Providing information to clients about psychological tests: A survey of attorneys' and law students' attitudes.

Surveyed 70 practicing attorneys and 150 law students to determine the extent to which they felt it was their responsibility to inform clients they referred for psychological testing about the testing process and about the validity scales on tests. Results showed that almost 50% of the attorneys and over 33% of the students believe that clients referred for testing always or usually should be informed of validity scales on tests. These results suggest that many test takers, particularly in forensic settings, may have information about validity scales that facilitates their giving biased responses without detection. Psychologists doing forensic evaluations should be alert to this possibility and should consider using more than one approach to detect response distortions. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Mapping nonnative plants using hyperspectral imagery

Nonnative plant species are causing enormous ecological and environmental impacts from local to global scale. Remote sensing images have had mixed success in providing spatial information on land cover characteristics to land managers that increase effective management of invasions into native habitats. However, there has been limited evaluation of the use of hyperspectral data and processing techniques for mapping specific invasive species based on their spectral characteristics. This research evaluated three different methods of processing hyperspectral imagery: minimum noise fraction (MNF), continuum removal, and band ratio indices for mapping iceplant (Carpobrotus edulis) and jubata grass (Cortaderia jubata) in California's coastal habitat. Validation with field sampling data showed high mapping accuracies for all methods for identifying presence or absence of iceplant (97%), with the MNF procedure producing the highest accuracy (55%) when the classes were divided into four different densities of iceplant.     

Capture of Airborne Particulate Using Surface Applied Emulsions: Potential for Postdetonation Dirty Bomb Cleanup

Recent research has proposed the use of asphalt and tall-oil-pitch emulsions for stabilizing radioactive contamination deposited on surfaces in urban areas. The objective of this project was to investigate whether surface applied emulsions could capture airborne radioactive particulate. Laboratory experiments included wind-blown particulate capture studies using an acrylic column and particulate retainment experiments using a wind box capable of producing wind speeds of 96?km/h. A probe methodology was developed to relate particulate retainment to a tack force on the emulsion surface. Experiments were also performed to determine the potential for such emulsions to absorb particulate matter into their emulsion matrix. Tall-oil-pitch emulsions outperformed asphalt emulsions in terms of particulate retention, tack force, and the ability to absorb magnesium silicate. Both tall-oil-pitch and asphalt emulsions were capable of extracting 22–24?g?m?2 of powder from particulate-laden airflow. Tall-oil-pitch emulsions were capable of retaining as much as 5–10% of magnesium silicate powder applied (i.e., retainment densities of 10–20?g?m?2) even after seven?days of curing and after applying 96.5?km/h (60?mph) wind. Tall-oil-pitch emulsions were able to absorb surface-applied magnesium silicate (approximately 0.1–0.2?g of magnesium silicate per 1.0?g of emulsion within three?days) into their emulsion matrix, preventing the magnesium silicate from being exposed to the external environment. Initial results with these five different emulsion formulations suggested particulate capture was feasible. Future emulsion formulations (i.e., longer curing times with greater acid concentrations) should be tested to optimize this postdetonation response strategy.     

Eye movements of young and older adults during reading.

The eye movements of young and older adults were tracked as they read sentences varying in syntactic complexity. In Experiment 1, cleft object and object relative clause sentences were more difficult to process than cleft subject and subject relative clause sentences; however, older adults made many more regressions, resulting in increased regression path fixation times and total fixation times, than young adults while processing cleft object and object relative clause sentences. In Experiment 2, older adults experienced more difficulty than young adults while reading cleft and relative clause sentences with temporary syntactic ambiguities created by deleting the that complementizers. Regression analyses indicated that readers with smaller working memories need more regressions and longer fixation times to process cleft object and object relative clause sentences. These results suggest that age-associated declines in working memory do affect syntactic processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

HiSQL: A Front-end Query System for Historical Relational Databases

The paper describes a prototype system called HiSQL (Historical SQL) which extends the functionality of SQL in manipulating historical data, by providing functions for spatial and temporal processing. Conceptually the paper is divided into three parts: the first part deals with the design and architecture of the system; the second part introduces a case study (the defters); and the third part describes specific functions for spatial and temporal processing of serial documents. The paper concludes with a comparison between HiSQL and SQL and suggestions for further work. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Stereotactic radiosurgery of malignant and benign intracranial lesions utilizing a patient rotator

The objective of this survey was to demonstrate whether a primary care track internal medicine residency program emphasizing community-based health care of the urban sick poor trains physicians who will continue to practice in general internal medicine or similar fields. Thirty-five primary care residents (100% of graduates) who trained from 1976 through 1993 in the Adult Primary Care Track of the Internal Medicine Residency Program at St. Vincent's Hospital, New York were used as participants.     

Outbreak of serogroup C meningococcal disease associated with campus bar patronage

Between February 1991 and April 1992, eight undergraduates at a US residential university and one at a nearby 2-year college contracted serogroup C meningococcal disease. A case-control investigation with 20 controls per case, oropharyngeal carriage surveys, and multilocus enzyme electrophoresis (MEE) of serogroup C isolates were used to identify factors contributing to the outbreak. All eight sterile-site isolates from cases were closely related by MEE and were similar (though not identical) to the strain associated with the 1991-1992 epidemic of meningococcal disease in eastern Canada. Disease was associated with cigarette smoking (p = 0.012), recent patronage of campus-area bars (p = 0.034), estimated amount of time spent in campus-area bars (p = 0.0003), and, especially, recent patronage of one specific bar, bar A (p = 0.0006; odds ratio = 23.1, 95% confidence interval 3.0-571.5). In carriage surveys, 1,528 throat cultures taken from (primarily student) noncases yielded only five (0.3%) strains that were identical by MEE to those from cases. Two of these were found among 22 cultures obtained from bar A employees in spring 1992. Some cases in this outbreak may have followed transmission of the epidemic strain in bar A. Campus bar environments may facilitate the spread of meningococcal disease among teenagers and young adults.