Words of wisdom: Language use over the life span.

Two projects explored the links between language use and aging. In the first project, written or spoken text samples from disclosure studies from over 3,000 research participants from 45 different studies representing 21 laboratories in 3 countries were analyzed to determine how people change in their use of 14 text dimensions as a function of age. A separate project analyzed the collected works of 10 well-known novelists, playwrights, and poets who lived over the last 500 years. Both projects found that with increasing age, individuals use more positive and fewer negative affect words, use fewer self-references, use more future-tense and fewer past-tense verbs, and demonstrate a general pattern of increasing cognitive complexity. Implications for using language as a marker of personality among current and historical texts are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identification of interaction site of pseudoazurin with its redox partner, copper-containing nitrite reductase from Alcaligenes faecalis S-6

Pseudoazurin, a low molecular weight protein containing a singletype I copper, functions as an electron donor to a copper-containingnitrite reductase (NIR) in a denitrifying bacterium Alcaligenesfaecalis S-6. To elucidate the proteinprotein interaction betweenthese two copper-containing proteins, each of nine out of 13lysine residues on the surface of pseudoazurin were independentlyreplaced by alanine or aspartate, and the effects of the mutationson the interaction with NIR, as well as the physicochemicalproperties of pseudoazurin, were analyzed. All of the mutatedpseudoazurins showed optical spectra and oxidation-reductionpotentials almost identical to those of wildtype pseudoazurin,suggesting that none of the replacements of these lysine residuesaffected the environment around the type I copper site. Kineticanalysis of electron transfer between mutated pseudoazurinsand NIR reveals that the lysine mutations have very little effecton the rate of electron transfer to NIR, but substitution atresidues 10, 38, 57 and 77, all close to the copper site, substantiallydecreases the affinity of pseudoazurin for NIR. This suggeststhat pseudoazurin interacts with NIR through the region closeto the type I copper site. The refined X-ray structures of Lys38Aspand Lys10Asp/Lys38Asp show that the molecular structure hasindeed changed little. A new space group is observed for theLys109Ala mutant crystal. Crystal packing interactions changefor the Lys10Asp/Lys38Asp mutant but remain the same for Lys38Aspand Lys59Ala mutants.     

Process training to improve children's referential communication: Asher and Wigfield (1981) revisited.

Presented 20 3rd- and 65 4th-grade Ss with a referential communication task in which they were required to generate a clue for an imaginary listener that would allow the listener to know which of 2 similar words (e.g., baby-child) was the referent. The optimal strategy for the task involved (a) generating an associate to the referent, (b) comparing the candidate clue with the referent and nonreferent, and (c) evaluating whether the clue was more highly associated with the referent than with the nonreferent. Children do not spontaneously carry out the comparison and evaluation components of this optimal strategy. Ss in the present complete instruction condition were taught to both compare and evaluate; their performance exceeded control performance for both easy and difficult materials. Comparison or evaluation training alone produced better clue production only for easy materials. Results are relevant to theoretical claims about referential communication and to the hypothesis that strategy instruction with schoolchildren should be elaborated and complete. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Interactive simulation and visualization of massless, massed, and evaporating particles

Most software packages available for particle tracing focus on visualizing steady or unsteady vector fields by using massless particle trajectories. For many applications, however, the use of massed and evaporating particles would provide a model of physical processes that could be used in product testing or design. In this article we describe the TrackPack toolkit, which provides an integrated interface for computing massless, massed, and evaporating particle trajectories in steady flow. In all cases, we assume a noncoupled model and compute particle trajectories through an existing vector field by numerically integrating with forward Euler, fourth-order Runge-Kutta, or an analytic streamline calculation. The TrackPack software effort was motivated by an industrial application to model pollution control systems in industrial boilers. We briefly describe the project and the visualization environment, and we demonstrate the necessity for massed, evaporating models in the application.     

Analysis and generation grammars

This paper describes the analysis and generation grammars for English and Japanese as they were employed in the KBMT-89 program. We discuss word order, coordination, subcategorization, morphological rules, rule ordering and bi-directional grammars.     

Enhancing the effectiveness of relaxation-thermal biofeedback training with propranolol hydrochloride.

This article evaluated the ability of propranolol to enhance results achieved with relaxation-biofeedback training. Thirty-three patients were randomized to relaxation-biofeedback training alone (administered in a limited-contact treatment format), or to relaxation-biofeedback training accompanied by long-acting propranolol (with dosage individualized at 60, 120, or 180 mg/day). Concomitant propranolol therapy significantly enhanced the effectiveness of relaxation-biofeedback training when either daily headache recordings (79% vs. 54% reduction in migraine activity) or neurologist clinical evaluations (90% vs. 66% reduction) were used to assess treatment outcome. Concomitant propranolol therapy also yielded larger reductions in analgesic medication use and greater improvements of quality of life measures than relaxation-biofeedback training alone but was more frequently associated with side effects. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Control of human aggression: A comparative perspective.

Recent animal research has demonstrated that humans are not a uniquely aggressive species and that even in so-called violence-prone animals, aggression is always an optional strategy. Although some form of intraspecific aggression exists in every vertebrate species studied thus far, it is also true that all organisms have coevolved equally potent inhibitory mechanisms that enable them to use an aggressive strategy selectively or to suppress aggression when it is in their interest to do so. Parallel studies of aggression in children, assaultive adults, and even entire societies have suggested that humans are exquisitely sensitive to subtle social controls that could be used to reduce the frequency of individual acts of violence. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)