George Martin Haslerud (1906–1990): Obituary.

Commemorates G. M. Haslerud, who died suddenly on April 10, 1990. In his doctoral dissertation (1934) he addressed free and prescribed maze patterns in rats, pointing to a lifetime interest in creative transfer. In 1972 he completed his magnum opus, Transfer, Memory, and Creativity: After-Learning as Perceptual Process, which reflects continuing conversations with his mentor, Robert Yerkes. Haslerud is remembered as a co-founder of the New Hampshire Psychological Association. (0 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effect of cisplatin and c-myb antisense phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotides combination on a human colon carcinoma cell line in vitro and in vivo

We investigated the effect of c-myb antisense phosphorothioate oligodeoxynucleotides [(S)ODNs] and cisplatin (CDDP) combination on the human colon carcinoma cell line LoVo Dx both in vitro and in nude mice bearing LoVo Dx solid tumour. We show that antisense (S)ODN treatment decreases c-myb mRNA and protein expression, induces growth arrest in the G1 phase of the cell cycle, and inhibits cell proliferation. In vivo treatment with c-myb antisense (S)ODNs results in a reduction in tumour growth. A greater inhibition of cell proliferation in vitro and a higher increase of tumour growth inhibition and growth delay in vivo were obtained with the combination of (S)ODNs and CDDP than when the two agents were administered separately. This comparative study, using the same tumour cell line in vitro and in vivo, suggests that c-myb antisense (S)ODNs might be useful in the therapy of colon cancer in combination with antineoplastic drugs.     

Dispersion equilibria in spatial Cournot competition

We consider the standard model of spatial Cournot competition and show that for dispersion equilibria to exist, (a) a necessary condition is that the distribution be not unimodal, and (b) a sufficient condition is that the distribution be convex with a unique antimode and that asymmetry is not too strong.     

Effect of solvent type on the extractability of bioactive compounds,antioxidant capacity and colour properties of natural annatto extracts

This study was conducted to obtain annatto extracts with both high antioxidant capacity and colour potential using solvents of different polarities (water, ethanol/water, ethanol, ethanol/ethyl acetate and ethyl acetate). The highest levels of total phenolic compounds were found in the water, ethanol/water and ethanol extracts (0.5 mg GAE mL^?1), and the highest level of bixin was found in the ethanol/ethyl acetate extract (5.2 mg mL^?1), which was characterised as the reddest and the most vivid one (a* = 40.5, h° = 46.1, C* = 58.4). The ethanol/ethyl acetate extract also showed the highest antioxidant activity (4.7 μm TEAC mL^?1) and the highest percentage of tryptophan protection against singlet oxygen (63.6%). On the other hand, ethyl acetate and ethanol/water were the least effective solvents for the extraction of phenolic compounds and bixin, respectively. According to the multivariate statistical analysis, ethanol/ethyl acetate and ethyl acetate were the most promising solvents to obtain annatto extracts with both antioxidant and colour properties.     

Mind over matter: Perceived success at psychokinesis.

Four experiments with 212 undergraduates showed that Ss' estimates of success on a psychokinetic (PK) task were independent of actual performance. In Exp I, Ss given a positive introductory set or no set about PK evidenced more illusory control than Ss given a negative set. In Exp II, both degree of general belief in psychic phenomena and the number of practice trials that Ss received influenced performance estimates, with high believers who received 10 practice trials providing the highest estimates and low believers who received 1 practice trial the lowest. In Exp III, Ss actively involved with the PK task judged their performance more positively than passively involved Ss. Exp IV showed that when they were actively involved in the task, Ss with an internal locus of control (Rotter's Internal–External Locus of Control Scale) gave higher estimates of their success than Ss with an external locus of control. When passively involved, internals and externals did not reliably differ in their estimates, but their estimates were lower in those of active/internals. Results support E. J. Langer's illusion-of-control theory and highlight the importance of general psychic belief and locus-of-control orientation in affecting perceived success at a psychic task. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Optimal Energy Dissipation in Sliding Friction Simulations

Non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, of crucial importance in sliding friction, are hampered by arbitrariness and uncertainties in the removal of the frictionally generated Joule heat. Building upon general pre-existing formulation, we implement a fully microscopic dissipation approach which, based on a parameter-free, non-Markovian, stochastic dynamics, absorbs Joule heat equivalently to a semi-infinite solid, and harmonic substrate. As a test case, we investigate the stick?Cslip friction of a slider over a two-dimensional Lennard-Jones solid, comparing our virtually exact frictional results with approximate ones from commonly adopted dissipation schemes. Remarkably, the exact results can be closely reproduced by a standard Langevin dissipation scheme, once its parameters are determined according to a general and self-standing variational procedure.     

Polymeric Copper Oxide: Preparation and Investigation of Its Structure and Optical Properties

A complex of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) with copper hydroxide was used as a precursor to obtain polymeric copper oxide through thermal decomposition. The absence of Cu(OH)₂ crystalline phase was observed for the component ratio up to 1 Cu(OH)₂ molecular unit to 3 PVA residuals. The formation of crystalline copper oxide was not observed after the dehydration of this material. UV–VIS and IR spectroscopy, and computational modeling were used to study the structure and properties of the obtained materials. A comparison with other similar materials was drawn. It was found that experimental data are in general accordance with the computations based on the polymeric model for copper hydroxide/oxide as a component of hybrid interpolymeric complex with PVA. A distinctive feature observed for polymeric copper oxide is strong broadening of the optical absorption band at 400 nm. It is suggested that this effect is caused by strong electron–phonon interaction, which is also responsible for superconductivity of copper oxide based systems.     

A four-color parallel algorithm for the solution of a two-dimensional advection-diffusion equation with the finite element method

Reordering schemes associated with multicoloring and domain decomposition techniques have been introduced in recent years to obtain parallel and/or vectorized versions of recursive linear solvers such as the Gauss-Seidel SOR scheme (Ortega and Voigt, 1986; White, 1989). In this paper we give a brief account of the successfull implementation of a four-color Gauss-Seidel parallel algorithm for the solution of block-tridiagonal matrices resulting from the finite-element discretization of a two-dimensional advection-diffusion equation. Performance data referring to the implementation on the IBM 3090/400 vector multiprocessor are reported and commented on.