The return of our American hostages: A psychologist's experience.

Describes the return of American hostages after 444 days in captivity in Tehran from the perspective of a psychologist assigned to conduct psychological evaluations upon their release. The testing process with the Sixteen Personality Factor Questionnaire (16PF) and the hostages' return to the US are detailed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Search advertising placement strategy: Exploring the efficacy of the conventional wisdom

Search advertising is one of the most important forms of electronic commerce. While click-through rates are considered a key measure of search advertising effectiveness by search providers, brand attention can also be a valuable objective. Our paper reports on an experiment that investigated how search advertisement placement affected search users’ brand recall and recognition. The results showed that semantically associated search ads generated significantly higher levels of brand attention than contextually associated ones. Significant interaction effects were found among search ad position, keyword association, and search result quality. Implications for decision makers are discussed.     

Minimum Bias Estimation and Experimental Design for Response Surfaces

Response surface estimators are obtained which first minimize integrated squared bias. The bias is due to specified higher order terms which may be in the model but are omitted from the fitted equation. The estimator, subject to achieving this minimum bias, minimizes the integrated variance; integration for both bias and variance being over a specified region of interest. Since the minimum integrated squared bias is attained for any design, other criteria may be satisfied by choice of design. One form of design flexibility which can be achieved is the minimization of the integrated variance of the fitted equation by choice of design. Illustrations of the application of this criterion are given for certain simple model and design settings.     

The compound 13-D selectively induces apoptosis in white blood cancers versus other cancer cell types

As general cytotoxins are still the backbone of anticancer chemotherapy, the identification of selective inducers of cell death in defined cancer types and subtypes is one of the major goals of modern oncology research. Thus, compounds identified with such selectivity have utility as probes of cancer-type-specific biological pathways, and optimized versions have potential in targeted anticancer therapy. Described herein is the discovery that compound 13-D selectively induces apoptotic cell death in white blood cancer cell lines but not in other cancer cell lines. Further experiments indicate that this selectivity is not simply due to selective cell permeability. The compound localizes to both the nucleus and cytoplasm and arrests cells in the prophase/prometaphase of the cell cycle, and there is a very sharp dependence of activity on compound structure, with the trans-alpha,beta-unsaturated amide of 13-D being critical for inducing cell death. The macromolecular target of 13-D could be involved in white blood cell-specific oncogenic pathways.     

A Question of Values.

Comments on K. E. Clark's America's Psychologists (see record 200415427-000) and the recent statement by Division 12 of the new requirement for fellowship status of "a significant contribution." The authors were impressed with the fact that either intentionally or unintentionally values are playing an increasingly significant role in determining the criteria which will be selected as appropriate for assessing the status of professional psychologists. It is interesting to note in this connection that in Clark's book much emphasis is given to research publication as a means of differentiating "significant contributors" from their ostensibly less productive colleagues. The point the present authors are trying to make is that a value system to a large extent determines what functions or productions are to be considered worthy and thus tends to sustain them. It should be remembered that Clark's book addresses itself, not only to research psychologists, but to the entire profession as well as to any other interested intelligent reader. Surely some consideration could have been given to other professional endeavors which are of significance to a large number of psychologists. Even Division 12 seems to be suffering from this same (unrecognized?) conflict. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comments on Meehl and Rosen's paper.

In a paper by Meehl and Rosen (see 30: 2902) a rationale for evaluating the predictive efficiency of psychometric instruments is presented. The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the importance of administrative policy in any consideration of statistical criteria. A discussion of Meehl and Rosen's Case 1 situation is presented. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparison of multivariate statistical methods for estimating expected consequences for low‐probability and high‐consequence incidents

The catastrophic incidents involving hazardous materials (hazmats) have often been termed as low probability and high consequence (LPHC). The purpose of this article is to address some fundamental questions with regard to hazmats incidents: What is the expected consequence of a hazmats incident? How should the consequences of incidents involving hazmats be predicted? An exhaustive statistical analysis is performed on the hazmat incident data available from the U.S. Hazardous Materials Incident Reporting System (HMIRS). We present a sequence of logically deduced, linear statistical models to estimate the two major areas of impact of an incident: (1) population affected and (2) cost incurred due to an incident based on the outcomes of the incident. Our initial experiments indicated that linear models are not sufficient for predicting the consequences. Subsequently, we extended our work to evaluate the effectiveness of three multivariate statistical methods, namely (1) partial least squares, (2) spline regression, and (3) Box‐Cox transformations. Based on our experiments, Box‐Cox transformation showed significant improvement in estimating the consequences. Last, we summarize our findings and provide some general guidelines to entities interested in estimating events categorized as LPHC. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Experimental evidence for spatial learning in cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis).

Laboratory mazes were used to study spatial-learning capabilities in cuttlefish (Sepia officinalis), using escape for reinforcement. In preliminary observations, cuttlefish in an artificial pond moved actively around the environment and appeared to learn about features of their environment. In laboratory experiments, cuttlefish exited a simple alley maze more quickly with experience and retained the learned information. Similar improvement was not found in open-field mazes or T mazes, perhaps because of motor problems. Cuttlefish learned to exit a maze that required them to find openings in a vertical wall. The wall maze was modified to an arena, and simultaneous discrimination learning and reversal learning were demonstrated. These experiments indicate that cuttlefish improve performance over serial reversals of a simultaneous, visual-spatial discrimination problem. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)