Religion and spirituality: Linkages to physical health.

Evidence is presented that bears on 9 hypotheses about the link between religion or spirituality and mortality, morbidity, disability, or recovery from illness. In healthy participants, there is a strong, consistent, prospective, and often graded reduction in risk of mortality in church/service attenders. This reduction is approximately 25% after adjustment for confounders. Religion or spirituality protects against cardiovascular disease, largely mediated by the healthy lifestyle it encourages. Evidence fails to support a link between depth of religiousness and physical health. In patients, there are consistent failures to support the hypotheses that religion or spirituality slows the progression of cancer or improves recovery from acute illness but some evidence that religion or spirituality impedes recovery from acute illness. The authors conclude that church/service attendance protects healthy people against death. More methodologically sound studies are needed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Enhancing the precision of the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder: An application of item response theory.

Examined, using item response theory, the measurement qualities of the Mississippi Scale for Combat-Related Posttraumatic Stress Disorder, with data taken from the 2,348 veteran participants in the National Vietnam Veterans Readjustment Study. Using F. Samejima's (1969) graded response model, estimates of each item's discrimination and difficulty parameters were derived, and item and test information functions were then computed. Various item information patterns and sample items are discussed in terms of improved assessment of posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD). (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Admission control mechanism and performance analysis based on stochastic automata networks formalism

IEEE 802.16 has been designed to support QoS (Quality of Service) in Wireless broadband Metropolitan Networks (WMAN), and specifically in the access networks. To achieve this, the IEEE 802.16.e amendment introduces the service differentiation by five service classes (UGS, ertPS, rtPS, nrtPS and BE). To maintain the QoS of active connections and to avoid any congestion in the network, an Admission Control (AC) is defined. AC aims to accept or reject a new connection according to the negotiated parameters and the availability of resources in the network. This mechanism is not standardized and let to the operators. We tackle this point, by proposing in this study a new Admission Control (AC) that improves the QoS of BE traffic by avoiding a strict bandwidth assignment of other traffics (rtPS and nrtPS) as is defined in major previous studies. The proposed mechanism is based on token bucket for rtPS, nrtPS and BE traffics in order to reduce lightly the number of accepted connections and to improve considerably the number of accepted BE connections. To evaluate the performance of the proposed scheme, we use PEPS (Performance Evaluation of Parallel Systems) which is a powerful tool based on models which can be described with Stochastic Automata Networks (SAN). PEPS can solve complex models with a large state space and with many synchronized events. Therefore, we show that this tool is suitable for wireless network, and specifically for the proposed scheme, toward numerical results we show as we expected that our proposed AC outperform the classical one by reducing lightly the performance of other service classes.     

High-aspect ratio metal tips attached to atomic force microscopy cantilevers with controlled angle, length, and radius for electrostatic force microscopy

We demonstrate a method to fabricate a high-aspect ratio metal tip attached to microfabricated cantilevers with controlled angle, length, and radius, for use in electrostatic force microscopy. A metal wire, after gluing it into a guiding slot that is cut into the cantilever, is shaped into a long, thin tip using a focused ion beam. The high-aspect ratio results in considerable reduction of the capacitive force between tip body and sample when compared to a metal coated pyramidal tip.     

Risk Factors for Partner Violence Among a National Sample of Combat Veterans.

In this study, the authors identified potential risk factors for partner violence perpetration among a subsample (n=109) of men who participated in a national study of Vietnam veterans. Partner violent (PV) men with posttraumatic stress disorder (PTSD) were compared with PV men without PTSD and nonviolent men with PTSD on family-of-origin variables, psychiatric problems, relationship problems, and war-zone factors. PV men with PTSD were the highest of the 3 groups on every risk factor other than childhood abuse. Group contrasts and a classification tree analysis suggest some potential markers and mechanisms for the association between PTSD and partner violence among military veterans and highlight the need for theory development in this area of inquiry. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A multi-institutional, multinational study of programming concepts using card sort data

Abstract: This paper presents a case study of the use of a repeated single‐criterion card sort with an unusually large, diverse participant group. The study, whose goal was to elicit novice programmers' knowledge of programming concepts, involved over 20 researchers from four continents and 276 participants drawn from 20 different institutions. In this paper we present the design of the study and the unexpected result that there were few discernible systematic differences in the population. The study was one of the activities of the National Science Foundation funded Bootstrapping Research in Computer Science Education project (2003).     

Resilience–recovery factors in post-traumatic stress disorder among female and male Vietnam veterans: Hardiness, postwar social support, and additional stressful life events.

Structural equation modeling procedures were used to examine relationships among several war zone stressor dimensions, resilience-recovery factors, and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in a national sample of 1,632 Vietnam veterans (26% women and 74% men). A 9-factor measurement model was specified on a mixed-gender subsample of the data and then replicated on separate subsamples of female and male veterans. For both genders, the structural models supported strong mediation effects for the intrapersonal resource characteristic of hardiness, postwar structural and functional social support, and additional negative life events in the postwar period. Support for moderator effects or buffering in terms of interactions between war zone stressor level and resilience–recovery factors was minimal. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

DNA barcoding to confirm morphological traits and determine relative abundance of burrowing mayfly species in western Lake Erie

Burrowing mayfly species of the genus Hexagenia are well known indicators of environmental health in lakes and rivers. Two species, H. limbata and H. rigida, are indistinguishable as nymphs and as adult females. Our objectives were to develop a genetic technique to distinguish between the two species and identify morphological features that separate cryptic nymphs and adult females. Fifty nymphs were collected before emergence from 10 sites throughout the western basin of Lake Erie in 2004 and 2005. Using known specimens of adult aerial male H. limbata and H. rigida, we used the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit 1 (COI) gene to identify a 16 base pair (bp) difference between species. DNA sequencing confirmed correct species identification based on differences in abdominal pigmentation patterns on adult female imagos in 19 of 20 cases; the lone exception was a female with very faint pigmentation. Pigmentation patterns between species were consistent on nymphs, subimagos and imagos of both sexes. Populations of both species are panmictic across the western basin of Lake Erie, but H. limbata is the numerically dominant species, representing 70 to 100% of nymphs at sites in both years. A separate lineage of H limbata was discovered in the samples. The ability to distinguish nymphs of the two species will aid in developing more sensitive ecosystem indicators.