Egg Thiamine Status of Lake Ontario Salmonines 1995–2004 with Emphasis on Lake Trout

Alewives (Alosa pseudoharengus), the major prey fish for Lake Ontario, contain thiaminase. They are associated with development of a thiamine deficiency in salmonines which greatly increases the potential for developing an early mortality syndrome (EMS). To assess the possible effects of thiamine deficiency on salmonine reproduction we measured egg thiamine concentrations for five species of Lake Ontario salmonines. From this we estimated the proportion of families susceptible to EMS based on whether they were below the ED20, the egg thiamine concentration associated with 20% mortality due to EMS. The ED20s were 1.52, 2.63, and 2.99 nmol/g egg for Chinook salmon (Oncorhynchus tshawytscha), lake trout (Salvelinus namaycush), and coho salmon (Oncorhynchus kisutch), respectively. Based on the proportion of fish having egg thiamine concentrations falling below the ED20, the risk of developing EMS in Lake Ontario was highest for lake trout, followed by coho (O. kisutch), and Chinook salmon, with the least risk for rainbow trout (O. mykiss). For lake trout from western Lake Ontario, mean egg thiamine concentration showed significant annual variability during 1994 to 2003, when the proportion of lake trout at risk of developing EMS based on ED20 ranged between 77 and 100%. Variation in the annual mean egg thiamine concentration for western Lake Ontario lake trout was positively related (p < 0.001, r² = 0.94) with indices of annual adult alewife biomass. While suggesting the possible involvement of density-dependent changes in alewives, the changes are small relative to egg thiamine concentrations when alewife are not part of the diet and are of insufficient magnitude to allow for natural reproduction by lake trout.     

An integrated energy planning model for Illinois

An integrated energy supply and demand model for the state of Illinois is described. This equilibrium model is an important tool for integrating information from a variety of planning studies and data bases. A wide range of energy issues affecting diverse areas of the energy system, such as Illinois coal production under alternate oil price assumptions, renewable energy resource potential, and conservation options, can be analyzed by using the model.     

Confidentiality in psychotherapy: History, issues, and research.

Discusses ethical guidelines of the American Psychological Association regarding confidentiality in psychotherapy. Possible inconsistencies between these guidelines and privileged communication are explored. It is asserted that additional research is needed to determine the implications for psychotherapy of the ethical limitations to confidentiality and the legal restrictions on privileged communication. The relevance of moral philosophy to issues of confidentiality is considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Responses of Dairy Cows to Exogenous Bovine Growth Hormone Administered During Early Lactation

Bovine growth hormone was administered to eight Holstein cows during two 10-d periods (commencing 20 and 60 d postpartum). Treatments involved daily subcutaneous injection of excipient (control) or of 50 IU growth hormone. Feed intake and yields of milk and milk components were measured during the last 5 d of treatment. In the first injection period, milk yield of treated cows was 6% greater than that of controls (36.2 kg/d). Fat content of milk was increased by treatment with the result that fat yield was elevated by 25%. Protein content was not altered. In the second period, milk yield increased by 12%, but composition of milk was not changed. As a result, milk energy secretion was increased by a similar amount in each treatment period (4.4 versus 4.5 Mcal/d). Feed intake was not changed in either period. During early lactation the ability of cows to increase milk yield in response to exogenous growth hormone may be limited by the supply of glucose for lactose synthesis rather than by ability to mobilize body reserves in support of lactation.     

The economics of energy efficiency for the poor—a South African case study

South Africa’s Reconstruction and Development Programme set ambitious goals for providing basic services to all, including housing and electrification. More efficient use of energy has the potential to socially and politically support these goals, particularly when it is targeted at low-income communities lacking adequate energy services. This paper examines the economics of energy efficiency for the urban poor from the perspective of society, utilities and poor consumers, using five example programmes. While the five energy efficiency programmes generally have significant economic and environmental benefits from a social perspective, they may not be as attractive to utilities and consumers. Also examined are the policy options for overcoming the significant barriers to energy efficiency, and ways government can bridge the gap between what is good for society and what is good for the electricity industry.     

Context and lexical access: Implications of nonword interference for lexical ambiguity resolution.

To eliminate potential "backward" priming effects, S. Glucksberg et al (see record 1986-29080-001) introduced a variant of the cross-modal lexical priming task in which subjects made lexical decisions to nonword targets that were modeled on a word related to either the contextually biased or unbiased sense of an ambiguous word. Lexical decisions to nonwords were longer than controls only when the nonword was related to the contextually biased sense of the ambiguous word, leading Glucksberg et al to conclude that context does constrain lexical access and that the multiple access pattern observed in previous studies was probably an artifact of backward priming. We did not find nonword interference when the nonword targets used by Glucksberg et al were preceded by semantically related ambiguous or unambiguous word primes. However, we did replicate their sentence context results when the ambiguous words were removed from the sentences. We conclude that the interference obtained by Glucksberg et al is due to postlexical judgments of the congruence of the sentence context and the target, not to context constraining lexical access. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Bizarre imagery, interference, and distinctiveness.

Previous studies have shown that bizarre and common images produce equivalent levels of recall in unmixed-list designs. Using unmixed lists, we tested the view that bizarre images would be less susceptible than common images to common sources of interference. In all experiments, subjects imaged a list of either bizarre or common sentences and then performed some kind of interfering task before recalling the initial list of sentences. Experiment 1 showed that bizarre images were better accessed than common images after imaging an intervening list of common sentences. Also, components of common images tended to be better recalled than those of bizarre images after imaging an intervening list of bizarre sentences. Experiments 2a and 2b showed that interfering tasks consisting of studying lists of common concrete nouns did not differentially affect memory for bizarre and common images. In Experiment 3, labeling and imaging an interfering list of common pictures produced higher recall of bizarre images. Generally, bizarre images appeared to be less susceptible than common images to interference from certain types of common encodings. Importantly, the superior recall of bizarre images was always due to greater image (sentence) access, whereas higher recall of common images was associated with greater recovery of the image (sentence) constituents. Explanation of the precise pattern of results requires consideration of the distinctive properties of bizarre images. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Relative importance of evaluation criteria for enterprise systems: a conjoint study

Abstract.  While a large body of research exists on the development and implementation of software, organizations are increasingly acquiring enterprise software packages [e.g. enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems] instead of custom developing their own software applications. To be competitive in the marketplace, software package development firms must manage the three-pronged trade-off between cost, quality and functionality. Surprisingly, prior research has made little attempt to investigate the characteristics of packaged software that influence management information system (MIS) managers' likelihood of recommending purchase. As a result, both the criteria by which MIS managers evaluate prospective packaged systems and the attributes that lead to commercially competitive ERP software products are poorly understood. This paper examines this understudied issue through a conjoint study. We focus on ERP systems, which are among the largest and most complex packaged systems that are purchased by organizations. In a conjoint study, 1008 evaluation decisions based on hypothetical ERP software package profiles were completed by managers in 126 organizations. The study represents the first empirical investigation of the relative importance that managers ascribe to various factors that are believed to be important in evaluating packaged software. The results provide important insights for both organizations that acquire such systems and those that develop them. The results show that functionality, reliability, cost, ease of use and ease of customization are judged to be important criteria, while ease of implementation and vendor reputation were not found to be significant. Functionality and reliability were found to be the most heavily weighted factors. We conclude the paper with a detailed discussion of the results and their implications for software acquisition and development practice.