Bodies, antibodies, and neighborhood-density effects in masked form priming.

Facilitatory priming effects due to similarity of orthographic form are obtained for high-N target words provided that they have low-frequency bodies and the body is shared between the prime and target (e.g., perd-HERD). Conversely, it is shown that low-N target words show priming regardless of the frequency of the body, provided that the prime and target do not share the same body (e.g., drice-DRIVE). If the body is shared, then priming occurs only for targets with low-frequency bodies. These results suggest that neighborhood density should be defined in terms of both individual letter units and subsyllabic units and that both types of density jointly determine priming. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A quadruple well, quadruple polysilicon BiCMOS process for fast 16Mb SRAM's

An advanced, high-performance, quadruple well, quadruple polysilicon BiCMOS technology has been developed for fast 16 Mb SRAM's. A split word-line bitcell architecture, using four levels of polysilicon and two self-aligned contacts, achieves a cell area of 8.61 μm² with conventional I-line lithography and 7.32 μm² with I-line plus phase-shift or with deep UV lithography. The process features PELOX isolation to provide a 1.0 μm active pitch, MOSFET transistors designed for a 0.80 μm gate poly pitch, a double polysilicon bipolar transistor with aggressively scaled parasitics, and a thin-film polysilicon transistor to enhance bitcell stability. A quadruple-well structure improves soft error rate (SER) and allows simultaneous optimization of MOSFET and bipolar performance     

Risk Factors for Partner Violence Among a National Sample of Combat Veterans.

In this study, the authors identified potential risk factors for partner violence perpetration among a subsample (n=109) of men who participated in a national study of Vietnam veterans. Partner violent (PV) men with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were compared with PV men without PTSD and nonviolent men with PTSD on family-of-origin variables, psychiatric problems, relationship problems, and war-zone factors. PV men with PTSD were the highest of the 3 groups on every risk factor other than childhood abuse. Group contrasts and a classification tree analysis suggest some potential markers and mechanisms for the association between PTSD and partner violence among military veterans and highlight the need for theory development in this area of inquiry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Examining the correlates of psychological aggression among a community sample of couples.

In this study, the authors examined the correlates of psychological aggression victimization and perpetration among a community sample of 145 heterosexual couples. For both women and men, psychological aggression victimization was associated with greater psychological distress, anxiety, and physical health symptoms beyond the effects of physical aggression. Psychological aggression victimization was also uniquely associated with higher levels of depression for women. Trait anger and poor relationship adjustment were the strongest correlates of psychological aggression perpetration across genders. Childhood father-to-child and father-to-mother aggressions were associated with psychological aggression perpetration for men only, suggesting possible distinct etiologies across genders. These data highlight the importance of the further development of models for psychological aggression in both women and men. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

IGP Link Weight Assignment for Operational Tier-1 Backbones

Intradomain routing protocols, such as IS-IS or OSPF, associate a weight (or cost) with each link to compute traffic routes. Proposed methods for selecting link weights largely ignore two practical issues, that of service-level agreement (SLA) requirements and of failures. Optimizing the routing configuration, without bounding the SLA, could severely violate this requirement, which is one of the most important vehicles used by carriers to attract new customers. Since most failures are short-lived, it is much more practical not to have to change weight settings during these episodes. In this paper we propose a tabu-search heuristic for choosing link weights that takes into account both SLA requirements and link failures. Our algorithm selects link weights that still perform well, without having to be changed, even under failure events. To validate the heuristic, we develop a lower bound based on a formal integer linear program (ILP) model, and show that our heuristic solution is within 10% of the optimal ILP lower bound. We study the performance of the heuristic using two operational Tier-1 backbones. Our results illustrate two tradeoffs, between link utilization and the SLA provided, and between performances under failures versus performance without failures. We find that performance under transient failures can be dramatically improved at the expense of a small degradation during normal network operation (i.e., no failures), while simultaneously satisfying SLA requirements. We use our algorithm inside a prototype tool to conduct a case study and illustrate how systematic link weight selection can facilitate topology planning.     

Application of the Isolated Perfused Rat Kidney Model to Assess Gender Effects on Drug Excretion

ABSTRACT

Purpose. To study the effect of gender on the renal disposition of two organic anions, p-aminohippuric acid (PAH) and furosemide (FSM) in the isolated perfused rat kidney (IPK). Methods. IPK experiments (3–4 per treatment group) were conducted using kidneys from male and female Sprague Dawley rats. PAH was administered as a continuous infusion (with loading dose, targeted steady-state concentration 10 ug/mL). FSM was added as a bolus dose (2.65 mg, targeted concentration 33 ug/mL). Urine was collected in 10-min. intervals and perfusate was sampled at the midpoint of each collection period. Control (drug naïve) perfusions were performed for both genders. PAH and FSM were measured by HPLC. Kidney viability (GFR [estimated using inulin clearance], sodium reabsorption, glucose reabsorption) was monitored continuously during each perfusion experiment (2-h duration). Results. Good kidney function was maintained across all study groups, and lower GFR estimates in female kidneys were due to differences in kidney weight. For PAH, kidney weight corrected renal clearance (0.88 ± 0.37 mL/min/g vs. 0.59 ± 0.19 mL/min/g) and excretion ratio (3.8 ± 1.7 vs. 2.2 ± 0.72) were significantly higher in male kidneys. For FSM, renal clearance was significantly lower in female (0.10 ± 0.05 mL/min/g) compared to male kidneys (0.15 ± 0.07 mL/min/g). Mass balance analysis showed that FSM cumulative urinary excretion was significantly higher and kidney accumulation was significantly lower in experiments with male kidneys. Conclusions. The study demonstrates that the IPK is a useful model to assess gender effects on renal drug disposition. The renal excretion of organic anions is reduced in female rats, possibly due to gender differences in expression and/or activity of membrane transporters (both basolateral and luminal) in the kidney.     

Posttraumatic stress disorder and intimate relationship problems: A meta-analysis.

Objective: The authors conducted a meta-analysis of empirical studies investigating associations between indices of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) and intimate relationship problems to empirically synthesize this literature. Method: A literature search using PsycINFO, Medline, Published International Literature on Traumatic Stress (PILOTS), and Dissertation Abstracts was performed. The authors identified 31 studies meeting inclusion criteria. Results: True score correlations (ρ) revealed medium-sized associations between PTSD and intimate relationship discord (ρ = .38, N = 7,973, K = 21), intimate relationship physical aggression perpetration (ρ = .42, N = 4,630, K = 19), and intimate relationship psychological aggression perpetration (ρ = .36, N = 1,501, K = 10). The strength of the association between PTSD and relationship discord was higher in military (vs. civilian) samples, and when the study was conducted in the United States (vs. other country), and the study represented a doctoral dissertation (vs. published article). The strength of the association between PTSD and physical aggression was higher in military (vs. civilian) samples, males (vs. females), community (vs. clinical) samples, studies examining PTSD symptom severity (vs. diagnosis), when the physical aggression measure focused exclusively on severe violence (vs. a more inclusive measure), and the study was published (vs. dissertation). For the PTSD–psychological aggression association, 98% of the variance was accounted for by methodological artifacts such as sampling and measurement error; consequently, no moderators were examined in this relationship. Conclusions: Findings highlight a need for the examination of models explaining the relationship difficulties associated with PTSD symptomatology and interventions designed to treat problems in both areas. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)