Granulomas and cholestatic--hepatocellular injury associated with phenylbutazone. Report of two cases

A combined cholestatic-hepatocellular injury and noncaseating granulomas occurred in two patients 1 and 4 weeks after phenylbutazone therapy. Both patients were jaundiced, one had a macular rash, and both had peripheral blood eosinophilia. Symptoms and signs subsided, and abnormal findings from tests of hepatic function rapidly returned to normal following withdrawal of the drug. Sections of liver biopsy specimens 6 months later showed no granulomas or other pathologic changes. Previously reported cases are reviewed.     

All prompts are created equal,but some prompts are more equal than others

Scores assigned to college placement essays by a computer program (PEG) showed high agreement with the evaluations of human readers (r =.82). Further, both types of graders tended to assign higher or lower scores to essays written about particular topics. Content analyses by a second program (MCCA) indicated that themes in essays varied in terms of emphasis on "analytic," "emotional," or "practical" dimensions. Human and machine readers tended to give higher scores for analytic and practical themes, and lower scores for those involving emotion. The ranks of mean prompt-related grades were concordant with the ranks of mean analytic and practical content across topics. Such findings call for the refined standardization of prompts for future testing, and the need for care in the evaluation of existing essays.     

A General Structure for Rate-Compatible Concatenated Codes

In this letter, a general concatenated code structure is presented, encompassing both parallel and serially concatenated codes as special cases. The structure provides a unifying framework for the analysis of concatenated codes and offers new degrees of freedom for code design. Performance analysis based on error bounds in the error floor region and suggestions for suitable design criteria are provided, together with a design approach for the waterfall region. The proposed structure allows for constructing very high-rate codes with no penalty in the error floor region and good performance in the waterfall region     

Observer-Based Estimation of Stator-Winding Faults in Delta-Connected Induction Motors: A Linear Matrix Inequality Approach

This paper addresses the subject of interturn short circuit estimation in the stator of a delta-connected induction motor. In this paper, an adaptive observer scheme is proposed. The proposed observer is capable of simultaneously estimating the speed of the motor, the amount turns involved in the short circuit, and an expression of the current in the short circuit. Moreover, the states of the motor are estimated, meaning that the magnetizing currents are made available even though a fault has occurred in the motor. To be able to develop this observer, a model that is particularly suitable for the chosen observer design, is also derived. The efficiency of the proposed observer is demonstrated by tests performed on a test setup with a customized designed induction motor. With this motor it is possible to simulate interturn short-circuit faults.     

Analysis of Likert-scale data: A reinterpretation of Gregoire and Driver.

Most studies that have investigated the use of coarsely grained scales have indicated that the accuracy of statistics calculated on such scales is not compromised as long as the scales have about 5 or more points. Gregoire and Driver (1987), however, found serious perturbances of the Type I and Type II error rates using a 5-point scale. They carried out three computer simulation experiments in which continuous data were transformed to Likert-scale values. Two of the three experiments are shown to be flawed because the authors incorrectly specified the population mean in their simulation. This article corrects the flaw and demonstrates that the Type I and Type II error rates are not seriously compromised by the use of ordinal-scale data. Furthermore, Gregoire and Driver's results are reinterpreted to show that in most cases, the parametric test of location equality shows a power superiority to the nonparametric tests. Only in their most nonnormal simulation does a nonparametric test show a power superiority. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Parental reports of coparenting and observed coparenting behavior during the toddler period.

Fifty-two married partners played with their 30-mo-olds in both dyadic (parent–child) and whole family contexts and reported on their own coparenting activities (family integrity-promoting behavior, conflict, disparagement, and reprimand). Coparenting behavior observed in the whole family context was evaluated for antagonism, warmth and cooperation, child–adult centeredness, balance of positive involvement, and management of toddler behavior. Parallel balance and management scores were also formed using dyadic session data. Men's reported family integrity-promoting activities and women's reported conflict and reprimand activities were reliable correlates of family group process in both bivariate and discriminant analyses, with links enduring even after controlling for marital quality. Whole family- and dyad-based estimates of coparenting were altogether unrelated, and reported coparenting was tied only to behavior in family context, not to family measures created from dyad-based data. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)