Conducting Psychological Research in Medical Settings: Challenges, Limitations, and Recommendations for Effectiveness Research.

Efficacy research is insufficient and ineffective in changing practice, despite a large supporting psychotherapy efficacy literature. Concurrently, demand for supporting data and the burden on everyday practice for generating these data is increasing. The disconnect between efficacy and effectiveness is due to a lack of conceptual and methodological tools for testing efficacious procedures in real-world settings, particularly medical contexts. This article articulates the position that effectiveness studies pose more complex questions that require an alteration of conceptual and methodological frames of reference in order to make behavioral services available to the broadest patient base. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Poly(m‐phenylenediamine)‐coated 316L SS: A promising material for bipolar plates in PEMFC environment

The applicability of conducting polymer coatings to enhance corrosion resistance of bipolar plates in proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFC) is gaining greater significance as electrical conductivity is as important as corrosion resistance. Metaphenylenediamine (mPD) monomer was electropolymerized to poly(m‐phenylenediamine) (PmPD) conducting polymer over 316L SS and characterized by attenuated total reflectance infrared spectroscopy to confirm the formation of P mPD polymer. Scanning electron microscopy was used to study the surface morphology of the polymer. Open‐circuit potential, electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS), and potentiodynamic polarization studies were conducted to assess the corrosion protection performance of the PmPD polymer coating in PEMFC environment. The charge‐transfer resistance measured from EIS for the coated substrates was higher than the uncoated substrate. Potentiodynamic polarization studies showed lower corrosion current density for the PmPD‐coated substrates. All the results proved that the PmPD‐coated substrates could exhibit enhanced corrosion resistance in PEMFC environment.     

E-banking and customer preferences in Malaysia: An empirical investigation

This paper examines the current trends in the e-commerce revolution that has set in motion in the Malaysian banking sector and reports on an empirical research that was carried out in Malaysia to study the customers’ preference for electronic banking and the factors, which they considered influenced the adoption of electronic banking. Results based on the analysis of data relating to 300 respondents indicate that while there is no significant differences between the age and educational qualifications of the electronic and conventional banking users, some differences exists on other demographic variables. Analysis further reveals that accessibility of Internet, a wareness of e-banking, and customers’ reluctance to change are the factors that significantly affected the usage of e-banking in Malaysia. The paper discusses on the implications of these. Limitations of the study are highlighted and further research directions are suggested.     

Power analysis attack resilient block cipher implementation based on 1-of-4 data encoding

Side-channel attacks pose an inevitable challenge to the implementation of cryptographic algorithms, and it is important to mitigate them. This work identifies a novel data encoding technique based on 1-of-4 codes to resist differential power analysis attacks, which is the most investigated category of side-channel attacks. The four code words of the 1-of-4 codes, namely (0001, 0010, 1000, and 0100), are split into two sets: set-0 and set-1. Using a select signal, the data processed in hardware is switched between the two encoding sets alternately such that the Hamming weight and Hamming distance are equalized. As a case study, the proposed technique is validated for the NIST standard AES-128 cipher. The proposed technique resists differential power analysis performed using statistical methods, namely correlation, mutual information, difference of means, and Welch's t-test based on the Hamming weight and distance models. The experimental results show that the proposed countermeasure has an area overhead of 2.3× with no performance degradation comparatively.     

Mathematical modeling and the thermal performance of floating cum tilted-wick type solar still

In this paper, mathematical modeling for the thermal performance of floating cum tilted-wick type solar still has been presented. Explicit expressions for the temperatures of various components of the proposed system and its efficiency have been developed. The effect of mass flow rate due to capillary action of jute wick has been investigated for evaporative, convective, and radiative heat transfer from the evaporating surface to the condensing surface.It has been found that the mass flow rate of 2.5 x 10^?3 kg/s is optimum for effective distillation. Also, the effect of absorptivity of the wick surfaces (floating and tilted-wick) on the productivity of the solar still has been studied and found that α_w1 (absorptivity of the tilted-wick surface) and α_wf(absorptivity of the floating-wick surface) of 0.85 have given higher productivity.For enunciation of the analytical results, numerical calculations have been made using meteorological parameters for a typical winter and summer day in Coimbatore.The theoretical results are in good agreement with the experimental results.     

The design of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor

India has a moderate uranium reserve and a large thorium reserve. The primary energy resource for electricity generation in the country is coal. The potential of other resources like gas, oil, wind, solar and biomass is very limited. The only viable and sustainable resource is the nuclear energy. Presently, Pressurised Heavy Water Reactors utilizing natural uranium are in operation/under construction and the plutonium generated from these reactors will be multiplied through breeding in fast breeder reactors. The successful construction, commissioning and operation of Fast Breeder Test Reactor at Kalpakkam has given confidence to embark on the construction of the Prototype Fast Breeder Reactor (PFBR). This paper describes the salient design features of PFBR including the design of the reactor core, reactor assembly, main heat transport systems, component handling, steam water system, electrical power systems, instrumentation and control, plant layout, safety and research and development.     

Enhancing methane production by anaerobic co-digestion of extruded organic wastes from slaughterhouse and vegetable market in batch and continuous processes

Clean Technologies and Environmental Policy - The organic wastes generated from centralized wholesale markets from urban centres are predominantly disposed in dumpsites/landfills. Although...