Detection of trace levels of persistent pollutants in the environment is difficult but significant. Organic pollutant homologues, due to their similar physical and chemical properties, are even more difficult to distinguish, especially in trace amounts. We report here a simple method to detect polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in soil and distilled spirit samples by the surface-enhanced Raman sc...

When a person is makes a judgment and assesses confidence, what is the effect of receiving more judgment-relevant information? Following up prior research on belief updating judgments (Oskamp, 1965; Slovic, 1973), we demonstrated that the predictive accuracy of experts did not improve but their confidence climbed steadily as they received more information about the target event. Our findings sh...

It is a common assumption in evolutionary theory that a parent will distribute its resources evenly between a set of equivalent oospring. However this paper presents a theoretical model in which uneven parental investment between a set of equivalent oospring can be a preferred evolutionary strategy to equal investment in the same set of oospring. This eeect does not depend on different oospring...

OBJECTIVES Conflicting reports of the effect of physical activity on knee cartilage may be due to the heterogeneity of populations examined and, in particular, the underlying health of the knee joint. This study examined the influence of recreational and occupational physical activity on cartilage volume loss. METHODS A total of 250 participants with no significant musculoskeletal disease wer...

A rare class of supernovae (SNe) is characterized by strong interaction between the ejecta and several solar masses circumstellar matter (CSM) as evidenced Balmer-line emission. Within first few weeks after explosion, they may display spectral features similar to overluminous Type Ia SNe, while at later phase their observation properties exhibit remarkable similarities with some extreme case II...

Existence of 2-methylpropane-2-thiol as an organosulfur and odorant compound in the soil could causes environmental problem and social dissatisfaction. In this study, remediation of this type of thiol using ultrasound is investigated. Central Composite Design (CCD) based on Response Surface Model (RSM) was used to obtain effects of the main factor (Power, sonication time and amount of water) an...