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The present study assessed use of food as a coping mechanism and cognitive distortions regarding food and weight in relation to extent of bulimic symptomatology. Subjects were 19 women who fulfilled an operationalized defination of the DSM‐III diagnostic criteria for bulimia (bulimics), 35 women who fulfilled an operationalized definition of an absence of bulimic symptomology (symptom‐free), and 41 women who fulfilled some but not all bulimic criteria (bulimic‐like). The symptom‐free, bulimic‐like, and bulimic groups each differed from one another in a linear fashion from low to high on measures of use of food as a coping mechanism, five of eight types of cognitive distortions regarding food and weight (dichotomous thinking, worry, exaggeration, superstitious thinking, and personalization), drive for thinness, and lack of interoceptive awareness. The bulimic and bulimic‐like groups evidenced greater perfectionism, defeatism, regret, and body dissatisfaction than the symptom‐free group. Variation in the extent of use of food and cognitive distortions accounted for 70% of explained variance in the severity of DSM‐III bulimic symptomatology. These results suggest that behavioral, affective, and cognitive indices of bulimia fall along parallel continua of symptomatic severity. The results also support the relevance of preventative and therapeutic programs with multidimensional foci.

Cooperative adaptive cruise control (CACC) has been loosely defined in recent literature to represent a wide variety of vehicle-following control concepts, and when trucks are discussed, CACC is often used synonymously with platooning. This paper discusses the similarities and differences between CACC and platooning and provides a more precise functional description of CACC operations for trucks. CACC operations include not only the steady state cruising mode but also the maneuvers needed to join vehicles together and separate them when a vehicle needs to leave a CACC string or when the string is interrupted by a cut-in maneuver by a noncooperative vehicle. Activity diagrams are used to describe the CACC maneuvers; the diagrams specify the sequence of actions that need to be taken by each driver and each vehicle (and its CACC software) and the information that needs to be exchanged between them. These precise definitions can be used to specify the vehicle-to-vehicle messages that need to be exchanged between vehicles to implement CACC and the driver–vehicle interface displays and controls that are needed. The paper also addresses practical considerations in CACC operation, such as maximum lengths for strings of CACC trucks, strategies for sequencing the trucks in CACC strings, and higher-level strategies for clustering CACC-capable trucks; these strategies range from ad hoc to local and global coordination.

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In recent years, electroporation has become a popular technique for in vivo transfection of DNA, RNA, and morpholinos into various tissues, including the eye, brain, and somites of zebrafish. The advantage of electroporation over other methods of genetic manipulation is that specific tissues can be targeted, both spatially and temporally, for the introduction of macromolecules by the application of electrical current. Here we describe the use of electroporation for transfecting mif and mif-like morpholinos into the tissues of the developing inner ear of the zebrafish. In past studies, mif morpholino injected into embryos at the 1-to 8-cell stage resulted in widespread morphological changes in the nervous system and eye, as well as the ear. By targeting the tissues of the inner ear at later stages in development, we can determine the primary effects of MIF in the developing inner ear, as opposed to secondary effects that may result from the influence of other tissues. By using phalloidin and acetylated tubulin staining to study the morphology of neurons, neuronal processes, and hair cells associated with the posterior macula, we were able to assess the efficacy of electroporation as a method for targeted transfection in the zebrafish inner ear. The otic vesicles of 24hpf embryos were injected with morpholinos and electroporated and were then compared to embryos that had received no treatment or had been only injected or electroporated. Embryos that were injected and electroporated showed a decrease in hair cell numbers, decreased innervation by the statoacoustic ganglion (SAG) and fewer SAG neurons compared with control groups. Our results showed that direct delivery of morpholinos into otocysts at later stages avoids the non-specific nervous system and neural crest effects of morpholinos delivered at the 1-8 cell stage. It also allows examination of effects that are directed to the inner ear and not secondary effects on the ear from primary effects on the brain, neural crest or periotic mesenchyme.