look Complex (SLC) data were pre-processed using SARScape 4.2 to produce georeferenced greyscale images. SAR intensity and InSAR coherence values were analysed against Coordinate Information on the Environment (CORINE) land‐cover classes and precipitation data. SAR intensity detected burnt peat well after a precipitation event and for previous fire events within the CORINE peat bog class. For the 18 April 2003 fire event, intensity increased to 0.84 dB post-fire inside the fire scar for the peat bog class. InSAR coherence peaked post-fire for moors and heathland and natural grassland classes inside the fire scar, but peat bog exposed from previous fires was less responsive. Overall, SAR was found to be effective for detecting the Bleaklow moorland wildfire scar and monitoring wildfire scar persistence in a degraded peat landscape up to 71 days later. Heavy precipitation amplified the SAR fire scar signal, with precipitation after wildfires being typical in UK moorlands. Further work is required to disentangle the effects of fire size, topography, and less generalized land‐cover classes on SAR intensity and InSAR coherence for detecting fire scars in degraded peat moorlands.     

Caregiver Resentment: Explaining Why Care Recipients Exhibit Problem Behavior.

Objective: To determine how attributions caregivers make about the source of problem behavior of frail, older care recipients may contribute to caregiver resentment of care recipients and obligations associated with providing care. Design: Cross-sectional interview data, screened according to primary cause of need for care. Participants: 103 caregiver-care recipient dyads in which care recipient was cognitively impaired (CI; n = 72) or physically disabled without cognitive impairment (n = 31). Outcome Measure: 17-item Caregiver Resentment Scale. Results: Caregivers of CI elders reported providing more care in response to CI-related care recipient disturbing behavior. However, beyond the source of impairment, disturbing (externally attributable) behavior typical of CI, and amount of care provided, resentment was predicted by controlling and manipulative (internally attributable) care recipient behavior. Conclusions: Caregivers are more resentful when care recipients are difficult in ways that they can attribute to the person rather than to the illness. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alcohol ingestion and levels of hepatic fatty acid synthetase and stearoyl-CoA desaturase activities in rats

Male Sprague-Dawley rats were fed, ad libitum for 30 days, a fat-free (FF) liquid diet containing 34% of the calories as ethanol or a control FF diet in which alcohol was replaced by an isocaloric amount of dextrins. The cytosolic fatty acid synthetase and the microsomal stearoyl-CoA desaturase activities in the livers of rats fed the alcohol diet were about half of those observed in the livers of control rats. The conclusion is that chronic ethanol consumption depresses the activities of these lipogenic enzymes in the liver.     

Pronoun resolution and discourse models.

Psychological investigations of pronoun resolution have implicitly assumed that the processes involved automatically provide a unique referent for every pronoun. The authors challenge this assumption and propose a new framework for studying pronoun resolution. Drawing on advances in discourse representation and global memory modeling, this framework suggests that automatic processes may not always identify a unique referent for a pronoun. In 9 experiments, the authors demonstrate that, unlike noun anaphors, pronouns sometimes do not produce relative facilitation of their referents in comparison with nonreferents. They argue that research on pronoun resolution must consider the discourse contexts in which pronouns are likely to occur. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metaphor-based schemas and text representations: Making connections through conceptual metaphors.

Four experiments were conducted to examine the role of metaphor-based schemas in text comprehension and representation. In Experiment 1, schemas facilitated recognition judgments for schema-related sentences that had been presented in a text. Similar facilitation was found for the recognition of individual words in Experiments 2, 3, and 4. The results are interpreted as evidence for the use of metaphor-based schemas to link elements within a text representation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)