Clinical practice as natural laboratory for psychotherapy research: A guide to case-based time-series analysis.

Both researchers and practitioners need to know more about how laboratory treatment protocols translate to real-world practice settings and how clinical innovations can be systematically tested and communicated to a skeptical scientific community. The single-case time-series study is well suited to opening a productive discourse between practice and laboratory. The appeal of case-based time-series studies, with multiple observations both before and after treatment, is that they enrich our design palette by providing the discipline another way to expand its empirical reach to practice settings and its subject matter to the contingencies of individual change. This article is a user's guide to conducting empirically respectable case-based time-series studies in a clinical practice or laboratory setting. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Analysis of the left-handed corrugated circular waveguide

Infinite circular corrugated waveguide is analysed to investigate its ability to support modes with backward wave behaviour. Such waveguides provide an alternative structure, easier to manufacture than those already reported based on rectangular symmetry with corrugated walls or filled with frequency selective surfaces. The corrugations if sufficiently deep provide a guiding structure with the required series capacitance and shunt inductance to allow left-handed propagation within some frequency bands. These backward waves are analysed using the surface impedance model of propagation in corrugated waveguides to predict their properties. Interpreting the physical meaning of the analysis, the authors discuss how backward waves are related to resonances in corrugated structures. The relationship between power flows in the guide and the behaviour of the group velocity for such guides is shown. A full wave simulator is also applied to validate these results and the case of a dielectric filled waveguide is considered showing the improved ability to support left-handed modes. The authors present the results of a parametric study of how left-handed propagation depends on the corrugation depth. Potential applications of backward waves in corrugated circular waveguides are proposed.     

Determinants of temperature in small coastal embayments of Lake Ontario

Along 25 km of the Lake Ontario shoreline near Toronto, Ontario, small coastal embayments (0.4–32 ha) have been constructed or modified by lake-infilling to restore warmwater fish habitat. The variation in thermal habitat quality for warmwater fishes among these embayments is very high; temperatures range from those found within a small pond to those of much cooler Lake Ontario. Since meteorological conditions and surface heat fluxes are almost identical, the temperature variation among embayments must be caused by differences in bathymetry or exchange with Lake Ontario. However, a previous study on these embayments found paradoxically that temperatures were not strongly associated with channel size or embayment bathymetry. This paper resolves the paradox by showing that flushing times for almost all of the constructed embayments were less than 1 day, and often less than 12 h. With so little time to warm within the embayments, water temperatures of almost all embayments remained very close to the temperatures of the adjacent lake waters. The coldest embayments connected directly to open Lake Ontario and warmer embayments connected to Lake Ontario through other embayments or protected harbors, where the inflowing water from Lake Ontario had already substantially warmed. To allow embayments along the exposed shoreline of Toronto to reach acceptable temperatures for warmwater fish, we use heat budgets to calculate that average summer flushing times must be increased from their current length of 1.5 to 5.5 h to approximately 30 h. Such changes could be achieved through large reductions in the channel cross section.     

Dissociations between procedural and episodic memory: Effects of time and aging.

The issue of multiple memory systems is explored. Young and older adults (mean ages?=?20 and 71, respectively) named pictures and were tested immediately, 1, 7, or 21 days later. Episodic memory (recognition) for pictures was significantly lower in older relative to young adults and declined systematically across all retention intervals in both age groups. In contrast, procedural memory (repetition priming in picture naming) revealed no reliable age differences. In both age groups, priming declined within the first 24 hr, but unlike recognition, there was no further decrement from 1 to 21 days. There were also within-subject dissociations: The magnitude of priming was equivalent for remembered and forgotten items, and the relation between recognition and priming across intervals was nonmonotonic, revealing a reversed association. The findings were interpreted within a multiple-memory-systems framework. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

"When your top choice turns you down: Effect of rejected offers on the utility of selection tests": Correction to Murphy.

Reports an error in "When your top choice turns you down: Effect of rejected offers on the utility of selection tests" by Kevin R. Murphy (Psychological Bulletin, 1986[Jan], Vol 99[1], 133-138). There was an error in the last line of Table 1, which appears on page 137. The corrected version is presented in the erratum. (The following abstract of the original article appeared in record 1986-15964-001.) Develops formulas for calculating the average ability of job candidates actually selected when the proportion of initial offers accepted is less than 100%. Three cases are considered: (a) those in which offers are declined at random, (b) those in which offers are declined by the highest-scoring applicants, and (c) those in which test scores are related to the probability of accepting an offer. It is shown that under realistic circumstances, utility formulas currently used could overestimate utility gains by 30–80% and that, under extreme circumstances, overestimation could be much worse. Such overestimation occurs even when tests are used only for screening rather than for rank-ordering candidates. (16 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)