Narcissism, sexual refusal, and aggression: Testing a narcissistic reactance model of sexual coercion.

Laboratory analog studies investigated the theory that narcissism and reactance contribute to causing rape. In Study 1, narcissism correlated positively with rape-supportive beliefs and negatively with empathy for rape victims. In Study 2, narcissists reported more enjoyment than other men of film depictions that presented consensual, affectionate activity followed by rape (but not in response to either affection or rape alone). In Study 3, narcissists were more punitive than other men toward a female confederate who refused to read a sexually arousing passage aloud to them. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Intellectual performance and ego depletion: Role of the self in logical reasoning and other information processing.

Some complex thinking requires active guidance by the self, but simpler mental activities do not. Depletion of the self's regulatory resources should therefore impair the former and not the latter. Resource depletion was manipulated by having some participants initially regulate attention (Studies 1 and 3) or emotion (Study 2). As compared with no-regulation participants who did not perform such exercises, depleted participants performed worse at logic and reasoning (Study 1), cognitive extrapolation (Study 2), and a test of thoughtful reading comprehension (Study 3). The same manipulations failed to cause decrements on a test of general knowledge (Study 2) or on memorization and recall of nonsense syllables (Study 3). Successful performance at complex thinking may therefore rely on limited regulatory resources. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Advanced New Lightweight Materials: Hollow‐Sphere Composites (HSCs) for Mechanical Engineering Applications

“Lightweight” is a major trend in machine tool design to ensure higher speed and higher acceleration of elements, which results from state‐of‐the‐art technology, such as the new linear drive and the control system.^[1] Research is being carried out in institutes worldwide into lightweight construction by either design and/or choice of material. One type of advanced lightweight engineering material to reduce the mass of the moving parts of machine tools is hollow‐sphere composites. Investigations of their thermal and mechanical properties show the superior quality of HSCs compared with alternative materials. Example applications of hollow‐sphere composites include the table of a milling machine and robot arms.     

Dissecting the assembly pathway of the 20S proteasome

Embryogenic cell lines of Pinus caribaea were isolated from somatic embryogenesis from zygotic embryos. Previous studies showed that the proteins and glycoproteins were characteristic of the embryogenic state. In the present work we were seeking typical feature in the polysaccharide from the cell walls of embryogenic calli at nine days of culture. Sequential extraction with water, ammonium oxalate, dimethyl sulfoxide, sodium borohydride and 4.3 M potassium hydroxide revealed that the extracted polysaccharides contained high proportions of arabinose and significant amounts of xylose. Fractionation of the hydrosoluble polymers on DEAE cellulose afforded a xylose-rich fraction (80% xylose, 24% glucose and lower properties of fucose and mannose). Methylation analysis and 13C-NMR spectra showed that the glycan backbone consisted of beta 1 --> 4 linked xylosyl residues Similar study of the fractions extracted respectively with DMSO and 4.3 M KOH showed the presence of polydisperse glycoxylans but excluded the presence of xyloglucan in significant amount. This could be a characteristic feature of embryogenic cells walls of Pinus caribaea or could be typical of cells grown as calluses. In the various fractions obtained from DEAE cellulose chromatography of the alkaline extract the infrequent occurrence of fucoxylans beside an arabinogalactan showed again the unusual nature of the cell wall polymers of this embryogenic lines, which seems to differ greatly from those found in the primary wall of cells from suspension cultures.     

A critique of the application of sensory integration therapy to children with learning disabilities

Sensory integration (SI) therapy is a controversial--though popular--treatment for the remediation of motor and academic problems. It has been applied primarily to children with learning disabilities, under the assumption that such children (or at least a subgroup of them) have problems in sensory integration to which some or all of their learning difficulties can be ascribed. The present article critically examines the related issues of whether children with learning disabilities differentially exhibit concomitant problems in sensory integration, and whether such children are helped in any way by means specific to SI therapy. An overview of theoretical contentions and empirical findings pertaining to the first issue is presented, followed by a detailed review of recent studies in the SI therapy research literature, in an effort to resolve the second issue. Results of this critique raise serious doubts as to the validity or utility of SI therapy as an appropriate, indicated treatment for the clinical population in question--and, by extension, for any other groups diagnosed as having "sensory integrative dysfunction." It is concluded that the current fund of research findings may well be sufficient to declare SI therapy not merely an unproven, but a demonstrably ineffective, primary or adjunctive remedial treatment for learning disabilities and other disorders.     

In vivo fluorescence microscopy for the assessment of microvascular reperfusion injury in small bowel transplants in rats

With the use of in vivo fluorescence microscopy we have analyzed microvascular reperfusion injury of small bowel isograft transplants in rats. Following 1 hr cold storage in University of Wisconsin solution, the small bowel was transplanted heterotopically, and the intestinal microcirculation was quantitatively analyzed 20-60 min after onset of reperfusion. The intestinal grafts' capillary perfusion of both the mucosa and the circular and longitudinal muscles was not found altered when compared with the intestinal capillary perfusion of sham-operated controls. In contrast, leukocyte-endothelial cell interaction, including leukocyte rolling (40 +/- 5%) and sticking (280 +/- 100 mm-2) in submucosal postcapillary venules, was significantly increased when compared with nontransplanted controls (12 +/- 8% and 20 +/- 10 mm-2, P < 0.01 and P < 0.05, respectively). Leukocyte-endothelial cell interaction was associated with a marked alteration of lymphatic capillary drainage, as indicated by the low functional density of lymphatic microvessels of 10.2 +/- 6.1 cm-1 (P < 0.01 vs. sham-operated controls (39.2 +/- 6.1 cm-1)). From these results we propose that leukocyte-endothelial cell interaction, not capillary "no-reflow," is the primary step in the manifestation of microvascular reperfusion injury following a short period of cold ischemia in small bowel grafts.     

Anomalies in ontologies with rules

For the development of practical semantic applications, ontologies are commonly used with rule extensions. Prominent examples of semantic applications not only are Semantic Wikis, Semantic Desktops, but also advanced Web Services and agents. The application of rules increases the expressiveness of the underlying knowledge in many ways. Likewise, the integration not only creates new challenges for the design process of such ontologies, but also existing evaluation methods have to cope with the extension of ontologies by rules.Since the verification of Owl ontologies with rule extensions is not tractable in general, we propose to verify ontologies at the symbolic level by using a declarative approach: With the new language Datalog^?, known anomalies can be easily specified and tested in a compact manner. We introduce supplements to existing verification techniques to support the design of ontologies with rule enhancements, and we focus on the detection of anomalies that especially occur due to the combined use of rules and ontological definitions.     

Knowledge visualization for evaluation tasks

Although various methods for the evaluation of intelligent systems have been proposed in the past, almost no techniques are present that support the manual inspection of knowledge bases by the domain specialist. Manual knowledge base inspection is an important and frequently applied method in knowledge engineering. Since it can hardly be performed in an automated manner, it is a time-consuming and costly task. In this paper, we discuss a collection of appropriate visualization techniques that help developers to interactively browse and analyze the knowledge base in order to find deficiencies and semantic errors in their implementation. We describe standard visualization methods adapted to specifically support the analysis of the static knowledge base structure, but also of the usage of knowledge base objects such as questions or solutions. Additionally, we introduce a novel visualization technique that supports the validation of the derivation and interview behavior of a knowledge system in a semi-automatic manner. The application of the presented methods was motivated by the daily practice of knowledge base development.     

Replication of LIGA structures using microcasting

Microcasting with a gold base alloy and an Al-bronze as a replication technique for LIGA structures is shown. A LIGA mold insert for injection molding is used to produce PMMA patterns as lost wax models in the microcasting process. Although there are several steps of replication the accuracy of the process is high and allows the fast manufacturing of middle size batches of microstructured parts. The mechanical properties can be varied within a wide range by choosing different casting alloys or cooling rates. Additionally the influence of the investment on the surface roughness is presented as well as results of flowlength tests showing maximal achievable aspect ratios with the gold base alloy and the Al-bronze.The funding of this work within Collaborative Research Center SFB 499 by Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) is gratefully acknowledged. Thanks also to the colleagues in the SFB 499 for good collaboration, especially to S. Rath for providing special investments for microcasting.