MS

thesisA comprehensive evaluation of 25 chronically mentally ill Day Treatment Center patients revealed 140 functional health problems. Fifty-six (40%) of these health problems were considered to have a potentially major impact upon life and functioning of the individual. Twenty-one patients (84%) were found to have at least one major functional health problem, and 72% (n = 18) to have more than one major problem. Minor functional health problems were identified in 100% of the patients. A majority of the health problems identified in this study (69%, n = 96) were either undiagnosed or untreated at the time of the study. This finding highlights a need for comprehensive health assessments to be regularly provided to this population. Each of the potential barriers to obtaining and managing physical health care was endorsed by some of the patients. The significant correlations relating to health and health care management are discussed. Potential ways of helping chronically mentally ill patients access, obtain, and follow through with physical health care are discussed

The relationship between mental toughness and cognitive control: evidence from the item-method directed forgetting task

Previous research by the authors found that mental toughness, as measured by the Mental Toughness Questionnaire 48 (MTQ48; Clough, P.J., Earle, K., & Sewell, D. [2002]. Mental toughness: the concept and its measurement. In I. Cockerill (Ed.), Solutions in sport psychology [pp. 32–43]. London: Thomson Publishing), was significantly associated with performance on the list-method directed forgetting task. The current study extends this finding to the item-method directed forgetting task in which the instruction to Remember or Forget is given after each item in the study list. A significant positive association was found between the correct recognition of Remember words and the emotional control subscale of the MTQ48. No significant associations were observed with other measures of mental toughness or personality. The findings are discussed in terms of the relationship between mental toughness and cognitive control

Uncertainty reconciles complementarity with joint measurability

The fundamental principles of complementarity and uncertainty are shown to be related to the possibility of joint unsharp measurements of pairs of noncommuting quantum observables. A new joint measurement scheme for complementary observables is proposed. The measured observables are represented as positive operator valued measures (POVMs), whose intrinsic fuzziness parameters are found to satisfy an intriguing pay-off relation reflecting the complementarity. At the same time, this relation represents an instance of a Heisenberg uncertainty relation for measurement imprecisions. A model-independent consideration show that this uncertainty relation is logically connected with the joint measurability of the POVMs in question.Comment: 4 pages, RevTeX. Title of previous version: "Complementarity and uncertainty - entangled in joint path-interference measurements". This new version focuses on the "measurement uncertainty relation" and its role, disentangling this issue from the special context of path interference duality. See also http://www.vjquantuminfo.org (October 2003

Theoretical Uncertainties in Red Giant Branch Evolution: The Red Giant Branch Bump

A Monte Carlo simulation exploring uncertainties in standard stellar evolution theory on the red giant branch of metal-poor globular clusters has been conducted. Confidence limits are derived on the absolute V-band magnitude of the bump in the red giant branch luminosity function (M_v,b) and the excess number of stars in thebump, R_b. The analysis takes into account uncertainties in the primordial helium abundance, abundance of alpha-capture elements, radiative and conductive opacities, nuclear reaction rates, neutrino energy losses, the treatments of diffusion and convection, the surface boundary conditions, and color transformations. The uncertainty in theoretical values for the red giant bump magnitude varies with metallicity between +0.13/-0.12 mag at [Fe/H] = -2.4 and +0.23/-0.21 mag at [Fe/H] = -1.0$. The dominant sources of uncertainty are the abundance of the alpha-capture elements, the mixing length, and the low-temperature opacities. The theoretical values of M_v,b are in good agreement with observations. The uncertainty in the theoretical value of R_b is +/-0.01 at all metallicities studied. The dominant sources of uncertainty are the abundance of the alpha-capture elements, the mixing length, and the high-temperature opacities. The median value of R_b varies from 0.44 at [Fe/H] = -2.4$ to 0.50 at [Fe/H] = -1.0. These theoretical values for R_b are in agreement with observations.Comment: 30 pages, 6 figures. To appear in Ap

Beta contamination monitor energy response

Beta contamination is monitored at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) with portable handheld probes and their associated counters, smear counters, air-breathing continuous air monitors (CAM), personnel contamination monitors (PCM), and hand and foot monitors (HFM). The response of these monitors was measured using a set of anodized-aluminum beta sources for the five isotopes: Carbon-14, Technetium-99, Cesium-137, Chlorine-36 and Strontium/Yttrium-90. The surface emission rates of the sources are traceable to the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with a precision of one relative standard deviation equal to 1.7%. All measurements were made in reproducible geometry, mostly using aluminum source holders. All counts, significantly above background, were collected to a precision of 1% or better. The study of the hand-held probes included measurements of six air gaps from 0.76 to 26.2 mm. The energy response of the detectors is well-parameterized as a function of the average beta energy of the isotopes (C14=50 keV, Tc99=85, Cs137=188, C136=246, and Sr/Y90=934). The authors conclude that Chlorine-36 is a suitable beta emitter for routine calibration. They recommend that a pancake Geiger-Mueller (GM) or gas-proportional counter be used for primarily beta contamination surveys with an air gap not to exceed 6 mm. Energy response varies about 30% from Tc99 to Sr/Y90 for the pancake GM detector. Dual alpha/beta probes have poor to negligible efficiency for low-energy betas. The rugged anodized sources represent partially imbedded contamination found in the field and they are provided with precise, NIST-traceable, emission rates for reliable calibration

The Insectivores of the Hagerman Local Fauna, Upper Pliocene of Idaho

171-180http://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/48451/2/ID300.pd

Adolescents, Adults and Rewards: Comparing Motivational Neurocircuitry Recruitment Using fMRI

Background: Adolescent risk-taking, including behaviors resulting in injury or death, has been attributed in part to maturational differences in mesolimbic incentive-motivational neurocircuitry, including ostensible oversensitivity of the nucleus accumbens (NAcc) to rewards. Methodology/Principal Findings: To test whether adolescents showed increased NAcc activation by cues for rewards, or by delivery of rewards, we scanned 24 adolescents (age 12–17) and 24 adults age (22–42) with functional magnetic resonance imaging while they performed a monetary incentive delay (MID) task. The MID task was configured to temporally disentangle potential reward or potential loss anticipation-related brain signal from reward or loss notification-related signal. Subjects saw cues signaling opportunities to win or avoid losing $0,$.50, or $5 for responding quickly to a subsequent target. Subjects then viewed feedback of their trial success after a variable interval from cue presentation of between 6 to17 s. Adolescents showed reduced NAcc recruitment by reward-predictive cues compared to adult controls in a linear contrast with non-incentive cues, and in a volume-of-interest analysis of signal change in the NAcc. In contrast, adolescents showed little difference in striatal and frontocortical responsiveness to reward deliveries compared to adults. Conclusions/Significance: In light of divergent developmental difference findings between neuroimaging incentive paradigms (as well as at different stages within the same task), these data suggest that maturational differences i

High-school students' mastery of basic flow-control constructs through the lens of reversibility

High-school students specialising in computing fields need to develop the abstraction skills required to understand and create programs. Novices' difficulties at high-school level, ranging from mastery of the "notional machine"to recognition of a program's purpose, have not been investigated as extensively as at tertiary level. This work explores high-school students' code comprehension by asking to reason about reversing conditional and iteration constructs. A sample of 205 K11 - 13 students from different institutions were asked to engage in a set of "reversibility tasklets". For each code fragment, they need to identify if its computation is reversible and either provide the code to reverse or an example of a value that cannot be reversed. For 4 such items, after extracting the recurrent patterns in students' answers, we have carried out an analysis within the framework of the SOLO taxonomy. Overall, 74% of answers correctly identified if the code was reversible but only 42% could provide the full explanation/code. The rate of relational answers varies from 51% down to 21%, the poorest performance arising for a small array-processing loop (and although 65% of the subjects had correctly identified the loop as reversible). The instruction level did not have a strong impact on performance, indicating such tasks are suitable for K11, when the basic flow-control constructs are usually introduced. In particular, the reversibility concept could be a useful pedagogical instrument both to assess and to help develop students' program comprehension