Potential for using a digital micromirror device as a signal multiplexer in visible spectroscopy.

A digital micromirror device (DMD) was tested to demonstrate its potential as a multiplexing device for the simultaneous detection of visible electromagnetic radiation. Using a Visual Basic program, four sections of the DMD were illuminated by a light source and each region of mirrors was modulated at different low frequencies (14.92, 20.

ERP and behavioral evidence of individual differences in metaphor comprehension.

In two experiments, we examined individual differences in metaphor processing. In Experiment 1, the subjects judged the literal truth of literal, metaphorical, and scrambled sentences. Overall, metaphors were more difficult to judge as false, in comparison with scrambled controls, suggesting that the metaphorical meaning was being processed automatically.

The rotating bucket of sand: Experiment and theory.

The surface shape of a bucket of sand rotating about its cylindrical axis is studied experimentally and theoretically. Focusing on fast time scales on which surface shape is determined by avalanches, we identify three regimes of behavior. At intermediate and high frequencies, the surface shape is always at its critical shape determined by the Coulomb yield condition.

Multipurpose senior centers: opportunities for community health nursing.

Nationally, almost 10 million older Americans are served by approximately 12,000 multipurpose senior centers (MSCs). Among those over age 65, 15% attended an MSC in the previous year. We can expect that the number of older Americans attending MSCs will increase as our population ages.

A differentiable, periodic function for pulsatile cardiac output based on heart rate and stroke volume.

Many mathematical models of human hemodynamics, particularly those which describe pressure and flow pulses throughout the circulatory system, require as specified input a modeling function which describes cardiac output in terms of volume per unit time. To be realistic, this cardiac output function should capture, to the greatest extent possible, all relevant features observed in measured physical data. For model analysis purposes, it is also highly desirable to have a model function that is continuous, differentiable, and periodic.

The effects of hand preference side and hand preference switch history on measures of psychological and physical well-being and cognitive performance in a sample of older adult right-and left-handers.

Claims have been made that left-handedness often arises from pathological causes, and that owing to this underlying pathology, the presence of sinistrality may entail disadvantages for both the length and quality of life. A prime implication of these claims is that left-handers, as a group, should display signs of poorer fitness than right-handers. This poorer fitness might take the form of an increased incidence of illnesses and/or accidents.

Hand preference side and its relation to hand preference switch history among old and oldest-old adults.

The last 10 years of research on adult hand preference patterns have generated a controversy over the meaning of the difference in the incidence rates of left- and right-hand preference in older adult samples (> 60 years old) when compared to samples of younger individuals (< 30 years old). Age differences in hand preference prevalence often are studied with large, cross-sectional age samples; however, with 1 notable exception (Gilbert & Wysocki, 1992), these large samples frequently are dominated numerically by individuals below the age of 45 years. This study reports on hand preference data from a sample of 1,277 individuals between the ages of 65 and 100 years.

The arrangement of resources in patchy landscapes: effects on distribution, survival, and resource acquisition of chironomids.

The spatial arrangement of resources in patchy habitats influences the distribution of individuals and their ability to acquire resources. We used Chironomus riparius, a ubiquitous aquatic insect that uses leaf particles as an important resource, to ask how the dispersion of resource patches influences the distribution and resource acquisition of mobile individuals in patchy landscapes. Two experiments were conducted in replicated laboratory landscapes (38×38 cm) created by arranging sand and leaf patches in a 5×5 grid so that the leaf patches were either aggregated or uniformly dispersed in the grid.

Materialism and credit card use by college students.

Much has been written in the popular press on credit card use and spending patterns of American college students. The proliferation of credit cards and their ease of acquisition ensure that students today have more opportunities for making more credit purchases than any other generation of college students. Little is known about the relationship between students' attitudes towards materialism and their use of credit cards.

On the nature and properties of appeals used in direct-to-consumer advertising of prescription drugs.

The past decade has seen a steady rise in expenditures for direct-to-consumer pharmaceutical advertising. While total revenues across all media are approaching the $1 billion dollar mark, surprisingly little is known about the effectiveness of these types of advertisements, including the appropriateness of various forms of emotional and informational appeal. A content analysis of direct-to-consumer advertising in 24 popular magazines shows that these advertisements are found in every category of magazine, the advertisements employ a mix of informational and emotional appeals, all types of emotional appeals are used, and to date, the type of appeal (emotional and/or informational) tends not to be based on the type of drug advertised.

Determinants of customer satisfaction with hospitals: a managerial model.

States that rapid changes in the environment have exerted significant pressures on hospitals to incorporate patient satisfaction in their strategic stance and quest for market share and long-term viability. This study proposes and tests a five-factor model that explains considerable variation in customer satisfaction with hospitals. These factors include communication with patients, competence of the staff, their demeanour, quality of the facilities, and perceived costs; they also represent strategic concepts that managers can address in their bid to remain competitive.

Low-latitude glaciation and rapid changes in the Earth's obliquity explained by obliquity-oblateness feedback.

Palaeomagnetic data suggest that the Earth was glaciated at low latitudes during the Palaeoproterozoic (about 2.4-2.2 Gyr ago) and Neoproterozoic (about 820-550 Myr ago) eras, although some of the Neoproterozoic data are disputed.

Nietzsche, autobiography, history: mourning and Martin and John.

How might gay and lesbian literature be read not as a mimetic representation of homosexuality, but as an activity linked to problems of subjectivity and historiography? Reading Dale Peck's novel Martin and John alongside passages from Friedrich Nietzsche's "On the Uses and Disadvantages of History for Life" and Sigmund Freud's "Mourning and Melancholia," this essay argues for an understanding of Peck's text as an attempt to link two apparently different processes of import to contemporary gay male subjects in particular: the writing of what Nietzsche terms "critical history," and the mourning of those lost to HIV disease. It concludes by linking Martin and John to feminist critiques of identity and traditional historiography, as well as noting the connection between these two critiques.

Analysis of the isopentenyl diphosphate isomerase gene family from Arabidopsis thaliana.

Two Arabidopsis thaliana cDNAs (IPP1 and IPP2) encoding isopentenyl diphosphate isomerase (IPP isomerase) were isolated by complementation of an IPP isomerase mutant strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae. Both cDNAs encode enzymes with an amino terminus that may function as a transit peptide for localization in plastids. At least 31 amino acids from the amino terminus of the IPP1 protein and 56 amino acids from the amino terminus of the IPP2 protein are not essential for enzymatic activity.

The role of cognitive factors in cue reactivity: extinction on demand.

Cue reactivity measures have become common in addictions research for their apparent objectivity. We used an analog paradigm to examine whether such measures are subject to impression management. Students with conditioned reactions of salivation to the sight and smell of a lemon were assigned to a control group, an experimental group asked to reduce salivation, or an experimental group asked to reduce salivation and promised a reward if successful.

A mathematical model of breast and ovarian cancer treated with paclitaxel.

A mathematical model that describes the effects of cell-cycle-specific drugs on cancer and normal tissue is developed. The model takes into account the proliferating cells, which are sensitive to the treatment, and the quiescent cells, which are resistant to the treatment. With the use of information from the medical literature, model parameters are estimated for breast and ovarian cancer as well as for bone marrow.

A mathematical model of drug resistance: heterogeneous tumors.

A mathematical model is developed to describe the growth and control of a heterogeneous tumor. The main aspect of the model is that it takes into account induced drug resistance. The mathematical model is a system of two ordinary differential equations that describes the growth of the cancer along with the effects of chemotherapy.

Mismatch negativity during attend and ignore conditions in Alzheimer's disease.

Mismatch negativities (MMNs) of the event-related potential to deviant tones and environmental sounds were recorded during active and ignore oddball sequences in young and elderly controls and patients with probable Alzheimer's disease (PAD). MMNs were smaller in the PAD waveforms compared to those of the controls, suggesting a degraded sensory memory trace in these subjects; however, under ignore conditions, environmental sounds elicited robust MMNs in the PAD group along with N2b and novelty P3 components in similar fashion to controls. As N2b and P3 are usually elicited by attended stimuli, these data suggest that in the PAD subjects, the highly deviant events involuntarily captured attention, perhaps reflecting the activation of an attentional switching mechanism.

High resolution measurement of translucent plastic wall thicknesses by computerized tomography and neural networks.

Today there is a great deal of interest in the field of plastics design. Several methods can be employed to create plastic products such as injection molding, compression and transfer molding, and blow molding. This paper is concerned with blow molding which is a procedure employed to create hollow plastic containers such as those used to contain liquids and solids in the wholesale and retail markets.

Old/new differences in direct and indirect memory tests using pictures and words in within- and cross-form conditions: event-related potential and behavioral measures.

Indirect measures of repetition priming are more sensitive to changes in surface features than are direct measures of memory. This dissociation may reflect differences in the extent to which the two tasks rely on form-specific processes, or on the activation of different memory systems. To assess this, subjects at study made semantic discriminations to a mixed list of pictures and words.

Using neural networks to solve the multicast routing problem in packet radio networks.

The primary function of a packet radio network is the efficient transfer of information between source and destination nodes using minimal bandwidth and end-to-end delay. Many researchers have investigated the problem of minimizing the end-to-end delay from a single source to a single destination for a variety of networks; however, very little work is reported about routing mechanisms for the common case where a particular information packet is intended to be sent to more than one destination in the network. This is known as multicasting.

Determination of dependent and independent communication paths using neural networks.

Efficient and timely computation of routing algorithms is very important for proper operation of multihop packet radio networks. When a network operates in the presence of jammers (a hostile environment) additional constraints must be considered when computing the routing tables. Insertion of those constraints in routing algorithms enables the determination of dependent and independent paths between source and destination nodes, thus fixing lower limits on the number of external jamming sources required to sever a transmission.

The extinction of naturally occurring conditioned reactions in psychoactive substance users: analog studies.

In the present series of studies we develop an analog approach for the study of conditioned reactions to drug stimuli. The analog we study is the naturally occurring conditioned reaction of salivation at the sight of a lemon. We show that this conditioned reaction can be extinguished, that spontaneous recovery occurs, and that the conditioned reaction increases after "relapse.

Parameters governing steam sterilization of deadlegs.

Use of saturated steam for sterilization-in-place (SIP) is limited by factors effecting displacement of air from deadlegs. Effects of tube diameter, length, orientation and position within a deadleg were quantitatively studied by examining temperature profiles and rates of kill of Bacillus stearothermophilus spores. Tube diameter had the greatest effect on sterilization.