Northampton Community College

About: Northampton Community College is a education organization based out in Bethlehem, Pennsylvania, United States. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Population & Poison control. The organization has 3410 authors who have published 4582 publications receiving 130398 citations. The organization is also known as: Northampton County Area Community College.

Plasma pyridoxal phosphate and pyridoxic acid and their relationship to plasma homocysteine in a representative sample of British men and women aged 65 years and over.

Abstract: Concentrations of pyridoxal phosphate and pyridoxic acid were measured in fasting plasma samples from British men and women aged 65 years and over, participating in a National Diet and Nutrition Survey during 1994–5, selected to be representative of the population of mainland Britain. In this population, the concentration of pyridoxal phosphate declined, whereas pyridoxic acid rose, with increasing age and frailty; however, both status indicators were strongly and directly (with a positive coefficient) correlated with estimates of vitamin B 6 intake. This was little affected by the inclusion of food energy and protein intakes in the model. Forty-eight percent of the participants living in the community and 75% of those living in institutions had plasma pyridoxal phosphate concentrations below a range considered normal from other studies. In a univariate regression model, plasma pyridoxal phosphate concentrations were inversely correlated with plasma homocysteine concentrations, consistent with the hypothesis that vitamin B 6 status may influence plasma homocysteine levels, and hence vascular disease risk. However, this relationship was partly attenuated in a multiple regression model including age, sex, domicile and biochemical status indices, including those of folate and vitamin B 12 . There was evidence that plasma pyridoxal phosphate was sensitive to metabolic conditions associated with inflammation and the acute-phase reaction, and that plasma pyridoxic acid was sensitive to renal function. Thus, neither index is an ideal predictor of vitamin B 6 status in older people, unless these confounding factors are allowed for. Since poor vitamin B 6 status may have health implications, e.g. for immune function, cognition, and for essential intermediary metabolic pathways in older people, it needs to be investigated as a possible public health problem.

Psychological consequences of sexual assault

Abstract: Sexual violence is an important issue worldwide and can have long-lasting and devastating consequences. In this chapter, we outline the psychological reactions to serious sexual assault and rape, including development of post-traumatic stress disorder. Myths and stereotypes surrounding this subject, and their potential effect on the emotional response and legal situation, are discussed.

Recycling behaviour in a London Borough: Results from large-scale household surveys

Abstract: This paper summarises the results of two large-scale surveys of households in the Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea in Greater London. The first, performed in 2000, covered 7500 households and the second, in 2004, 3250 households. Respondents provided information on their use of the local authority's kerbside recycling scheme and ‘bring’ sites for recycled materials. In 2000, approximately half of the householders surveyed via face-to-face interviews claimed that they used the kerbside scheme and/or bring sites on a regular basis. This proportion had grown to 70% in 2004. Details of this usage are outlined, including consideration of stated reasons for non-participation in waste recycling activities and reasons for variation in recycling behaviour across the borough. The context for this research is the establishment of national and local authority targets for the amount of household waste to be recycled. Given widespread concern that these targets are not being met, the research project not only evaluated the effectiveness of the existing opportunities for householders in Kensington and Chelsea but also promoted participation in recycling. One effect of this promotion was an observable increase in the amount of waste for recycling following both surveys. A key conclusion is that large-scale house-to-house publicity of local recycling opportunities has a demonstrable positive effect, but that for current targets to be met more householders need to be convinced of the need to recycle.

Large test collection experiments on an operational, interactive system: Okapi at TREC

Abstract: The Okapi system has been used in a series of experiments on the TREC collections, investigating probabilistic models, relevance feedback, and query expansion, and interaction issues. Some new probabilistic models have been developed, resulting in simple weighting functions that take account of document length and within-document and within-query term frequency. All have been shown to be beneficial. Relevance feedback and query expansion are highly beneficial when based on large quantities of relevance data (as in the routing task). Interaction issues are much more difficult to evaluate in the TREC framework, and no benefits have yet been demonstrated from feedback based on small numbers of “relevant” items identified by intermediary searchers.