udmurtian folk beliefs: Topics by WorldWideScience.org

Huo-Luo-Xiao-Ling Dan modulates antigen-directed immune response in adjuvant-induced inflammation

BackgroundThe rhizomes of Cynodon dactylon are used for the treatment of heart failure in folk medicine. In the present study, we investigated the effects of hydroalcoholic...Full Text Available

Complement-fixing Activity of Fulvic Acid from Shilajit and Other Natural Sources

Ethnopharmacological relevanceHLXL is a traditional Chinese medicine that has long been used in folk medicine for the treatment of chronic inflammatory diseases....Full Text Available

2009-05-04

Antipyretic and antibacterial activity of Chloranthus erectus (Buch.-Ham.) Verdcourt leaf extract: A popular folk medicine of Arunachal Pradesh

Shilajit has been used traditionally in folk medicine for treatment of a variety of disorders, including syndromes involving excessive complement activation. Extracts of Shilajit contain significant...Full Text Available

2009-03-01

Cultural beliefs that may discourage breastfeeding among Lebanese women: a qualitative analysis

Objective:The main objective of this work was to study the antipyretic and antibacterial activity of C. erectus (Buch.-Ham.) Verdcourt leaf extract in an...Full Text Available

2010-10-01

Students' general and physics epistemological beliefs: a twofold phenomenon

BackgroundAlthough the health benefits of breastfeeding are well established, early introduction of formula remains a common practice. Cultural beliefs and practices can have an...Full Text Available

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Background: Although research on epistemological beliefs has expanded over the past two decades, there are still some issues that need to be explored, such as whether epistemological beliefs are domain general or domain specific. Purpose: One of the purposes of this research was to determine if high school students' general epistemological beliefs were different from their epistemological beliefs in the domain of physics. Sample: The research was conducted with 15 grade nine students studying in an urban all-boys school. Their average age was 16. Their previous school experiences were traditional oriented. Design and methods: A case study design with qualitative methods was used for the research. Two questionnaires were developed and used in semi-structured interview protocols two times, w...

2011-01-01

Surgeons' beliefs and perceptions about removal of orthopaedic implants

Opinion fluctuations and disagreement in social networks

BackgroundThe routine removal of orthopaedic fixation devices after fracture healing remains an issue of debate. There are no evidence-based guidelines on this matter, and little...Full Text Available

Online grocery retailing: What do consumers think?

We study a stochastic gossip model of continuous opinion dynamics in a society consisting of two types of agents: regular agents, who update their beliefs according to information that they receive from their social neighbors; and stubborn agents, who never update their opinions and might represent leaders, political parties or media sources attempting to influence the beliefs in the rest of the society. When the society contains stubborn agents with different opinions, opinion dynamics never lead to a consensus (among the regular agents). Instead, beliefs in the society almost surely fail to converge, and the belief of each regular agent converges in law to a non-degenerate random variable. The model thus generates long-run disagreement and continuous opinion fluctuations. The structure of the social network and the location of stubborn agents within it shape opinion dynamics. When the society is ...

2010-01-01

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Purpose: To use the theory of planned behavior (TPB) as a theoretical framework to explore in depth the range of beliefs held by consumers about internet shopping in general and internet grocery shopping in particular. Design/methodology/approach: Seven focus group interviews, four in the United Kingdom and three in Denmark, were conducted among consumers with different degrees of experience with internet grocery shopping. This diversification of respondents was chosen to capture a broad range of the consumer beliefs that predict intentions to buy groceries online or not. The TPB framework was used to construct the interview guide that was followed in all focus groups. Findings: An unexpected result of the explorative study was that the seven groups consisting of more or less experienced internet shoppers differed only little in their pool of beliefs (outcome and control beliefs). ...

2005-01-01

Mixmaster: fact and belief

W. E. B. Du Bois's Basic American Negro Creed and the Associates in Negro Folk Education: A Case of Repressive Tolerance in the Censorship of Radical Black Discourse on Adult Education

We consider the dynamics towards the initial singularity of Bianchi type IX vacuum and orthogonal perfect fluid models with a linear equation of state. Surprisingly few facts are known about the 'Mixmaster' dynamics of these models, while at the same time most of the commonly held beliefs are rather vague. In this paper, we use Mixmaster facts as a base to build an infrastructure that makes it possible to sharpen the main Mixmaster beliefs. We formulate explicit conjectures concerning (i) the past asymptotic states of type IX solutions and (ii) the relevance of the Mixmaster/Kasner map for generic past asymptotic dynamics. The evidence for the conjectures is based on a study of the stochastic properties of this map in conjunction with dynamical systems techniques. We use a dynamical systems formulation, since this approach has so far been the only successful path to obtain theorems, but we also make comparisons with the ...

2009-04-07

The Urologist's View of Male Overactive Bladder: Discrepancy between Reality and Belief in Practical Setting

W. E. B. Du Bois, one of the brightest lights in African American history, wrote a sparkling critique of the American social and economic system originally planned as part of the Bronze Booklets series, edited and published by Alain Locke and the Associates in Negro Folk Education. The piece was never published and has, until now, been lost to the annals of adult education history. Using historical evidence, the authors examine Du Bois's Basic American Negro Creed and the circumstances that led to its exclusion from the series. It is argued that the Creed was far too radical for the liberal minded Carnegie Corporation and its leaders who were only interested in accommodating adult education for Blacks through the AAAE funded Bronze Booklets. The exclusion of the Creed represents an example of repressive tolerance by the AAAE.

2008-12-01

Nurses' knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs regarding organ and tissue donation and transplantation.

PurposeIn order to gain insight into the physicians' awareness of and attitude towards management of overactive bladder (OAB) in males, we performed a nationwide survey of the current...Full Text Available

2010-05-01

Medical disclosure and refugees. Telling bad news to Ethiopian patients.

The acute shortage of human organs and tissues for transplantation has been attributed in part to health professionals, including nurses, for their reluctance to recognize and refer suitable candidates...Full Text Available

1991-03-01

Key Beliefs for Targeted Interventions to Increase Physical Activity in Children: Analyzing Data from an Extended Version of the Theory of Planned Behaviour

The strong value in American medical practice placed on the disclosure of terminal illness conflicts with the cultural beliefs of many recent refugees and immigrants to the United States, who often...Full Text Available

1992-09-01

Efficient use of accessibility in microRNA target prediction

Given the high prevalence of overweight and low levels of physical activity among children, a better understanding of physical activity behaviour is an important step in intervention planning. This...Full Text Available

2010-01-01

Making sense of theory of mind and paranoia: The psychometric properties and reasoning requirements of a false belief sequencing task.

Considering accessibility of the 3′UTR is believed to increase the precision of microRNA target predictions. We show that, contrary to common belief, ranking by the hybridization energy or by...Full Text Available

2011-01-01

In the Face of Terrorism: Evidence that Belief in Literal Immortality Reduces Prejudice Under Terrorism Threat

Introduction. This study used Item-Response Theory (IRT) to model the psychometric properties of a false belief picture sequencing task. Consistent with the mental time travel hypothesis of paranoia, we anticipated that performance on this deductive theory of mind (ToM) task would not be associated with the presence of persecutory delusions but would be related to other clinical, cognitive, and demographic factors. Method. A large (N=237) and diverse clinical and nonclinical sample differing in levels of depression and paranoid ideation performed 2 ToM tasks: the false belief sequencing task and a ToM stories task that was used to assess the validity of the false belief sequencing task as a measure of ToM. Results. A unidimensional IRT model was found to fit the data well. Latent ToM ability as measured by the false belief sequencing task was negatively related with age and positively with IQ. In ...

2011-08-15

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Based on terror management theory, previous research has shown that terrorism threat increases prejudice against Muslims and is mediated by death-related thoughts. Because this effect was found on a correlational level, it remains unclear whether terrorism threat increases prejudice against Muslims because of enhanced death-related thoughts or the opposite: terrorism threat increases death-related thoughts because of stronger prejudice against Muslims. To disentangle this shortcoming, we varied death-related thoughts by systematically manipulating the belief in literal immortality. Using two studies, we found that participants exposed to terrorism pictures (vs. controls) had increased prejudice against both Muslims (Study 1) and immigrants (Study 2) when they were led to believe that liter...

2011-01-01

Green Growth

Wastenet

... Social Capital Social capital describes circumstances in which individuals and organisations can use membership in groups and networks to secure benefits. Connections within and between networks reinforce the belief that these social networks have a value and can be used as a platform for further social progress. In this light, natural capital and social capital are closely related, and policies that build or destroy one often build ...

1 2 3

Attitudes toward obesity in obese persons: a matched comparison of obese women with and without binge eating.

Resolving conflicting safety cultures

No research has compared expressions of weight bias across different subgroups of obese individuals. This study compared attitudes toward and beliefs about obesity in women with and without binge eating disorder (BED) and examined whether these attitudes are related to psychological factors. Fifty obese women with BED were compared with an age- and body mass index (BMI)-matched group of 50 obese women without BED on a battery of established measures of anti-fat attitudes and beliefs about weight controllability and psychological factors (self-esteem, depression, and eating disorder features). The ageand BMI-matched groups did not differ with respect to beliefs about obesity or attitudes toward obese persons, or in self-esteem or depression. Correlational analyses conducted separately within each group revealed that women with BED who reported more favorable attitudes towards obese persons had higher self-esteem and lower ...

2010-01-27

Understanding the Conundrum of Rebirth Experience of the Beaver, Gitxsan, and Witsuwit'en

Several nuclear power plant sites have been wounded in the crossfire between two distinct corporate cultures. The traditional utility culture lies on one side and that of the nuclear navy on the other. The two corporate cultures lead to different perceptions of open-quotes safety culture.close quotes This clash of safety cultures obscures a very important point about nuclear plant operations: Safety depends on organizational learning. Organizational learning provides the foundation for a perception of safety culture that transcends the conflict between utility and nuclear navy cultures. Corporate culture may be defined as the knowledge, attitudes, and beliefs shared by employees of a given company. Safety culture is the part of corporate culture concerning shared attitudes and beliefs affecting individual or public safety. If the safety culture promotes behaviors that lead to greater safety, employees will tend to open-quotes do the right ...

1993-06-20

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Summary The First Nations people of British Columbia experience reincarnation as a revitalization of their culture. This article documents the perseverance of reincarnation experiences among the Beaver, Witsuwit'en, and Gitxsan peoples of British Columbia, as well as my own growth in understanding such experiences. It recounts examples of rebirth cases. It explains what rebirth experiences mean to the First Nations people. It describes how these experiences are embedded in their perception of this world and embodied in their beliefs of spiritual realms, which include the interconnected and parallel worlds of fish and land animals, on this world and in spiritual dimensions. While the rebirth worldview contrasts with that of the Western scientific world, this is a worldview I have come to en...

2010-01-01

Estimating deficit probabilities with price-responsive demand in contract-based electricity markets

The approximate maximum-likelihood certificate

Studies that estimate deficit probabilities in hydrothermal systems have generally ignored the response of demand to changing prices, in the belief that such response is largely irrelevant. We show that ignoring the response of demand to prices can lead to substantial over or under estimation of the probability of an energy deficit. To make our point we present an estimation of deficit probabilities in Chile's Central Interconnected System between 2006 and 2010. This period is characterized by tight supply, fast consumption growth and rising electricity prices. When the response of demand to rising prices is acknowledged, forecasted deficit probabilities and marginal costs are shown to be substantially lower. (author)

2009-02-01

The Social Context of Motorcycle Riding and the Key Determinants Influencing Rider Behavior: A Qualitative Investigation

A new property which relies on the linear programming (LP) decoder, the approximate maximum-likelihood certificate (AMLC), is introduced. When using the belief propagation decoder, this property is a measure of how close the decoded codeword is to the LP solution. Using upper bounding techniques, it is demonstrated that the conditional frame error probability given that the AMLC holds is, with some degree of confidence, below a threshold. In channels with low noise, this threshold is several orders of magnitude lower than the simulated frame error rate, and our bound holds with very high degree of confidence. In contrast, showing this error performance by simulation would require very long Monte Carlo runs. When the AMLC holds, our approach thus provides the decoder with extra error detection capability, which is especially important in applications requiring high data integrity.

2011-01-01

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Objective: Given the increasing popularity of motorcycle riding and heightened risk of injury or death associated with being a rider, this study explored rider behavior as a determinant of rider safety and, in particular, key beliefs and motivations that influence such behavior. To enhance the effectiveness of future education and training interventions, it is important to understand riders' own views about what influences how they ride. Specifically, this study sought to identify key determinants of riders' behaviors in relation to the social context of riding, including social and identity-related influences relating to the group (group norms and group identity) as well as the self (moral/personal norm and self-identity). Method: Qualitative research was undertaken via group discussions ...

2011-01-01

Sex Differences in Pain and Psychological Functioning in Persons With Limb Loss

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

Sex differences in pain are frequently reported in the literature. However, less is known about possible sex differences in the experience of pain secondary to a disability. The current study explored these issues in persons with limb loss (n = 335, 72% men) who were recruited as part of a postal survey. Participants provided ratings of phantom limb pain (PLP), residual limb pain (RLP), and general pain intensity. Participants also completed measures of pain-related interference, catastrophizing, coping, and beliefs. Results indicated that a greater proportion of males than females (86% vs 77%, respectively) reported the presence of PLP; however, this difference was no longer prominent when cause of limb loss was controlled. No sex differences were found in the presence of RLP, or in avera...

2010-01-01

New Lectures on Supergravity

Hydraulic Fracture Stimulation Treatments at East Mesa, Well 58-30; Geothermal Reservoir Well Stimulation Program; Experiment 3 and 4

This essay aims to summarize the main physical features arising from a new supersymmetric theory of gravitation. Based on preliminary discussions about classical field theory, cosmology, algebra and group theory, and taking formal results and theoretical considerations in comparison with several contributions from great authors, present work deals with gravity inside the limits of a meta-field theory, that is, a non-quantized but consistent representation of supergravity, the supersymmetry between gravitons and gravitinos. The introduction of meta-fields furnishes an independent framework for the study of gravity despite of constraints of quantization, treating the supersymmetric partners as deterministic actors of gravitation and not simply probabilistic entities. I explain my belief that gravitational field, by its own nature, is not quantizable in the same foot as the other fields, what does not means that we can not understand gravity by similar formal veins. ...

2011-01-01

Bulk properties and photoelectron spectroscopy of the z-U-Pu phase

The tests reported were part of the DOE Geothermal Reservoir Well Stimulation Program. This East Mesa (Imperial Valley, CA) well was successfully stimulated with two fracture treatments, a dendritic fracture and a planar fracture. The natural flow production of the well increased 114 percent, to 197,900 lb/hr. These tests were among the few successful attempts of this program to increase flow from geothermal production wells. The general belief is that these tests worked OK primarily because the formation was sedimentary rock (similar to rock in most oil and gas wells that have been stimulated successfully. Similar tests in geothermal hard rock reservoirs did not work very well. (DJE 2005)

1982-02-01

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

The z-phase, existing between 35% and 70% U in Pu, belongs to the high-density phases seen from the point of view of systematics of allotropic modifications of Pu metal. Despite the volume per actinide atom only slightly higher than for a-Pu, it magnetic susceptibility is much higher than for a-Pu and exceeds even the d-Pu value. Similarly, the Sommerfeld coefficient g>40mJ/mol Pu K2 exceeds the experimental d-Pu value. The data confirm that the volume is not the primary control parameter affecting the situation around the Fermi level of common Pu phases and they point against the traditional belief that they are essentially narrow 5f band systems. Electronic structure calculations suggest that the 5f states of Pu have slightly lower occupancy comparing with d-Pu. A tendency to the 5f loca...

2011-01-01

Approaching the ?Resistant:? Exploring East Asian International Students? Perceptions of Therapy and Help-Seeking Behavior Before and After They Arrived in the United States

British Library Electronic Table of Contents (United Kingdom)

In this study we investigated cultural, familial, and individual beliefs that influenced international students? perceptions of therapy and help-seeking behaviors. Included were changes in perception or behavior before and after the students came to the US, and factors that influenced help-seeking behaviors. Six international students from East Asian countries where English is a foreign language, including Taiwan, Mainland China, Japan, and South Korea, were interviewed. We used semi-structured interviews and participant observations for collecting data. The findings indicated changes after students came to the US. Further discussions focus on encouraging and discouraging factors relative to seeing therapists, and culturally sensitive interventions for family therapy clinicians.

2011-01-01

A new model of coal-water interaction and relevance for dewatering

Consumer attitudes and decision-making with regard to genetically engineered food products: A review of the literature and a presentation of models for future research

This project is concerned with a basic scientific question concerning the properties of coal--to what extent is the ability of coal to hold moisture a manifestation of the well-known ability of coal to swell, when exposed to good solvents The question implies that the long-held belief that coal holds a significant portion of its moisture by classical capillary condensation processes, is possibly in error. It is likely that a sound approach to permanent drying would involve highly crosslinking the coal at mild drying conditions. The crosslinked coal could not swell sufficiently to hold much water. It is identifying processes to achieve this goal, that constitute the objective of the second phase of this work. 25 refs., 4 figs., 1 tab.

1991-01-01

DEFF Research Database (Denmark)

Executive summary 1. Few studies have to date explained consumer attitudes and purchase decisions with regard to genetically engineered food products. However, the increased marketing of genetically engineered food products and the considerable concern that consumers seem to express with regard to the technology call for the development of a theoretical basis for research into these issues. 2. The aim of the paper is to present three models which we have developed to explain consumer attitudes, buying behaviour and attitude change with regard to genetically engineered food products. All three models build on established consumer behaviour theory and on existing and comparable research in the field. 3. Consumer attitudes toward genetic engineering in food products are explained in an attitude model that builds on Fishbein's multiattribute attitude model. The model deviates from Fishbein's model in a number of ways: there is an explicit distinction between perceived benefits and risks ...

1998-01-01

Universality for the Noisy Slepian-Wolf Problem Via Spatial Coupling

The allusive cognitive deficit in paranoia: the case for mental time travel or cognitive self-projection.

We consider a noisy Slepian-Wolf problem where two correlated sources are separately encoded and transmitted over two independent binary memoryless symmetric channels. Each channel capacity is assumed to be characterized by a single parameter which is not known at the transmitter. The receiver has knowledge of both the source correlation and the channel parameters. We call a system universal if it retains near-capacity performance without channel knowledge at the transmitter. Kudekar et al. recently showed that terminated low-density parity-check (LDPC) convolutional codes (a.k.a. spatially-coupled LDPC ensembles) can have belief-propagation thresholds that approach their maximum a-posteriori thresholds. This was proven for binary erasure channels and shown empirically for binary memoryless symmetric channels. They also conjectured that the principle of spatial coupling is very general and the phenomenon of threshold saturation applies to a very broad class of ...

2011-01-01

Stress corrosion cracking of austenitic stainless steel core internal welds.

Delusional beliefs are characteristic of psychosis and, of the delusions, the paranoid delusion is the single most common type associated with psychosis. The many years of research focused on neurocognition in schizophrenia, using standardized neurocognitive tests, have failed to find conclusive cognitive deficits in relation to positive symptoms. However, UK-based psychological research has identified sociocognitive anomalies in relation to paranoid thinking in the form of theory of mind (ToM), causal reasoning and threat-related processing anomalies. Drawing from recent neuroscientific research on the default mode network, this paper asserts that the common theme running through the psychological tests that are sensitive to the cognitive impairment of paranoia is the need to cognitively project the self through time, referred to as mental time travel. Such an understanding of the cognitive roots of paranoid ideation provides a synthesis between psychological and ...

2010-08-01

Optimization of maintenance programme at Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station based on RCM analysis results

Microstructural analyses by several advanced metallographic techniques were conducted on austenitic stainless steel mockup and core shroud welds that had cracked in boiling water reactors. Contrary to previous beliefs, heat-affected zones of the cracked Type 304L, as well as 304 SS core shroud welds and mockup shielded-metal-arc welds, were free of grain-boundary carbides, which shows that core shroud failure cannot be explained by classical intergranular stress corrosion cracking. Neither martensite nor delta-ferrite films were present on the grain boundaries. However, as a result of exposure to welding fumes, the heat-affected zones of the core shroud welds were significantly contaminated by oxygen and fluorine, which migrate to grain boundaries. Significant oxygen contamination seems to promote fluorine contamination and suppress thermal sensitization. Results of slow-strain-rate tensile tests also indicate that fluorine exacerbates the susceptibility of ...

1999-04-14

Management of upper water catchments, especially in dry forests in India with low base flows; forestry and low flows, spatial modelling and open GIS dissemination of the science perception

This paper begins with an introduction to Guangdong Daya Bay Nuclear Power Station (GNPS) and gives a simple introduction to the operations and maintenance documentation system at GNPS. It then will review the maintenance program guidelines base and the associated problems prior to the application of reliability centered maintenance (RCM). How RCM was implemented at GNPS, how the results of RCM analysis were used to optimize the maintenance program and test program, and what is the interface between RCM and the existing maintenance program will be shown. Next, it will show the successful implementation of RCM at GNPS resulted in the following changes: A new understanding of equipment failure challenges operations and maintenance beliefs, maintenance concepts undergo a large change, maintenance program and periodic testing program are continuously modified and optimized, new on-condition maintenance technologies are introduced, non-productive scheduled overhauls are ...

2003-12-01

Environmental Research Database

SummaryIntended Outputs: Documentation demonstrating an improved biophysical understanding of the role of forests on low flows in the arid zone regions of India through the development and outputs from hydrological models such as Hyluc and SWAT.A documented analysis of the impacts on the poor of historical and current water management policies, including the investigation through PRA techniques of people's perceptions and beliefs of land-use/hydrological interactions, and the implications o [continued...]ObjectivesTo establish a better understanding of forest impacts on low flows and the social impact of water resources management in arid zone regions of India, and to develop tools which allow this improved understanding to be disseminated directly to stakeholders.DescriptionProject Background: Reducing river flows and groundwater tables, especially during the dry season, constitutes a major problem causing great hardship to large numbers of rural and urban poor ...

2006-01-30

Law as an organizational variable: an examination of the impact of law on the performance of the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission

Individual differences and weight bias: Do people with an anti-fat bias have a pro-thin bias?

The role of law in a federal regulatory agency is examined from an organizational perspective. While law is usually viewed in terms of its legal, political, and social value consequences, it is postulated that it also has significant organizational consequences. The impact of those consequences is examined in the case of a single agency, the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission. The legal process is shown to be a powerful organizational characteristic of the government administrative agency, beginning with statuatory definition of organization goals, structure, and procedures and ending with judicial review of actions. Agency lawyers are shown to represent a distinct professional subculture within this agency. Their values and orientations toward business, the role of regulation, and the role of nuclear utilities are different from the 95% of agency employees subculture based on a physical science/engineering background. It is concluded that agency effectiveness suffers from the cultural ...

Incorporating organizational factors into Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) of complex socio-technical systems: A hybrid technique formalization

While levels of weight bias vary among individuals, it is not clear why one person possesses stronger anti-fat attitudes than another person. This investigation examined whether individual differences commonly associated with greater anti-fat bias are also associated with a greater preference for thinness among people of varying levels of weight. Young adults (62% women; 84% Caucasian) recruited from psychology classes (N=308) rated four male and female figures with approximate BMIs of 18.5, 25, 30, and 40, on measures of dislike and personality characteristics and completed measures assessing weight controllability, attitudes toward the obese, and perceptual reliance. Greater negative attitudes, weight controllability beliefs, and perceptual reliance were positively associated with greater dislike and negative personality attributes among obese/severely obese figures, but inversely related among low normal weight figures. Individuals who judge others based on ...

2010-01-20

1 2 3

In Vitro Fracture of Human Cortical Bone: Local Fracture Criteria and Toughening Mechanisms

This paper is a result of a research with the primary purpose of extending Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) modeling frameworks to include the effects of organizational factors as the deeper, more fundamental causes of accidents and incidents. There have been significant improvements in the sophistication of quantitative methods of safety and risk assessment, but the progress on techniques most suitable for organizational safety risk frameworks has been limited. The focus of this paper is on the choice of 'representational schemes' and 'techniques.' A methodology for selecting appropriate candidate techniques and their integration in the form of a 'hybrid' approach is proposed. Then an example is given through an integration of System Dynamics (SD), Bayesian Belief Network (BBN), Event Sequence Diagram (ESD), and Fault Tree (FT) in order to demonstrate the feasibility and value of hybrid techniques. The ...

2009-05-15

Exploring the concept of climate surprises. A review of the literature on the concept of surprise and how it is related to climate change

A micro-mechanistic understanding of bone fracture that encompasses how cracks interact with the underlying microstructure and defines their local failure mode is lacking, despite extensive research on the response of bone to a variety of factors like aging, loading, and/or disease. Micro-mechanical models for fracture incorporating such local failure criteria have been widely developed for metallic and ceramic materials systems; however, few such deliberations have been undertaken for the fracture of bone. In fact, although the fracture event in mineralized tissues such as bone is commonly believed to be locally strain controlled, until recently there has been little experimental evidence to support this widely held belief. In the present study, a series of in vitro experiments involving a double-notch bend test geometry are performed in order to shed further light on the nature of the local cracking events that precede catastrophic fracture in bone and to define ...

2004-08-18

A cultural research approach to instrument development: the case of breast and cervical cancer screening among Latino and Anglo women.

This report examines the concept of climate surprise and its implications for environmental policymaking. Although most integrated assessment models of climate change deal with average values of change, it is usually the extreme events or surprises that cause the most damage to human health and property. Current models do not help the policymaker decide how to deal with climate surprises. This report examines the literature of surprise in many aspects of human society: psychology, military, health care, humor, agriculture, etc. It draws together various ways to consider the concept of surprise and examines different taxonomies of surprise that have been proposed. In many ways, surprise is revealed to be a subjective concept, triggered by such factors as prior experience, belief system, and level of education. How policymakers have reacted to specific instances of climate change or climate surprise in the past is considered, particularly with regard to the choices ...

1998-01-01

4U 1907+09: a HMXB running away from the Galactic plane

To illustrate the implementation of a bottom-up approach to the study of culture in health disparities, this article describes the development of a cultural cancer screening scale (CCSS) using mixed methodologies. The aim was to identify cultural factors relevant to breast and cervical cancer screening, develop an instrument to assess them and examine its preliminary psychometric properties among Latin American (Latino) and non-Latino White (Anglo) women in Southern California. Seventy-eight Latino and Anglo women participated in semi-structured interviews, which were content coded based on Triandis' methods for the analysis of subjective culture. Based on the emerging cultural elements, items relevant to cancer screening were developed and pilot tested with 161 participants. After the instrument was refined, 314 Latino and Anglo women from various socioeconomic backgrounds completed the CCSS and data were factor analyzed resulting in five cultural factors: cancer screening fatalism, ...

2010-09-23

Using the health belief model to predict injecting drug users' intentions to employ harm reduction strategies.

We report the discovery of a bow shock around the high-mass X-ray binary (HMXB) 4U 1907+09 using the Spitzer Space Telescope 24 $\\mu$m data (after Vela X-1 the second example of bow shocks associated with HMXBs). The detection of the bow shock implies that 4U 1907+09 is moving through the space with a high (supersonic) peculiar velocity. To confirm the runaway nature of 4U 1907+09, we measured its proper motion, which for an adopted distance to the system of 4 kpc corresponds to a peculiar transverse velocity of $\\simeq 160 \\pm 115$ km/s, meaning that 4U 1907+09 is indeed a runaway system and supporting the general belief that most of HMXBs possess high space velocities. The direction of motion of 4U 1907+09 inferred from the proper motion measurement is consistent with the orientation of the symmetry axis of the bow shock, and shows that the HMXB is running away from the Galactic plane. We also present the Spitzer images of the bow shock around Vela X-1 (a ...

2011-01-01

Isotope Production at the Hanford Site in Richland, Washington

We examined whether perceived susceptibility to and severity of two injection-related health conditions (i.e., non-fatal overdose and bacterial infections), and perceived benefits of, barriers to, self-efficacy to, social acceptance of, and recent use of two harm-reduction behaviors (i.e., injecting test shots and pre-injection skin cleaning), predicted injecting drug users' near-term intentions to engage in these two strategies. Recent past use of these two behaviors consistently and positively predicted near-term intentions in each of four drug-use situations (i.e., in withdrawal, not in withdrawal, alone, and with others). Perceived susceptibility to non-fatal overdose predicted intentions to do test shots, but only when participants imagined not being in withdrawal or injecting when alone. Perceived self-efficacy to clean one's skin predicted intentions to engage in this behavior, but only when participants imagined injecting while not in withdrawal. Participants' ratings of how ...

2011-06-24

Genome Sequence of a Lancefield Group C Streptococcus zooepidemicus Strain Causing Epidemic Nephritis: New Information about an Old Disease

This report was prepared in response to a request from the Nuclear Energy Research Advisory Committee (NERAC) subcommittee on ''Long-Term Isotope Research and Production Plans.'' The NERAC subcommittee has asked for a reply to a number of questions regarding (1) ''How well does the Department of Energy (DOE) infrastructure sme the need for commercial and medical isotopes?'' and (2) ''What should be the long-term role of the federal government in providing commercial and medical isotopes?' Our report addresses the questions raised by the NERAC subcommittee, and especially the 10 issues that were raised under the first of the above questions (see Appendix). These issues are related to the isotope products offered by the DOE Isotope Production Sites, the capabilities and condition of the facilities used to produce these products, the management of the isotope production programs at DOE ...

1999-06-01

Combined Estimation of Hydrogeologic Conceptual Model, Parameter, and Scenario Uncertainty with Application to Uranium Transport at the Hanford Site 300 Area

Outbreaks of disease attributable to human error or natural causes can provide unique opportunities to gain new information about host-pathogen interactions and new leads for pathogenesis research. Poststreptococcal glomerulonephritis (PSGN), a sequela of infection with pathogenic streptococci, is a common cause of preventable kidney disease worldwide. Although PSGN usually occurs after infection with group A streptococci, organisms of Lancefield group C and G also can be responsible. Despite decades of study, the molecular pathogenesis of PSGN is poorly understood. As a first step toward gaining new information about PSGN pathogenesis, we sequenced the genome of Streptococcus equi subsp. zooepidemicus strain MGCS10565, a group C organism that caused a very large and unusually severe epidemic of nephritis in Brazil. The genome is a circular chromosome of 2,024,171 bp. The genome shares extensive gene content, including many virulence factors, with genetically related group A ...

2008-08-21

Advanced Lighting Program Development (BG9702800) Final Report

This report to the Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) describes the development and application of a methodology to systematically and quantitatively assess predictive uncertainty in groundwater flow and transport modeling that considers the combined impact of hydrogeologic uncertainties associated with the conceptual-mathematical basis of a model, model parameters, and the scenario to which the model is applied. The methodology is based on a n extension of a Maximum Likelihood implementation of Bayesian Model Averaging. Model uncertainty is represented by postulating a discrete set of alternative conceptual models for a site with associated prior model probabilities that reflect a belief about the relative plausibility of each model based on its apparent consistency with available knowledge and data. Posterior model probabilities are computed and parameter uncertainty is estimated by calibrating each model to observed system behavior; prior parameter estimates ...

2007-07-30

A comparison of algorithms for inference and learning in probabilistic graphical models.

The report presents a long-range plan for a broad-based, coordinated research, development and market transformation program for reducing the lighting energy intensities in commercial and residential buildings in California without compromising lighting quality. An effective program to advance lighting energy efficiency in California must be based on an understanding that lighting is a mature field and the lighting industry has developed many specialized products that meet a wide variety of light needs for different building types. Above all else, the lighting field is diverse and there are applications for a wide range of lighting products, systems, and strategies. Given the range of existing lighting solutions, an effective energy efficient lighting research portfolio must be broad-based and diverse to match the diversity of the lighting market itself. The belief that there is one solution--a magic bullet, such as a better lamp, for example--that will propel ...

1998-02-01