News: Canadian ecological research area faces major funding cuts

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News: Pilot program will update IRIS health risk database for 11 chemicals

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Overcoming intuition: Metacognitive difficulty activates analytic reasoning.

Humans appear to reason using two processing styles: System 1 processes that are quick, intuitive, and effortless and System 2 processes that are slow, analytical, and deliberate that occasionally correct the output of System 1. Four experiments suggest that System 2 processes are activated by metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency during the process of reasoning. Incidental experiences of difficulty or disfluency--receiving information in a degraded font (Experiments 1 and 4), in difficult-to-read lettering (Experiment 2), or while furrowing one's brow (Experiment 3)--reduced the impact of heuristics and defaults in judgment (Experiments 1 and 3), reduced reliance on peripheral cues in persuasion (Experiment 2), and improved syllogistic reasoning (Experiment 4). Metacognitive experiences of difficulty or disfluency appear to serve as an alarm that activates analytic forms of reasoning that assess and sometimes correct the output of more intuitive forms of reasoning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual-kinesthetic dissociation in treatment of victims of rape.

A visual–kinesthetic (V–K) dissociation procedure of neurolinguistic programming (NLP) was used in treating rape-induced anxiety and phobic reactions in 2 18- and 19-yr-old rape victims. NLP theory suggests that anxiety reactions experienced by rape victims is a function of the interrelated processes of synesthesia and anchoring. In these 2 case reports, the use of the V–K dissociation technique is explored. From this preliminary basis, further research entailing the use of this treatment procedure is suggested. Implications for clinical practice are noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of dietary n−3 FA deficiency on rat bone tissue FA composition

The effect of dietary n−3 FA deficiency on bone tissue FA composition was evaluated in growing rats. Two mixtures combining hydrogenated coconut oil with safflower oil served as the n−3-deficient dietary treatments and provided two levels of linoleic acid (LA). The n−3 treatments were formulated with added α-linolenic acid (LNA) from flaxseed oil (diet LNA) or LNA plus DHA, and both were balanced for LA. This study showed that bone is sensitive to changes in dietary n−3 FA and that DHA is more effective than LNA in maintaining DHA levels in these tissues.     

Study of stability of high‐temperature polyimides using TG/MS technique

The oxidative stability of the carbon fiber‐reinforced composite of polyimide was examined, in real time, using the evolved gas analysis techniques. Off‐gas degradation products suggested the onset temperature for chain scissions to be fairly low at about 190–220°C. Based on the off‐gas products present and the trend of their release, the composite degradation mechanism appeared to be similar between 190 and 371°C, thereby marking 371°C to be the highest accelerated aging temperature for its long‐term lifetime prediction. Beyond 371°C, different degradation mechanisms would apply. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 83: 1219–1227, 2002     

OptaDOS: A tool for obtaining density of states,core-level and optical spectra from electronic structure codes

We present OptaDOS, a program for calculating core-electron and low-loss electron energy loss spectra (EELS) and optical spectra along with total-, projected- and joint-density of electronic states (DOS) from single-particle eigenenergies and dipole transition coefficients. Energy-loss spectroscopy is an important tool for probing bonding within a material. Interpreting these spectra can be aided by first principles calculations. The spectra are generated from the eigenenergies through integration over the Brillouin zone. An important feature of this code is that this integration is performed using a choice of adaptive or linear extrapolation broadening methods which we show produces higher accuracy spectra than standard fixed-width Gaussian broadening. OptaDOS  may be straightforwardly interfaced to any electronic structure code. OptaDOS  is freely available under the GNU General Public licence from http://www.optados.org.     

Physical adsorption and heat of immersion studies of microporous carbons

Physisorption and heat of immersion measurements have been made with two microporous carbons—a sample of charcoal cloth (BET area, 1250 m² g^?1; pore volume, 0.59 cm³ g^?1 having predominantly narrow micropores and a sample of Amoco carbon (BET area, 3700 m² g^?1; pore volume, 1.9 cm³ g^?1), having a wider distribution of micropores extending into the supermicropore range (pore width, ca. 1–2 nm). The adsorption isotherms of nitrogen and toluene are of Type 1 and reveal that the external surface of both samples is very small. The heat of immersion measurements were carried out with the aid of a Tian-Calvet microcalorimeter and with the following liquids: n-hexane, cyclohexane, neo-hexane, toluene, mesitylene and isodurene. A sample of non-porous graphitized carbon black (Vulcan 3G: BET area, 71.1 m² g^?1) was studied. Immersion calorimetry shows that in spite of the larger adsorptive capacity of the Amoco carbon, the sample of charcoal cloth has a higher adsorption affinity. The differences in the corresponding heats of immersion and in the adsorptive properties indicate that many of the pores in charcoal cloth are slit-shaped, whereas those in the Amoco carbon appear to be more cylindrical in shape.