Shortage of expert system personnel in the UK — hype or reality?

Abstract: There is much conjecture in the press about the manpower shortage in the UK expert system field. Is it hype or reality? Presented here are the findings of a three-month study which investigated the availability of jobs in this field, the types of personnel sought by employers and whether demand is currently being met. The study involved identifying and analysing all national advertisements for expert system posts over a six-month period and undertaking follow-up surveys involving the agencies and employers who placed the advertisements. It was concluded that the shortage of expert system personnel in the UK is neither hype nor reality. The reason for this is that although there is not a sizeable demand for expert system personnel (only 134 posts were advertised) some employers are genuinely finding it hard to fill posts.     

Functional relations are not models: A note on covariation detection.

Reviews the main points made by the authors (1985) in their article on covariation judgment and argues that, while C. F. Surber's (see record 1986-16237-001) arguments about covariation detection models and about assessment of variable importance are essentially correct, they are inappropriately applied to the authors' analyses of functional relations. (3 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Psychology and the church: An exemplar of psychologist–clergy collaboration.

Despite the increasing attention being given to clergy–psychologist collaboration, many psychologists may wonder what clergy–psychologist collaboration looks like in actual practice. The authors describe an example of clergy–psychologist collaboration involving a careful needs-assessment phase followed by the development of a wide spectrum of preventive, consultative, and direct services. Current challenges include funding, establishment of trust, and the integration of psychology and spirituality. Implications for professional psychologists are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Coworker exchange: Relationships between coworkers, leader-member exchange, and work attitudes.

The study of leadership exchanges is extended by studying both leader-member exchanges (LMXs) and, coworker exchanges (CWXs). Data from 110 coworker dyads were used to examine relationships between LMXs and CWXs and between exchange relationships and work attitudes. As predicted, the interaction between 2 coworkers' LMX scores predicted CWX quality for the coworker dyad. Also, after controlling for LMX, greater diversity in a worker's CWX relationships was negatively related to his or her organizational commitment but not job satisfaction. The quality of a worker's CWX relationships, however, did not moderate the relationship between CWX diversity and work attitudes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Determination of the Impact of Glycolate on Cs,Sr, and Actinide Separations in High-Level Waste

The Defense Waste Processing Facility (DWPF), responsible for vitrifying high-level waste (HLW) at the Savannah River Site (SRS), is planning to introduce glycolic acid as a reductant during chemical conditioning of the waste prior to vitrification. A portion of this glycolic acid may be recycled back to the tank farm as sodium glycolate. Since glycolate can serve as a complexing agent for a variety of metallic ions, recent studies were performed to examine the effect of glycolate on the removal of Sr and actinides by monosodium titanate (MST) and modified MST (mMST) and the separation of Cs by the caustic-side solvent extraction (CSSX) process.     

Photon Upconversion Hydrogels for 3D Optogenetics

The ability to optically induce biological responses in 3D has been dwarfed by the physical limitations of visible light penetration to trigger photochemical processes. However, many biological systems are relatively transparent to low-energy light, which does not provide sufficient energy to induce photochemistry in 3D. To overcome this challenge, hydrogels that are capable of converting red or near-IR (NIR) light into blue light within the cell-laden 3D scaffolds are developed. The upconverted light can then excite optically active proteins in cells to trigger a photochemical response. The hydrogels operate by triplet–triplet annihilation upconversion. As proof-of-principle, it is found that the hydrogels trigger an optogenetic response by red/NIR irradiation of HeLa cells that have been engineered to express the blue-light sensitive protein Cry2olig. While it is remarkable to photoinduce the clustering of Cry2olig with blanket NIR irradiation in 3D, it is also demonstrated how the hydrogels trigger clustering within a single cell with great specificity and spatiotemporal control. In principle, these hydrogels may allow for photochemical control of cell function within 3D scaffolds, which can lead to a wealth of fundamental studies and biochemical applications.     

Learning and Predicting Photonic Responses of Plasmonic Nanoparticle Assemblies via Dual Variational Autoencoders

The application of machine learning is demonstrated for rapid and accurate extraction of plasmonic particles cluster geometries from hyperspectral image data via a dual variational autoencoder (dual-VAE). In this approach, the information is shared between the latent spaces of two VAEs acting on the particle shape data and spectral data, respectively, but enforcing a common encoding on the shape-spectra pairs. It is shown that this approach can establish the relationship between the geometric characteristics of nanoparticles and their far-field photonic responses, demonstrating that hyperspectral darkfield microscopy can be used to accurately predict the geometry (number of particles, arrangement) of a multiparticle assemblies below the diffraction limit in an automated fashion with high fidelity (for monomers (0.96), dimers (0.86), and trimers (0.58). This approach of building structure-property relationships via shared encoding is universal and should have applications to a broader range of materials science and physics problems in imaging of both molecular and nanomaterial systems.     

PolyHIPEs for Separations and Chemical Transformations: A Review

Polymeric foams prepared from polymerizing high internal-phase emulsions (polyHIPEs) provide several distinct advantages over conventional polymer resins for applications in separations as well as chemical transformations, most notably reliance on convective rather than diffusive mass transport. Elimination of the slow diffusion through pores of a typical macroporous resin bead allows for higher throughputs to be achieved using polyHIPE resins. This review will discuss recent examples of polyHIPE materials used in separations applications (metal complexation, ion-exchange, protein purification, chromatography, and oil/water separation) as well as supports for various catalysts (small molecules, nanoparticles, and enzymes) for chemical-transformation applications.     

Parent–child attachment and monitoring in middle childhood.

Research on parent–child attachment and parental child rearing practices has been pursued independently. The purpose of the present study was to test whether a secure attachment relationship is related to parental monitoring and child efforts to contribute to the monitoring process. This question was examined in a cross-sectional study of third- and sixth-grade children and their parents. Attachment-based measures were used to tap child and parent perceptions of attachment. Monitoring (i.e., parents' awareness of children's whereabouts and activities) was assessed through phone interviews with children and parents. Child contributions to monitoring were assessed with parent and child questionnaires. A more secure attachment was related to closer monitoring and greater cooperation by the child in monitoring situations, especially at sixth grade. The findings illustrate the importance of embedding attachment within a larger child rearing context. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Normative data for the F(p) Scale of the MMPI–2: Implications for clinical and forensic assessment of malingering.

Data from several clinical samples and the Minnesota Multiphasic Personality Inventory–2 standardization group are presented to familiarize the reader with response patterns of different groups on a new validity scale designed to assist in the identification of exaggeration or fabrication of psychological disturbance. Sensitivity-specificity analyses are included along with suggestions for use of the F(p) Scale with other validity scales. Cautions about setting single cutoff scores are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)