Adolescent abortion: Psychological perspectives on public policy.

The Supreme Court has relied on psychological assumptions in adolescent abortion cases, but it has failed to consider relevant empirical research. The work of the Interdivisional Committee on Adolescent Abortion to fill in this gap provides a model for organized psychology's integration, dissemination, and application of psychological knowledge to promote the public interest. Such efforts should be replicated by state associations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Fuzzy relations and fuzzy relational databases

This paper deals with the connections existing between fuzzy set theory and fuzzy relational databases. Our new result dealing with fuzzy relations is how to calculate the greatest lower bound (glb) of two similarity relations. Our main contributions in fuzzy relational databases are establishing from fuzzy set theory what a fuzzy relational database should be (the result is both surprising and elegant), and making fuzzy relational databases even more robust.Our work in fuzzy relations and in fuzzy databases had led us into other interesting problems—two of which we mention in this paper. The first is primarily mathematical, and the second provides yet another connection between fuzzy set theory and artificial intelligence. In understanding similarity relations in terms of other fuzzy relations and in making fuzzy databases more robust, we work with closure and interior operators; we present some important properties of these operators. In establishing the connection between fuzzy set theory and artificial intelligence, we show that an abstraction on a set is in fact a partition on the set; that is, an abstraction defines an equivalence relation on the underlying set.     

Timing of reproductive life stages

We have investigated lysis of cultured human glial cells by non-major histocompatibility complex (MHC)-restricted or 'promiscuous' CD(4+)-T lymphocytes, activated either under relatively long-term limiting dilution culture conditions in the presence of phytohemagglutinin (PHA) and interleukin (IL)-2, or under short-term PHA-activated bulk culture conditions. Specific effector:target cell ratio-dependent lysis of oligodendrocytes (OGCs) by CD4+ T lymphocytes, generated under both of the above conditions, was observed in an 18-h 51Cr-release assay, but not in a 5-h assay. The extent of CD4 T-cell-mediated OGC lysis was less than for the tumor necrosis factor (TNF)-alpha-sensitive cell line U937, but greater than for TNF-resistant cell lines (K562, EL4). The effect could not be reproduced by T-cell culture supernatants or by high concentrations of recombinant TNF-alpha or beta. Anti-TNF-alpha antibody did not inhibit CD4-mediated lysis of OGC or U937 cells, but did inhibit U937 lysis induced by recombinant TNF-alpha, added in amounts exceeding those secreted by CD4 T cells. Human astrocytes and microglia were also susceptible to CD4+ T-cell-mediated lysis. Our results suggest that non-antigen non-MHC-restricted CD4+ T-cell-mediated injury of human glial cells can occur and may be dependent or enhanced by effector:target cell contact.     

Family preservation using multisystemic therapy: An effective alternative to incarcerating serious juvenile offenders.

Multisystemic therapy (MST) delivered through a community mental health center was compared with usual services delivered by a Department of Youth Services in the treatment of 84 serious juvenile offenders and their multiproblem families. Offenders were assigned randomly to treatment conditions. Pretreatment and posttreatment assessment batteries evaluating family relations, peer relations, symptomatology, social competence, and self-reported delinquency were completed by the youth and a parent, and archival records were searched at 59 wks postreferral to obtain data on rearrest and incarceration. In comparison with youths who received usual services, youths who received MST had fewer arrests and self-reported offenses and spent an average of 10 fewer weeks incarcerated. In addition, families in the MST condition reported increased family cohesion and decreased youth aggression in peer relations. The relative effectiveness of MST was neither moderated by demographic characteristics nor mediated by psychosocial variables. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Immune-Inspired Adaptable Error Detection for Automated Teller Machines

This paper presents an immune-inspired adaptable error detection (AED) framework for automated teller machines (ATMs). This framework has two levels: one is local to a single ATM, while the other is network-wide. The framework employs vaccination and adaptability analogies of the immune system. For discriminating between normal and erroneous states, an immune-inspired one-class supervised algorithm was employed, which supports continual learning and adaptation. The effectiveness of the proposed approach was confirmed in terms of classification performance and impact on availability. The overall results are encouraging as the downtime of ATMs can de reduced by anticipating the occurrence of failures before they actually occur.     

Recognizing, assessing, and intervening with problems of professional competence.

Working collaboratively, psychologist educators and trainers at the doctoral, internship, and postdoctoral levels; credentialers; practitioners; and students offer 8 proposals for psychologists to consider in recognizing, assessing, and intervening with problems of professional competence in students and practicing professionals. In the proposals, the authors address the following topics: definitions and categories; preparing the system; self-assessment; remediation; diversity; communication across various levels of the system; confidentiality; and ethical, regulatory, and legal underpinnings. They also propose future directions for the assessment of problems in professional competence in both students and practicing psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Palatability of prerigor cooked boar meat

Cooking reduces odor intensity in boar meat but also may induce lipid oxidation unless the meat pH is above approximately 6.0. This research was designed to determine the feasibility of cooking boar meat in the prerigor state to overcome boar odor and lipid oxidation problems. Prerigor and postrigor triceps brachii muscle samples from 40 boars (20 Duroc and 20 Yorkshire) were cooked to 60 degrees C, frozen and stored at -20 degrees C, reheated in a 60 degrees C water bath for 1 h, and then subjected to pH, thiobarbituric acid (TBA), and sensory analyses. Boar odor intensity and skatole concentration in backfat samples were determined by olfactory test and HPLC, respectively. Cooked (initial cooking) prerigor meat was found to have higher (P < .05) pH and lower (P < .05) TBA values than comparable postrigor meat (6.44 vs 6.09 and 2.15 vs 3.23, respectively). Regression analysis indicated an inverse relationship between pH and TBA values (r = -.52; P < .01). No appreciable changes in TBA values were noted after frozen storage for 14 to 98 d, but reheating increased TBA values (P < .05) in both prerigor and postrigor samples (3.45 vs 4.32, respectively). Sensory evaluation scores indicated that prerigor cooked meat was less tender with more pronounced rancid flavor than postrigor cooked meat (P < .05), but panelists may have allowed the toughness of the prerigor samples to adversely affect their flavor scores. No difference in boar odor was detected between rigor states or breeds. Mean skatole concentration in backfat was .12 micrograms/g and no difference was detected between breeds.(ABSTRACT TRUNCATED AT 250 WORDS)