Comparison of mortality of patients with heart attacks admitted to a coronary care unit and an ordinary medical ward

During a 32-month period 2047 patients suspected of having heart attacks were admitted to hospital and were followed up prospectively. Out of 1480 eventually found to have definite or probable myocardial infarction, 483 had initially been admitted to an ordinary medical ward because of the shortage of coronary care unit (CCU) beds. More patients aged over 65 had been admitted to a ward than to a CCU, and more patients aged 65 or less had been admitted initially to a CCU. Within each age group, however, patients admitted initially to a CCU were clinically similar to those admitted initially to a ward. There was a higher proportion of successful resuscitations among patients admitted to a CCU, but there was no significant difference in mortality in either age group between patients admitted to a CCU and a ward.     

Do amnesics forget colours pathologically fast?

We tested amnesic and control subjects on a task which required the recognition of single, difficult to name colours, after delays ranging from 7 seconds to 120 seconds after performance of the two subject groups had been matched at the shortest delay by giving the amnesic patients longer study time. The amnesic patients showed abnormally fast forgetting over the two minute period. Furthermore, a subgroup of nine subjects with presumed damage to midline diencephalic structures (Korsakoff's syndrome) were found to forget as fast as a group of six subjects with presumed medial temporal lobe damage (herpes simplex encephalitis). These results contrast both with studies using the Huppert and Piercy procedure and those using the Brown-Peterson task, none of which have shown convincing evidence of accelerated forgetting in medial temporal lobe or diencephalic amnesia.     

The education and training of clinical psychologists in the Netherlands.

With the reduction of the doctorandus program in the Netherlands to 4 yrs, a graduate program has been created that is significant to clinical psychology because it separates the research and applied orientations. The research orientation leads to the PhD, the applied orientation to a certificate of professional registration. This distinction has effectively ended the scientist–practitioner model underlying the training of clinical psychologists. In moving clinical psychology from its scientific research base, psychology has become more fragmented, and in a way that has far-reaching implications for the discipline and the profession in the Netherlands. These developments are of interest due to the debate in the US and elsewhere on training and licensure of clinical psychologists and concern about the unity of psychology. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The perilous problem of neglecting cultural realities.

Comments on the article by H. J. M. Hermans and H. J. G. Kempen (see record 1998-12442-002) which argued that cross-cultural psychology conceptualizes cultural difference in terms of strict, stable dichotomies defining homogenous groups. The present author is in total agreement with the concern expressed by Hermans and Kempen about the "perilous problems of cultural dichotomies." Expressed in terms of another aspect of the problem of cultural dichotomies that has been raised by Hermans and Kempen, the present author's concern is about their under-valuing of the local in the course of emphasizing the global. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The Choice of Optimum Dye Exhaustion Profiles in the Direct Control of Dyeing

New developments could substantially increase the practical feasibility of direct control by optical means of the exhaustion of commercial dyeings. This paper examines the preferred form of the exhaustion profile that should be used by such equipment, and the relationship between the rate of bath exhaustion, and the corresponding error in dye deposition in different parts of a textile load has been calculated. It is shown that the maximum permissible rate must fall progressively throughout the exhaustion period. This is contrasted with isoreactive dyeing and related concepts. The relationship between dye deposition error and colour difference is also discussed. Examples are given of practical profiles, the colour differences associated with them, and the operation of a control parameter based on the theory.     

Individual differences in the biphasic effects of ethanol

Ethanol exerts both stimulant-like and sedative-like subjective and behavioral effects in humans depending on the dose, the time after ingestion and, we will argue, also on the individual taking the drug. This study assessed stimulant-like and sedative-like subjective and behavioral effects of ethanol during the ascending and descending limbs of the blood alcohol curve across a range of doses in nonproblem social drinkers. Forty-nine healthy men and women, 21 to 35 years old, consumed a beverage containing placebo or ethanol (0.2, 0.4, or 0.8 g/kg) on four separate laboratory sessions, in randomized order and under double-blind conditions. Subjective and behavioral responses were assessed before and at regular intervals for 3 hr after ingestion of the beverage. The lowest dose of ethanol (0.2 g/kg) only produced negligible subjective effects compared to placebo. The moderate dose (0.4 g/kg) increased sedative-like effects 90 min after ethanol ingestion but did not increase ratings of stimulant effects at any time. The highest dose (0.8 g/kg) increased ratings of both stimulant- and sedative-like effects during the ascending limb and produced only sedative-like effects during the descending limb. Closer examination of the data revealed that individual differences in response to the highest dose of ethanol accounted for this unexpected pattern of results: about half of the subjects reported stimulant-like effects on the ascending limb and sedative-like effects on the descending limb after 0.8 g/kg ethanol, whereas the other half did not report stimulant-like effects at any time after administration of ethanol. These results challenge the simple assumption that ethanol has biphasic subjective effects across both dose and time, and extend previous findings demonstrating individual differences in response to ethanol.