OBJECTIVE Acute mental stress elicits blood hypercoagulability. Following a transactional stress model, we investigated whether individuals who anticipate stress as more threatening, challenging, and as exceeding their coping skills show greater stress reactivity of the coagulation activation marker D-dimer, indicating fibrin generation in plasma. METHODS Forty-seven men (mean age 44 +/- 14 y...

The safety of gas cylinders in domestic applications is of utmost importance. A crucial stage in the appraisal of the risk for failures and possible faults is occurring during the filling process. In Cyprus, this task is currently done by specialized workers who monitor the cylinders during filling. In order to explore the possibility for an automated risk appraisal and consequent screening, a ...

Despite considerable research on the influence of emotions on risk taking, investigators have yet to agree on an explanatory framework. Reviewing the literature, we identify problems with popular valence-based approaches. In contrast, Lerner and Keltner s (2000, 2001) appraisal-tendencies theory has been supported, and usefully generates testable predictions regarding the effects of specific em...

Constructing structurally complex reservoir models at the appraisal stage is a complex task, with a high-degree of uncertainty. The lack of an intuitive set of modeling and visualization tools that support expert visual interpretation from geophysicists and geologists significantly increases the challenge. We present a set of interactive software tools to reservoir modeling in the appraisal sta...

In this issue, Terasawa and colleagues used functional neuroimaging to test for common neural substrates supporting conscious appraisal of subjective bodily and emotional states and explored how the relationship might account for personality and experience of anxiety symptoms. Their study highlights a role for the same region of anterior insula cortex in appraisal of emotions and bodily physiol...

DESCRIPTION The American College of Physicians (ACP) developed this guidance statement to present the available evidence on screening for HIV in health care settings. METHODS This guidance statement is derived from an appraisal of available guidelines on screening for HIV. Authors searched the National Guideline Clearinghouse to identify guidelines on screening for HIV in the United States an...

Appraisal of companies is an important business activity. We mainly apply Bayesian networks for this classification task for Japanese electric company data. Firstly, few standard statistical techniques are performed. Then Bayesian networks are applied in four steps; (1) for implementing a current procedure of economical experts, where economical variables are clustered and then summarised for c...

The anterior cingulate cortex (ACC) is critically involved not only in affective and anxiety processing, but also in error and conflict monitoring. To investigate how anxiety interacts with processing affective ambiguity, 15 anxious and 15 nonanxious individuals were scanned while performing a validated affective appraisal task, in which the fraction of faces of a particular affect or gender wa...

BACKGROUND This paper was written as a result of the International Psychogeriatric Association Task Force on Mental Health Services in Long-Term Care. The appraisal presented here aims to (1) identify the best available evidence that underpins best practice for geriatric mental health education and training of staff working in long-term care, and (2) summarize the appraisal of the literature to...

The relationship between subjective invulnerability and optimism bias in risk appraisal, and their comparative association with indices of risk activity, substance use and college adjustment problems was assessed in a sample of 350 (M (age) = 20.17; 73% female; 93% White/European American) emerging adults. Subjective invulnerability was measured with the newly devised adolescent invulnerability...