White racial identity attitude development: A psychometric examination of two instruments.

The purpose of this investigation was to provide an independent examination of the psychometric properties of the White Racial Identity Attitude Scale (WRIAS; J. E. Helms & R. T. Carter, 1990) and the Oklahoma Racial Attitude Scale—Preliminary Form (ORAS–P; S. Choney & J. Behrens, 1996). After completing both inventories, 387 students in introductory education and psychology classes from a Midwest university were split randomly into 2 groups: Sample 1 (n?=?199) was used for exploratory factor analysis, and Sample 2 (n?=?199) for confirmatory factor analysis. Four factors reflecting attitudes were identified: Degree of Racial Comfort (Factor 1), Attitudes Toward Racial Equality (Factor 2), Attitudes of Racial Curiosity (Factor 3), and Unachieved Racial Attitudes (Factor 4). Each instrument was represented by 3 of the 4 factors. The WRIAS and ORAS–P overlapped on Factors 1 and 2, the WRIAS loaded only on Factor 3, and the ORAS–P loaded only on Factor 4. Recommendations are made for future investigations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing preparation among entry-level clinical health psychologists: Recommendations for “best practices” from the first meeting of the Council of Clinical Health Psychology Training Programs (CCHPTP).

Recent discussions in clinical health psychology regarding foundational (knowledge-based) and functional (applied) competencies have been guided by the cube model of core competencies (Rodolfa et al., 2005). Proposed competencies for doctoral-level clinical health psychologists were recently published (France et al., 2008). Based on the 2008 Council of Clinical Health Psychology Training Programs conference, we discuss how the proposed competencies might be incorporated into doctoral-level training. Because we view these competencies and training practices to be aspirational, we also address the challenges inherent in making curricular decisions pertaining to which competencies are emphasized in individual programs and within the context of American Psychological Association accreditation requirements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Are the Genes nadA and norB Involved in Formation of Aflatoxin G1?

Aflatoxins, the most toxic and carcinogenic family of fungal secondary metabolites, are frequent contaminants of foods intended for human consumption. Previous studies showed that formation of G-group aflatoxins (AFs) from O-methylsterigmatocystin (OMST) by certain Aspergillus species involves oxidation by the cytochrome P450 monooxygenases, OrdA (AflQ) and CypA (AflU). However, some of the steps in the conversion have not yet been fully defined. Extracts of Aspergillus parasiticus disruption mutants of the OYE-FMN binding domain reductase-encoding gene nadA (aflY) contained a 386 Da AFG₁ precursor. A compound with this mass was predicted as the product of sequential OrdA and CypA oxidation of OMST. Increased amounts of a 362 Da alcohol, the presumptive product of NadA reduction, accumulate in extracts of fungi with disrupted aryl alcohol dehydrogenase-encoding gene norB. These results show that biosynthesis of AFG₁ involves NadA reduction and NorB oxidation.     

Integrative chemical product design strategies: Reflecting industry trends and challenges

A review of integrative product design strategies is motivated by current trends and challenges faced by the chemical processing industry. The transition in the chemical process industry towards more complex formulated and structured products challenges existing approaches and scientific tools that are well suited for bulk chemical design and properties estimation (Charpentier and McKenna, 2004, Favre et al., 2002). Moreover, the ensuing market challenges, brought on by dominant global trends, demand efficient product design approaches that seek to balance technical specifications and market requirements with the business performance objectives. Integrative approaches to product design are therefore repositioned as useful strategies that simultaneously enhance technical performance and efficiency in design execution. The discussion of the integrative product design strategies is supported by findings of a recent industry benchmark study involving 15 chemical manufacturers.     

The effects of changing contexts on return of fear following exposure therapy for spider fear.

Treatment of specific fears and phobias is sometimes followed by a return of fear. Work with rats has provided evidence that a greater return of fear occurs when a conditioned stimulus extinguished in 1 context is later presented in a different context than if presented in the same context in which it was originally extinguished. In the present study. 36 human participants who were highly afraid of spiders received 1 session of exposure therapy (with participant modeling) and were then tested for return of fear 1 week later in either the same or a different context. It was hypothesized that there would be a greater return of fear in those participants treated and followed up in different contexts than in those treated and followed up in the same context. Participants tested in a novel context at follow-up showed a greater return of fear than participants tested in the same context. Limitations and areas for future study are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Data refinement of mixed specifications

Using predicate transformers as a basis, we give semantics and refinement rules for mixed specifications that allow UNITY style specifications to be written as a combination of abstract program and temporal properties. From the point of view of the programmer, mixed specifications may be considered a generalization of the UNITY specification notation to allow safety properties to be specified by abstract programs in addition to temporal properties. Alternatively, mixed specifications may be viewed as a generalization of the UNITY programming notation to allow arbitrary safety and progress properties in a generalized ‘always section’. The UNITY substitution axiom is handled in a novel way by replacing it with a refinement rule. The predicate transformers foundation allows known techniques for algorithmic and data-refinement for weakest precondition based programming to be applied to both safety and progress properties. In this paper, we define the predicate transformer based specifications, specialize the refinement techniques to them, demonstrate soundness, and illustrate the approach with a substantial example. Received: 1 April 1996 / 6 March 1997     

Using atomic await commands to develop concurrent programs in Java

Systematic techniques for dealing with concurrency can be very helpful in concurrent programming. In his concurrent programming text, Andrews [2] describes a technique for developing concurrent programs based on first developing solutions using course-grained atomic commands and atomic await primitives (which are usually not available in real programming environments), then systematically transforming the solution to an implementation that uses available synchronization primitives. Transformations are known for semaphores, conditional critical regions, and monitors. In this paper, transformations are given for the synchronization constructs provided by the Java programming language [1]. Familiarity with the basic facilities to support concurrency provided by Java is assumed.