High activity, templated mesoporous SO4/ZrO2/HMS catalysts with controlled acid site density for α-pinene isomerisation

Highly active mesoporous SO₄/ZrO₂/HMS (hexagonal mesoroporous silica) solid acid catalysts with tuneable sulphated zirconia (SZ) content have been prepared for the liquid phase isomerisation of α-pinene. The mesoporous HMS framework is preserved during the grafting process as evidenced by the X-ray diffraction (XRD) and porosimetry with all SO₄/ZrO₂/HMS materials possessing average pore-diameters 20 Å. XRD confirms the presence of a stabilized tetragonal phase of nanoparticulate ZrO₂, with no evidence for zirconia phase separation or the formation of discrete crystallites, consistent with a uniform and highly dispersed SZ coating. The activity towards α-pinene isomerisation scales linearly with Zr loading, while the specific activities are an order of magnitude greater than attainable by conventional methodologies (1 versus 0.08 mol h⁻¹ g Zr⁻¹).     

Building the Confidence of Women Engineering Students With a New Course to Increase Understanding of Physical Devices

This paper discusses the first two offerings of an experimental course designed to overcome women engineering student's anxiety and intimidation about using mechanical and electrical devices. The design and implementation of the initial course are presented, the changes that were made in the second offering of the course are discussed, and feedback from students in the course is summarized. Principles and guidelines applicable to educational experiences aimed at addressing women engineering students' anxiety about hardware that were observed and developed by the authors are presented and discussed. Finally, future activities and plans are outlined.     

Functional verification of power gated designs by compositional reasoning

Power gating is a technique for low power design in which whole sections of the chip are powered off when they are not needed, and powered back on when they are. Functional correctness of power gating is usually checked at the system level, where the most widely used technique is simulation using pseudo-random stimuli. This normally entails running extremely expensive ternary simulations, in order to model the memory loss that occurs as a result of a memory element being powered off. We propose instead a methodology in which we prove sequential equivalence between the power gated design and a simplified version of itself, then use the simplified version in a binary simulation. We use a compositional approach that looks for partial equivalence of each unit under a suitable set of assumptions, guaranteed by the neighboring units. The partial equivalences are then composed into total equivalence on the whole chip. Our method is applicable to any power gated design, no matter the side effects (e.g., in timing of events across the interfaces) caused by the particular implementation of power gating.     

Random Copolymer Films with Molecular‐Scale Compositional Heterogeneities that Interfere with Protein Adsorption

Smooth surfaces with compositional heterogeneities at a molecular‐length scale are presented with the goal of disrupting surface–protein interactions. These surfaces are synthesized by utilizing photoinitiated chemical vapor deposition (piCVD) to deposit thin films of random copolymers consisting of highly hydrophilic and highly hydrophobic comonomers. Swellability, wettability, and surface roughness could be systematically controlled by tuning the copolymer composition. The surface composition was dynamic, and the surface reconstructed based on the hydration state of the film. Proteins adsorbed to the copolymer films less readily than to either of the respective homopolymers, indicating a synergistic effect resulting from the random copolymer presenting molecular‐scale compositional heterogeneity. These results provide direct evidence that protein adsorption can be disrupted by such surfaces and a simple analytical model suggests that the heterogeneities occur over areas encompassing 4–5 repeat units of the polymer. The synthetic method used to create these films can be used to coat arbitrary geometries, enabling practical utility in a number of applications.     

"Social cognitions as organizers of autonomic and affective responses to social challenge": Correction.

Reports an error in the original article by D. B. Bugental et al (Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 1993, Vol 64[1], 94–203). On page 97, the sentence "SCL was measured by bipolar silver-silver chloride electrodes placed on the thumb of the nonpreferred hand' should read as follows: "SCL was measured by bipolar silver-silver chloride electrodes placed on the thenar and hypothenar eminences of the nonpreferred hand.' (The following abstract of this article originally appeared in record 1993-21385-001.) Autonomic and affective responses to children were assessed as a function of adult perceptions of interpersonal control. Women (N?=?160) interacted with and provided feedback to computer-simulated children who behaved responsively or unresponsively on a computer game. Women were categorized as low in perceived control (PC) if they attributed high control to children but low control to self over negative events on the Parent Attribution Test. As predicted, low-PC women were maximally reactive to child characteristics, manifesting peak levels of defensive arousal (increased level of heart rate and electrodermal activity) and negative affect with unresponsive children and minimal levels of arousal and negative affect with responsive children … (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Thirty-month naturalistic follow-up study of early-onset dysthymic disorder: Course, diagnostic stability, and prediction of outcome.

Dysthymic disorder (DD) is defined and distinguished from major depressive disorder (MDD) largely on the basis of its course. Surprisingly, however, there have been few prospective, longitudinal studies of the naturalistic course of DD. This article reports the major findings from a prospective, longitudinal 30-month follow-up study of 86 outpatients with early-onset DD (EOD) and 39 outpatients with episodic MDD. Follow-up assessments included the Longitudinal Interval Follow-Up Evaluation and Hamilton Rating Scale for Depression. Compared with patients with episodic MDD, patients with EOD exhibited less improvement from the baseline evaluation and were more symptomatic at follow-up. Only 39% of patients with EOD recovered from DD during the follow-up period. The diagnosis of DD was fairly stable, with 52% of the EOD group meeting full criteria for DD at follow-up. These data provide prospective confirmation of the chronic course of DD. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Adaptive Window Size Image De-noising Based on Intersection of Confidence Intervals (ICI) Rule

We describe a novel approach to solve a problem of window size (bandwidth) selection for filtering an image signal given with a noise. The approach is based on the intersection of confidence intervals (ICI) rule and gives the algorithm, which is simple to implement and nearly optimal in the point-wise mean squared error risk. The local polynomial approximation (LPA) is used in order to derive the 2D transforms (filters) and demonstrate the efficiency of the approach. The ICI rule gives the adaptive varying window size and enables the algorithm to be spatially adaptive in the sense that its quality is close to that which one could achieve if the smoothness of the estimated signal was known in advance. Optimization of the threshold (design parameter of the ICI) is studied. It is shown that the cross-validation adjustment of the threshold significantly improves the algorithm accuracy. In particular, simulation demonstrates that the adaptive transforms with the adjusted threshold parameter perform better than the adaptive wavelet estimators.     

ON-LINE MONITORING OF PAPERMAKING PROCESSES

As part of our continuing effort to improve monitoring and control in the pulp and paper industry, this work is concerned with fault detection and diagnosis in the papermaking process. It analyzes on-line data gathered from the real industrial process, investigates the cause/effect relationships, identifies latent variables responsible for paper machine operation and paper quality, and constructs multivariate control charts for more effective supervision and control. Based on multivariate statistical analysis, a new diagnosis method using the directional property of the observation residuals is also developed.     

Evaluating parents in child protection decisions: An innovative court-based clinic model.

Providing relevant, timely forensic evaluations is challenging because of the differing worlds of mental health and law. In this study, the authors evaluated an innovative, court-based clinic model for improving acquisition and use of clinical information in juvenile court in a 3-year pilot project prior to wide-scale implementation. The authors investigated the extent to which 170 evaluations of parents in the child protection division met criteria recommended in the forensic literature by comparing reports across four groups categorized by source (inside or outside court; part of pilot project or not). Findings suggested greater use of recommended practices and more timely, consistent reports by the pilot clinic. The findings provide preliminary support for the model and guidance for improving forensic evaluations in child protection. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Predicting prison adjustment with structured personality inventories.

Investigated the degree to which individual scales and multivariate combinations of scales on the MMPI and the California Psychological Inventory (CPI) could predict criteria of adjustment in prison. Ss were 1,313 male inmates (mean age 22.2 yrs) at a federal correctional institution who were admitted over a 2-yr period. Two-thirds of the sample was used as a derivation sample and one-third was used for cross-validation. Ss completed the scales soon after incarceration. Results support the construct validity of several MMPI and CPI scales, but the absolute magnitude of the associations was low. Combinations of MMPI and CPI scales produced higher multiple correlations but generally did not hold up on cross-validation. It is concluded that neither the MMPI or CPI scales or weighted linear combinations thereof provided enough accuracy to be used alone for individual actuarial prediction. (36 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)