Shared book reading: When and how questions affect young children's word learning.

Shared book reading, and the conversation that accompanies it, can facilitate young children's vocabulary growth. To identify the features of extratextual questions that help 3-year-olds learn unfamiliar words during shared book reading, two experiments explored the impact of cognitive demand level, placement, and an approximation to scaffolding. Asking questions about target words improved children's comprehension and production of word–referent associations, and children with larger vocabularies learned more than children with smaller vocabularies. Neither the demand level nor placement of questions differentially affected word learning. However, an approximation to scaffolding, in which adults asked low demand questions when words first appeared and high demand questions later, did facilitate children's deeper understanding of word meanings as assessed with a definition task. These results are unique in experimentally demonstrating the value for word learning of shifting from less to more challenging input over time. Discussion focuses on why a scaffolding-like procedure improves children's acquisition of elaborated word meanings. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The effect of enzyme systems and processing on the hydrolysis of peanut (Arachis hypogaea L.) protein

In vitro protein digestion studies were carried out on raw and roasted peanut flour as the starting material in the production of peanut protein hydrolysate. Peanut flour was hydrolyzed with alcalase and alternately in a sequential digestion with pepsin-pancreatin, both for up to 24 h. The degree of hydrolysis (DH) at different times of hydrolysis was determined using the trinitrobenzenesulfonic acid (TNBS) method. Sodium dodecyl sulfate-polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) was used to indicate destruction of native protein units in the enzymatic digests.Hydrolysis with alcalase was very rapid for the first 6 h after which a plateau was reached, whereas that with pepsin–pancreatin was more gradual reaching a plateau after 12 h of hydrolysis. Raw peanut hydrolyzed with alcalase and pepsin–pancreatin had 23% and 21% DH after 24 h respectively, whilst roasted peanut hydrolyzed with alcalase had 21% DH, with the pepsin–pancreatin hydrolysate recording the highest value of 25% after 24 h of hydrolysis.SDS-PAGE results showed that raw peanut samples behaved differently from the roasted samples; increasing hydrolysis time reduced larger peanut protein subunits, with only peptides of <20 kDa visible after hydrolysis for raw peanut, and virtually no distinct visible bands for the roasted peanut after 3 h of hydrolysis.     

Integrating evidence-based practice, cognitive–behavior therapy, and multicultural therapy: Ten steps for culturally competent practice.

During the past decade, 3 major developments in psychotherapy have been converging: the establishment of evidence-based practices in psychology (EBPP); enormous growth in cognitive–behavior therapy and research (CBT); and increasing recognition of the impact of multicultural influences, as highlighted in the field of multicultural therapy (MCT). Cognitive–behavioral research has produced many empirically supported treatments used in the establishment of the scientific research base of EBPP, and MCT research has provided a wealth of qualitative information that balances this scientific emphasis with recognition of the importance of culturally competent clinical judgment, expertise, and experience. This article describes the advantages and potential limitations involved in the integration of CBT and multicultural considerations, with limitations reframed as opportunities to improve the relevance and effectiveness of psychotherapy. Ten suggestions are provided for integrating multicultural considerations into the clinical practice of cognitive–behavior therapy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Oocysts of Cryptosporidium parvum and model sand surfaces in aqueous solutions: an atomic force microscope (AFM) study

Oocysts of C. parvum have been associated with several waterborne outbreaks of gastro-enteric disease. Currently, one of the main barriers to oocyst contamination of drinking waters is provided by sand-bed filtration. In this study an atomic force microscope (AFM) has been used to measure the force of interaction between oocysts of C. parvum and a model sand surface (silicate glass). The AFM force curves have been compared and contrasted with the corresponding electrical potentials obtained from electrophoretic measurements (zeta). It has been found that the surface of C. parvum oocysts possesses a hairy layer, most likely a result of surface proteins extending into solution. The hairy layer imposes a steric repulsion between the oocyst and sand surface, in addition to any electrostatic repulsion. The hairy layer collapsed to varying extents in the presence of dissolved calcium and dissolved organic carbon, indicating that the oocysts may be more readily adsorbed onto the model sand surface under these conditions. Conversely, as the two surfaces are pulled apart, the occasional attachment of oocyst surface proteins to the model sand surface can result in adhesion. The AFM results offer new insights into the oocyst surface of C. parvum, and the mechanism of interaction with model sand surfaces under conditions relevant to sand-bed filtration.     

Sandtray therapy with a 24-year-old woman in the residual phase of schizophrenia.

Sandtray therapy is a clinical tool for helping a client express and understand his or her unconscious dynamics. It utilizes a sandtray and anywhere from a few hundred to a few thousand figurines in the room for the client to select from. These figurines cover a wide range of people, situations, and objects, from the most ordinary to the mythical. The client makes a story in the sand, which the client and therapist then discuss. It is standard therapeutic wisdom that one should not use techniques involving fantasy with psychotic clients since it is typically too hard for both them and the clinician to contain those fantasies in a healthy manner. Although this is very often true, the authors offer an example of how they were able to use sandtray to great therapeutic advantage with a schizophrenic client in the residual phase of schizophrenia. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fault identification for robot manipulators

Several factors must be considered for robotic task execution in the presence of a fault, including: detection, identification, and accommodation for the fault. In this paper, a nonlinear observer is used to identify a class of actuator faults once the fault has been detected by some other method. Advantages of the proposed fault-identification method are that it is based on the nonlinear dynamic model of a robot manipulator (and hence, can be extended to a number of general Euler Lagrange systems), it does not require acceleration measurements, and it is independent from the controller. A Lyapunov-based analysis is provided to prove that the developed fault observer converges to the actual fault. Experimental results are provided to illustrate the performance of the identification method.     

Challenges and solutions for recruiting pregnant smokers into a nicotine replacement therapy trial.

Improvements in smoking cessation interventions for pregnant smokers are needed. One major step is to examine the potential effectiveness of nicotine replacement therapy (NRT). The potential benefits of providing pregnant women with NRT to help them quit smoking are still unknown; early interventions to test the effectiveness and efficacy are vital to advancing the field. This paper describes recruitment efforts for a multiclinic trial to test the effectiveness of NRT use in addition to behavioral therapy in promoting cessation during pregnancy. The biggest challenge is recruiting sufficient numbers of pregnant women. This paper discusses specific obstacles for recruitment and solutions. Knowing the potential pitfalls to recruiting pregnant women into these trials can lead to better studies and thus improved outcomes.     

Extracurricular involvement among affluent youth: A scapegoat for "ubiquitous achievement pressures"?

It has been suggested that overscheduling of upper-class youth might underlie the high distress and substance use documented among them. This assumption was tested by considering suburban 8th graders' involvement in different activities along with their perceptions of parental attitudes toward achievement. Results indicated negligible evidence for deleterious effects of high extracurricular involvement per se. Far more strongly implicated was perceived parent criticism for both girls and boys as well as the absence of after-school supervision. Low parent expectations connoted significant vulnerability especially for boys. The findings indicate that at least among early adolescents, converging scientific and media reports may have scapegoated extracurricular involvements, to some degree, as an index of ubiquitous achievement pressures in affluent communities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A toolkit for the incremental implementation of heterogeneous database management systems

The integration of heterogeneous database environments is a difficult and complex task. The A la carte Framework addresses this complexity by providing a reusable and extensible architecture in which a set of heterogeneous database management systems can be integrated. The goal is to support incremental integration of existing database facilities into heterogeneous, interoperative, distributed systems. The Framework addresses the three main issues in heterogeneous systems in tegration. First, it identifies the problems in integrating heterogeneous systems. Second, it identifies the key interfaces and parameters required for autonomous systems to interoperate correctly. Third, it demonstrates an approach to integrating these interfaces in an extensible and incremental way. The A la carte Framework provides a set of reusable, integrating components which integrate the major functional domains, such as transaction management, that could or should be integrated in heterogeneous systems. It also provides a mechanism for capturing key characteristics of the components and constraints which describe how the components can be mixed and interchanged, thereby helping to reduce the complexity of the integration process. Using this framework, we have implemented an experimental, heterogeneous configuration as part of the object management work in the software engineering research consortium, Arcadia.