Links Between Sex-Typed Time Use in Middle Childhood and Gender Development in Early Adolescence.

The authors studied sex-typing in the kinds (e.g., sports, handicrafts) and social contexts (same- vs. other-sex companions) of children's free time activities, and the links between sex-typed activities and gender development over 2 years. Participants were 200 White, working- and middle-class children (103 girls, 97 boys; mean age = 10.86 years). In annual home interviews, children rated their self-esteem, gender role attitudes and sex-typed personality qualities, academic interests, and school grades. During 7 nightly phone interviews each year, children reported on their activities. Boys were more sex-typed than girls in their peer activities, and children were least sex-typed in their activities with siblings. Sex-typed activities in middle childhood predicted individual differences in gender development in early adolescence (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hope and Guidance for Parents of Children with OCD: A Review of Freeing Your Child from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder.

Reviews the book "Freeing Your Child from Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder," by T.E. Chansky (see record 2000-16012-000). This is a concise and helpful resource for parents who are seeking active participation as an agent in their child's treatment of Obsessive-Compulsive Disorder (OCD). It is likely that one book alone will never be sufficient to help a child and/or parent through an entire course of treatment for OCD; rather, change appears to come through a combination of many resources, including information, books, professional support, and skill development. As part of a comprehensive intervention approach, this book provides a "roadmap" for parents seeking a helping role in supporting their child's treatment trajectory. Although this book contains invaluable information for parents, the information and guidelines will be best understood and most effectively employed when parents are consulting with a qualified psychologist. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Electronic trading and the process of globalization in traditional futures exchanges: a temporal perspective

This paper develops a temporal perspective to examine information and communication technologies (ICT) adoption and processes of globalization. The foundations of our theoretical approach explicitly draw upon three intersecting planes of temporality implicit in structuration; namely reversibility, irreversibility and institutionalization. We further develop our theoretical perspective by extending the scope of structuration to incorporate temporal features of Adam's social theory on ‘global time’. We then use this temporal perspective to examine the emergence of electronic trading and the process of globalization across London and Chicago futures exchanges. Our analysis provides insights into the IT-enabled reconfiguration of these exchanges during processes of reproduction and change associated with globalization. We conclude with some key implications for e-trading strategy and consider changes in trader work life associated with the adoption of e-trading.     

Clinical outcomes of an integrated treatment for depression and substance use disorders.

The authors compared longitudinal treatment outcomes for depressed substance-dependent veterans (N = 206) assigned to integrated cognitive–behavioral therapy plus standard pharmacotherapy (ICBT + P) or 12-step facilitation therapy plus standard pharmacotherapy (TSF + P). Drug and alcohol involvement and depressive symptomology were measured at intake and at 3-month intervals during treatment and up to 1 year posttreatment. Participants in both treatment conditions showed decreased depression and substance use from intake. ICBT + P participants maintained improvements in substance involvement over time, whereas TSF + P participants had more rapid increases in use in the months following treatment. Decreases in depressive symptoms were more pronounced for TSF + P than ICBT + P in the 6 months posttreatment. Within both treatment groups, higher attendance was associated with improved substance use and depression outcomes over time. Initial levels of depressive symptomology had a complex predictive relationship with long-term depression outcomes. Early treatment response predicted long-term substance use outcomes for a portion of the sample. Although both treatments were associated with improvements in substance use and depression, ICBT + P may lead to more stable substance use reductions compared with TSF + P. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Cluster randomized trials with treatment noncompliance.

Cluster randomized trials (CRTs) have been widely used in field experiments treating a cluster of individuals as the unit of randomization. This study focused particularly on situations where CRTs are accompanied by a common complication, namely, treatment noncompliance or, more generally, intervention nonadherence. In CRTs, compliance may be related not only to individual characteristics but also to the environment of clusters individuals belong to. Therefore, analyses ignoring the connection between compliance and clustering may not provide valid results. Although randomized field experiments often suffer from both noncompliance and clustering of the data, these features have been studied as separate rather than concurrent problems. On the basis of Monte Carlo simulations, this study demonstrated how clustering and noncompliance may affect statistical inferences and how these two complications can be accounted for simultaneously. In particular, the effect of the intervention on individuals who not only were assigned to active intervention but also abided by this intervention assignment (complier average causal effect) was the focus. For estimation of intervention effects considering noncompliance and data clustering, an ML-EM estimation method was employed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Modulated pulse laser with pseudorandom coding capabilities for underwater ranging, detection, and imaging

Optical detection, ranging, and imaging of targets in turbid water is complicated by absorption and scattering. It has been shown that using a pulsed laser source with a range-gated receiver or an intensity modulated source with a coherent RF receiver can improve target contrast in turbid water. A blended approach using a modulated-pulse waveform has been previously suggested as a way to further improve target contrast. However only recently has a rugged and reliable laser source been developed that is capable of synthesizing such a waveform so that the effect of the underwater environment on the propagation of a modulated pulse can be studied. In this paper, we outline the motivation for the modulated-pulse (MP) concept, and experimentally evaluate different MP waveforms: single-tone MP and pseudorandom coded MP sequences.     

Knowledge representation for mathematical discovery: Three experiments in graph theory

This paper describes the nature of mathematical discovery (including concept definition and exploration, example generation, and theorem conjecture and proof), and considers how such an intelligent process can be simulated by a machine. Although the material is drawn primarily from graph theory, the results are immediately relevant to research in mathematical discovery and learning.The thought experiment, a protocol paradigm for the empirical study of mathematical discovery, highlights behavioral objectives for machine simulation. This thought experiment provides an insightful account of the discovery process, motivates a framework for describing mathematical knowledge in terms of object classes, and is a rich source of advice on the design of a system to perform discovery in graph theory. The evaluation criteria for a discovery system, it is argued, must include both a set of behavior to display (behavioral objectives) and a target set of facts to be discovered (factual knowledge).Cues from the thought experiment are used to formulate two hierarchies of representational languages for graphy theory. The first hierarchy is based on the superficial terminology and knowledge of the thought experiment. Generated by formal grammars with set-theoretic semantics, this eminently reasonable approach ultimately fails to meet the factual knowledge criteria. The second hierarchy uses declarative expressions, each of which has a semantic interpretation as a stylized, recursive algorithm that defines a class by generating it correctly and completely. A simple version of one such representation is validated by a successful, implemented system called Graph Theorist (GT) for mathematical research in graph theory. GT generates correct examples, defines and explores new graph theory properties, and conjectures and proves theorems.Several themes run through this paper. The first is the dual goals, behavioral objectives and factural knowledge to be discovered, and the multiplicity of their demands on a discovery system. The second theme is the central role of object classes to knowledge representation. The third is the increased power and flexibility of a constructive (generator) definition over the more traditional predicate (tester) definition. The final theme is the importance of examples and recursion in mathematical knowledge. The results provide important guidance for further research in the simulation of mathematical discovery.     

A bi-labeling based XPath processing system

We present BLAS, a Bi-LAbeling based XPath processing System. BLAS uses two labeling schemes to speed up query processing: P-labeling for processing consecutive child (or parent) axis traversals, and D-labeling for processing descendant (or ancestor) axis traversals. XML data are stored in labeled form and indexed. Algorithms are presented for translating XPath queries to SQL expressions. BLAS reduces the number of joins in the SQL query translated from a given XPath query and reduces the number of disk accesses required to execute the SQL query compared with the traditional XPath processing using D-labeling alone. We also propose an approximate P-labeling scheme and the corresponding query translation algorithm to handle XML data trees that contain a large number of distinct tag names, and/or are very deep. This extension captures a spectrum of XPath-to-SQL query translation schemes, ranging from existing schemes that do not use P-labels to the one that uses exact P-labels. Experimental results demonstrate the efficiency of the BLAS system.     

A multi-institutional, multinational study of programming concepts using card sort data

Abstract: This paper presents a case study of the use of a repeated single‐criterion card sort with an unusually large, diverse participant group. The study, whose goal was to elicit novice programmers' knowledge of programming concepts, involved over 20 researchers from four continents and 276 participants drawn from 20 different institutions. In this paper we present the design of the study and the unexpected result that there were few discernible systematic differences in the population. The study was one of the activities of the National Science Foundation funded Bootstrapping Research in Computer Science Education project (2003).     

Ultraviolet-visible metal-semiconductor-metal photodetectors fabricated from InxGa1−xN (0≤x≤0.13)

Metal-semiconductor-metal (MSM) photodetectors have been fabricated on In_xGa_1−xN epitaxial films grown by metalorganic chemical vapor deposition within the composition range 0≤x≤0.13. The dark current and spectral response were measured for devices with a varying In mole fraction x. The devices, which had nominal finger widths and finger spacing of 5 μm, were biased with modest voltages in the range 2≤V_bias≤5 V. In general, turn-on wave-length and dark current increased with increasing x. Turn-on wavelengths ranged from λ=370 nm to 430 nm and dark current densities ranged from I_dark=2×10⁻² A/cm² (V_bias=5 V, x≈0.05) to 9×10⁴ A/cm² (V_bias=2 V, x≈0.13) depending on the In content, x, of the device active area.