Management gaps analysis: a case study of groundwater resource management in New Zealand

The primary objective of this project is to identify gaps, whether real or perceived, that hinder effective groundwater management in New Zealand. These gaps show as gaps in information, gaps in implementation, gaps in technological and management tools, and gaps in understanding of fundamental processes. The secondary objective is to propose a management strategy to close the identified gaps. Several methods are used to meet these objectives: surveys distributed to selected staff in each regional council; the review of various written reports; the analysis of land-use databases; and private consultation within each regional council. Results show that groundwater management in New Zealand is generally reactionary with the main gaps being in strategic planning and national guidelines. Most gaps appear to be predominantly information and implementation issues. In some cases there are gaps in the understanding of fundamental processes within an aquifer system, including the long-term effects of land-use on groundwater quality. An adaptive management approach is suggested as a means of closing these gaps.     

The role of perspective in the accessibility of goals during reading.

An implicit assumption of several causal reasoning models is that readers adopt the goals of a narrative's protagonist during text comprehension. In apparent violation of this assumption, readers participating in Experiment 1 of the present study drew inferences relevant to a protagonist's goal even when that goal was already satisfied from the perspective of the protagonist. In Experiments 2 and 3, participants were explicitly asked to view the text situation from the point of view of the protagonist. In this case, the goals of the reader and the protagonist should be the same. In these experiments, participants focused on the goals of the protagonist only when those goals had not been satisfied from the perspective of the protagonist. These results are discussed in terms of reader- and character-based perspectives and in terms of text characteristics that cue perspective taking. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Partial congenital defect of the left pericardium: angiographic diagnosis and treatment by thoracoscopic pericardiectomy: case report

Twenty-six patients with an intracardiac myxoma underwent surgical resection at our institution from 1977 through 1992. Left atrial myxoma was diagnosed in 22 patients, left ventricular in 1, right atrial in 2, and right ventricular in 1. Six patients were asymptomatic; preoperative symptoms included dyspnea, arrhythmias, embolic episodes, and syncope. The diagnosis was established with transthoracic echocardiography in all cases but one. Surgery was performed in all cases with the aid of cardiopulmonary bypass with moderate hypothermia and cold crystalloid cardioplegia. One patient with a left ventricular myxoma died in a comatose state during the immediate postoperative period. Long-term clinical and echocardiographic evaluation was performed in 19 patients; results were excellent (all the patients were in New York Heart Association functional class I or II), and no recurrences were documented. The clinical characteristics, diagnostic methods, and surgical approach are presented and discussed.     

Self-monitoring processes and Holland Vocational Preferences among college students.

Examined the association between self-monitoring and occupational preferences. 237 undergraduates completed Snyder and Gangestad's (1986) revised self-monitoring scale and Holland's (1977) Vocational Preference Inventory (VPI). Regression analyses showed that men who valued congruence between their beliefs and behavior (i.e., low self-monitors) preferred social occupations. Men who were inclined to modify their behavior to fit social situations (i.e., high self-monitors) preferred enterprising occupations. In contrast, high self-monitoring women preferred artistic occupations. It is argued that these gender-neutral occupations permit high self-monitoring women to use their social skills but without the constraints found in male dominated enterprising occupations. Results support the assumption that people prefer occupations compatible with their social skills. Implications for career counseling and further research are noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Effects of age on cardiovascular responses to adrenaline in man

Sensitivity to toxicants is a major criterion for selecting organisms for bioassay testing. If a sensitive species is also abundant and occupies a role as prey for many other species within a community, then the species become a valuable tool in environmental monitoring. These features apply to larval midge Chironomus petiolatus in freshwater environments of central Chile. The youngest larval instar is the most sensitive and presents the additional feature of lower survival within control arenas, making it more difficult to discern toxicant-related mortality from background mortality. In this work, we perform acute bioassays with the three larval stages of C. petiolatus and K2Cr2O7 as reference toxicant, with the goal of selecting a particular instar as the best bioassay tool using two criteria: sensitivity and background mortality. Sensitivity is evaluated through Monte Carlo estimation of LC50 and background mortality through bootstrap resampling, and a final Bioassay Performance Index as the product of LC50 and background mortality. For this task we developed a new computationally intensive statistical algorithm. Results show that the best bioassay tool is not the youngest and most sensitive instar but an intermediate one.     

Maintaining global coherence during reading.

Previous research demonstrated a contradiction effect: Although text currently being processed was locally coherent, readers were aware of inconsistencies between a protagonist's actions and characteristics of the protagonists that were described earlier in the text and subsequently backgrounded. In the present experiments, not only the critical characteristics but also the protagonist were backgrounded. When the protagonist was reintroduced into the narrative in the context of carrying out an inconsistent action, the contradiction effect again occurred. In Exps 1–3, we examined the effects of several variables on the onset of the effect. In Exp 4, we presented probes at various points in the passage with results that supported the conclusion that the critical characteristics had been backgrounded before the sentence that contradicted them. Results are discussed in terms of several recent models in which currently active representational elements serve as retrieval cues for other inactive, but highly related, elements. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)