Evaluating response set styles on the MMPI with prisoners: Faking good adjustment and maladjustment.

Told 24 prison inmates (mean age = 23 yr) to fake good adjustment and maladjustment on the MMPI. Results were compared with Ss' normal or "honest" MMPI profiles. Ss were easily able to fake maladjustment and, contrary to theory, were also able to fake good adjustment. The adequacy of various indices of faking were compared and recommendations are made for the applied use of some of these indices for the detection of faked responses in correctional settings. Previous role-playing vs "real-life" studies are contrasted and the inmates' results are compared with previous findings. (French summary) (27 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Rearing conditions alter social reactivity and D1 dopamine receptors in high- and low-aggressive mice

As a result of selective breeding, NC900 mice exhibit isolation-induced attacks in a social interaction test, whereas NC100 mice do not attack but freeze instead. Administration of the D1 receptor agonist dihydrexidine was previously shown to reduce aggression in NC900 mice and nonagonistic approaches in NC100 mice. This resulted from induction of a marked social reactivity in both selected lines. Because isolation rearing also induces social reactivity, the present experiment was designed to test the hypothesis that D1 dopamine receptors mediate isolation-induced social reactivity. Isolation was expected to potentiate the effects of a D1 agonist and to increase D1 dopamine receptor density. Thus, isolated and group-reared mice were administered dihydrexidine, and their social behavior was compared to vehicle-injected controls. Dihydrexidine induced higher levels of reactivity among isolated than among group-reared animals, especially in NC900 mice. In independent experiments, increased densities of D1 dopamine receptors in the striatum of isolated animals were found, with no change in affinity. These studies suggest an important role for the D1 dopamine receptor as a mediator of isolation-induced social reactivity.     

Letting the baby drown in the bathwater: Fear of facts.

Challenges S. B. Sobel's (see record 1979-09067-001) critique of a previous article (J. McCord; see record 1979-09057-001) that reported the findings from a 5-yr treatment program designed to prevent delinquency. Discussed are Sobel's comments on the failure to analyze for deterioration effects, the finding of deleterious treatment effects, and counseling and relationship models. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancement of emulsifying properties of whey proteins by controlling spray-drying parameters

Whey protein concentrate is the main source of globular proteins in food products which are principally used as emulsifying, foaming and gelling ingredients. These whey proteins are commonly used in powder form obtained by a spray-drying process. It is well known that β-lactoglobulin, the major protein component in whey, is greatly affected by heat treatments, with consequences on its adsorption properties at fluid–fluid interfaces. This study concerned four whey protein powders obtained using spray-drying at four different air inlet temperatures (from 170 to 260 °C), leading to different levels of protein solubility, denaturation and end-use properties. After evaluation of the protein denaturation by HPLC, the emulsifying properties were studied through particle size parameters and rheological properties in relation with spray-drying parameters. Our results indicated that oil-in-water emulsions, stabilized by 5% (w/w) protein samples, exhibited a shear-thinning flow behaviour, and the harsher the spray-drying conditions (the higher the protein denaturation), the less viscous were the emulsions. The apparent viscosity of emulsions measured at 20 °C and 50 s⁻¹ shear rate was around 0.08 Pa s when containing whey proteins before drying, and around 0.05–0.018 Pa s after drying at air inlet temperatures from 170 to 260 °C. These differences in emulsion rheological properties were related to particle size effects, in regards to analysis of particle size distributions which showed a finer emulsion according to spray-drying intensity. Our results will be presented and discussed in terms of optimization of spray-drying process relative to globular protein surface activity.     

Solitary confinement of prisoners: An assessment of its effects on inmates' personal constructs and adrenocortical activity.

Examined the effects of 10 days prison solitary confinement on inmates' personal constructs and adrenocortical activity. 8 Ss maintained their regular institutional routine and 8 Ss were placed for 10 days in solitary confinement. Personal construct rankings (measured by the repertory grid technique) increased in stability for confined Ss compared to nonconfined Ss. This effect was more pronounced for "good" than for "bad" constructs for Ss independently rated as "simple" concept types. Adrenocortical function, as measured by plasma cortisol levels, indicated that solitary confinement was not more stressful than normal institutional life. (French summary) (32 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An integration of production management rules and fabrication know-how for real-time cell production control

Between the steps of operation release and process control of the production activity control, no re-evaluation of the production organization is undertaken. However, the production organization can be technically optimized or modified. This level of production management is difficult to achieve, essentially because several fields come into play. It becomes apparent, however, that it is essential to integrate production management and production cell control in order to obtain advanced production systems which are more ‘reactive’ to technical and economic perturbations. In this paper, a contribution to the resolution of this problems is presented and the following ideas are introduced:

1. a control structure of production cells within “real-time production management functions”,

2. a control strategy of the cells by “scénario de production” (production scenario).

First of all, the functions of this control structure are described and then the principles of its generic utilization for the control of a complex production system are given. An executable production scenario is conceived according to the production management rules, the data and know-how of the fabricators also play a role. The last section of this paper describes, using an industrial example in the field of sub-contracted machining, the construction of such a scenario.     

A hybrid genetic algorithm with adaptive diversity management for a large class of vehicle routing problems with time-windows

The paper presents an efficient Hybrid Genetic Search with Advanced Diversity Control for a large class of time-constrained vehicle routing problems, introducing several new features to manage the temporal dimension. New move evaluation techniques are proposed, accounting for penalized infeasible solutions with respect to time-window and duration constraints, and allowing to evaluate moves from any classical neighbourhood based on arc or node exchanges in amortized constant time. Furthermore, geometric and structural problem decompositions are developed to address efficiently large problems. The proposed algorithm outperforms all current state-of-the-art approaches on classical literature benchmark instances for any combination of periodic, multi-depot, site-dependent, and duration-constrained vehicle routing problem with time windows.     

Solving an integrated employee timetabling and job-shop scheduling problem via hybrid branch-and-bound

We propose exact hybrid methods based on integer linear programming (ILP) and constraint programming (CP) for an integrated employee timetabling and job-shop scheduling problem. Each method we investigate uses a CP formulation associated with an LP relaxation. Under a CP framework, the LP relaxation is integrated into a global constraint using in addition reduced cost-based filtering techniques. We propose two CP formulations of the problem yielding two different LP relaxations. The first formulation is based on a direct representation of the problem. The second formulation is based on a decomposition in intervals of the possible operation starting times. We show the theoretical interest of the decomposition-based representation compared to the direct representation through the analysis of dominant schedules. Computational experiments on a set of randomly generated instances confirm the superiority of the decomposition-based representation. In both cases, the hybrid methods outperform pure CP for employee cost minimization while it is not the case for makespan minimization. The experiments also investigate the interest of the proposed integrated method compared to a sequential approach and show its potential for multiobjective optimization.     

Topology-aware wavelength partitioning for DWDM OBS networks: A novel approach for absolute QoS provisioning

Optical Burst Switching (OBS) is a promising switching technology for the next generation all-optical networks. An OBS network without wavelength converters and fiber delay lines can be implemented simply and cost-effectively using the existing technology. However, this kind of networks suffers from a relatively high burst loss probability at the OBS core nodes. To overcome this issue and consolidate OBS networks with QoS provisioning capabilities, we propose a wavelength partitioning approach, called Optimization-based Topology-aware Wavelength Partitioning approach (OTWP). OTWP formulates the wavelength partitioning problem, based on the topology of the network, as an Integer Linear Programming (ILP) model and uses a tabu search algorithm (TS) to resolve large instances efficiently. We use OTWP to develop an absolute QoS differentiation scheme, called Absolute Fair Quality of service Differentiation scheme (AFQD). AFQD is the first absolute QoS provisioning scheme that guarantees loss-free transmission for high priority traffic, inside the OBS network, regardless of its topology. Also, we use OTWP to develop a wavelength assignment scheme, called Best Effort Traffic Wavelength Assignment scheme (BETWA). BETWA aims to reduce loss probability for best effort traffic. To make AFQD adaptive to non-uniform traffic, we develop a wavelength borrowing protocol, called Wavelength Borrowing Protocol (WBP). Numerical results show the effectiveness of the proposed tabu search algorithm to resolve large instances of the partitioning problem. Also, simulation results, using ns-2, show that: (a) AFQD provides an excellent quality of service differentiation; (b) BETWA substantially decreases the loss probability of best effort traffic to a remarkably low level for the OBS network under study; and (c) WBP makes AFQD adaptive to non-uniform traffic by reducing efficiently blocking probability for high priority traffic.