Mutagenicity of three agricultural soils

A chemical and biological testing protocol was employed to evaluate the mutagenic potential of the organic compounds extracted from three agricultural soils. The analytical procedures used included bioassays with Salmonella typhimurium and Aspergillus nidulans for the detection of point mutations and a gas chromatography/mass spectrometry/computer system to identify major organic constituents. The extracts of all three soils exhibited mutagenic response in the bioassays. At a dose level of 1000 micrograms per plate, the organic extract of the Bastrop clay induced 434 net revertants; while at the same dose level the Norwood sandy clay and the Sassafrass sandy loam induced 35 and 178 net revertants, respectively, in the Salmonella assay with metabolic activation. In the Aspergillus assay, the extract of the Norwood and Bastrop soils induced a positive response without metabolic activation; this effect was reduced or eliminated in the presence of metabolic activation. Chemical analysis identified a variety of initiators, promotors, inhibitors, and cocarcinogens; however, there were no mutagenic compounds identified in any of the soil extracts. The results of this combined testing protocol indicate that the agricultural soils tested had an inherent level of mutagenic activity, which was not detected by GC/MS analysis alone, and this activity may be related to the past history of agricultural practices, including biocide applications, fertilization, and cultivation.     

XML data update management in XML-enabled database

With the increasing demand for a proper and efficient XML data storage, XML-Enabled Database (XEnDB) has emerged as one of the popular solutions. It claims to combine the pros and limit the cons of the traditional Database Management Systems (DBMS) and Native XML Database (NXD). In this paper, we focus on XML data update management in XEnDB. Our aim is to preserve the conceptual semantic constraints and to avoid inconsistencies in XML data during update operations. In this current era when XML data interchange mostly occurs in a commercial setting, it is highly critical that data exchanged be correct at all times, and hence data integrity in XML data is paramount. To achieve our goal, we firstly classify different constraints in XML documents. Secondly, we transform these constraints into XML Schema with embedded SQL annotations. Thirdly, we propose a generic update methodology that utilizes the proposed schema. We then implement the method in one of the current XEnDB products. Since XEnDB has a Relational Model as the underlying data model, our update method uses the SQL/XML as a standard language. Finally, we also analyze the processing performance.     

The Role of Acceptance and Job Control in Mental Health, Job Satisfaction, and Work Performance.

Acceptance, the willingness to experience thoughts, feelings, and physiological sensations without having to control them or let them determine one's actions, is a major individual determinant of mental health and behavioral effectiveness in a more recent theory of psychopathology. This 2-wave panel study examined the ability of acceptance also to explain mental health, job satisfaction, and performance in the work domain. The authors hypothesized that acceptance would predict these 3 outcomes 1 year later in a sample of customer service center workers in the United Kingdom (N = 412). Results indicated that acceptance predicted mental health and an objective measure of performance over and above job control, negative affectivity, and locus of control. These beneficial effects of having more job control were enhanced when people had higher levels of acceptance. The authors discuss the theoretical and practical relevance of this individual characteristic to occupational health and performance. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metric analysis of the information visibility and diffusion about the European Higher Education Area on Spanish University websites

The purpose of the study proposed in this paper is to evaluate the Spanish public university websites dedicated to the European Higher Education Area (EHEA). To do so, the quality of these resources has been analysed in the light of data provided by a series of indicators grouped in seven criteria, most of which were used to determine what information is made available and in what way. The criteria used in our analysis are: visibility, authority, updatedness, accesibility, correctness and completeness, quality assessment and navigability. All in all, the results allow us to carry out an overall diagnosis of the situation and also provide us with information about the situation at each university, thus revealing their main strengths, namely authority and navegability, and also their chief shortcomings: updatedness, accessibility and quality assessment. In this way it is possible to detect the best practices in each of the aspects evaluated so that they can serve as an example and guide for universities with greater deficiencies and thus help them to improve their EHEA websites.     

Recent Development of Cognitive and Neuropsychological Assessment in Asian Countries.

There is a growing trend of research in neuropsychological assessment in Asia: The mean number of published studies increased from 1.8 in the 1980s to 16.0 in 2 recent years. About 40% of the studies reviewed concerned test development or adaptation, with the latter greatly outnumbering the former. To facilitate the test selection for clinical use, 36 clinical measures were evaluated based on some statistical criteria. The results showed that only 8 neuropsychological tests (5 Chinese. 2 Korean, and 1 Japanese) met the criteria. Given that Asian and Western populations differ on certain cognitive processes, future development of neuropsychological assessment measures in Asia should move from the adaptation of Western tests toward the construction of original tests with better ecological validity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Finite Element Computational Method for Gas Hydrate. Part I: Theory

A finite element scheme is presented to model the dissociation of gas hydrates in porous media by hot water injection. We show a complete derivation of the finite element formulation, including the associated mass and energy conservation equations capable of performing transient analysis of both conductive and convective heat transfer for gas and liquid flow in porous media. The scheme also includes the latent heat effect to accommodate the change of phase due to melting of hydrate. In the companion paper, Part II, this method is successfully applied to hydrate reservoirs.     

Psychopathy, IQ, and Violence in European American and African American County Jail Inmates.

The accuracy of the prediction of criminal violence may be improved by combining psychopathy with other variables that have been found to predict violence. Research has suggested that assessing intelligence (i.e., IQ) as well as psychopathy improves the accuracy of violence prediction. In the present study, the authors tested this hypothesis by using a contemporary measure of psychopathy, the Psychopathy Checklist-Revised (R. D. Hare, 2003), in a sample of 326 European American and 348 African American male offenders. The postdictive power of psychopathy was evident for both ethnic groups and robust across most changes in the operationalization of violence and the analysis conducted, whereas the postdictive power of IQ was not. No Psychopathy x IQ interactions were identified. Implications of these results for violence prediction are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)