William Lee Hayes (1926–1995): Obituary.

Obituary of W. L. Hays who lived from January 20, 1926–December 3, 1995. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Tobacco harm reduction strategies: the case for physical activity.

Since the effects of tobacco smoke are so detrimental to health, growing consideration has been given to the development of harm reduction strategies for those smokers who are unable or unwilling to stop using tobacco. The term harm reduction refers to a policy, strategy, or particular intervention that assumes continued use of an undesired behavior and aspires to lower the risk of adverse consequences associated with the continuation of this addictive behavior. Up to this point, tobacco harm reduction interventions have focused on reducing tobacco-related harm through the utilization of innovative tobacco products, reduced tobacco consumption, and pharmaceutical medications. With the possible exception of medicinal nicotine products, these strategies remain unproven and thus far no scientific or medical literature exists to suggest these harm reduction strategies reduce tobacco-related exposure, morbidity, or mortality. Consequently, a need exists for broadening the range of potentially effective harm reduction strategies. This preliminary review suggests that physical activity has the potential to become one such strategy. Of the eight principles that characterize a harm reduction strategy, all are at least partially satisfied by physical activity. Further, emerging evidence indicates that physical activity may delay the occurrence of disease and premature death initiated by tobacco consumption. Significant concerns remain regarding the practicality of physical activity as a harm reduction strategy and the extent to which participation in physical activity may be used to justify continued smoking.     

Interdependence of form and function in cognitive systems explains perception of printed words.

Perception is described within a complex systems framework that includes several constructs: resonance, attractors, subsymbols, and design principles. This framework was anticipated in J. J. Gibson's ecological approach (M. T. Turvey & C. Carello, 1981), but it is extended to cognitive phenomena by assuming experiential realism instead of ecological realism. The framework is applied in this article to explain phonologic mediation in reading and a complex array of published naming and lexical decision data. The full account requires only two design principles: covariant learning and self-consistency. Nonetheless, it organizes and explains a vast empirical literature on printed word perception. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Gender is a dimension of face recognition.

In an experiment, the authors investigated the impact of gender categorization on face recognition. Participants were familiarized with composite androgynous faces labeled with either a woman's first name (Mary) or a man's first name (John). The results indicated that participants more quickly eliminated faces of the opposite gender than faces of the same gender than the face they were looking for. This gender effect did not result from greater similarity between faces of the same gender. Rather, early gender categorization of a face during face recognition appears to speed up the comparison process between the perceptual input and the facial representation. Implications for face recognition models are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

A study of the effect of the top patch in rectangular dual patch microstrip antennas

A moment method procedure is used to solve the integral equations describing rectangular dual patch microstrip antennas. After checking the accuracy of the procedure by comparing calculated with measured results, it is used to analyse theoretically the effect of the top patch, especially the variation of the impedance curve and the gain of the configuration with two parameters, the distance between the two patches and the size of the top patch. Finally, a first attempt is made to outline a technique for the determination of these two parameters in order to obtain a maximum bandwidth.     

Platelet-activating factor acetylhydrolase activity in human tissues and blood cells

Human tissues, blood cells, and plasma have enzymes that catalyze the hydrolysis of PAF (1-O-alkyl-2-acetyl-sn-glycero-3-phosphocholine). The activities are not due to phospholipases A₂ that hydrolyze long chain acyl groups at thesn-2 position of glycerophospholipids, since they are calcium-independent and are specific for hydrolysis of short chain acyl groups. We examined the biochemical properties of these PAF acetylhydrolase activities (EC 3.1.1.47) in homogenates of human liver and spleen, in white blood cells (neutrophils and monocytes), and in erythrocytes. The data suggest that the plasma and intracellular PAF acetylhydrolase activities are likely due to different proteins. Second, the intracellular PAF acetylhydrolase activities in liver and spleen share several biochemical features that differentiate them from the activities in blood cells. Third, the activities in monocytes and neutrophils have properties that differentiate them from the activity present in human erythrocytes. Finally, the erythrocyte activity has unique properties that place it in a separate category of short chain acylhydrolases. In conclusion, there is a family of distinct enzymes that can be identified as PAF acetylhydrolases based on their calcium-independence and specificity for a short residue at thesn02 position of phospholipids. Based on a paper presented at the Third International Conference on Platelet-Activating Factor and Structurally Related Alkyl Ether Lipids, Tokyo, Japan, May 1989.