Kindergarten children's emotion competence as a predictor of their academic competence in first grade.

This study examined the relation between emotion competence and academic competence and three potential mediators of this relation. In kindergarten, 193 children from elementary schools serving urban, minority, and low income students participated in an emotion competence assessment, and 142 of these children completed a follow-up assessment in first grade. The relation between teacher ratings of emotion regulation and academic competence was primarily indirect through the effect of emotion regulation on teacher ratings of attention. Peer acceptance and teacher closeness did not mediate the relations between emotion competence and academic competence. Results highlight the potential benefits of early emotion-centered prevention programs and the need to identify children with attention problems as early as possible to prevent academic difficulties. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Children's emotional competence and attentional competence in early elementary school.

The current study examined the relations between two aspects of emotional competence--emotion knowledge and emotion expression, and children's attentional competence during one school year. Participants were 263 first- and second-grade students at two rural elementary schools. A multiple regression analysis showed that emotion knowledge predicted attentional competence while controlling for age, gender, verbal ability, and initial levels of attentional competence. Multiple regression analyses examining predictors of peer nominations of emotion expression showed that attentional competence predicted peer nominations of happiness, sadness, and anger expression, and emotion knowledge predicted peer nominations of anger expression. Potential improvements for prevention programs and the importance of the findings for school personnel are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Metabolism of14C-labelled oleic acid,erucic acid and nervonic acid in rats

1-¹⁴C-Oleic acid, 2-¹⁴C-erucic acid and 2-¹⁴C-nervonic acid were administered to rats by tail-vein and the distribution of radioactivity in liver lipids was determined at intervals from 15 min to 6 hr after injection. High levels of activity were found after short time intervals which were mainly associated with triglycerides in the case of oleic acid and with free fatty acids in the case of erucic acid and nervonic acid. The activity in these lipids decreased with time and was later exceeded by that in more polar lipids. In rats given erucic acid or nervonic acid, sphingolipids were more highly labelled than glycerophosphatides. Nervonic acid showed little tendency to form a complex with serum albumin and erucic acid complexed less readily than palmitic acid. Presented at the AOCS Meeting in Houston, April 1965.     

Developmental Changes in Facial Expressions of Emotions in the Strange Situation During the Second Year of Life.

Infants' expressions of discrete emotions were coded during the more stressful episodes (4 through 8) of the Strange Situation at 13 and 18 months. The data showed a significant decrease in full-face expressions (more complex configurations of movements) and a significant increase in component expressions (simpler and more constrained patterns of movements). The authors interpreted this trend as a developmental change toward more regulated and less intense emotions. Consistent with this view, the aggregate index of infants' full-face negative emotion expressions, interpreted as reflecting relatively unregulated intense emotions, correlated significantly with maternal ratings of difficult temperament. The authors discuss alternative interpretations of the findings in terms of changes in reactivity/arousability and the emerging capacity for self-regulation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Potential applications of three-way multidimensional scaling and related techniques to integrate knowledge from multiple experts

Theknowledge transfer problem in artificial intelligence consists of finding effective ways to elicit information from a human expert and represent it in a form suitable for use by an expert system. One approach to formalizing and guiding this knowledge transfer process for certain types of expert systems is to use psychometric scaling methods to analyze data on how the human expert compares or groups solutions. For example, Butler and Corter [1] obtained judgments of thesubstitutability of solutions from an expert, then analyzed the resulting data via techniques for fitting trees and extended trees [2]. The expert's interpretation of certain aspects of the solutions were directly encoded as production rules, allowing rapid prototyping. In this paper we consider the problem of combining information from multiple experts. We propose the use of three-way or individual differences multidimensional scaling, tree-fitting, and unfolding models to analyze two types of data obtainable from the multiple experts: judgments of the substitutability of pairs of solutions, and judgments of the appropriateness of specific solutions to specific problems. An application is described in which substitutability data were obtained from three experts and analyzed using the SINDSCAL program [3] for three-way multidimensional scaling [4].     

Obesity as a risk factor for certain types of cancer

Summary and Conclusions In conclusion, obesity has been associated with increased risk for a number of different types of cancer. The evidence has been most consistent for endometrial cancer, breast cancer in postmenopausal women, and renal cell cancer. More variable results have been reported for colorectal, prostate and pancreatic cancer. Possible mechanisms by which obesity may influence cancer risk include alteration in hormonal patterns, including sex hormones and insulin, and factors such as the distribution of body fat and changes in adiposity at different ages. The increasing prevalence of obesity in many parts of the world emphasizes the importance of learning more about the relationship between obesity and cancer and the mechanisms involved in their interaction. This paper was prepared as one of the background documents for the WHO Consultation on Obesity (Geneva, Switzerland, 3–5 June 1997). For further details, please see the report of the Consultation, Obesity: preventing and managing the global epidemic (WHO/NUT/NCD/97.2).     

Cover Picture: Functionalization of Crystalline Colloidal Arrays through Click Chemistry (Adv. Mater. 21/2007)

Photonic crystals based on electrostatically‐stabilized colloidal arrays dispersed in a liquid medium are of interest to materials scientists partly because of the optical tuning afforded to theses systems with a variation in interparticle distance. On p. 3507, Stephen Foulger and co‐workers from Clemson University, USA report on a general strategy for the preparation of well‐defined and regioselectively functionalized ordered colloidal particles through the exploitation of “click” chemistry. Click transformations have found utility in the synthesis and/or functionalization of a range of systems. In addition, the solvochromic tuning of the ordered arrays is employed to modify the emission spectra of the surface‐attached photoluminescent dyes.