Gender identity and coping in female 46, XY adults with androgen biosynthesis deficiency (intersexuality/DSD).

Individuals living with an intersex condition have not received much attention in counseling psychology, although a high need for psychosocial care is obvious. Using a mixed-methods multiple case study with qualitative and quantitative data, the authors explore coping and gender experiences in seven 46, XY intersexual persons with deficiencies of androgen biosynthesis. These were assigned female at birth. At puberty, the participants experienced unexpected physical virilization due to 5alpha-reductase-2 (n = 3) and 17beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase-3 deficiency (n = 4). All 7 received medical treatment (e.g., gonadal removal, genital surgery) to stop virilization and maintain the primarily assigned female sex and gender. The cases illustrate high adjustment challenges caused by the condition itself and the medical treatment experienced. None changed to male during adolescence as reported in previous studies. Highly variable patterns of gender identification become visible with subjectivities that do not only represent a binary gender model. Adult gender identity outcome of the participants is characterized by an increased uncertainty of gender identity, high male and low female gender identity. Implications for clinical management, particularly psychological counseling, are drawn. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Polypropylene composites with enzyme modified abaca fibre

Abaca fibre reinforced PP composites were prepared using a high speed mixer followed by injection moulding with 30 wt.% of fibre load. Prior to composite production, the fibres were modified by fungamix and natural enzyme. The effects of modification of the fibre were assessed on the basis of morphology and thermal resistance and as well as on mechanical, thermal and environmental stress corrosion resistance properties of the resulting composites. Coupling agent (MA-PP) was also used with unmodified abaca fibre to observe the coupling agent effect on resulting composites properties. The moisture absorption of the composites was found to be reduced 20–45% due to modification. Tensile strength found to be 5–45% and flexural strengths found to be 10–35% increased due to modification. Modified fibre composites found to better resistance in acid and base medium.     

Silver Nanoparticles with Controlled Dispersity and Their Assembly into Superstructures

In this paper we report on the influence of particle size distribution, particle substrate interaction, and drying behavior on the self‐assembly process using ligand stabilized silver particles. Two‐dimensional particle arrays were characterized using transmission electron microscopy and extensive image analysis. The formation of such structures was observed in situ using an environmental scanning electron microscope in WET‐STEM mode. The results confirm that a small particle size distribution is crucial for the formation of regular particle patterns with long range order, but also the particle substrate interaction and the particle density have an influence on the degree of ordering. Additionally, we find that separated binary particle assemblies keep the orientation of their two‐dimensional hexagonal lattices over alternating domains of small and big particles. This is probably enabled due to the formation of dislocations and a small change of the course of the lattice lines within the respective boundary.     

Wind power and market power in competitive markets

Average market prices for intermittent generation technologies are lower than for conventional generation. This has a technical reason but can be exaggerated in the presence of market power. When there is much wind smaller amounts of conventional generation technologies are required, and prices are lower, while at times of little wind prices are higher. This effect reflects the value of different generation technologies to the system. But under conditions of market power, conventional generators with market power can further depress the prices if they have to buy back energy at times of large wind output and can increase prices if they have to sell additional power at times of little wind output. This greatly exaggerates the effect. Forward contracting does not reduce the effect. An important consequence is that allowing market power profit margins as a support mechanism for generation capacity investment is not a technologically neutral policy.     

Space and time: Wind in an investment planning model

Investment planning models inform investment decisions and government policies. Current models do not capture the intermittent nature of renewable energy sources, restricting the applicability of the models for high penetrations of renewables. We provide a methodology to capture spatial variation in wind output in combination with transmission constraints. The representation of wind distributions using stochastic approaches or using extensive historic data sets exceeds computational constraints for real world application. Hence we restrict the amount of input data, and use bootstrapping to illustrate the robustness of the results. For the UK power system we model wind deployment and the value of transmission capacity.     

Analysis of local operators applied to discrete tracking problems

This article investigates various local operators in a discrete (1, )-setting applied to tracking problems, a specific class of non-stationary problems. In the first instance, the influence of operator properties on the tracking performance is examined. Both the enforcement of bigger steps and, especially, directed mutations are found to increase the tracking accuracy considerably. For the examination of highly time restricted problems, a correlation between the population size and the severity of the problem dynamics is assumed. Relatively large population sizes are found to be advantageous if the number of evaluations has a big influence on the severity. All results are obtained using a fixpoint analysis of a worst-case model as well as simulations within a two-dimensional Markov model.     

Analyte templating: enhancing the enantioselectivity of chiral selectors upon incorporation into organic polymer environments

A simple strategy for preserving and enhancing the chiral recognition capacity of polymer-embedded chiral selectors is proposed, capitalizing on a temporary blockage of the receptor binding site with tightly binding analytes during the polymerization process. We demonstrate that the copolymerization of a quinine tert-butylcarbamate selector monomer with chiral (and achiral) 3,5-dichlorobenzoyl amino acids allows one to control to a certain extent the binding characteristics of the resultant polymeric chiral stationary phases. The structural and stereochemical requirements of the templating analytes for maximizing the chiral recognition capacity of the polymer-embedded selectors are probed. The chromatographic chiral recognition characteristics of the analyte-templated polymeric chiral stationary phases are analyzed with respect to binding capacities and affinities and compared to those obtained with a conventional silica-based surface-grafted reference material. Changes in substrate-specific enantioselectivity originating from analyte templating are also addressed.     

Subject Index to Volume 28

Subject Index

Subject Index to Volume 28     

C++ im Nebenfachstudium: Konzepte und Erfahrungen

Eingegangen am 06.10.1995, in überarbeiteter Form am 03.07.1996     

Determination of effective macropore diffusion coefficients by digital image processing

In this contribution, a new method is proposed for determining effective macropore diffusion coefficients in porous media by digitized microphotographs of porous support materials and random walk simulations. The method introduced allows calculation of the effective diffusion coefficient as a function of the mean free path length over a wide variety of values. A versatile method for the preparation of porous substances for light microscopy is described. The frequently applied model of an active shell, which is used to model particle/solid collisions, was found to give incorrect results in conjunction with the application of the first passage time algorithm, which was applied to save computing time in the simulation of gas diffusion. It was possible to show that more realistic results are obtained if a Knudsen layer is used to model particle/solid collisions. Furthermore, in investigating diffusion in two- and three-dimensional representations of capillary tubes, it was found that results of simulations performed to calculate transport properties of fluids in porous media, based on two-dimensional model systems, cannot in any case be transferred to the corresponding three-dimensional systems.