OBJECTIVE To provide the first empirical investigation of the association between smoking cessation and indices of physiological and subjective sexual health in men. SUBJECTS AND METHODS Male smokers, irrespective of erectile dysfunction status, who were motivated to stop smoking ('quitters'), were enrolled in an 8-week smoking cessation programme involving a nicotine transdermal patch treatm...

OBJECTIVE To estimate in a cross sectional analysis the degree of colinearity among the disease activity measures more commonly used in juvenile chronic arthritis (JCA). METHODS This study assessed in a single clinical evaluation three subjective variables, three measures of functional capacity, eight articular indices, and two laboratory indicators of systemic inflammation in 55 consecutive ...

Young adolescents are quickly becoming avid users of social networking sites (SNSs); however, little is known regarding how they use these sites. The goal of the present study was to examine the extent to which young adolescents use SNSs, with whom they connect via these sites, and whether SNS use disrupts daily functioning. Among 268 middle-school students surveyed, 63% reported having their o...

This study presents results of subjective judgments to simulated floor impact sound to create classification scheme of heavy weight impact sound with standardized rubber ball. The floor impact sound samples were recorded in a wood-frame test house with different floor configurations and were reproduced in an anechoic chamber. Using the relationship between subjective rating and physical indices...

We propose a family of image quality assessment (IQA) models based on natural scene statistics (NSS), that can predict the subjective quality of a distorted image without reference to a corresponding distortionless image, and without any training results on human opinion scores of distorted images. These ‘completely blind’ models compete well with standard non-blind image quality indices in ter...

We experimentally explore the effects and interactions of three variables considered important when bargaining over a jointly produced surplus: performance information, production uncertainties when translating performance into output, and subjective entitlements derived from the production process. We find that without performance information subjective entitlements are mostly mutually consist...

Purpose: We propose in this paper to analyze what are the factors that influence knowledge transfer both intra and intergenerational in family firms. The main objective is to establish a framework that can be used later in empirical research, although we maintain a completely theoretical approach in this paper Design/methodology/approach: This study, which is a comprehensive framework character...

This article adopts a critical sociological perspective to examine the expectations surrounding the uses of social networking sites (SNSs) articulated in the domain of clinical literature. This emerging body of articles and commentaries responds to the recent significant growth in SNS use, and constitutes a venue in which the meanings of SNSs and their relation to health are negotiated. Our ana...

The project management discipline is expanding within many engineering activities. This discipline can facilitate strivings toward successful accomplishment of an engineering project. Therefore, many academic institutes teach the “project management” program. This study presents a novel approach that educates engineering students to become successful project managers based on contextual learnin...

Ambivalence, the presence of positive and negative reactions toward an object, typically involves the subjective experience of conflict. We investigate the role that the perceived validity of each side of an ambivalent attitude plays in producing subjective ambivalence (SA). Consistent with the metacognitive model of attitudes, we demonstrated that SA is reduced when people doubt either the pos...