The Efficacy of Play Therapy With Children: A Meta-Analytic Review of Treatment Outcomes.

The efficacy of psychological interventions for children has long been debated among mental health professionals; however, only recently has this issue received national attention, with the U.S. Public Health Service (2000) emphasizing the critical need for early intervention and empirically validated treatments tailored to children's maturational needs. Play therapy is a developmentally responsive intervention widely used by child therapists but often criticized for lacking an adequate research base to support its growing practice. A meta-analysis of 93 controlled outcome studies (published 1953-2000) was conducted to assess the overall efficacy of play therapy and to determine factors that might impact its effectiveness. The overall treatment effect for play therapy interventions was 0.80 standard deviations. Further analysis revealed that effects were more positive for humanistic than for nonhumanistic treatments and that using parents in play therapy produced the largest effects. Play therapy appeared equally effective across age, gender, and presenting issue. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Some key effects on the failure assessment of weld repairs in CrMoV pipelines using continuum damage modelling

Some typical results obtained from finite element (FE) creep and continuum damage mechanics analyses, for assessing weld repair performance, are presented. The work outlines some developments in failure analyses of repaired welds in pressurised, thick-walled, main steam circumferential pipe weldments made of CrMoV steels. Methods involved in determining the material properties for constitutive equations are briefly described. Results presented cover a range of analyses, taking account of the effects of repair profiles/dimensions, geometry change during creep, end (system) loading, reheating effects in the weld metal of partial repair welds and initial damage level, etc., on the failure life of the repaired welds. The potential uses and limitations of the damage analysis for weld repair performance assessment are discussed.     

Improvements in the model for interoperability of intrusion detection responses compatible with the IDWG model

This paper presents a model for response interoperability between intruder detection systems (IDSs), compatible with the model for alert interoperability developed by the Intrusion Detection Working Group (IDWG). Alterations in IDS IDWG architecture are proposed in order to provide for response interoperability support. The development and testing of the proposed model and its components are also presented. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Measured Noise Performance for Heterodyne Detection of 10-Gb/s OOK and DPSK

Heterodyne detection of 10-Gb/s nonreturn-to-zero (NRZ) on-off keying and NRZ differential phase-shift keying is demonstrated. The noise performance of the heterodyne receiver with and without the use of an optical preamplifier is experimentally investigated     

‘Best’ for whom?: the tension between ‘best practice’ ERP packages and diverse epistemic cultures in a university context

The idea that so-called ‘best’ business practices can be transferred to organizations when they purchase enterprise resource planning (ERP) software packages is a major selling point of these packages. Yet recent research has illustrated a gap between the espoused theory of a best practice solution and the theory-in-use experienced by those who install software with such a design. As researchers begin to examine the difficult process by which organizations recast the best practices model handed down to them by consultancies and software vendors in an effort to make the software ‘work for them’ in practice, it is equally important that we begin to understand the reasons that such a gap exists. To this end, we analyze the strategic partnership between a multinational software vendor and a university who together designed a ‘best practice’ ERP package for the higher education industry. Through the theoretical lens of ‘epistemic cultures’ we argue that in organizational contexts made up of more than one epistemic culture, the use of a best practice model will be problematic because, by definition, the model mandates one epistemological position through the software design. This is counter to a university's loosely coupled organizational form.     

Chemical modification of poly(styrene-co-acrylonitrile) with 2-aminoalcohols and 3-aminoalcohol

Nitrile groups of poly(styrene-co-acrylonitrile) (SAN) can be converted to 2-substituted Δ²-oxazoline using 2-aminoethanol. The formation of oxazoline in SAN can be significantly increased through addition of substituted aminoalcohols like 2-amino-2-ethylpropane-1,3-diol and 2-aminobutanol and through reaction with 3-aminopropanol using dibutyltin oxide as catalyst. Using this procedure, dihydro-4H-oxazine can be easily produced from 3-aminopropanol due to the lower ring tension in comparison with the five-membered oxazoline ring.     

Control of TRPM3 Ion Channels by Protein Kinase CK2-Mediated Phosphorylation in Pancreatic β-Cells of the Line INS-1

In pancreatic β-cells of the line INS-1, glucose uptake and metabolism induce the openings of Ca²⁺-permeable TRPM3 channels that contribute to the elevation of the intracellular Ca²⁺ concentration and the fusion of insulin granules with the plasma membrane. Conversely, glucose-induced Ca²⁺ signals and insulin release are reduced by the activity of the serine/threonine kinase CK2. Therefore, we hypothesized that TRPM3 channels might be regulated by CK2 phosphorylation. We used recombinant TRPM3α2 proteins, native TRPM3 proteins from INS-1 β-cells, and TRPM3-derived oligopeptides to analyze and localize CK2-dependent phosphorylation of TRPM3 channels. The functional consequences of CK2 phosphorylation upon TRPM3-mediated Ca²⁺ entry were investigated in Fura-2 Ca²⁺-imaging experiments. Recombinant TRPM3α2 channels expressed in HEK293 cells displayed enhanced Ca²⁺ entry in the presence of the CK2 inhibitor CX-4945 and their activity was strongly reduced after CK2 overexpression. TRPM3α2 channels were phosphorylated by CK2 in vitro at serine residue 1172. Accordingly, a TRPM3α2 S₁₁₇₂A mutant displayed enhanced Ca²⁺ entry. The TRPM3-mediated Ca²⁺ entry in INS-1 β-cells was also strongly increased in the presence of CX-4945 and reduced after overexpression of CK2. Our study shows that CK2-mediated phosphorylation controls TRPM3 channel activity in INS-1 β-cells.