Adaptation level, personality theory, and psychopathology.

Adaptation-level (AL) theory represents a quantitative approach to the concept of adjustment and offers an experimental psychological point of departure for a science of personal and social behavior. It is suggested that a personality theory develop from classification of response types specifying relevant aspects of the focal, background, and residual factors. The various psychopathologies may be similarly viewed in terms of specific behavioral excesses or impairments within the framework of AL theory. A proposal for the use of AL theory in regard to personality and psychopathology is outlined and representative studies are cited. (58 ref.) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

What is the most environmentally beneficial way to treat commercial food waste?

Commercial food waste represents a relatively available high-quality feedstock for landfill diversion to biological treatment. A life-cycle assessment was performed for commercial food waste processed through aerobic composting systems of varying complexity, anaerobic digestion, and landfills with and without gas collection and energy recovery, as well as a bioreactor landfill. The functional unit was 1000 kg of food waste plus 550 kg of branches that are used as a bulking agent. For each alternative, global warming potential, NO(x) and SO(2) emissions, and total net energy use were determined. Anaerobic digestion was the most environmentally beneficial treatment option, leading to -395 kg net CO(2)e per functional unit. This result was driven by avoided electricity generation and soil carbon storage from use of the resulting soil amendment. The composting alternatives led to between -148 and -64 kg net CO(2)e, whereas the landfill alternatives led to the emission of -240 to 1100 kg CO(2)e. A traditional landfill with energy recovery was predicted to have lower emissions than any of the composting alternatives when a fertilizer offset was used. There is variation in the results based on uncertainty in the inputs, and the relative rankings of the alternatives are dependent on the soil amendment offset that is used. The use of compost to offset peat has greater emission offsets than the value of compost as a fertilizer.     

Implosive therapy: A critical analysis of Morganstern's review.

Presents a critique of K. P. Morganstern's (see record 1973-31818-001) review of implosive therapy and "flooding" literature. It is concluded that (a) the majority of negative results published by investigators using implosive therapy with analog Ss occurred with taped therapy presentations which violate the implosive therapy procedure in 2 important ways, (b) at the analog level only 1 study provided negative results with an actual therapist, (c) all patient therapy studies cited reported that an implosive therapy or flooding procedure was effective, (d) only 1 study using a live therapist reported that a systematic desensitization procedure was more effective than implosive therapy, and (e) whether it was the implosive therapy technique per se that produced the positive findings is still unclear. (24 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Isolation and partial characterization of the neutral glycosphingolipids and gangliosides of the human heart

The glycosphingolipids (GLS) of the human heart muscle have been isolated from total lipids by column and thin layer chromatography and their sugars and fatty acids analyzed by gas liquid chromatography. Hearts from traffic victims were obtained at autopsy between 12 and 16 hr after death and dissected into parts (left and right ventricular walls, intraventricular septum and papillary muscle). The neutral GSL content for those parts of the hearts of two males aged 22 and one female aged 14 ranged from about 90 to 160 nmoles/g wet weight. Trihexosyl ceramide and globoside were the most abundant neutral GSL. Total ganglioside content was about 50 nmoles/g wet weight, and the most abundant gangliosides were partially characterized as GM₃ and GM₁; other mono-, di- and trisialogangliosides were also present. Differences in the content and composition of neutral GSL and gangliosides between the heart and other human tissues are discussed. It is concluded that the patterns of these two GSL fractions of the heart are more complex than those of most of the extraneural human tissues.     

Distributing and Load Balancing Sparse Fluid Simulations

This paper describes a general algorithm and a system for load balancing sparse fluid simulations. Automatically distributing sparse fluid simulations efficiently is challenging because the computational load varies across the simulation domain and time. A key challenge with load balancing is that optimal decision making requires knowing the fluid distribution across partitions for future time steps, but computing this state for an arbitrary simulation requires running the simulation itself. The key insight of this paper is that it is possible to predict future load by running a speculative low resolution simulation in parallel. We mathematically formulate the problem of load balancing over multiple time steps and present a polynomial time algorithm to compute an approximate solution to it. Our experimental results show that distributing and speculatively load balancing sparse FLIP simulations over 8 nodes speeds them up by 5.3× to 7.9×, and that speculative load balancing generates assignments that perform within 20% of optimal.     

Differentiation of eight phenotypes and discovery of potential biomarkers for a single plant organ class using laser electrospray mass spectrometry and multivariate statistical analysis

Laser electrospray mass spectrometry (LEMS) coupled with offline multivariate statistical analysis is used to discriminate eight phenotypes from a single plant organ class and to find potential biomarkers. Direct analysis of the molecules from the flower petal is enabled by interfacing intense (10(13) W/cm(2)), nonresonant, femtosecond laser vaporization at ambient pressure with electrospray ionization for postionization of the vaporized analytes. The observed mass spectral signatures allowed for the discrimination of various phenotypes using principal component analysis (PCA) and either linear discriminant analysis (LDA) or K-nearest neighbor (KNN) classifiers. Cross-validation was performed using multiple training sets to evaluate the predictive ability of the classifiers, which showed 93.7% and 96.8% overall accuracies for the LDA and KNN classifiers, respectively. Linear combinations of significant mass spectral features were extracted from the PCA loading plots, demonstrating the capability to discover potential biomarkers from the direct analysis of tissue samples.     

Site diversity for satellite earth terminals and measurements at 28GHz

This work reviews site diversity concepts and models and presents the results of a site diversity experiment, in which radiometers were used to measure attenuation on Earth-space paths, performed at Columbus, Ohio, for a period of one year. Attenuation statistics are presented first in the form of the joint probability density function of attenuation at the two sites. From these are derived the cumulative two-dimensional distribution of attenuation at both sites, the cumulative distribution of attenuation at each site, the effective cumulative distribution of attenuation for a diversity system that always switches to the better of two signals, and the effective cumulative distribution of attenuation for a system with maximal-ratio signal combining. The switched-system diversity gain is compared with D.B. Hodge's (1982) predictive model, and the diversity improvement is compared with L. Boithias' (Radiowave Propagation, McGraw-Hill, 1987) model. Fade-duration and interfade-interval statistics are presented for each site and for systems that use switching and maximal-ratio combining. Rain-rate and interrainfall interval statistics are included     

A project-based approach to teaching research writing to nonnative writers

It is commonly accepted that writing instruction should meet the specific needs of writers and that students in scientific and technical fields benefit more by learning to write to match the requirements of their specific fields. A variety of models for writing classes have been proposed to meet these needs, from genre-based approaches to courses targeting specific disciplines to general courses serving a heterogeneous group of students from many disciplines. Although persuasive arguments can be made for discipline-specific writing courses, many writing courses for nonnative writers at U.S. universities operate with two key constraints. First, monetary and curricular limitations mean that students from a variety of disciplines are placed in the same course. Second, these courses are staffed by instructors who, while well-prepared in addressing language needs of nonnative writers, may know very little about the content and conventions of engineering and science. This paper discusses a writing course which works within these constraints and has been developed for graduate students who are early in their program of study. In the course, groups of students carry out an original research project as a vehicle to learn professional writing conventions common to research papers in a variety of scientific and engineering fields. In addition, students analyze written conventions in published articles within their fields to raise awareness of how general conventions are worked out in their individual disciplines. General principles for the course are discussed, and samples of successful research topics are provided.