Review of Interviewing in Social Research.

Reviews the book Interviewing in social research by H. H. Hyman et al. (1954). This volume is a scholarly but freeflowing treatise on sources of error and potentialities for their control in the survey interview. The book is divided into seven rather lengthy chapters. Chapter I, entitled "A Frame of Reference for the Study of Interviewer Effects," reviews the widespread application of interviewing as a fallible method of scientific inquiry, and cautiously suggests the possibilities for generalization about other kinds of interviewing from studies of the survey interview. Chapter II, "The Definition of the Interview Situation," is devoted to the formulation of hypotheses about factors affecting interviewing from "phenomenological" case studies based largely on intensive interviews with interviewers and respondents. The third chapter presents an analysis of "Sources of Effect Deriving from the Interviewer." Chapter IV, "Respondent Reaction in the Interview Situation," reviews the contradictory evidence on personal interviewing vs. self-administered questionnaires. The "Situational Determinants of Interviewer Effects" are examined in Chapter V. Chapter VI is an attempt to evaluate the magnitude of "Interviewer Effects under Normal Operating Conditions." The final chapter is devoted to consideration of the relative merits of various methods for "Reduction and Control of Error." (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Lewis and Fischer rat strains display differences in biochemical, electrophysiological and behavioral parameters: studies in the nucleus accumbens and locus coeruleus of drug naive and morphine-treated animals

We investigated the effects of the systemic administration of thymosin alpha 1 plus relatively low doses of human recombinant interleukin-2 or very low doses of interferon alpha,beta in untreated and cyclophosphamide (CY)-treated DBA/2 mice challenged either subcutaneously or intravenously (i.v.) with Friend erythroleukemia cells (FLC). Both treatments resulted in the complete regression of subcutaneous tumor and cured a significative percentage of mice. They also increased the survival time of mice i.v. injected with large numbers of FLC. Neither immunotherapy alone nor CY, alone or in combination with single cytokines, produced similar effects. The antitumor action of these combined chemoimmunotherapy protocols seems to involve activation of the immune response since (a) a synergistic increase of the cytotoxicity of spleen cells was demonstrated in treated mice; (b) selective in vivo depletion of asialo-GM1, CD4, or CD8-positive cells abrogated this antitumor activity; and (c) a high lymphoid cell infiltration was found at the tumor site and in the livers of treated mice.     

Helicobacter pylori detection by polymerase chain reaction in gastric juice and its correlation with the histology (Giemsa)]

HP infection is involved in the pathogenesis of several gastroduodenal diseases, as type B chronic gastritis, duodenal and gastric ulcer, MALT lymphoma and gastric cancer. The recent availability of molecular techniques, specifically the PCR, allow us to detect very low amounts of the bacterium. The aim of the study is to evaluate the presence of HP in gastric juice by PCR technique and to correlate this findings with histology (Giemsa) of gastric mucosa. Gastric juice PCR positive findings were found in 10/31 (32.3%) HP positive patients at histology. We concluded that HP in gastric juice is possible to detect by molecular techniques. In our study 32.3% of the patients showed the presence of HP in gastric juice.     

Call routing to distributed queues: Is FIFO really better than MED?

New services providing automatic call distribution in the network have been one of the most hotly contested areas in the USA telecommunications arena in recent years. This has been fueled by increasing demand from large corporations for intelligent network routing that will keep their geographically distributed telemarketing/service centers operating with maximum efficiency. This paper compares two basic strategies for a network call distributor: a centralized FIFO queue and a distributed queueing strategy called Minimum‐Expected‐Delay (MED). According to MED, a central controller routes each arrival to the node that minimizes its expected delay (waiting time). Our main result qualifies the conventional wisdom that perceives FIFO as optimal. We show that the waiting time under FIFO is not stochastically smaller than that under MED. Furthermore, we prove that the waiting time distribution functions intersect at a single point. Numerical experiments suggest that, for certain performance criteria and over a range of parameters of interest, MED can actually outperform FIFO. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.