Showing papers by "University of Florida published in 1986"

Development of criteria for the classification and reporting of osteoarthritis: Classification of osteoarthritis of the knee

Abstract: For the purposes of classification, it should be specified whether osteoarthritis (OA) of the knee is of unknown origin (idiopathic, primary) or is related to a known medical condition or event (secondary). Clinical criteria for the classification of idiopathic OA of the knee were developed through a multicenter study group. Comparison diagnoses included rheumatoid arthritis and other painful conditions of the knee, exclusive of referred or para-articular pain. Variables from the medical history, physical examination, laboratory tests, and radiographs were used to develop sets of criteria that serve different investigative purposes. In contrast to prior criteria, these proposed criteria utilize classification trees, or algorithms.

The Role of Attitude toward the Ad as a Mediator of Advertising Effectiveness: A Test of Competing Explanations:

Abstract: Attitude toward the ad (Aad) has been postulated to be a causal mediating variable in the process through which advertising influences brand attitudes and purchase intentions. Previous conceptual a...

A comparative analysis of methodologies for database schema integration

Abstract: One of the fundamental principles of the database approach is that a database allows a nonredundant, unified representation of all data managed in an organization. This is achieved only when methodologies are available to support integration across organizational and application boundaries.Methodologies for database design usually perform the design activity by separately producing several schemas, representing parts of the application, which are subsequently merged. Database schema integration is the activity of integrating the schemas of existing or proposed databases into a global, unified schema.The aim of the paper is to provide first a unifying framework for the problem of schema integration, then a comparative review of the work done thus far in this area. Such a framework, with the associated analysis of the existing approaches, provides a basis for identifying strengths and weaknesses of individual methodologies, as well as general guidelines for future improvements and extensions.

Knowledge, motivation, and adaptive behavior : a framework for improving selling effectiveness

Abstract: The authors propose that adaptive selling is influenced by salespeople's knowledge of customer types and sales strategies as well as their motivation to alter the direction of their behavior. Perti...

Wait Time: Slowing Down May Be A Way of Speeding Up!:

Abstract: The wait time concept has become a significant dimension in the research on teaching. When teachers ask students ques tions, they typically wait less than one second for a student response. Further...

Cavernous Angioma: A Review of 126 Collected and 12 New Clinical Cases

Abstract: The histopathological, clinical, and radiological features of the intracranial cavernous angioma are reviewed, based on an analysis of 138 symptomatic, histologically verified cases. Twelve of the cases are from our own series and 126 were collected from appropriately documented reports in the modern literature. The analysis indicated that, at the time of diagnosis, one-third of the patients (49 cases) were being evaluated for seizures, one-third (40 cases) for clinical evidence of hemorrhage, and one-third (49 cases) for mass lesions. Unlike the other two groups, the group presenting with clinical evidence of hemorrhage was distinguished by a dominant age at the time of diagnosis (41% were diagnosed during the 4th decade of life), by a high incidence of prior neurological evaluation (43%), by a higher rate of diagnosis at autopsy (28%) than at operation, and by the absence of microscopic calcification within the lesion.

Nodes, networks, and MUMs: preserving diversity at all scales

Abstract: The present focus of practical conservation efforts is limited in scope. This narrowness results in an inability to evaluate and manage phenomena that operate at large spatiotemporal scales. Whereas real ecological phenomena function in a space-time mosaic across a full hierarchy of biological entities and processes, current conservation strategies address a limited spectrum of this complexity. Conservation typically is static (time-limited), concentrates on the habitat content rather than the landscape context of protected areas, evaluates relatively homogeneous communities instead of heterogeneous landscapes, and directs attention to particular species populations and/or the aggregate statistic of species diversity. Insufficient attention has been given to broad ecological patterns and processes and to the conservation of species in natural relative abundance patterns (native diversity). The authors present a conceptual scheme that evaluates not only habitat content within protected areas, but also the landscape context in which each preserve exists. Nodes of concentrated ecological value exist in each landscape at all levels in the biological hierarchy. Integration of these high-quality nodes into a functional network is possible through the establishment of a system of interconnected multiple-use modules (MUMs). The MUM network protects and buffers important ecological entities and phenomena, while encouraging movement of individuals, species, nutrients, energy, and even habitat patches across space and time. An example is presented for the southeastern USA (south Georgia-north Florida), that uses riparian and coastal corridors to interconnect existing protected areas. This scheme will facilitate reintroduction and preservation of wide-ranging species such as the Florida panther, and help reconcile species-level and ecosystem-level conservation approaches.

Investment Banking, Reputation, and the Underpricing of Initial Public Offerings

Abstract: Examines the underpricing of initial public offerings (IPOs) and the impact of this underpricing on investor uncertainty and on the investment bankers who take the firms public. The firms going public lack the credibility to assert that the offering price is below the expected market price because they only go public once. As a result, these firms seek the help of investment bankers who, through their underwriting process, take many firms public. Data used in the analysis were collected from 1,028 firms that went public between 1977 and 1982. Support is shown for the proposition that the greater the investor uncertainty in the value of the stock, the greater the underpricing is expected to be. The results further show that investment bankers who cheat on underpricing equilibrium by underpricing too much or too little are penalized by the market. Three conditions must be met for investment bankers to be willing to strive for underpricing equilibrium. These are: (1) uncertainty as to the market price of the stock when it beings trading, (2) reputation capital of the investment banker that cannot be repaired, and (3) decline in return on reputation capital if investment banker cheats on underpricing. Given these results, it becomes evident that investment bankers enforce the underpricing equilibrium. (SRD)

Life Events as Stressors in Childhood and Adolescence

Abstract: Children, in the process of growing up, frequently encounter a range of life experiences or events that may result in changes in their lives and that necessitate varying degrees of coping and adaptation. They often experience the birth of siblings. They must adapt to school entry and often to change from one school to another. In our mobile society, these school changes are often associated with a change in residence, which may in turn, be correlated with a host of other changes that require additional coping efforts. Parental separation and divorce, serious illness or injury to family members, deaths in the family, and illnesses experienced by the children themselves are among other life events that affect the lives of children. Although children vary in the extent to which they experience significant life changes, such events are a potential source of stress to which all children are exposed to a greater or lesser degree.

Source of funding and outcome of clinical trials.

Abstract: Because of recent concerns about conflicts of interest and published research, the author analyzed 107 controlled clinical trials Studies were classified as favoring either a new therapy or a traditional therapy, and as being supported by a pharmaceutical manufacturer or as being generally supported Seventy-one per cent of the trials favored new therapies; 43% of these were funded by pharmaceutical firms Of the 31 trials favoring traditional therapy, only four (13%) were supported by a pharmaceutical firm There was a statistically significant association between the source of funding and the outcome of the study (p=0002) Few trials supported by pharmaceutical manufacturers favored traditional therapy; some reasons for this finding may include selection of drugs likely to be proven efficacious, Type II errors (false-negative studies), and fear of discontinuation of funding should such studies be submitted Important clinical information may be lost if negative studies are not published

Electrokinetic shape changes of cochlear outer hair cells

Abstract: Rapid mechanical changes have been associated with electrical activity in a variety of non-muscle excitable cells1–5. Recently, mechanical changes have been reported in cochlear hair cells6–8. Here we describe electrically evoked mechanical changes in isolated cochlear outer hair cells (OHCs) with characteristics which suggest that direct electrokinetic phenomena are implicated in the response. OHCs make up one of two mechanosensitive hair cell populations in the mammalian cochlea; their role may be to modulate the micromechanical properties of the hearing organ through mechanical feedback mechanisms6–10. In the experiments described here, we applied sinusoidally modulated electrical potentials across isolated OHCs; this produced oscillatory elongation and shortening of the cells and oscillatory displacements of intracellular organdies. The movements were a function of the direction and strength of the electrical field, were inversely related to the ionic concentration of the medium, and occurred in the presence of metabolic uncouplers. The cylindrical shape of the OHCs and the presence of a system of membranes within the cytoplasm—laminated cisternae11—may provide the anatomical substrate for electrokinetic phenomena such as electro-osmosis12,13.

The Relationship Between Anxiety and Foreign Language Oral Proficiency Ratings.

Abstract: The American Council on the Teaching of Foreign Languages (ACTFL) has developed an oral proficiency test, the Oral Proficiency Interview (OPI), which may become the official test of oral performance for prospective foreign language teachers in Texas. Professionals in foreign language education are raising concerns about the effect of anxiety on Oral Proficiency Interview ratings. The purpose of this study was to provide an assessment of how anxiety may influence scores on the OPI. An examination of the relationship between anxiety and oral performance must take foreign language ability into account. In this study, subjects' foreign language proficiency was assessed through a Self-Appraisal of Language Proficiency questionnaire and a dictation test. Subjects' anxiety was assessed on the basis of four independent anxiety measures: the State Anxiety Inventory, the Cognitive Interference Questionnaire, a Self-Report of Anxiety, and a Foreign Language Anxiety Scale of Reactions. A total of sixty subjects took the OPI at the University of Texas at Austin, Southwest Texas State University, or the University of Texas at El Paso. These subjects were either majors in French, German, or Spanish or prospective French, German, or Spanish teachers at one of these three institutions. The Self-Appraisal of Speaking Proficiency and the State Anxiety Inventory were administered before the OPI, and the other anxiety instruments were given immediately after it. Results showed significant negative correlations between anxiety and the OPI, but once the effects of ability were accounted for, the correlations were no longer significant. In other words, once the effect of an individual's language proficiency was accounted for, oral performance no longer decreased as anxiety increased. An important qualification that must be noted is that subjects were aware that the OPI in this study represented an unofficial administration of the test. Therefore, this study does not provide data on anxiety levels for official test situations.

Attentional Vulnerability Indicators, Thought Disorder, and Negative Symptoms

Abstract: Deficits on two continuous performance test versions and the forced-choice span of apprehension task, which are potential vulnerability factors for schizophrenic disorders, were examined in relationship to particular symptoms of schizophrenic disorders, with emphasis on hypothesized relationships to formal thought disorder and negative symptoms. These interrelationships were determined concurrently within a group of 40 schizophrenic patients at an inpatient point. In addition, 32 of these patients were retested at a stabilized outpatient point to address the extent to which continued attentional deficits were associated with specific symptomatology during the hospitalized period. Signal-discrimination deficits on the three tasks were consistently associated with inpatient negative symptoms of schizophrenia as measured by the Anergia factor of the Brief Psychiatric Rating Scale (BPRS), across both the inpatient and outpatient assessments. The outpatient signal-discrimination deficits also showed significant, but less consistent, correlations with inpatient schizophrenic modes of thinking measured by the Rorschach Thought Disorder Index and with formal thought disorder measured by the BPRS Conceptual Disorganization rating. In contrast, no relationship with inpatient hallucinations or delusions was found. Combined with previous findings from high-risk samples, these results are consistent with the view that signal-discrimination deficits in situations demanding high levels of effortful processing are enduring vulnerability factors for schizophrenic negative symptoms and possibly for certain schizophrenic forms of thought disorder.

New perspectives on the pelagic stage of sea turtle development

Abstract: An original difficulty in accepting the idea of a pe- lagic developmental period for sea turtles was to explain how food could be found in reliable supply in the open ocean The uncertainty that this introduced was removed when I belatedly came to appreciate theprevalence and diversity of convergences where downwelling gathers and aligns buoyant material, in- cluding the dispersedfood resources of the surface waters. Thus, it now seems clear that an essential factor in the survival of young sea turtles-and of other elements of the epipelagic, open-oceanfauna as well-is the accessibility of afront, where inanimate debris and any floating animal or plant will be gathered in This new evidence of complexity in the lost-year ecology of sea turtles has important implications for their conservation and management. It is now obvious that when young cultured sea turtles are released in so-called head-starting projects, the release sites ought to be chosen with the greatest care. Shores located at a distance from any major current or its eddy ought to be avoided It is also necessary to avoid release localities where the convergence habitat may carry heavy loads of pol- lutant& Results of the present work reveal an urgent need for further study of sea turtle life cycles, with special attention to their developmental ecology. The growing evidence for a more pro- tracted pelagic stage, during which the juvenile turtles are pas- sive migrants in fronts that are increasingly invaded by debris

The R 2 cosmology: Inflation without a phase transition

Abstract: A pure gravity inflationary model for the Universe is examined which is based on adding an \ensuremath{\epsilon}${R}^{2}$ term to the usual gravitational Lagrangian. The classical evolution is worked out, including eventual particle production and the subsequent join to radiation-dominated Friedmann behavior. We show that this model gives significant inflation essentially independent of initial conditions. The model has only one free parameter which is bounded from above by observational constraints on scalar and tensorial perturbations and from below by both the need for standard baryogenesis and the need for galaxy formation. This requires ${10}^{11}$${\ensuremath{\epsilon}}^{\mathrm{\ensuremath{-}}1/2}$${10}^{13}$ GeV.

Insulin-like growth factors in vitreous studies in control and diabetic subjects with neovascularization

Abstract: Vitreous and serum were obtained at the time of vitrectomy from 23 diabetic subjects with proliferative retinopathy and from 8 nondiabetic subjects. The mean concentration of IGF-I in vitreous from diabetic patients with neovascularization was 6.3 +/- 0.93 versus 2.7 +/- 0.96 ng/ml. Chi-square and rank analysis indicated that higher concentrations of IGF-I occurred in diabetic vitreous (P less than 0.01 by both analyses). IGF-II concentrations in vitreous of control and diabetic subjects were not significantly different. A positive correlation existed between the concentrations of IGF-I and IGF-II in vitreous and their concentrations in serum in diabetic subjects, but not in control subjects. When vitreous concentrations of IGF-I were calculated for diabetic subjects studied previously with rapid acceleration of retinal disease, these concentrations varied from 20 to 30 ng/ml. The concentrations of IGF-I in the vitreous of most diabetic subjects with severe neovascularization are thus in the range known to stimulate cellular differentiation and growth in several systems. Whether they do so in the eye, and thus contribute to the development of retinopathy, remains to be determined.

Limits of human bite strength

Abstract: lhe greatest human bite strength in the early literature was reported more than 300 years ago by Borelli of Rome, Italy, in 1681.’ He attached weights to a cord, which passed over the molar teeth of the open mandible, and with closing of the jaw, up to 440 lbs (200 kg) were raised.’ In recent times, the greatest reported bite strength was 348 lbs (158 kg) in the Alaskan Eskimo.2 Bite strength records have been limited by instrumentation. Black,3 for example, reported that at least one of his subjects could have exceeded the 275 lb (125 kg) limit of his gnathodynamometer. Furthermore, his subjects were biting unilaterally and, as in many other studies, did not have the advantage of bilateral support. An improved gnathodynamometer was needed if increased bite strengths were to be measured. Today’s soft diet cannot compare with the hard, frozen diet of the Eskimos for strengthening the mandibular muscles.4 However, many people today undergo jaw muscle-strengthening through clenching and bruxing habits that may be considerably more rigorous than even the chewing demands of the Eskimo. Our hypothesis was that human bite strength of the bruxer-clencher has been underestimated, and some individuals can exceed the bite strength of the Eskimo.

A general wave equation for waves over rippled beds

Abstract: A time-dependent extension of the reduced wave equation of Berkhoff is developed for the case of waves propagating over a bed consisting of ripples superimposed on an otherwise slowly varying mean depth which satisfies the mild-slope assumption. The ripples are assumed to have wavelengths on the order of the surface wavelength but amplitudes which scale as a small parameter along with the bottom slope. The theory is verified by showing that it reduces to the case of plane waves propagating over a patch of sinusoidal ripples, which vary in one direction and extend to ± ∞ in the transverse direction, studied recently by Davies & Heathershaw and Mei. We then formulate and use coupled parabolic equations to study propagation over patches of arbitrary form in order to study wave reflection.

Fifth-Order Many-Body Perturbation Theory and Its Relationship to Various Coupled-Cluster Approaches*

Abstract: Publisher Summary This chapter presents the fifth-order terms generated by several different coupled-cluster (CC) approaches and compares them with all fifth-order MBPT diagrams. This will enable to analyze the steps required to compute these terms. Several simplifications are identified. In particular, all the fifth-order diagrams arising from T 4 may be obtained with only an n 6 algorithm. To enumerate the fifth-order terms, a modified type of diagram is introduced that reduces the overall number of fifth-order diagrams. There are several different methods of calculating fifth-order diagrams. One of the most straightforward would be to collect all the different fifth-order diagrams, to factorize them if possible, and to compute them one by one, several of them requiring multiplication by two to account for their Hermitian conjugates demonstrated by comparing, for instance, groups of diagrams. Later, the results discussed in the chapter exhibit that the calculation of the fifth-order energy is feasible and when carefully implemented may be applied to moderate-sized systems. The number of terms that must be considered may be substantially reduced by taking into account the fact that many of the diagrams have identical values and many are amendable to factorization.

Integrating User Views in Database Design

Abstract: g a database is an im-data engineering activi-view integration is one nt phases in logical data-uring this phase, the in-s designed by separate re integrated into a con-i for the entire organiza-data may originate from .1I OUser views-The perception of users about what a proposed database (or an ideal database) should contain. * Existing database schemas-The description of data in an existing information system, either manual or automated. User view integration is applicable to initial design, while existing schema integration applies to existing databases. Here, view integration refers to the activity of designing a global structure (integrated schema) starting from individual component structures (views). We feel that view integration can be accomplished only with interactive design tools and a continuous dialog with the designer. Integration is thus somewhat subjective, with the de-%sner helping to resolve semantic con-fIl. The main goal in view integra-tionl aid the designer in identifying possiblays of integration and to help him resolve inconsistencies while working with large, real-life problems.

Pharmacokinetics and pharmacodynamics of glucocorticoid suspensions after intra-articular administration

Abstract: Triamcinolone acetonide, triamcinolone hexacetonide, and a combination of betamethasone phosphate and acetate were given intra-articularly in different doses. Plasma levels of the steroids were measured and pharmacokinetic parameters were calculated. As a pharmacodynamic parameter for systemic steroid activity, plasma hydrocortisone levels were monitored for 3 weeks. Results indicate complete absorption from the site of injection over a period of 2 to 3 weeks. Because of its lower solubility, triamcinolone hexacetonide is absorbed slower than triamcinolone acetonide, thus maintaining synovial levels for a longer time and creating lower systemic corticoid levels. Endogenous hydrocortisone suppression correlated with exogenous steroid levels. Threshold concentrations for maximum suppression were determined.