A step toward disentangling the alliance/improvement cycle in family therapy.

The authors focused on 2 unique aspects of the alliance in conjoint therapy: feeling safe in the therapeutic context with other family members and the family's shared sense of purpose about treatment (i.e., productive within-family collaboration). Low-income, multiproblem families were seen in a community clinic by therapists with varying theoretical orientations and a wide range of experience. Alliance-related behavior was assessed using the System for Observing Family Therapy Alliances (M. L. Friedlander, V. Escudero, & L. Heatherington, 2006). The significant mediated model showed that parent safety contributed to productive family collaboration in the 1st session, which, in turn, predicted global improvement rated after Session 3. Given the heterogeneous sample of clients, therapists, and therapy approaches, findings support the ecological validity of the alliance in family therapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Aflatoxins and ochratoxin A in Brazilian paprika

Seventy paprika samples collected in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, from January to April 2006 were analysed for aflatoxins and ochratoxin A (OTA) using an immunoaffinity column clean-up and HPLC-FLD. For aflatoxins, the limit of quantification (LOQ) were 0.23, 0.23, 0.45 and 0.45 μg/kg for AFB₁, AFB₂, AFG₁ and AFG₂, respectively. For OTA the LOQ was 0.80 μg/kg. Aflatoxins were found in 82.9% of samples and AFB₁ was detected in 61.4% at levels ranging from 0.5 to 7.3 μg/kg with mean concentration of 3.4 μg/kg. OTA was found in 85.7% at levels ranging from 0.24 to 97.2 μg/kg with mean concentration of 7.0 μg/kg.     

Comparing emergy accounting with well-known sustainability metrics: The case of Southern Cone Common Market,Mercosur

The quality and the power of human activities affect the external environment in different ways that can be measured and evaluated by means of several approaches and indicators. While the scientific community has been publishing several proposals for sustainable development indicators, there is still no consensus regarding the best approach to the use of these indicators and their reliability to measure sustainability. It is important, therefore, to question the effectiveness of sustainable development indicators in an effort to continue in the search for sustainability. This paper compares the results obtained with emergy accounting with five global Sustainability Metrics (SMs) proposed in the literature to verify if metrics are communicating coherent and similar information to guide decision makers towards sustainable development. Results obtained using emergy indices are discussed with the aid of emergy ternary diagrams. Metrics are confronted with emergy results, and the degree of variability among them is analyzed using a correlation matrix created for the Mercosur nations. The contrast of results clearly shows that metrics arrive at different interpretations about the sustainability of the nations studied, but also that some metrics may be grouped and used more prudently. Mercosur is presented as a case study to highlight and explain the discrepancies and similarities among Sustainability Metrics, and to expose the extent of emergy accounting.     

Influence of the final ethanol concentration on the acetification and production rate in the wine vinegar process

BACKGROUND: The acetification process needs an overall study of the variables influencing it in order to establish their optimum values. Based on industrial experience and available literature, including a recently proposed model by the authors, among the variables most strongly influencing the acetification process are the ethanol concentration at the time the reactor is unloaded, the unloaded volume and the loading rate. To ensure economically efficient industrial production of vinegar, and to check the predictions of the aforementioned model, the influence of the final ethanol concentration at unloading time on the mean acetification rate and on productivity has been studied in this work. RESULTS: An increase in the final ethanol concentration from 0.5 to 3.5% (v/v) increased the mean overall acetification rate and acetic acid production by 38 and 26%, respectively. The increase was established mainly during the loading phase. CONCLUSIONS: The final ethanol concentration is a key variable for process optimization. If a high rate is desired then a product containing much unused substrate will be obtained, which may be industrially unacceptable. These results suggest the necessity to investigate other possibilities when high values for yield and productivity must to be achieved. Copyright © 2010 Society of Chemical Industry     

Investigating the role of mineral-bound humic acid in phenanthrene sorption

Contaminant-soil interaction studies have indicated that physical conformation of organic matter atthe solid-aqueous interface is important in governing hydrophobic organic compound (HOC) sorption. To testthis, organo-clay complexes were constructed by coating montmorillonite and kaolinite with peat humic acid (PHA) in Na+ or Ca2+ dominated solutions with varying pH and ionic strength values. The solution conditions encouraged the dissolved PHA to adopt a "coiled" or "stretched" conformation prior to interacting with the clay mineral surface. Both kaolinite and montmorillonite organo-clay complexes exhibited higher phenanthrene sorption (Koc values) with decreasing pH, indicating that the coiled configuration provided more favorable sorption conditions. Evidence from 1H high-resolution magic angle spinning (HR-MAS) nuclear magnetic resonance (NMR) indicated that polymethylene groups were prevalent at the surface of the organo-clay complexes and may enhance sorptive interactions. Preferential sorption of polymethylene groups on kaolinite and aromatic compounds on montmorillonite may also contribute to the difference in phenanthrene sorption by PHA associated with these two types of clay. This study demonstrates the importance of solution conditions in the sorption of nonionic, hydrophobic organic contaminants and also provides evidence for the indirect role of clay minerals in sorption of contaminants at the soil-water interface.     

Introducing a brief measure of cultural and religious identification in American Jewish identity.

The authors conducted 3 studies to develop and investigate the psychometric properties of the American Jewish Identity Scales (AJIS), a brief self-report measure that assesses cultural identification and religious identification. Study 1 assessed the content validity of the item pool using an expert panel. In Study 2, 1,884 Jewish adults completed the initial AJIS and various measures of ethnic identity, collective self-esteem, and religiosity. Using confirmatory factor analyses, the authors selected and cross-validated 33 items that loaded highly and differentially on the 2 theorized latent factors. Study 3 assessed the AJIS's short-term stability and its relation to social desirability. Tests of reliability and construct validity provided initial psychometric support for the measure and confirmed the theorized primary salience of cultural identification. Participants reported significantly more private than public collective self-esteem, and the most Jewish-identified participants reported greater private self-esteem, acculturative stress, and perceived discrimination than did their more assimilated counterparts. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Electronic Structure and Half-Metallic Character in Sr2CoB′O6 (B′ = Mo, Re) Materials

We report several ab initio calculations performed for Sr₂CoB′O₆ (B′ = Mo, Re) by means of the Density Functional Theory and the Linearized Augmented Plane Waves method with spin polarization. For the calculations, the exchange and correlation potentials were included through the local density LDA+U approximation with B3PW91. Density of states (DOS) study was carried out considering both up and down spin polarizations by the Generalized Gradient Approximation (GGA). From the Murnaghan state equation, we calculate the cell dimensions that minimize the total energy. Our results of DOS calculations show that the Sr₂CoMoO₆ material presents a metallic behavior, while Sr₂CoReO₆ reveals a half-metallic nature with conductor behavior for the spin down orientation and semiconducting feature for spin up channel. It was observed close to Fermi level that the low-energy spin down states of Co are responsible by the majority contribution to conduction band. The calculated effective cell magnetic moment of the Sr₂CoReO₆ compound evidences a value 2.02 μ _B , which is close to an integer number as expected for a half-metallic material.     

Molecular characterization of dissolved organic matter in glacial ice: coupling natural abundance 1H NMR and fluorescence spectroscopy

Glaciers and ice sheets are the second largest freshwater reservoir in the global hydrologic cycle, and the onset of global climate warming has necessitated an assessment of their contributions to sea-level rise and the potential release of nutrients to nearby aquatic environments. In particular, the release of dissolved organic matter (DOM) from glacier melt could stimulate microbial activity in both glacial ecosystems and adjacent watersheds, but this would largely depend on the composition of the material released. Using fluorescence and (1)H NMR spectroscopy, we characterize DOM at its natural abundance in unaltered samples from a number of glaciers that differ in geographic location, thermal regime, and sample depth. Parallel factor analysis (PARAFAC) modeling of DOM fluorophores identifies components in the ice that are predominantly proteinaceous in character, while (1)H NMR spectroscopy reveals a mixture of small molecules that likely originate from native microbes. Spectrofluorescence also reveals a terrestrial contribution that was below the detection limits of NMR; however, (1)H nuclei from levoglucosan was identified in Arctic glacier ice samples. This study suggests that the bulk of the DOM from these glaciers is a mixture of biologically labile molecules derived from microbes.     

Properties of wheat starch film-forming dispersions and films as affected by chitosan addition

In order to evaluate the impact of chitosan on the physical properties of wheat starch–glycerol films, part of the wheat starch was replaced by chitosan, and the effect of composition on the properties of both the films and the film-forming dispersions was studied. The latter became more stable and viscous as the chitosan proportion was increased in the mixture. Both polymers appeared to integrate homogeneously in the film matrix. The combined effect of the glycerol and chitosan proportions affected the mechanical and barrier properties of the films. The tensile strength and elastic modulus of the films were improved as chitosan ratio increased. The oxygen and water vapor permeability slightly increased in line with the amount of chitosan in the blend although the induced differences were very small. Chitosan ratio directly affected the antimicrobial properties of the films, which showed a significant bactericide activity when the chitosan–starch ratio in the film was 50%. Nevertheless, at a starch:chitosan ratio of 80:20, counts of coliforms did not exceed the initial value in the meat after 7 storage days.