Mechanisms underlying retarded emergence of conditioned responding following inhibitory training: Evidence for the comparator hypothesis.

The comparator hypothesis posits that conditioned responding is determined by a comparison at the time of testing between the associative strengths of the conditioned stimulus/stimuli (CS) and stimuli proximal to the CS at the time of conditioning. The hypothesis treats all associations as being excitatory and treats conditioned inhibition as the behavioral consequence of a CS that is less excitatory than its comparator stimuli. Conditioned lick suppression by rats was used to differentiate 4 possible sources of retarded responding to an inhibitory CS. These include habituation to the unconditioned stimulus/stimuli (UCS), latent inhibition to the CS, blocking of the CS-UCS association by the conditioning context, and enhanced excitatory associations to the comparator stimuli. Prior research has demonstrated the 1st 3 phenomena. Therefore, we employed parameters expected to highlight the 4th one—the comparator process. In Exp I, our negative contingency training produced a conditioned inhibitor that passed inhibitory summation and retardation tests. In Exp II we found transfer of retardation from an inhibitory CS to a novel stimulus when the location where retardation-test training occurred was excitatory. In Exp III, extinction of the conditioning context attenuated retardation regardless of whether extinction occurred before or after the CS-UCS pairings of the retardation test. Exp IV demonstrated that habituation to the UCS did not contribute to retardation in the present case. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Hand movement asymmetries during verbal and nonverbal tasks.

12 male and 12 female right-handed undergraduates were videotaped while they assembled blocks to perform a series of verbal and nonverbal tasks and a neutral (nonlateralized) task. Analysis of the videotapes revealed that the frequency of movement of one hand relative to the other changed systematically with the cognitive nature of the task, but only for movements playing a functional role in task performance. For the majority of such movements, verbal tasks elicited a greater proportion of right-hand use than did a neutral task, while nonverbal tasks elicited a greater proportion of left-hand use than did a neutral task. These shifts may have reflected the engagement of lateralized problem-solving systems within the 2 hemispheres. (French abstract) (33 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Surface properties of miscible poly(1,1,1,3,3,3‐hexafluoroisopropyl methacrylate)/phenoxy blends

Poly(1,1,1,3,3,3‐hexafluoroisopropyl methacrylate) (PHF) is miscible with poly(hydroxyether of bisphenol‐A) (phenoxy) as shown by the optical transparency and a single glass‐transition temperature in each blend. FTIR spectroscopy shows that the interactions between PHF and phenoxy are not particularly strong. The surface properties of the blends were studied by contact angle measurements, dynamic and static time‐of‐flight secondary ion mass spectroscopy, and X‐ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The blend surfaces were enriched with PHF. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 91: 1798–1805, 2004     

Induced mood and preschoolers' behavior: Isolating the effects of hedonic tone and degree of arousal.

A circumplex model of emotion was used to examine the role of hedonic tone and degree of arousal in the effects of induced mood on children's persistence behavior. A total of 45 preschool children were asked to describe and think about either exciting, calm, or sad experiences and then perform a persistence task. Heart rate was continuously recorded throughout the session. Observers' ratings of facial expressions and parents' ratings of the experiences provided convergent validation of the induction procedure. Children in the excited induction were rated as displaying facial expressions and situations of those in the calm induction were also rated as positive, but less arousing, whereas those in the sad induction were rated as low on both. Concurrent heart rate recordings showed differential effects of the mood condition on autonomic arousal during the period when the children were generating the affect-induction procedure. Subsequent performance on a persistence task indicated that higher levels of arousal increased the amount of work completed, whereas higher levels of pleasure did not. Differential levels of autonomic arousal were displayed during the persistence task. These findings validate two important elements of the experimental design: (a) excited versus calm states induce similar levels of pleasure but different levels of arousal, and (b) calm versus sad states induce similar levels of arousal but different levels of pleasure. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Recovery of Al,Co, Cu,Fe, Mn,and Ni from spent LIBs after Li selective separation by COOL-Process – Part 2: Solvent Extraction from Sulphate Leaching Solution

The market for lithium-ion batteries (LIB) is experiencing substantial growth, what is owed to electromobility and the growing demand for cordless devices. Securing the raw material base for LIB is mandatory to achieve the objectives of EU commission's Green Deal. This implies not only sufficient access to lithium but also the accompanying metals, above all Co, Ni, Mn. After preceding recovery of Li₂CO₃ by the COOL-Process and subsequent acid digestion of the Li-free black mass, value metals, such as Co, Cu, Ni, and Mn were recovered by counter-current solvent extraction. Fe (98.5 ± 0.65 %), Co/Mn (99.8 ± 0.78 %; 99.9 ± 1.11 %), Al (99.7 ± 1.07 %) and Cu/Ni (97.8 ± 1.46 %; 98.6 ± 1.32 %) were selectively extracted with high discriminatory power using cationic exchangers and solvating extractants such as D2EHPA and TBP, respectively. This way, a complete, holistic recycling process for LIB is at hand that allows for recovering housing material, lithium and the accompanying metals almost quantitatively.     

Laboratory‐Evolved Enzymes Provide Snapshots of the Development of Enantioconvergence in Enzyme‐Catalyzed Epoxide Hydrolysis

Engineered enzyme variants of potato epoxide hydrolase (StEH1) display varying degrees of enrichment of (2R)‐3‐phenylpropane‐1,2‐diol from racemic benzyloxirane. Curiously, the observed increase in the enantiomeric excess of the (R)‐diol is not only a consequence of changes in enantioselectivity for the preferred epoxide enantiomer, but also to changes in the regioselectivity of the epoxide ring opening of (S)‐benzyloxirane. In order to probe the structural origin of these differences in substrate selectivity and catalytic regiopreference, we solved the crystal structures for the evolved StEH1 variants. We used these structures as a starting point for molecular docking studies of the epoxide enantiomers into the respective active sites. Interestingly, despite the simplicity of our docking analysis, the apparent preferred binding modes appear to rationalize the experimentally determined regioselectivities. The analysis also identifies an active site residue (F33) as a potentially important interaction partner, a role that could explain the high conservation of this residue during evolution. Overall, our experimental, structural, and computational studies provide snapshots into the evolution of enantioconvergence in StEH1‐catalyzed epoxide hydrolysis.     

Obstacles Experienced by Care Managers in Managing Information for the Care of Chronically Ill Patients

ABSTRACT

Care managers play a key role in coordinating care, especially for patients with chronic conditions. They use multiple health information technology (IT) applications in order to access, process, and communicate patient-related information. Using the work system model and its extension, the Systems Engineering Initiative for Patient Safety (SEIPS) model, we describe obstacles experienced by care managers in managing patient-related information. A web-based questionnaire was used to collect data from 80 care managers (61% response rate) located in clinics, hospitals, and a call center. Care managers were more likely to consider “inefficiencies in access to patient-related information” and “having to use multiple information systems” as major obstacles than “lack of computer training and support” and “inefficient use of case management software.” Care managers who reported “inefficient use of case management software” as an obstacle were more likely to report high workload. Future research should explore strategies used by care managers to address obstacles, and efforts should be targeted at improving the health information technologies used by care managers.     

Predictive relations of tropical forest biomass from Landsat TM data and their transferability between regions

The full realization of the potential of remote sensing as a source of environmental information requires an ability to generalize in space and time. Here, the ability to generalize in space was investigated through an analysis of the transferability of predictive relations for the estimation of tropical forest biomass from Landsat TM data between sites in Brazil, Malaysia and Thailand. The data sets for each test site were acquired and processed in a similar fashion to facilitate the analyses. Three types of predictive relation, based on vegetation indices, multiple regression and feedforward neural networks, were developed for biomass estimation at each site. For each site, the strongest relationships between the biomass predicted and that measured from field survey was obtained with a neural network developed specifically for the site (r>0.71, significant at the 99% level of confidence). However, with each type of approach problems in transferring a relation to another site were observed. In particular, it was apparent that the accuracy of prediction, as indicated by the correlation coefficient between predicted and measured biomass, declined when a relation was transferred to a site other than that upon which it was developed. Part of this problem lies with the observed variation in the relative contribution of the different spectral wavebands to predictive relations for biomass estimation between sites. It was, for example, apparent that the spectral composition of the vegetation indices most strongly related to biomass differed greatly between the sites. Consequently, the relationship between predicted and measured biomass derived from vegetation indices differed markedly in both strength and direction between sites. Although the incorporation of test site location information into an analysis resulted in an increase in the strength of the relationship between predicted and actual biomass, considerable further research is required on the problems associated with transferring predictive relations.     

Phase Equilibria in the Ga2O3In2O3 System

Subsolidus phase relationships in the Ga₂O₃–In₂O₃ system were studied by X-ray diffraction and electron probe microanalysis (EPMA) for the temperature range of 800°–1400°C. The solubility limit of In₂O₃ in the β-gallia structure decreases with increasing temperature from 44.1 ± 0.5 mol% at 1000°C to 41.4 ± 0.5 mol% at 1400°C. The solubility limit of Ga₂O₃ in cubic In₂O₃ increases with temperature from 4.X ± 0.5 mol% at 1000°C to 10.0 ± 0.5 mol% at 1400°C. The previously reported transparent conducting oxide phase in the Ga-In-O system cannot be GaInO₃, which is not stable, but is likely the In-doped β-Ga₂O₃ solid solution.