Book review

Book reviewed in this article: Sensory Evaluation Techniques, 4th edition Authors: Morten C. Meilgaard, B. Thomas Carr and Gail Vance Civille     

Intragroup status and social presence in online fan groups

Low and high status member posts from online fan message board posts were examined. Low status members, as compared to high status members, were found to use more intimacy and immediacy social presence cues, including: praise for the group, self-disclosure, friendly and positive affective language, first person singular pronouns, and present tense verbs. Low status members were less likely than high status members to use articles, larger words, and discrepancy words. Lastly, low status members were rated as more likeable than high status members. The results suggest that low status members may strategically use social presence cues as a means of ingratiating themselves to the group.     

Organic–Inorganic Nanohybridization by Block Copolymer Thin Films

A simple route for fabricating highly ordered organic–inorganic hybrid nanostructures, using polystyrene‐block‐poly(ethylene oxide) diblock copolymer (PS‐b‐PEO) thin films coupled with sol–gel chemistry, is presented. Hexagonally packed arrays of titania nanodomains were generated by one‐step spin‐coating from solutions containing a titania precursor and PS‐b‐PEO, where the precursor was selectively incorporated into the PEO domain. The PS‐b‐PEO template was subsequently removed by UV treatment, leaving behind a highly dense array of hexagonally packed titania dots. The size of the dots, as well as the lattice spacing of the array, could be fine‐tuned by simply controlling the relative amount of sol–gel precursor to PS‐b‐PEO.     

School counselors perceived importance of counseling technology competencies

The purpose of this study was to determine levels of perceived importance of technological competencies among school counselors, school counseling students, supervisors, and counselor educators as the competencies relate to their work. Results indicated that technology competencies relating to Ethical Standards and Data Management practices were rated as most important. Technological competencies rated lowest for level of importance related to Multimedia and Web Development. Four of the other subscales were very similar in overall average ratings and included Word Processing, World Wide Web, Communication and Collaboration, and Operating Systems. In addition, findings indicate that neither the participant’s age, level of practice, or position (e.g., graduate student vs. practitioner) affects the perceived importance of technological competencies included in this survey. Implications for practice, training, and future research are included.     

Implicit effects of justice on self-identity.

The authors provide one of the first tests of whether justice has effects at implicit or subconscious levels. By manipulating justice in a laboratory experiment, they found that the activation of interdependent and individual self-identities were higher when people experienced fairness and unfairness, respectively. Although these effects occurred at both implicit and explicit levels, they were stronger in the former case. These identity-based effects proved to be important because they mediated the effects of justice on trust and on cooperative and counterproductive behaviors. Implications of these findings for theory and practice are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Kappa-Carrageenan Gel Immobilisation of Lager Brewing Yeast

Kappa-carrageenan has been found to be a suitable carrier for yeast immobilisation for continuous fermentation systems due to its unique properties. Brewing lager yeast immobilised in kappa-carrageenan beads was studied both in batch and in a continuously fermenting gas lift bioreactor. The cells were monitored over a six month period of continuous fermentation. Viability (methylene blue), immobilised cell concentration and distribution, and the morphological characteristics of the cells (electron microscopy) were investigated. Viability of cells within the beads was found to decline to less than 50% after six months of continuous wort fermentation and maximum bead population did not exceed 10⁹ cells/mL of gel bead.     

Enterprise Modelling the Telecommunications Industry

The telecommunications industry is becoming both more co-operative and more competitive and this has dramatic consequences on the character of operational support. Operational activities make up the majority of telecommunications companies, and investment in these activities is huge. Dynamic markets and emerging new roles and supply chains stress the design of such operational systems and processes, some of which can trace their origins back to the monopolistic days of the past. This paper presents preparatory work in the search for new architectural tools to prepare operational support for the next millennium. The paper provides a definition for a value-adding enterprise and shows how conversation theory can help analyse the interaction of roles within an enterprise model. Such models can describe the interaction between responsibilities within enterprises and, in future, the required operational support systems, activities, data and processes.     

An adaptive high-voltage protection and common-mode adjustment circuit for passive–active continuous-time sigma–delta ADCs

A digitally-programmable circuit is proposed to provide high-voltage protection at start-up, overload, and supply loss conditions in continuous-time passive–active sigma delta ADCs implemented in low-voltage nanometer CMOS technologies. The circuit optimizes the common-mode level at the input stage of the ADC enabling it to interface with input levels beyond its own supply voltage with no impact on device reliability or distortion levels, and minimum impact on area and noise performance, which provides maximum flexibility in the ADC usage. The proposed circuit along with the full ADC is implemented in a typical 65 nm CMOS technology.     

Random Cnf’s are Hard for the Polynomial Calculus

We prove linear lower bounds on the Polynomial Calculus (PC) refutation-degree of random CNF whenever the underlying field has characteristic greater than 2. Our proof follows by showing the PC refutation-degree of a unsatisfiable system of linear equations modulo 2 is equivalent to its Gaussian width, a concept defined by the late Mikhail Alekhnovich.