A gender approach to work ability and its relationship to professional and domestic work hours among nursing personnel

The association between working hours and work ability was examined in a cross-sectional study of male (N=156) and female (N=1092) nurses in three public hospitals. Working hours were considered in terms of their professional and domestic hours per week and their combined impact; total work load. Logistic regression analysis showed a significant association between total work load and inadequate work ability index (WAI) for females only. Females reported a higher proportion of inadequate WAI, fewer professional work hours but longer domestic work hours. There were no significant differences in total work load by gender. The combination of professional and domestic work hours in females seemed to best explain their lower work ability. The findings suggest that investigations into female well-being need to consider their total work load. Our male sample may have lacked sufficient power to detect a relationship between working hours and work ability.     

Transcriptome Analysis of High-Temperature Stress in Developing Barley Caryopses :Early Stress Responses and Effects on Storage Compound Biosynthesis

High-temperature stress,like any abiotic stress,impairs the physiology and development of plants,including the stages of seed setting and ripening.We used the Aflymetrix 22K Barley1 GeneChip microarray to investigate the response of developing barley(Hordeum vulgare)seeds,termed caryopses,after 0.5,3,and 6 h of heat stress exposure;958 induced and 1122 repressed genes exhibited spatial and temporal expression patterns that provide a detailed insight into the caryopses'early heat stress responses.Down-regulation of genes related to storage compound biosynthesis and cell growth provides evidence for a rapid impairment of the caryopsis' development.Increased levels of sugars and amino acids were indicative for both production of compatible solutes and feedback-induced accumulation of substrates for storage compound biosynthesis.Metadata analysis identified embryo and endosperm as primary locations of heat stress responses,indicating a strong impact of short-term heat stress on central developmental functions of the caryopsis.A comparison with heat stress responses in Arabidopsis shoots and drought stress responses in barley caryopses identified both conserved and presumably heat-and caryopsis-specific stress-responsive genes.Summarized,our data provide an important basis for further investigation of gene functions in order to aid an improved heat tolerance and reduced losses of yield in barley as a model for cereal crops.     

Estimation of the Standard Deviation of the Logistic Distribution by the Use of Selectkd Order Statistics

A technique is applied to ohtain unbiased eslimators with minimttm variance among the class of linear estimators for the standard deviation of of logistic. population with known mean. Coefficients for multiplying ordered observations are developed for complete and completc samples for n = 2(1)26. Each sample of size n is censored from above where m ≤ n. Then the smallest subset of l order slatistics from the set of m available order statistics is found which yields at list a 98.5% efficiency relative to the m-order-statistic estimator. The coefficients for the l-order-statistic estimator, the variance and efficiency relative to the estimatot, using all m order statistics are persented.     

Chaotic neurodynamics for autonomous agents

Mesoscopic level neurodynamics study the collective dynamical behavior of neural populations. Such models are becoming increasingly important in understanding large-scale brain processes. Brains exhibit aperiodic oscillations with a much more rich dynamical behavior than fixed-point and limit-cycle approximation allow. Here we present a discretized model inspired by Freeman's K-set mesoscopic level population model. We show that this version is capable of replicating the important principles of aperiodic/chaotic neurodynamics while being fast enough for use in real-time autonomous agent applications. This simplification of the K model provides many advantages not only in terms of efficiency but in simplicity and its ability to be analyzed in terms of its dynamical properties. We study the discrete version using a multilayer, highly recurrent model of the neural architecture of perceptual brain areas. We use this architecture to develop example action selection mechanisms in an autonomous agent.     

Relational self-worth: differences in perceived worth as a person across interpersonal contexts among adolescents

Between 1988 and 1991, 644 serum samples were collected from 480 grizzly bears (Ursus arctos horribilis) and 40 black bears (Ursus americanus) from Alaska, United States of America, and were tested for selected canine viral infections and zoonoses. Antibody prevalence in grizzly bears was 0% for parvovirus, 8.3% (40/480) for distemper, 14% (68/480) for infectious hepatitis, 16.5% (79/480) for brucellosis, 19% (93/480) for tularaemia and 47% (225/478) for trichinellosis. In black bears, prevalence ranged from 0% for distemper and parvovirus to 27.5% for trichinellosis and 32% for tularaemia. Antibody prevalence for brucellosis (2.5%) and tularaemia (32%) were identical for grizzly bears and black bears from the geographical area of interior Alaska. Links between differences in prevalence and the origin of the grizzly bears were observed. Antibodies to canine distemper virus and infectious hepatitis virus were mainly detected in grizzly bears from Kodiak Island and the Alaskan Peninsula. Brucellosis antibodies were prevalent in grizzly bears from western and northern Alaska, whereas tularaemia antibodies were detected in grizzly bears from interior Alaska and the Arctic. There was a strong gradient for antibodies to Trichinella spp. from southern to northern Alaska. For most diseases, antibody prevalence increased with age. However, for several infections, no antibodies were detected in grizzly bears aged from 0 to 2 years, in contrast to the presence of those infections in black bears. Grizzly bears served as excellent sentinels for surveillance of zoonotic infections in wildlife in Alaska.     

Business-unit-level relationship between employee satisfaction, employee engagement, and business outcomes: A meta-analysis.

Based on 7,939 business units in 36 companies, this study used meta-analysis to examine the relationship at the business-unit level between employee satisfaction-engagement and the business-unit outcomes of customer satisfaction, productivity, profit, employee turnover, and accidents. Generalizable relationships large enough to have substantial practical value were found between unit-level employee satisfaction-engagement and these business-unit outcomes. One implication is that changes in management practices that increase employee satisfaction may increase business-unit outcomes, including profit. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mastery motivation and the need for approval in older children and their relationship to social desirability response tendencies.

The relative strength of mastery motivation and need for approval was tested among 2 groups of 11-yr-olds, 40 high and 40 low scorers on the Children's Social Desirability Scale. Mastery motivation was inferred from the amount of time that Ss spent in 1 of 2 discrimination tasks, a challenging (unsolvable) or a solvable problem. To measure need for approval, Ss were tested in either a social-reinforcement or an E-absent condition. As predicted, low scorers spent more time in the unsolvable than the solvable task, with negligible condition differences. High scorers spent more time in the social-reinforcement than in the E-absent condition, with negligible task differences. On the solvable task, high Ss demonstrated poorer learning than low Ss. Sex differences revealed greater mastery motivation for boys and greater need for approval for girls. The need to study the developmental course of these motives and to investigate the antecedents of the group differences obtained is emphasized. (29 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)