Attachment, separation, and women's vocational development: A longitudinal analysis.

This study tested a proposed model investigating the relations among attachment to and separation from parents, career self-efficacy, and career aspiration over a 5-year period with a sample of 207 young women. Results suggested that being attached to parents may lead to the development of confidence in pursuing career-related tasks, which in turn influences career aspiration. Separation from parents did not have direct effects on career self-efficacy. Results also indicated that women's career plans changed over a 5-year period with young women selecting more traditional and less prestigious careers than those to which they aspired in their senior year of high school. In addition, these women chose careers that underutilized their abilities. Finally, this sample of young women intended to have both careers and families, and the majority of these women ranked family as more important than career. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluation of spatio-temporal variations in chlorophyll-a in Lake Naivasha,Kenya: remote-sensing approach

Restoration of the ecosystem services and functions of lakes requires an understanding of the turbidity dynamics in order to arrive at informed environmental management decisions. The understanding of the spatio-temporal dynamics of turbidity requires frequent monitoring of the turbidity components such as chlorophyll-a concentration. In this study, we explored the use of Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer Aqua (MODIS-Aqua) satellite data in studying the spatio-temporal changes in chlorophyll-a concentration in Lake Naivasha, a turbid tropical system. The temporal trend of chlorophyll-a concentration over the study period in the lake was also evaluated. The temporal trend assessment was achieved through the removal of periodic seasonal interference using Seasonal-Trend decomposition based on the LOESS (Local Regression) procedure. The resultant chlorophyll-a concentration maps derived from MODIS-Aqua satellite data give an indication of the monthly spatial variation in chlorophyll-a concentration from 2002 to 2012. The results of regression analyses between satellite-derived chlorophyll-a and in situ measurements reveal a high level of precision, but with a measureable bias with the satellite underestimating actual in situ measurements (R² = 0.65, P < 0.001). Although the actual values of the chlorophyll-a concentrations are underestimated, the significant relationship between satellite-derived chlorophyll-a and in situ measurements provides reliable information for studying spatial variations and temporal trends. In 2009 and 2010, it was difficult to detect chlorophyll-a from the MODIS-Aqua imagery, and this coincided with a period of the lowest water levels in Lake Naivasha. An inverse relationship between de-seasoned water level and chlorophyll-a concentration was evident. This study shows that MODIS-Aqua satellite data provide useful information on the spatio-temporal variations in Lake Naivasha, which is useful in establishing general trends that are more difficult to determine through routine ground measurements.     

Public Displays of Play: Studying Online Games in Physical Settings

As research on virtual worlds gains increasing attention in educational, commercial, and military domains, a consideration of how player populations are ‘reassembled’ through social scientific data is a timely matter for communication scholars. This paper describes a large‐scale study of virtual worlds in which participants were recruited at public gaming events, as opposed to through online means, and explores the dynamic relationships between players and contexts of play that this approach makes visible. Challenging conventional approaches to quantitatively driven virtual worlds research, which categorizes players based on their involvement in an online game at a particular point in time, this account demonstrates how players' networked gaming activities are contingent on who they are playing with, where, and when.     

Body and sexual esteem as mediators of the physical disability-interpersonal competencies relation.

Objectives: To examine whether body and sexual esteem mediated the associations between sexual satisfaction, perceived disability severity, and social perceptions of the disability and interpersonal competencies. Research Method/Design: Web-based survey with 326 adults with a range of physical disabilities. Main Outcome Measures: Perceived interpersonal competence in initiating relationships and being assertive in negative situations. Results: For men, sexual satisfaction, social perceptions of the disability, and perceived severity of the disability significantly predicted competence with relationship initiation. Sexual satisfaction and social perceptions of the disability predicted competence with negative assertion. For women, social perceptions of the disability predicted both interpersonal competencies, and sexual satisfaction predicted competence with negative assertion. Aspects of body esteem mediated the relations between the predictor variables and the interpersonal competencies. Conclusions: Findings indicate the importance of perceived attractiveness to others in mediating the negative relations between impact of the disability and interpersonal competencies. Findings also suggest important gender differences in variables predictive of interpersonal competencies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Normality and impairment following profound early institutional deprivation: A longitudinal follow-up into early adolescence.

Longitudinal analyses on normal versus impaired functioning across 7 domains were conducted in children who had experienced profound institutional deprivation up to the age of 42 months and were adopted from Romania into U.K. families. Comparisons were made with noninstitutionalized children adopted from Romania and with nondeprived within-U.K. adoptees placed before the age of 6 months. Specifically, the validity of the assessment, the degree of continuity and change in levels of functioning from 6 to 11 years, and the factors in the pre- and postadoption environment accounting for heterogeneity in outcome were examined. Pervasive impairment was significantly raised in children experiencing institutional deprivation for ≥6 months of life, with a minority within this group showing no impairment. There was no additional significant effect of duration of deprivation beyond the 6-month cutoff, and few other predictors explained outcome. The pattern of normality/impairment was mainly established by 6 years of age, with considerable continuity at the individual level between 6 and 11 years. The findings are discussed in terms of the possibility of a sensitive period for development. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Maltreated children's memory: Accuracy, suggestibility, and psychopathology.

Memory, suggestibility, stress arousal, and trauma-related psychopathology were examined in 328 3- to 16-year-olds involved in forensic investigations of abuse and neglect. Children's memory and suggestibility were assessed for a medical examination and venipuncture. Being older and scoring higher in cognitive functioning were related to fewer inaccuracies. In addition, cortisol level and trauma symptoms in children who reported more dissociative tendencies were associated with increased memory error, whereas cortisol level and trauma symptoms were not associated with increased error for children who reported fewer dissociative tendencies. Sexual and/or physical abuse predicted greater accuracy. The study contributes important new information to scientific understanding of maltreatment, psychopathology, and eyewitness memory in children. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting future reconviction in offenders with intellectual disabilities: The predictive efficacy of VRAG, PCL-SV, and the HCR-20.

Accurate predictions of future reconviction, including those for violent crimes, have been shown to be greatly aided by the use of formal risk assessment instruments. However, it is unclear as to whether these instruments would also be predictive in a sample of offenders with intellectual disabilities. In this study, the authors have shown that the Violence Risk Appraisal Guide (V. L. Quinsey, G. T. Harris, M. E. Rice, & C. Cormier, 1998); the Psychopathy Checklist--Screening Version (S. D. Hart, D. N. Cox, & R. D. Hare, 1995); and the History, Clinical, Risk Management--20 (C. D. Webster, K. S. Douglas, D. Eaves, & S. D. Hart, 1997) were all significant predictors of violent and general reconviction in this sample, and in many cases, their efficacy was greater than in a control sample of mentally disordered offenders without an intellectual disability. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Informational Architectures of the SSA and Knud L?nberg-Holm

This paper offers an account of the unusual protosystemic and informational approach to architecture that emerged in the early 1930’s within the largely unknown Structural Study Associates (SSA), a circle of architects around Buckminster Fuller. It examines the design of a dynamic information system for architects by SSA members Knud L?nberg-Holm and Carl Theodore Larson and compares them to pre- and post-war knowledge indexing systems and world projects. This study also explores the systems-oriented positions outlined by these architects. This provides a view of American architecture of the era that counters the one presented by the canonical International Style Exhibition of 1932, which essentially edited out the more variegated approaches to modern architecture and technology as represented by the SSA and especially L?nberg-Holm.     

Effective discrepancy and numerical experiments

Many problems require the computation of a high dimensional integral, typically with a few tens of input factors, with a low number of integrand evaluations. To avoid the curse of dimensionality, we reduce the dimension before applying the Quasi-Monte Carlo method. We will show how to reduce the dimension by computing approximate Sobol indices of the variables with a two-levels fractional factorial design. Then, we will use the Sobol indices to define the effective discrepancy, which turns out to be correlated with the QMC error and thus enables one to choose a good sequence for the integral estimation.