Counseling adolescents with problem pregnancies.

According to current estimates, 40% of young women will get pregnant while they are teenagers. Most teenage pregnancies are unintended, and thus, they often precipitate a personal crisis. This article discusses the psychosocial context of such pregnancies, including emotional and cognitive development during adolescence, family and peer relations, and norms for gender-appropriate sexual expression. In counseling teenagers with problem pregnancies, the main goal is to help clients reach and implement an informed and fully integrated decision about the pregnancy. Ethical conflicts arise when counselors impose their religious or moral beliefs on their clients, or when the confidentiality and privacy of the counseling relationship is limited by an external authority. In addition, it may sometimes be difficult to reconcile clients' right to self-determination with the responsibility to promote their best interests. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Performance of rats on the Maier Three-Table Task following septal lesions occurring 24 hours after birth.

Two experiments with 85 Long-Evans hooded rats studied whether behavioral sparing would be demonstrated when septal lesions occurred prior to the age at which the tested behavior first appears in normal rats. Ss given septal lesions at 1 or 7 days after birth performed at approximately chance on the Maier 3-table task when tested at 90 days of age. Ss that had control electrode insertions at the same ages performed at a level similar to normal Ss. Ss given septal lesions at either age explored significantly more than did control Ss. Results are discussed in terms of the constancy over time of the septal contribution to performance on the 3-table task and the involvement of the septum and hippocampus in the processing of spatial information. (50 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Transitions and turning points: Navigating the passage from childhood through adolescence.

In the past decade, much of the research on adolescent development has focused on the transitions that define and shape the experiences of adolescents. Several models are identified that have been useful in predicting and understanding behavioral and affective change at transitions, in particular, transitions occurring from middle childhood through adolescence. Some models are specific to particular transition points ( such as pubertal development ), whereas others may be applied more generally, even if they have only been tested for at a single transition. Of importance is how well the data fit each model and whether continuity in outcomes is predicted by the models across different transitions. Examples highlight research on how a specific transition, event, or ecological niche influences adolescent behavior and affect. To understand which individuals are affected by transitions and how transitions are navigated, more specific models are needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategy use on standardized reading comprehension tests.

Strategy use and its impact on standardized reading test performance were investigated. High school students were randomly assigned to 2 groups, standardized test and main idea, with separate control and think-aloud conditions. In the standardized think-aloud group, students thought aloud while taking a portion of a reading test, consisting of passages accompanied by several questions each. In the main idea conditions, students read the same passages with the lower level questions removed and answered a single multiple-choice question about the main idea of each passage, having been told that the task was not a test. Both groups used strategies, and students in the standardized test condition made significantly greater use of strategies than students in the main idea condition. Significant between-group differences were found in use of rereading. In comparisons between the think-aloud and control conditions, thinking aloud was found to have a significant detrimental effect on students' ability to identify passage main ideas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Pathways to change in the psychotherapy of depression: Relating process to session change and outcome.

Identified a pathway from in-session process, and problem resolution, to post-session change and final outcome. Two brief treatments for depression, one using client-centered (CC) and the other process-experiential (PE) interventions, were compared on client process and outcome. The PE group showed significantly higher levels of experiencing, vocal quality and expressive stance, and greater problem resolution than the CC group in 2 of 3 PE interventions studied. Ss' degree of problem resolution correlated significantly with depth of experiencing, and sustained resolution over treatment resulted in better outcome. Ss' task-specific post-session change scores correlated significantly with change in depression post-therapy and 6 mo later, indicating that repeated post-session change is related to reduction in symptomatology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Automatic generation of nested,fork-join parallelism

This paper presents an efficient algorithm that automatically generates a parallel program from a dependence-based representation of a sequential program. The resulting parallel program consists of nested fork-join constructs, composed from the loops and statements of the sequential program. Data dependences are handled by two techniques. One technique implicitly satisfies them by sequencing, thereby reducing parallelism. Where increased parallelism results, the other technique eliminates them by privatization: the introduction of process-specific private instances of variables. Additionally, the algorithm determines when copying values of such instances in and out of nested parallel constructs results in greater parallelism. This is the first algorithm for automatically generating parallelism for such a general model. The algorithm generates as much parallelism as is possible in our model while minimizing privatization.An earlier version of this paper was presented at the First Workshop on Languages and Compilers for Vector and Parallel Machines, which was held at Cornell University in August 1988. That same year a select group of these workshop papers were published in two special issues of the journal: volume 2, numbers 2 and 3.     

Nickel release from inexpensive jewelry and hair clasps purchased in an EU country — Are consumers sufficiently protected from nickel exposure?

Background

Nickel allergic subjects are at risk factor of acquiring hand eczema. In 1990 and 1994, respectively, Denmark and member states in the EU regulated nickel release from selected consumer products. The intention was that the nickel epidemic could be controlled and prevented if the general population was protected from high cutaneous nickel concentrations. Despite a decrease, the prevalence of nickel allergy remains high as nearly 10% of young women are nickel allergic.

Objective

This study aimed to perform dimethylglyoxime (DMG) testing of inexpensive jewelry and hair clasps purchased from random stores in Copenhagen, Denmark to detect the proportion of items that may result in nickel allergy.

Methods

Inexpensive jewelry and hair clasps were purchased from 36 stores and street vendors in Copenhagen and were later tested for nickel release using the DMG test.

Results

The study showed that 19.3% hair clasps, 14.8% earrings, and 12.9% necklaces intended for adult women released an excessive amount of nickel. Of 25 stores visited, 36.0% sold DMG positive jewelry. For items designed for children, excessive nickel release was identified in hair clasps (79.4%) and in finger rings (20%). Four (50.0%) of 8 children clothing stores sold jewelry that released too much nickel.

Discussion

Excessive nickel release has been regulated since 1990 in Denmark. However, 1/5 of purchased items released nickel in concentrations that may lead to nickel allergy. Especially hair clasps intended for children released an excessive amount of nickel.     

Bayesian model for flow-class dependent distributions of fecal-indicator bacterial concentration in surface waters

A Bayesian statistical water quality model is demonstrated to predict fecal-indicator bacterial concentrations for waterbodies without sufficient monitoring data for data-intensive modeling techniques. Using a truncated bivariate normal likelihood function and the readily available observations of flow and bacterial concentration, the Bayesian approach propagates the uncertainty in the model parameterization to the final predictions of in-stream bacterial concentration. The proposed model captures the variation in the magnitude of bacterial loading between dry and wet conditions by estimating separate sets of model parameters for different flow conditions, but also has the capability to pool the data among flow conditions. The model can be used in two ways: first, the model specifies the percent of time that the recreational season in-stream concentration is not in compliance with the relevant water quality standard, and second, the model estimates the necessary bacterial load reduction for multiple flow conditions to meet the relevant water quality standard. Using an eleven year monitoring record for a site sampled at a monthly frequency on the Youghiogheny River in southwestern Pennsylvania, USA, the model parameters are updated and posterior predictions are generated for each 2-year increment. After six years of sampling, the predicted percent of time that the recreational season in-stream bacterial concentration is not in compliance with the relevant water quality is 82% with 95% CI(80,85), and the bacterial load reductions required to meet the standard are 14.7 CI(14.6,14.8), 14.5 CI(14.3, 14.6), and 14.0 CI(13.9, 14.2) log₁₀(cfu/day) for the high, normal, and dry flow conditions, respectively. The change in estimated load reduction and percent exceedance resulting from additional monitoring for this site becomes small after six years of sampling, indicating that a decision does not need to be postponed for additional monitoring.