New approaches for estimating risk from exposure to diethylstilbestrol.

A subgroup from a National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences, workshop concerned with characterizing the effects of endocrine disruptors on human health at environmental exposure levels considered the question, If diethylstilbestrol (DES) were introduced into the market for human use today and likely to result in low-dose exposure of the human fetus, what would be required to assess risk? On the basis of an analysis of the quality of data on human DES exposure, the critical times and doses for inducing genital tract malformations and cancer must be determined. This would be facilitated through analysis of the ontogeny of estrogen receptor expression in the developing human genital tract. Models of low-dose estrogenic effects will have to be developed for human and rodent genital tract development. Mouse models offer many advantages over other potential animal models because of the wealth of the earlier literature, the availability of sensitive end points, the availability of mutant lines, and the possibility of generating genetically engineered model systems. Through multidisciplinary approaches, it should be possible to elucidate the cellular and molecular mechanisms of endocrine disruption elicited by estrogens during development and facilitate an assessment of risk to humans

Developing a recovery college: a preliminary exercise in establishing regional readiness and community needs

peer-reviewedBackground: Recovery orientated intervention has experienced a paradigm shift towards stakeholder training and education within recovery colleges. Such colleges are typicallyunderpinned by a culture of emancipatory education that aims to facilitate recovery through educational choice.Aims: The study aims to establish regional readiness for a recovery college. Specifically, we aim to uncover key stakeholder attitudes towards recovery, outline a contextual conceptualization of recovery and show how inductive, community-based research can incorporate stakeholderviews with core fidelity markers of a recovery college.Method: A mixed methods approach, specifically a cross-sectional survey, was adopted tointersect quantitative scales of stakeholder attitudes and qualitative assessment of recovery concepts and community needs.Results: Stakeholders recovery attitudes were positive overall with some variation between participant groups. Concepts of recovery were developing independent abilities, establishing connectedness to support and as a journey. The needs cited by the stakeholders were largely correlated with the core fidelity markers of a recovery college.Conclusion: A community psychology approach offers a means to ascertain regional readinessfor a recovery college, and uncover key development foci based on community needs. Werecommend that service areas adopt a similar approach when considering recovery-orientatedservice developments.ACCEPTEDpeer-reviewe

Encounters With Ethical Problems During the First 5 Years of Practice in Occupational Therapy: A Survey

Background: Health care professionals face ethical problems in practice, but there is little research on types of ethical problems encountered or ethical problem resolution. This study explored ethical problems encountered by occupational therapists and occupational therapy assistants (OTAs) within the first 5 years of practice. Method: Investigators sent a survey in cooperation with NBCOT to a sample of 7,800 occupational therapists and OTAs in multiple practice settings who were NBCOT certified within the past five years. The survey covered questions regarding ethical problems encountered in practice, including productivity and related issues, clinical decision-making and professional reasoning, therapeutic relationships, and employer/employee and colleague relationships. Results: Occupational therapists and OTAs (n = 125) completed the survey. The most consistently encountered types of ethical problems included productivity and related issues and conflicts over clinical decision-making. Occupational therapists and OTAs working in adult and older adult settings reported more consistent encounters with ethical problems than practitioners in other settings. Occupational therapists and OTAs who have been NBCOT certified for longer experienced ethical problems more consistently. Conclusion: Implications included providing more support in specific ethics topics for practitioners within the first 5 years. Further research in which types of ethics education best prepare practitioners to manage ethical issues is warranted

Agreement on the perception of moral character

This study tested for inter-judge agreement on moral character. A sample of students and community members rated their own moral character using a measure that tapped six moral character traits. Friends, family members, and/or acquaintances rated these targets on the same traits. Self/other and inter-informant agreement was found at the trait level for both a general character factor and for residual variance explained by individual moral character traits, as well as at the individual level (judges agreed on targets’ “moral character profiles”). Observed inter-judge agreement constitutes evidence for the existence of moral character, and raises questions about the nature of moral character traits

Cladoceran birth and death rates estimates

I. Birth and death rates of natural cladoceran populations cannot be measured directly. Estimates of these population parameters must be calculated using methods that make assumptions about the form of population growth. These methods generally assume that the population has a stable age distribution. 2. To assess the effect of variable age distributions, we tested six egg ratio methods for estimating birth and death rates with data from thirty-seven laboratory populations of Daphnia pulicaria. The populations were grown under constant conditions, but the initial age distributions and egg ratios of the populations varied. Actual death rates were virtually zero, so the difference between the estimated and actual death rates measured the error in both birth and death rate estimates. 3. The results demonstrate that unstable population structures may produce large errors in the birth and death rates estimated by any of these methods. Among the methods tested, Taylor and Slatkin's formula and Paloheimo's formula were most reliable for the experimental data. 4. Further analyses of three of the methods were made using computer simulations of growth of age-structured populations with initially unstable age distributions. These analyses show that the time interval between sampling strongly influences the reliability of birth and death rate estimates. At a sampling interval of 2.5 days (equal to the duration of the egg stage), Paloheimo's formula was most accurate. At longer intervals (7.5–10 days), Taylor and Slatkin's formula which includes information on population structure was most accurate

Generic programming in POOMA and PETE

POOMA is a C++ framework for developing portable scientific applications for serial and parallel computers using high-level physical abstractions. PETE is the expression template library used by POOMA. This paper discusses generic programming techniques that are used to achieve flexibility and high performance in POOMA and PETE. POOMA uses an engine class that factors the data representation out of its array classes. PETE`s expression templates are used to build up and operate efficiently on expressions. PETE itself uses generic techniques to adapt to a variety of client-class interfaces, and to provide a powerful and flexible compile-time expression-tree traversal mechanism

On the nature of surface roughness with application to contact mechanics, sealing, rubber friction and adhesion

Surface roughness has a huge impact on many important phenomena. The most important property of rough surfaces is the surface roughness power spectrum C(q). We present surface roughness power spectra of many surfaces of practical importance, obtained from the surface height profile measured using optical methods and the Atomic Force Microscope. We show how the power spectrum determines the contact area between two solids. We also present applications to sealing, rubber friction and adhesion for rough surfaces, where the power spectrum enters as an important input.Comment: Topical review; 82 pages, 61 figures; Format: Latex (iopart). Some figures are in Postscript Level