MAGNESIUM HYDROXIDE FILLED EVA: THE EFFECTS OF FILLER SURFACE MODIFICATION ON THE STRENGTH OF FILLER/MATRIX ADHESION AND THE CONSEQUENCES FOR COMPOSITE STRUCTURE AND PROPERTIES

The interaction of ammonium stearate (AS) and γ-aminopropyltriethoxysilane (APS) treatments with a magnesium hydroxide flame retardant filler and their effects on its use in an ethylene vinyl acetate copolymer compound have been investigated. The work has shown clear evidence of changes in the structure of the surface layers formed on the filler as the amount of additive is increased and the levels at which these occur can be correlated with theoretical monolayer quantities. Infrared (IR) spectroscopy data suggest that the stearate coating changes from a half salt to a full salt as the coating level is increased and that the APS coating on the filler initially has a significant bicarbonate content, presumably due to reaction with atmospheric carbon dioxide. The effect of coating level on the melt flow rate, insoluble matrix content, crystallisation behaviour, tensile properties, limiting oxygen index, and ageing of the filled compound has been studied. Distinct trends have been observed, many of which can be correlated with the structure of the filler surface layers. Of particular importance is the observation that, unlike APS, excess stearate appears to promote detrimental ageing effects.     

Confidentiality in psychotherapy: History, issues, and research.

Discusses ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association regarding confidentiality in psychotherapy. Possible inconsistencies between these guidelines and privileged communication are explored. It is asserted that additional research is needed to determine the implications for psychotherapy of the ethical limitations to confidentiality and the legal restrictions on privileged communication. The relevance of moral philosophy to issues of confidentiality is considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Context and lexical access: Implications of nonword interference for lexical ambiguity resolution.

To eliminate potential "backward" priming effects, S. Glucksberg et al (see record 1986-29080-001) introduced a variant of the cross-modal lexical priming task in which subjects made lexical decisions to nonword targets that were modeled on a word related to either the contextually biased or unbiased sense of an ambiguous word. Lexical decisions to nonwords were longer than controls only when the nonword was related to the contextually biased sense of the ambiguous word, leading Glucksberg et al to conclude that context does constrain lexical access and that the multiple access pattern observed in previous studies was probably an artifact of backward priming. We did not find nonword interference when the nonword targets used by Glucksberg et al were preceded by semantically related ambiguous or unambiguous word primes. However, we did replicate their sentence context results when the ambiguous words were removed from the sentences. We conclude that the interference obtained by Glucksberg et al is due to postlexical judgments of the congruence of the sentence context and the target, not to context constraining lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bizarre imagery, interference, and distinctiveness.

Previous studies have shown that bizarre and common images produce equivalent levels of recall in unmixed-list designs. Using unmixed lists, we tested the view that bizarre images would be less susceptible than common images to common sources of interference. In all experiments, subjects imaged a list of either bizarre or common sentences and then performed some kind of interfering task before recalling the initial list of sentences. Experiment 1 showed that bizarre images were better accessed than common images after imaging an intervening list of common sentences. Also, components of common images tended to be better recalled than those of bizarre images after imaging an intervening list of bizarre sentences. Experiments 2a and 2b showed that interfering tasks consisting of studying lists of common concrete nouns did not differentially affect memory for bizarre and common images. In Experiment 3, labeling and imaging an interfering list of common pictures produced higher recall of bizarre images. Generally, bizarre images appeared to be less susceptible than common images to interference from certain types of common encodings. Importantly, the superior recall of bizarre images was always due to greater image (sentence) access, whereas higher recall of common images was associated with greater recovery of the image (sentence) constituents. Explanation of the precise pattern of results requires consideration of the distinctive properties of bizarre images. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Correlates of improvement in multidisciplinary treatment of chronic pain.

Although multidisciplinary pain programs have been demonstrated to be effective, the processes of improvement have yet to be clarified. Cognitive-behavioral models posit that improvement is due, in part, to changes in patient pain beliefs and coping strategies. To test the relationships between treatment outcome and changes in beliefs and coping strategies, 94 chronic pain patients (aged 21–64 yrs) completed measures of physical and psychological functioning, health care utilization, pain beliefs, and use of pain coping strategies at admission and 3 to 6 mo after inpatient pain treatment. Improved functioning and decreased health care use were associated with changes in both beliefs and cognitive coping strategies. However, changes in some coping strategies, such as exercise and use of rest, were not associated with improvement. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Overview of recent operating experience regarding plant aging

Recent, as well as past, studies of reactor trip frequencies and other types of operating experience have shown that relatively high frequencies are likely in new plants with little accumulated operating time. In order to better understand all the factors which contribute to high frequencies in new plants, the authors have made a comparison of reactor trip frequencies between plants which went into operation in the 1960's and the early 1970's and those which have gone into operation more recently. Trip frequency versus accumulated operating time for two plant groups are compared to see the extent to which design differences (e.g., capacity, thermal margin) affect trip frequency.This paper also presents a review of some recent events in which plant age has played a major role. The events which are reviewed have been identified through the normal systematic event analysis program conducted by the NRC. Information regarding these events was obtained through followup by reviews conducted by NRC Resident Inspectors as well as event reports submitted by licensees.     

The lexical nature of syntactic ambiguity resolution.

Ambiguity resolution is a central problem in language comprehension. Lexical and syntactic ambiguities are standardly assumed to involve different types of knowledge representations and be resolved by different mechanisms. An alternative account is provided in which both types of ambiguity derive from aspects of lexical representation and are resolved by the same processing mechanisms. Reinterpreting syntactic ambiguity resolution as a form of lexical ambiguity resolution obviates the need for special parsing principles to account for syntactic interpretation preferences, reconciles a number of apparently conflicting results concerning the roles of lexical and contextual information in sentence processing, explains differences among ambiguities in terms of ease of resolution, and provides a more unified account of language comprehension than was previously available. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)