Personality traits, perceived risk, and risk-reduction behaviors: A further study of smoking and radon.

Personality traits and risk perceptions were examined as predictors of changes in smoking behavior. Participants (N = 697) were part of a randomized controlled trial of interventions to reduce exposure to the combined hazard of radon and cigarette smoke. Participants with higher perceived risk at baseline for the combination of smoking and radon were more likely to have a more restrictive household smoking ban in place at 12-month follow-up (p p p     

Decision making and set shifting impairments are associated with distinct symptom dimensions in obsessive-compulsive disorder.

Obsessive- compulsive disorder (OCD) is clinically heterogeneous. The authors examined how specific OCD symptom dimensions were related to neuropsychological functions using multiple regression analyses. A total of 39 OCD patients and 40 controls completed the Iowa Gambling Task (IGT; A. Bechara, A. R. Damasio, H. Damasio, & S. W. Anderson, 1994), which is a test of decision making, and the Wisconsin Card Sorting Test (R. K. Heaton, 1981), which is a test of set shifting. OCD patients and controls showed comparable decision making. However, patients with prominent hoarding symptoms showed impaired decision making on the IGT as well as reduced skin conductance responses. OCD patients had poorer set shifting abilities than controls, and symmetry/ordering symptoms were negatively associated with set shifting. These results help explain previous inconsistent findings in neuropsychological research in OCD and support recent neuroimaging data showing dissociable neural mechanisms involved in mediating the different OCD symptom dimensions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Characterizing nicotine withdrawal in pregnant cigarette smokers.

Maternal smoking is a leading preventable cause of poor pregnancy outcomes and infant morbidity and mortality. Whereas pregnancy has been thought of as a "window of opportunity" when women are more motivated to change health behaviors such as smoking, only 20% of pregnant women quit smoking upon learning they are pregnant and remain abstinent at the end of the pregnancy. Greater understanding of possible obstacles to smoking during pregnancy, such as nicotine withdrawal, is needed. The symptoms of nicotine withdrawal have been well characterized in nonpregnant smokers, but there has been only 1 report conducted during pregnancy, and that was a retrospective study. The aim of the present study was to characterize nicotine withdrawal and craving in pregnant cigarette smokers. These data were collected as part of prospective clinical trials assessing the efficacy of voucher-based incentives to promote abstinence from cigarette smoking during pregnancy and postpartum. The authors examined results from the Minnesota Nicotine Withdrawal Scale (J. R. Hughes & D. K. Hatsukami, 1998) in 27 abstainers (reported no or very low levels of smoking, which was confirmed biochemically) and 21 smokers (smoked at >80% of their baseline smoking level) during the first 5 days of a cessation attempt. Abstainers reported more impatience, anger, and difficulty concentrating than did smokers. The results also suggest that pregnant smokers generally may have elevated baseline levels of withdrawal, which need to be considered in the design and analysis of future studies. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

High-maintenance interaction: Inefficient social coordination impairs self-regulation.

Tasks requiring interpersonal coordination permeate all spheres of life. Although social coordination is sometimes efficient and effortless (low maintenance), at other times it is inefficient and effortful (high maintenance). Across 5 studies, participants experienced either a high- or a low-maintenance interaction with a confederate before engaging in an individual-level task requiring self-regulation. Self-regulation was operationalized with measures of (a) preferences for a challenging task with high reward potential over an easy task with low reward potential (Study 1) and (b) task performance (anagram performance in Study 1, Graduate Record Exam performance in Studies 2 and 3, physical stamina in Study 4, and fine motor control in Study 5). Results uniformly supported the hypothesis that experiencing high-maintenance interaction impairs one's self-regulatory success on subsequent, unrelated tasks. These effects were not mediated through participants' conscious processes and emerged even with a nonconscious manipulation of high-maintenance interaction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's emotional competence and attentional competence in early elementary school.

The current study examined the relations between two aspects of emotional competence--emotion knowledge and emotion expression, and children's attentional competence during one school year. Participants were 263 first- and second-grade students at two rural elementary schools. A multiple regression analysis showed that emotion knowledge predicted attentional competence while controlling for age, gender, verbal ability, and initial levels of attentional competence. Multiple regression analyses examining predictors of peer nominations of emotion expression showed that attentional competence predicted peer nominations of happiness, sadness, and anger expression, and emotion knowledge predicted peer nominations of anger expression. Potential improvements for prevention programs and the importance of the findings for school personnel are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Exploring the design space of robots: Children''s perspectives

Children's perceptions and evaluations of different robot designs are an important unexplored area within robotics research considering that many robots are specifically designed for children. To examine children's feelings and attitudes towards robots, a large sample of children (N = 159) evaluated 40 robot images by completing a questionnaire for each image, which enquired about robot appearance, robot personality dimensions and robot emotions. Results showed that depending on a robot's appearance children clearly distinguished robots in terms of their intentions (i.e. friendly vs. unfriendly), their capability to understand, and their emotional expression. Results of a principal components analysis of the children's ratings of the robots' personality attributes revealed two dimensions labelled ‘Behavioural Intention’ and ‘Emotional Expression’. Robots were classified according to their scores on these two dimensions and a content analysis of their appearance was conducted in an attempt to identify salient features of different robot personalities. Children judged human-like robots as aggressive, but human–machine robots as friendly. Results on children's perceptions of the robots' behavioural intentions provided tentative empirical support for the Uncanny Valley, hypothesized by (Mori, M., 1970), reflecting a situation where robots are very human-like, but still distinguishable from humans, evoking a feeling of discomfort or repulsion. The paper concludes with a discussion of design implications for robots, and the use of robots in educational contexts.     

Estimation of yellow starthistle abundance through CASI-2 hyperspectral imagery using linear spectral mixture models

The invasive weed yellow starthistle (Centaurea solstitialis) has infested between 4 and 6 million hectares in California. It often forms dense infestations and rapidly depletes soil moisture, preventing the establishment of other species. Precise assessment of its canopy cover, especially low-density abundance in the earlier growing season, is the key to effective management. Compact Airborne Spectrographic Imager 2 (CASI-2) hyperspectral imagery was acquired at the western edge of California's Central Valley grasslands on July 15, 2003. Four linear spectral mixture models (LSMM) were investigated from the original CASI-2 data. Band selections based upon residual analysis and feature extraction (PCA) were further explored to reduce the data dimension. All approaches, except four band-selection unconstrained LSMMs, provide consistent results. The uncertainty of the PCA-based LSMM was estimated through a Monte-Carlo simulation. The maximum standard deviation was approximately 11%. The results suggest that unmixing CASI-2 imagery could be used for estimating and mapping yellow starthistle for larger regional areas.     

Automation for High-throughput Identification and Picking of GFP Expressing Colonies

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) has many applications as a marker in living cells, and has become widely used as a reporter gene in microbial, plant and animal cells. Screening microbial colonies for GFP expression enables various types of assays (e.g. for secretory mutations). However, this is laborious, non-quantitative and potentially hazardous to the operator (due to UV illumination) when performed manually. In order to address this the GloPix robot was developed. The imaging system discriminates between colonies based on the level of fluorescence activity and the picking function automatically transfers cells to microplate wells. Measuring fluorescent activity allows quantitation of fluorescent tag concentration/expression.     

When a Capital Investment Becomes an Emotional Loss: The Health Consequences of the Experience of Mortgage Possession in England

This paper contributes to current debates on the psycho-social determinants of health by offering a qualitative analysis of the health consequences of the experience of mortgage possession. Previous research has shown that it is possible to decipher a statistical relationship between the onset of mortgage indebtedness and health. This paper extends this work by examining how this statistical patterning is generated at the level of the 'lived experiences' of families experiencing the loss of their mortgaged home. The narratives of 44 adults and 10 children from a sample of 30 households who have experienced mortgage possession are analysed. The results of this qualitative analysis are related to current debates in both the sociology of health inequalities and the sociology of the emotions concerned with the specification of what Elstad has called "the psychological stress, relative deprivation and psycho-social injuries of inequality structures".     

Personality characteristics of adult women with low and high profiles on the SCII or SVIB occupational scales.

Investigated how women (aged 25 yrs and over) with low profiles (LP) on the Strong-Campbell Interest Inventory (SCII) or SVIB female Occupational Scales differ from women who have high profiles (HP) with respect to measured personality characteristics (California Psychological Inventory [CPI]) and vocational needs (Minnesota Importance Questionnaire [MIQ]). 467 Ss for both SCII and SVIB groups, LP Ss differed from HP Ss on 35 CPI items and scored significantly lower on 9 CPI scales (e.g., Dominance, Capacity for Status, Sociability) and on 3 MIQ needs (Authority, Creativity, and Responsibility). LP and HP Ss differed significantly on 96 of the 110 SCII scales that are relevant to women and on 52 of the 85 female SVIB scales. At a response difference of at least 28%, 70 SCII and 61 SVIB items best separated LP and HP Ss. Compared with LP Ss, HP Ss liked activities that involved writing, public speaking, and leadership. (23 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)