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An analysis of the spatial distribution of the sodium adsorption ratio (SAR) values in the upper subsurface horizons of Vertisols made it possible to estimate the degree of sheet erosion on the dissected coastal plain composed of the sodium-bearing montmorillonite clay in Israel. The depth of the appearance of slickensides in the profile of the Vertisols was used as an additional criterion of the disturbance of these soils by erosion. The approximate rates of erosional dissection of the local landscapes after the deposition of montmorillonite clay are discussed.

Israel, whose area is comparable to half the area of Moscow oblast, has a wide range of soils, from Terra Rossas in the subhumid northern regions to Regosols on the arid southern plains. This diversity is due to both the present-day differentiation of the climate and the landscape structure of the region and due to evidence of the past, mainly of the Neogene and Quaternary environments. The pre-Quaternary history resulted in the prevalence of soils developed on calcareous rocks differing in weathering forms; the Quaternary age is imprinted in soils developed on different rocks of continental genesis, including coastal dunes and lacustrine deposits. This pattern is completed with soils developed on Neogene-Quaternary magmatites. The soil cover of the country was influenced by the eolian accumulation of silty-clay material and experienced periodic climatic changes from more humid to drier ones during the entire Quaternary period and acquired features of a particular spatial unit. At the same time, similar soils occur in adjacent countries: Lebanon, Syria, Jordan, and Egypt. During the last 50–70 years, many new agrogenically transformed soils and soil-like formations have appeared in the soil cover of the country.

The role of nonoperative management of solid abdominal organ injury from blunt trauma in neurologically impaired patients has been questioned. A statewide trauma registry was reviewed from January 1993 through December 1995 for all adult (age12 years) patients with blunt trauma and an abdominal solid organ injury (kidney, liver, or spleen) of Abbreviated Injury Scale scoreor =2. Patients with initial hypotension (systolic blood pressure90 mm Hg) were excluded. Patients were stratified by Glasgow Coma Score (GCS) into normal (GCS 15), mild to moderate (GCS 8-14), and severe (GCSor =7) impairment groups. Management was either operative or nonoperative; failure of nonoperative management was defined as requiring laparotomy for intraabdominal injury more than 24 hours after admission. In the 3-year period 2327 patients sustained solid viscus injuries; 1561 of these patients were managed nonoperatively (66 per cent). The nonoperative approach was initiated less frequently in those patients with greater impairment in mental status: GCS 15, 71 per cent; GCS 8 to 14, 62 per cent; and GCSor =7, 50 per cent. Mortality, hospital length of stay, and intensive care unit days were greater in operatively managed GCS 15 and 8 to 14 groups but were not different on the basis of management in the GCSor =7 group. Failure of nonoperative management occurred in 94 patients (6%). There was no difference in the nonoperative failure rate between patients with normal mental status and those with mild to moderate or severe head injuries. Nonoperative management of neurologically impaired hemodynamically stable patients with blunt injuries of liver, spleen, or kidney is commonly practiced and is successful in more than 90 per cent of cases. No differences were noted in the rates of delayed laparotomy or survival between normal, mild to moderately head-injured, and severely head-injured patients.

Although significant progress has been made in the treatment of patients with acute lung failure in the critical care setting, the mortality rate from acute lung injury and ARDS is unacceptably high, given the numbers of patients treated for these syndromes each year. The improved understanding of the pathophysiology of respiratory failure from basic science and clinical research is reflected in improved survival rates over the years. Advances in the mechanical ventilator (through microprocessor technology); biosurface technology; liquid ventilation; and, in some cases, returning to so-called "antiquated" practices of patient care (e.g., prone positioning) seem to have had an impact nonetheless. As refinement continues to occur in these areas, morbidity and mortality from lung failure will have a lesser impact on patients as physicians treat the consequences of organ failure in the ICU.

The Medical College of Georgia Level I Trauma Center admitted 5603 adult trauma patients from January 1, 1989 through June 30, 1993. Cricothyrotomy was required in 66 of 525 patients who required emergency airway control but could not be intubated nonsurgically in an expeditious manner. There were three major complications (thyroid cartilage laceration, significant hemorrhage, and failure to obtain a surgical airway) involving two patients, but each resolved without sequelae. Twenty-six patients with cricothyrotomy survived their hospital course, of which seven had decannulation of the cricothyrotomy without further airway procedures, and 19 had conversion to tracheostomy. No patient had clinically significant morbidity from the cricothyrotomy, whether with or without a subsequent tracheostomy. Surgical cricothyrotomy remains an important technique with low morbidity for selected trauma victims needing emergency airway control.

The United States population older than 65 years increased 21 per cent from 1980 to 1990. Attempts to characterize geriatric trauma have failed to yield a consensus on basic descriptors or physiologic parameters predictive of outcome. We reviewed the records of 170 trauma patients, aged 60 or above, admitted to our institution in a recent 50-month period. Mortality was 21.8 per cent. None of the 54 general care patients died; 79 (68%) of the 116 ICU patients survived. ICU deaths correlated with number of organ systems failing and severe head injury. Although these results justify aggressive ICU treatment, average hospital stay was 15 days, and one third of patients required skilled nursing facilities for ultimate recovery, so the resource cost is high.

Four experiments were carried out upon a psychiatrist's ability to predict the degree of symptom intensity reported by patients. The psychiatrist's predictions were based on interviews with the patient, each of which was conducted either immediately before or immediately after the patient had reported the intensity of his own symptoms in a reproducible and quantifiable manner by means of a personal questionnaire. The psychiatrist gave expression to his predictions by responding to a duplicate questionnaire, the results of which could be compared exactly with the patient's own responses. Each of the four experiments was carried out on a different psychiatric patient, each of whom suffered from a long-term non-psychotic affective disorder. Each experiment involved between 6 and 17 separate occasions of testing, and each patient was rated on between 20 and 29 symptoms on each occasion. The psychiatrist's predictions were exactly correct about 60 per cent of the time, and were out by one scale point at least another 25 per cent of the time. Discrepancies between psychiatrist and patient did not appear to be related to content but to level of severity, accuracy being greater at the extremes of intensity than in the middle. The results are seen to have implications for research into the nature of psychological disorder and into patient-doctor communication.

This paper evaluates four propositions as part of a long-term investigation of already published data. The aim of the investigation is to see whether there might be self-reported feelings uniquely related to clinical depression. The propositions are: (i) indices of strength of association are a necessary addition to conventional tests of significance; (ii) the degree of complexity of scales used to rate feelings is quantifiable and can throw light upon research findings, (iii) the form and content of the communication of feelings can largely account for important discrepancies in research findings; and (iv) feelings expressed referentially are weakly associated with clinical depression. The re-examination of a set of already published data produced a confirmation of propositions (i) and (ii) and partial but constructive negations of propositions (iii) and (iv).

This paper reports the application of pattern recognition and substructural analysis to the problem of predicting the antineoplastic activity of 24 test compounds in an experimental mouse brain tumor system based on 138 structurally diverse compounds tested in this tumor system. The molecules were represented by three types of substructural fragments, the augmented atom, the heteropath, and the ring fragments. Of the two pattern recognition methods used to predict the activity of the test compounds the nearest neighbor method predicted 83% correctly while the learning machine method predicted 92% correctly. The test structures and the important substructural fragments used in this study are given and the implications of these results are discussed.

Models were developed for describing the regular pattern of blue cones in macaque retina. Two functional descriptions were applied to patterns, one based on the cdf of interpoint distances, the other on the cdf of the central angles of Voronoi regions. Disordered triangular and square lattices and hard balls failed to model the blue-cone point pattern. An elastic-ball model was developed whose spatial properties fit well those of the blue-cone pattern. This model employed a hard core and a soft surrounding shell and is proposed as a valid model for the blue-cone pattern.

This paper reports a re-evaluation of seven sets of findings appearing in the research literature. The findings were derived from questionnaire studies of feelings of guilt and other feelings in diagnosed depressives and other psychiatric groups. The publications did not provide sufficient information to evaluate important inconsistencies in the findings. However, an examination of the structure and content of the questionnaires which were used made it possible to account for the discrepancies. There were three main conclusions. The first was that the only way to minimize the ambiguity of questionnaire responses was to avoid the use of multiple-item scales and only to use single-item questions which were constructed as simply as possible. The second was that depressives were not much different from other people in the degree of outwardly and inwardly directed hostility. The third was that, while guilt feelings, with certain provisos, tended to be associated with the diagnosis of depression, other feelings appeared to be both more prominent in and more strongly associated with depression. These feelings consisted of increments in feelings of loss, in the most general sense of the word, and decrements in general positive pleasant feelings.

1. One of the reasons for the positive effect which nitrogen additions have on the intercrystalline corrosion resistance of low-carbon steel is the decrease in relative free energy of the grain boundaries and consequent decrease in the rate of carbide formation at the grain boundaries. 2. Low-carbon austenitic steel of 03Kh19AG3N10 type alloyed with 0.2–0.25% N possesses satisfactory mechanical and corrosion resistance properties.

The relative specificity of the structure of psychological traits has presented the clinical psychologist with a very difficult problem; it means that generalized test procedures are of limited use. This paper suggests: (1) that the interview presents one way of beginning to solve this problem, and (2) that the findings of psychological research may provide the means of arriving at a distinctive style of valid interviewing for assessment purposes. This style has two main features: (1) it facilitates self-exploration and self-disclosure and (2) it maximizes the accuracy of the information obtained. An outline of some of the research findings is presented; some of the methodological problems are discussed; and a brief example is given.

Individual-centred experiments were carried out on the state described by the word ‘depression’. The subjects were six non-psychotic psychiatric inpatients. Three of them were in a therapeutic community and three in a general psychiatric ward. In the first three subjects changes in the feeling of depression, during interpretative psychotherapeutic sessions, were compared with changes during unsupervised sessions in the ward. In the second three patients the comparison was between sessions of non-directive psychotherapy and of behavioural modification. Interpretative interviews were associated with a relatively high frequency of within-session worsening compared with ward sessions. During modification sessions there was a higher frequency of within-session improvement than during non-directive interviews. Size of difference, in both groups, was highly inconsistent between patients. Similar differences were found for tension states and fear-anxiety states but were consistently large for the former and consistently small for the latter. Anomalous results were obtained for various kinds of somatic states.

This paper advocates discarding the notion of clinical psychology as an applied science, with its emphasis upon the use of prevalidated procedures of assessment and treatment. The grounds are that, in scientific principle, there is no difference between practical clinical work and research. Each aims at maximizing the accuracy of our ideas about psychological dysfunctions and their manipulation, both therapeutic and experimental. They differ in: (i) their general purpose; and (ii) the greater accuracy of research. One should therefore think in terms of a scientific approach to practical clinical psychology, conceptualizing it as a branch of psychological science. In assessment, the research finding of the relative specificity of psychological responses leads to (i) describing and explaining each patient's particular psychological dysfunctions; (ii) using information-seeking interviews supplemented by the few validated procedures, and (iii) seeking guidance from general psychological and interview research and from general scientific method. In treatment, the main consequence is the development, in the course of clinical work, of therapies which: (i) derive from general psychological and clinical research; (ii) are dysfunction-oriented; (iii) are critically eclectic; (iv) monitor outcome; and (v) evaluate therapists' behaviour. Finally, the scientific approach requires evaluation studies of both assessment and treatment.

This paper advances the view that the experimental clinical psychologist should concern himself, more than he has done hitherto, with the direct experimental manipulations of the psychological disorders which bring patients into the mental hospitals. As an illustration of this point of view an account is given of a preliminary experiment, with a patient diagnosed as a paranoid schizophrenic, on the effect of rational discussions upon persecutory delusions and feelings of guilt. The outcome of the experiment was consistent with the following conclusions: 1. The rational discussion of paranoid beliefs diminished their strength. 2. The discussion of guilt had little effect on the strength of guilt feelings but increased the strength of persecutory beliefs. 3. The effects of a series of discussions were delayed and appeared only after a period in which there was no discussion. It is made clear that further experimentation is necessary before the generalizations described above could be accepted with any confidence, and that the results serve, primarily, to indicate that the direct experimental analysis of psychological disorder might lead to useful results.

This paper reports experiments carried out to test an explanation of the block design rotation effect, an effect which has previously been shown to be associated with brain damage and to occur according to certain laws of organization of the visual field. One deduction from this explanation was that visual conditions could be so arranged as to produce in normals the same effect as that shown by brain-damaged patients, and according to the same laws. The results were consistent with expectation. The use of the explanation of the block design rotation effect as a basis for a general theory of the psychological effects of brain damage is discussed, and the outstanding problems for further investigation outlined.

This paper reports an investigation of the relation of the rotation effect to visual field defects and to “oculo-motor” defects. The “rotation effect” refers to the tendency to reproduce abstract designs correctly but in a misoriented position. The subjects consisted of 61 normals, 58 non-brain-damaged functionally disordered patients, 24 patients with visual field and “oculo-motor” defects and 24 brain-damaged patients without such defects. The influences of differences in age, Wechsler vocabulary, and Wechsler Block Design ability were partialled out by means of discriminant function technique. The outstanding finding was that, after this was done, the brain-damaged group with visual field and “oculo-motor” defects rotated far more than the other three groups, which were only slightly differentiated from each other. On consideration of further analyses of the data, it was concluded that it was reasonable to look upon visual field defects and “oculo-motor” defects as sufficient causes of rotation and that it was unnecessary, as Shapiro had previously done, to postulate a generalized increase in the strength of inhibitory processes in brain-damaged subjects. The general implications of these findings are discussed.

1. The dislocation arrays affect the precipitation of carbides in steel Kh18N10T and also its susceptibility to ICC. 2. Intercrystalline corrosion of steel Kh18N10T in nitric acid is due to the elevated dislocation density in the grain boundaries after tempering at 600–650° and is not the result of improvement of the boundaries in chromium. 3. Deformation of steel Kh18N10T (up to 30%) increases its resistance to ICC in tests by the AM and D methods. 4. Carbon can be more completely combined in titanium carbide by a combined treatment consisting of deformation, heating at 600° for 10 h, and stabilizing at 900° for 8 h. This treatment is recommended to increase the resistance to ICC for parts operating at 500–650°.

This article was concerned with the discussion of only one aspect of the work of the clinical psychologist: the use of psychological tests for diagnostic purposes. It discussed the needs which give rise to the use of the standardized validated test, and the difficulties that arise when the results are being evaluated. The main thesis put forward was that the difficulties can, to a large degree, be met by making explicit the principles underlying all clinical investigations and that these principles are those of experimental method. Psychological tests, therefore, can be seen as one method, but not the only one, of testing hypotheses about a patient.

An experiment was carried out on the symptoms of a 38-year-old female patient with phobias and depressive symptoms of long standing. Two forms of treatment, one ‘rational-training’ and the other ‘non-directive’, were applied to the patient. Eight sessions of each type of treatment were completed over a period of four weeks, in balanced order, with measures of both immediate and delayed effects of each type of treatment session upon the symptoms. The main findings were: (i) each form of treatment produced beneficial immediate effects; (ii) the delayed effect of the ‘rational-training’ sessions appeared to be that of relapse, and that of the ‘non-directive’ to be variable though with an average effect of improvement; (iii) previous findings of the relatively independent fluctuations of phobic and depressive symptoms were confirmed.

It was noticed that, during the performance of the Kohs Blocks Test, a few patients would in some cases make the model correctly, but misoriented. Illustration i gives an example of such a phenomenon. The patient had to reproduce the design shown with four Kohs Blocks. His reproduction is shown. The pattern has been correctly reproduced, but has been misoriented by 45°. The pattern was never in fact misoriented to a greater extent than this.

The aim of the research of which this study forms part, is to examine the relationship of certain aspects of mental functioning to the psychiatric illnesses of old age.One of the apparent deficits of function to which psychiatrists commonly attach importance is “memory impairment“. This is considered part of various clinical syndromes, especially of the “organic” disorders of senility. The assessment of memory is, therefore, of considerable practical importance and most psychiatrists working with elderly patients use some kind of “memory tests”. Such tests are usually unstandardized and lack objective scoring criteria.There are, in relation to memory assessment, some points of conflict between clinical usage and the evidence of objective psychological investigations. For example, the existence of a “memory function” which could be considered as relatively independent of general mental functioning or intelligence, has not been well substantiated when some such clinical tests have been put to critical examination. Eysenck and Halstead (2) after a brief review of the literature and an experimental attack on this problem, conclude that “… the ability involved in the clinical tests of memory studied in this research was identical with that involved in the intelligence test used, and that, therefore, it was misleading to accept scores on these various tests as estimates of a person's ‘memory’ ability.”

Summary This paper describes an experiment to test the theory that the perceptions of organic psychiatric subjects are similar to those of normal subjects who are looking at the world through a small hole. The experiment was carried out on 20 brain-damaged and epileptic subjects. They were required to reproduce abstract designs with Kohs Blocks, the designs being painted on 3 inch, 6 inch and 12 inch square cards. The same designs appeared on each set of cards. Previous experimentation with 6 inch cards had shown that diamond oriented cards produced more rotation of the reproductions than did the square oriented cards. It was hypothesized that the edges of the 12 inch card were likely to be further outside the supposed peephole than those of a 6 inch card, which in turn would be further outside the hypothesized peephole than those of a 3 inch card. The further outside the peephole edges the card, the less likely would the orientation of that card be to influence the amount of rotation, and hence the smaller would be the difference between diamond and square oriented cards. Whilst the results may be regarded as consistent with expectation, they need to be repeated before the theory can be considered to have been reliably confirmed.