Methodological considerations in the refinement of clinical assessment instruments.

Instrument refinement refers to any set of procedures designed to improve an instrument's representation of a construct. Though often neglected, it is essential to the development of reliable and valid measures. Five objectives of instrument refinement are proposed: identification of measures' hierarchical or aggregational structure, establishment of internal consistency of undimensional facets of measures, determination of content homogeneity of undimensional facets, inclusion of items that discriminate at the desired level of attribute intensity, and replication of instrument properties on an independent sample. The use of abbreviated scales is not recommended. The refinement of behavioral observation procedures is discussed, and the role of measure refinement in theory development is emphasized. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Protection of astrocytes by fructose 1,6-bisphosphate and citrate ameliorates neuronal injury under hypoxic conditions

Fructose 1,6-bisphosphate (FBP) protects astrocytes from hypoxic injury in vitro. To determine whether FBP and citrate (inhibitors of phosphofructokinase) ameliorate hypoxia-induced injury to neurons and, if they do, whether the protective effects are a direct result of their actions on neurons or a consequence of their actions on astrocytes, we added FBP or citrate to the media of normoxic and hypoxic 'pure', mixed and co-culture systems. FBP (3.5 mM) and citrate (10 microM-2 mM) decreased release of LDH from astrocytes following 24 h of hypoxia. Eight hours of hypoxia killed pure neuronal cultures and neither FBP nor citrate prevented this death. However, in mixed and co-culture systems, FBP and citrate increased neuronal viability (as determined by the ratio of live-to-total cells), even after 47 h of hypoxia. In co-culture, following 24 h of hypoxia, both FBP and citrate reduced neuronal release of LDH and neuronal death. Fluorocitrate, a suicidal-inhibitor of aconitase, also protected astrocytes, but not neurons, from hypoxia in 'pure' culture, presumably by increasing intracellular citrate concentrations through inhibition of the catalysis of citrate to isocitrate We conclude that FBP and citrate attenuate hypoxic neuronal injury through their effects on astrocytes.     

Globalizing carbon lock-in

This paper extends the arguments surrounding carbon lock-in elaborated in Unruh (Energy Policy 28 (2000) 817; 30 (2002) 317) to countries currently undergoing industrialization. It argues that, for numerous reasons, industrializing countries are unlikely to leapfrog carbon intensive energy development. On the contrary, carbon lock-in may be globalizing and could further constrain climate change mitigation options. It is then argued that many policy recommendations ignore carbon lock-in, possibly limiting their potential for successful implementation. The paper then discusses four policy approaches that appear to have advantages given lock-in conditions. It is recognized, however, that relative ease of implementation does not necessarily equate with superiority. Instead, it is merely a path dependent outcome of past development decisions. Pursuing policies on the basis of relative implementation ease may help address the issue of climate change, but could also result in sub-optimal outcomes along other dimensions of sustainable development.     

Emotional information processing: Modulation of fear in normal and dysthymic subjects.

The role of emotion and its associated psychophysiology have received little systematic attention in studies of psychopathology. In the present study, dysthymic and control subjects with high or low fear levels were compared on a task involving anticipation of pleasant and unpleasant slides to evaluate whether dysthymic subjects would demonstrate differential affective processing. Dysthymic subjects were found to differ from controls in several psychophysiological measures, though not in ratings of the slides or in behavioral performance. Although dysthymic subjects showed normal or heightened initial reactions to emotionally significant warning stimuli, results suggest that they withdrew and ceased affective processing as the actual emotional stimulus approached. Response mobilization processes supporting normal overt behavior appear to be intact, but aspects of the orienting response may be dysfunctional in dysthymia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Conventional wire and cable technology

The present state of the art of practical bulk superconductors is reviewed. The recent developments in high-current density fine-filament NbTi conductors are dealt with at length. The improvements achieved can be applied to the full range of different product forms of monofilamentary NbTi. These are described together with the fabrication methods used to produce them. Three practical fabrication techniques for multifilamentary Nb₃Sn are outlined and properties are compared and discussed. Reference is made to V₃Ga, NbN, and Chevrel phases and the novel fabrication techniques used to produce these materials. It is pointed out that the lessons learned in the manufacture of these compound superconductors can be used to help in the development of the newer high-T_c materials     

Neural dynamics of word recognition and recall: Attentional priming, learning, and resonance.

Discusses data and models about recognition and recall of words and nonwords in terms of a real-time network processing theory, the adaptive resonance theory, which arose from an analysis of how a language system self-organizes in real time in response to its complex input environment. Such an approach emphasizes the moment-by-moment dynamic interactions that control language development, learning, and stability. Concepts such as verification, automatic and interactive activation, limited-capacity processing, conscious attention, serial search, processing stages, speed–accuracy trade-off, familiarity, and encoding specificity are revised using an analysis of system constraints. Concepts such as adaptive resonance, resonant equilibration of short-term memory, bottom–up adaptive filtering, top–down adaptive template matching, competitive masking field, unitized list representation, and attentional priming are applied. (107 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Social information-processing patterns partially mediate the effect of early physical abuse on later conduct problems.

The authors tested the hypothesis that early physical abuse is associated with later externalizing behavior outcomes and that this relation is mediated by the intervening development of biased social information-processing patterns. They assessed 584 randomly selected boys and girls from European American and African American backgrounds for the lifetime experience of physical abuse through clinical interviews with mothers prior to the child's matriculation in kindergarten. Early abuse increased the risk of teacher-rated externalizing outcomes in Grades 3 and 4 by fourfold, and this effect could not be accounted for by confounded ecological or child factors. Abuse was associated with later processing patterns (encoding errors, hostile attributional biases, accessing of aggressive responses, and positive evaluations of aggression), which, in turn, predicted later externalizing outcomes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Dynamics and mechanics below the glass transition: The non-equilibrium state

There is much interest in the dynamics of glass-forming systems above the glass transition temperature. However, in many applications the behavior of the systems needs to be understood in the glass-transition T_g range and particularly in the non-equilibrium state. We present a set of empirical observations for the dynamics of material behaviors near to, but below the glass transition for polymer glass formers and outline a “minimal” set of requirements that might be expected of computer simulations in the non-equilibrium glass near to T_g. The survey includes the kinetics and nonlinearity of the structural (volume or enthalpy) recovery of the glass and its impact on the mechanical response (physical aging). These are presented with the thought that computer simulations may well be able to provide insights to the origins of an extremely complicated set of experimental observations.

Additionally, we present some results of glass formation of simple liquids constrained to nanometer size pores with the expectation that such experiments may be readily simulated because of the small number of molecules in such pores.