Parent-Adolescent Disagreement Regarding Psychopathology in Adolescents From the General Population as a Risk Factor for Adverse Outcome.

This study investigated whether parent-adolescent disagreement regarding adolescents' behavioral and emotional problems predicted adverse outcome. A Dutch sample of 15- to 18-year-olds was prospectively followed across a 4-year interval. The Child Behavior Checklist (CBCL: T. M. Achenbach, 1997) and Youth Self-Report (YSR; T. M. Achenbach, 1991b) were administered at initial assessment, and the following signs of poor outcome were assessed 4 years later: police/judicial contacts, expulsion from school/job, suicidal ideation, unwanted pregnancy, suicide attempts, deliberate self-harm, referral to mental health services, report of having a behavioral or emotional problem, and feeling the need for professional help without actually receiving help. Twenty CBCL syndrome scores, 23 YSR syndrome scores, and 16 discrepancy scores were significant predictors of poor outcome. It was concluded that to determine the prognosis of psychopathology in adolescents, discrepancies between informants may be important. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Postoperative pneumonia

Thoracic surgical patients are susceptible to pneumonia because of impaired systemic and lung host defenses. The incidence of pneumonia is higher with more extensive lung resections. Current prophylactic antibiotic therapy is based primarily on general surgical experience with emphasis on wound infection, not pneumonia. With expansion of indications for lung resection to include higher risk patients, there is a need to render antibiotic prophylaxis more specific to bacteria causative of pneumonia.     

Dissolution rates of poly(methyl methacrylate) films in mixed solvents

A laser interferometer has been used to measure in situ the dissolution rates of thin films of poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA). The most significant finding is that addition of small amounts of a low-molecular weight nonsolvent can increase the rate obtained with a higher molecular weight solvent. In this study, silicon wafers were coated with polymer (about 1 μm thick) and annealed at 155°C for 1 h. The dissolution rates were measured at 17.5, 22.5, and 27.5°C. All the mixtures contained methyl ethyl ketone (MEK) (2-butanone), as the major component. The minor component was water, methanol, ethanol, 1-propanol, 2-propanol, or ethylene glycol. Water and methanol showed the greatest effects. Both were able to increase the dissolution rate as much as two-fold. All the mixtures exhibit the same activation energy (25 kcal/mol) despite their wide differences in dissolution rate.     

A Transformation-Based Approach to Business Process Management in the Cloud

Business Process Management (BPM) has gained a lot of popularity in the last two decades, since it allows organizations to manage and optimize their business processes. However, purchasing a BPM system can be an expensive investment for a company, since not only the software itself needs to be purchased, but also hardware is required on which the process engine should run, and personnel need to be hired or allocated for setting up and maintaining the hardware and the software. Cloud computing gives its users the opportunity of using computing resources in a pay-per-use manner, and perceiving these resources as unlimited. Therefore, the application of cloud computing technologies to BPM can be extremely beneficial specially for small and middle-size companies. Nevertheless, the fear of losing or exposing sensitive data by placing these data in the cloud is one of the biggest obstacles to the deployment of cloud-based solutions in organizations nowadays. In this paper we introduce a transformation-based approach that allows companies to control the parts of their business processes that should be allocated to their own premises and to the cloud, to avoid unwanted exposure of confidential data and to profit from the high performance of cloud environments. In our approach, the user annotates activities and data that should be placed in the cloud or on-premise, and an automated transformation generates the process fragments for cloud and on-premise deployment. The paper discusses the challenges of developing the transformation and presents a case study that demonstrates the applicability of the approach.     

Vortex shedding from confined micropin arrays

The hydrodynamics in microcavities populated with cylindrical micropins was investigated using dynamic pressure measurements and fluid pathline visualization. Pressure signals were Fourier-analyzed to extract the flow fluctuation frequencies, which were in the kHz range for the tested flow Reynolds numbers (Re) of up to 435. Three different sets of flow dependent characteristic frequencies were identified, the first due to vortex shedding, the second due to lateral flow oscillation and the third due to a transition between these two flow regimes. These frequencies were measured at different locations along the chip (e.g. inlet, middle and outlet). It is established that vortex shedding initiates at the outlet and then travels upstream with increase in Re. The pathline visualization technique provided direct optical access to the flow field without any intermediate post-processing step and could be used to interpret the frequencies determined through pressure measurements. Microcavities with different micropin height-to-diameter aspect ratios and pitch-to-diameter ratios were tested. The tests confirmed an increase in the Strouhal number (associated with the vortex shedding) with increased confinement (decrease in the aspect ratio or the pitch), in agreement with macroscale measurements. The compact nature of the microscale geometry tested, and the measurement technique demonstrated, readily enabled us to investigate the flow past 4,420 pins with various degrees of confinements; this makes the measurements performed and the techniques developed here an important tool for investigating large arrays of similar objects in a flow field.