BACKGROUND Exaggerated cardiovascular reactions to psychological stress are considered a risk factor for cardiovascular morbidity. Social support may reduce such risk by attenuating cardiovascular reactivity to stress. PURPOSE To examine the effects of three independent social support variables and their interaction on cardiovascular reactivity to acute stress. The variables were stranger or ...

Society’s increasing reliance on digital communication networks is creating unprecedented opportunities for wholesale surveillance and censorship. This thesis investigates the use of public networks such as the Internet to build robust, private communication systems that can resist monitoring and attacks by powerful adversaries such as national governments. We sketch the design of a censorship-...

Electronic Support Measures consist of passive receivers which can identify emitters coming from a small bearing angle, which, in turn, can be related to platforms that belong to 3 classes: either Friend, Neutral, or Hostile. Decision makers prefer results presented in STANAG 1241 allegiance form, which adds 2 new classes: Assumed Friend, and Suspect. Dezert-Smarandache theory (DSmT) is particu...

The acceptability of the quality of hotwater supplied by harvested rainwater in the urban environment has been the subject of much debate in many developed countries as a result of attempts to maximise usage of harvested rainwater in order to improve city water-cycle management. Debate has centred around the issues of the microbiological quality of the heated rainwater, since many tank water sa...

The complex mixture of organic compounds in the atmosphere influences climate, air quality, and ecosystem processes. Atmospheric pressure electrospray ionization mass spectrometry (APESI-MS) was evaluated as a potential tool for direct measurement of the total suite of individual dissolved organic matter (DOM) compounds in rainwater. The APESI-MS response was linear to all DOM compounds of atmo...

In this study, 200 Escherichia coli isolates from 22 rainwater tank samples in Southeast Queensland, Australia, were tested for the presence of 20 virulence genes (VGs) associated with intestinal and extraintestinal pathotypes. In addition, E. coli isolates were also classified into phylogenetic groups based on the detection of the chuA, yjaA, and TSPE4.C2 genes. Of the 22 rainwater tanks, 8 (3...

a comprehensive study on the chemical composition of rainwater was carried out in obuasi, a gold mining town in ghana. rainwater samples were analyzed for major ions (ca2+,mg2+, k+, na+, nh4+, cl-, no3- and so4 2-) and trace metals (fe, al, zn, pb, cr, and cd). the rainwater was typically acidic with a mean ph of 4.76±0.47, which ranged from 4.0 to 5.6. the low ph found in the water suggests t...

An example of game theory is the classic Prisoner’s Dilemma. Suppose you and a friend are arrested for robbery. You are put in separate cells. The police lack sufficient evidence to convict either of you, so they try to get one of you to testify against each other. The police tell you that if you testify against your friend, you will be released, provided your friend does not testify against yo...