Older women: social cognitive theory correlates of health behavior

Most research about health promoting behaviors has focused on pre-old adults and men, despite clear evidence that the leading cause of death among postmenopausal women is related to health behaviors. This study applied social cognitive theory constructs to exercise, dietary, and stress management health behavior. The purpose of this study was to examine the ability of self-efficacy expectation and outcome expectancy to predict health behavior among older women. Community-dwelling women aged 65 to 92 years were interviewed with previously developed instruments and instruments designed specifically for this study (N = 225). Self-efficacy was the strongest predictor of each of the health behaviors (beta weights: dietary behavior .50; exercise, .39; stress management, .32). Outcome expectancy was not a significant predictor of exercise or dietary behavior. Outcome expectancy was a significant predictor of stress management behavior. The findings of this study, combined with the importance of health promotion behaviors among older women, justify the need for continued research about self-efficacy and health behavior among this vulnerable population.     

Morphological, molecular, and chromosomal discrimination of cryptic Anopheles (Nyssorhynchus) (Diptera: Culicidae) from South America

Based on similarity of male genitalia, the malaria vector Anopheles trinkae Faran from the eastern Andean piedmont of Colombia, Ecuador, Peru, and Bolivia was determined by Peyton (1993) to be a junior synonym of An. dunhami Causey, then known from a single locality in Amazonian Brazil. Following an appraisal of molecular, chromosomal, and morphological characters, we conclude herein that the 2 taxa are specifically distinct and remove An. trinkae from synonymy with An. dunhami. Eggs of the 2 species are distinguished easily by the anterior crown, long floats, and closed deck that occur only in An. trinkae. The X chromosome of larval polytenes is divisible into R and L arms in An. dunhami, but not in An. trinkae. A phenogram based on banding pattern scores from 18 random amplified polymorphic DNA primers separated with 100% resolution An. dunhami, An. trinkae, Anopheles nuneztovari Gabaldón and Anopheles darlingi Root. In the ITS2 region of rDNA, 25% of base sites distinguished An. trinkae from An. dunhami and 21% from the related An. nuneztovari; males of these 3 species had accessory glands of significantly different sizes. Preliminary isoenzyme screening indicated that 3 of 11 loci were diagnostic for separating An. trinkae from An. dunhami. The results indicate that An. dunhami is related more closely to An. nuneztovari than to An. trinkae and illustrate the merits of a multidisciplinary approach to mosquito systematics.     

Trends in infectious disease hospitalizations in the United States, 1980-1994

BACKGROUND: A recent study concluded that between 1980 and 1992, deaths from infectious diseases increased 58%. This article explores trends in infectious diseases as a cause of hospitalization. METHODS: We analyzed data from the National Hospitalization Discharge Survey for 1980 through 1994 using a previously developed approach to evaluate infectious diseases in data coded according to the International Classification of Diseases, Ninth Revision. RESULTS: Between 1980 and 1994, the rate of hospitalizations in the United States declined approximately 33%; hospitalizations occurred at a rate of 133+/-5 per 1000 US population (35 million+/-1 million discharges) in 1994. The rate of hospitalization for infectious diseases declined less steeply--12% during this interval--resulting in an increased proportion of hospitalizations because of infectious diseases. In 1994, the rate of hospitalizations for infectious diseases was 15.4+/-0.7 per 1000 US population (4.0 million+/-0.2 million discharges). The fatality rate associated with hospitalizations for infectious diseases increased from 1.9%+/-0.1% to 4.0%+/-0.3%, attributable to increased hospitalizations of elderly persons and an increased fatality rate among those younger than 65 years. Among selected categories, hospitalizations for human immunodeficiency virus infections and acquired immunodeficiency syndrome, prosthetic device infections, sepsis, and mycosis increased substantially, and hospitalizations for upper respiratory tract infections, pelvic inflammatory disease, and oral infections declined sharply. Hospitalizations for lower respiratory tract infections constituted 37% of all infectious disease hospitalizations in 1994. CONCLUSIONS: Considering hospitalizations as a dimension of the burden of infectious diseases involves an array of factors: secular trends in hospitalization, changing case management practices, demographic changes, and trends in the variety of infectious diseases themselves. Increases in the proportions of hospitalizations because of infectious diseases during years when hospitalizations for all causes were decreasing reflect an increasing burden of infectious diseases in the United States between 1989 and the mid-1990s.     

Impurity Transport in a Simulated Gas Target Divertor

Future generation fusion reactors and tokamaks will require dissipative divertors to handle the high particle and heat loads leaving the core plasma (100–400 MW/m² in ITER). A radiative divertor is proposed as a possible scenario, utilizing a hydrogen target gas to disperse the plasma momentum and trace impurity radiation to dissipate the plasma heat flux. Introducing an impurity into the target hydrogen gas enhances the radiative power loss but may lead to a significant impurity backflow to the main plasma. Thus, impurity flow control represents a crucial design concern. Such impurity flows are studied experimentally in this thesis. The PISCES-A linear plasma device (n 3 × 10¹⁹ m^–3, kT _e 20 eV) has been used to simulate a gas target divertor. To study the transport of impurities, a trace amount of impurity gas (i.e., neon and argon) is puffed near the target plate along with the hydrogen gas. Varying the hydrogen gas puffing rate permits us to study the effects of various background plasma conditions on the transport of impurities. A 1-1/2-D fluid code has been developed to solve the continuity and momentum equations for a neutral and singly ionized impurity in a hydrogen background plasma. The results indicate an axial reduction in the impurity concentration upstream from the impurity puffing source. Impurity entrainment is more effective for higher hydrogen target pressures (and for higher hydrogen plasma densities). However, if there is a reversal of the background plasma flow, impurity particles can propagate past the plasma flow reversal point and are then no longer entrained.     

Dichotic listening in college students who report auditory hallucinations.

College students were placed in 2 groups, hallucinators and nonhallucinators, on the basis of their responses to a verbal hallucinations questionnaire. Both groups were given a consonant-vowel version of a Dichotic Listening Test under 3 conditions: nonforced, forced-right, and forced-left. When hallucinators were instructed to attend to the left ear stimuli (forced-left condition), they had fewer correct responses to right ear syllables than did nonhallucinators. This resulted in a left ear advantage for hallucinators. When nonhallucinators were instructed to attend to the left ear, they maintained a right ear advantage. Results suggest that auditory hallucinations in college students are associated with differences in hemispheric functioning. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Focused interaction in dialogues

This report addresses the dialogue support issues involved in tailoring courses to organization‐specific requirements. We present a brief discussion of current dialogue support techniques and discuss their inability to facilitate focussed interfacing, a crucial element in raising the quality of service available to real‐world organizations. In any real‐world organization the functionality must exist to modify and refine an initial position with respect to a course. We demonstrate techniques for focusing on the task at hand and incorporating partial decision elements in the dialogue interface itself, providing an illustration of our approach.     

Parametric downconvertor (6 to 4 GHz) for satellite ground-station applications

The letter details the theoretical design and the experimental results of a parametric downconverter (p.d.c.) operated at an r.f. frequency fs of 6 GHz and pumped at fp = 10 GHz. The circuit exhibited a conversion gain of 14.5 dB, a noise figure of 4.3 dB and a 3 dB b.w. of 238 MHz.