The Flash for Life

The second activator intervention I want to relate dates back to 1984, when I developed the Flash for Life. Here is how it worked. A person displayed to vehicle occupants the front side of an 11- by 14-inch flash card that read, Please Buckle-up—1 Care. If someone buckled up after viewing this message, the flasher flipped the card over to display the bold words, Thank You For Buckling Up. For the first evaluation of this behavior change intervention (Geller et al., 1985), the flasher was in the front seat of a stopped vehicle and the flashee was the driver of an adjacent, stopped vehicle. The flash card was shown to 1087 unbuckled drivers, and of the 82 percent who looked at the card, 22 percent complied immediately with the buckle-up request. 

When hearing about this Flash for Life project, many of my colleagues expressed concern for my sanity. Why do you waste your time some would say. Getting 22 percent to buckle up is not a big deal, and most of those who buckled up for your daughter only did it the one time. They probably won t buckle up the next day.  

I had two answers to this sort of pessimism. First, achievement is built on small wins. People need to break up big problems or challenges into small, achievable steps, and then work on each successive step, one at a time (Weick, 1984). We cannot expect to solve a major safety problem like low use of personal protective equipment with one intervention technique, but we need to start somewhere. If everyone contributed a small win for safety, the cumulative effects could be tremendous. 

You see, people who actively care for safety by encouraging—or activating—others to practice safe behaviors strengthen their own personal safety commitment. When Karly was in fourth grade she won a speech contest for a talk on her flashing experiences at age three and one-half. Her early involvement in safety led to this later role as a safety teacher, further strengthening her personal conunitment to practice safe behaviors. 

A follow-up study (Berry et al., 1992) showed that this activator had a substantially greater impact when a person held the buckle-up sign, as opposed to the sign being 

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In another variahon, Roberts and his students (1990) disseminated vinyl folders with the "Flash for Life" messages on front and back to 10,000 school children. They observed children "flashing" throughout the community and found higher rates cf safety-belt use among children who received the flash card. Again, this points out tlie power of involvement. 

As with the "Flash for Life" activator, many friends have laughed at the "Airline Lifesaver," claiming I am wasting my time. A common comment was "No one listens to the airline announcements anyway, and besides, do you really think an airline message could be enough to motivate people to buckle up if they don t already "... 

You would think that product ad activators on television are less effective in directing behavior than promotions at store locations. Similarly, it is reasonable to predict that promoting vehicle safety-belt use on television would be less effective than presenting buckle-up activators at road locations, as exemplified by the "Flash-for-Life" intervention. This assumption is supported by the classic and rigorous evaluation of safety-belt promotion in public service annormcements on television by Robertson et al. (1974). 

I have personally distributed more than 3000 "Flash for Life" cards nationwide, usually upon request by an individual who heard about the intervention procedure. In addition, a number of safety-belt groups in Ohio, Tennessee, and Virginia have personalized the flash card for distribution and use throughout their states. 1 have heard numerous "small win" success stories from recipients of this "Flash for Life" activator. 

Under severe conditions and at high temperatures, noble metal films may fail by oxidation of the substrate base metal through pores in the film. Improved life may be achieved by first imposing a harder noble metal film, eg, rhodium or platinum—iridium, on the substrate metal. For maximum adhesion, the metal of the intermediate film should ahoy both with the substrate metal and the soft noble-metal lubricating film. This sometimes requires more than one intermediate layer. For example, silver does not ahoy to steel and tends to lack adhesion. A flash of hard nickel bonds weh to the steel but the nickel tends to oxidize and should be coated with rhodium before applying shver of 1—5 p.m thickness. This triplex film then provides better adhesion and gready increased corrosion protection. 

Anastrozole is a selective nonsteroidal aromatase inhibitor that lowers estrogen levels. The pharmacokinetics of anastrozole demonstrate good absorption, with hepatic metabolism the primary route of elimination and only 10% excreted unchanged by the kidney. The elimination half-life is approximately 50 hours. Anastrozole is used for the adjuvant treatment of postmenopausal women with hormone-positive breast cancer and in breast cancer patients who have had disease progression following tamoxifen. Side effects include hot flashes, arthralgias, osteoporosis/bone fractures, and thrombophlebitis. 

Fluid milk is commonly subjected to a combination steam injection/in-fusion and vacuum flash evaporation process to remove volatile off-flavor compounds. The process is designed to remove the same amount of water by the flash treatment as is added during steam injection/infu-sion, so that the composition of the milk remains unchanged. This treatment is most effective for removing volatile, water-soluble flavor compounds, such as those from weeds and feed consumed by the cow. The additional heat from this process usually provides further improvement in product shelf life. 

Phenyltrimethyldisilene (15) and (E)- and (Z)-l,2-dimethyl-l,2-diphenyldisilene (16) were also observed as transient absorption spectra by laser flash photolysis of the precursors in methylcyclohexanes28. The absorption band at 380 nm, assigned to the disilene 15, reached maximum intensity at ca 10 ns after the excitation and then started to decrease. The half-life assigned to 15 was 700 ns. The logarithm of the decay profile of the transient absorption at 380 nm versus time shows a very good linear relationship, indicating that the decay of the transient absorption fits first-order kinetics. This result shows that intramolecular isomerization or proton abstraction from the solvent is the origin for the decay of the disilene 15, which survives in solution only for several nanoseconds. 

If an intermediate such as a radical or an excited molecule is produced by absorption of radiation and disappears at a rate proportional to the first power of the intensity, it is possible to interrupt the light beam and the rate of disappearance integrated over time will then vary merely as the fraction of the time the light reaches the reaction vessel. If this is 0.25, the net rate with interruption will be 0.25 times the rate with full illumination. If, on the other hand, the intermediates disappear by a second order reaction (i.e. the rate is proportional to the square of their concentration) the situation is different. At very high rates of interruption the light will appear to be on all of the time but with one quarter of the intensity. At very slow rates of interruption the light will appear to be on one quarter of the time with full intensity. In a plot of rate vs. duration of flash the asymptotes for very slow and for very rapid interruption will differ by a factor of four. The inflection point will come at about the mean life of the intermediate being studied. 

A mechanism of biogenesis must account for the fact that life is instantaneously demanding and there is no time to produce any vital component once the membrane has closed around a nascent cell. Each unit is sparked into being in seconds and if a burst of light were associated with that instant, a long-lived observer walking across the early earth would see for a few million years these flashes dotting the landscape. 

The composition and rate of formation of all the products have been studied as a function of flash times. The mass balances are excellent. The results clearly show that the reaction begins with depolymerization processes giving rise to a short life time intermediate confound (ILC) that is liquid at reaction terrq)erature but solid at room temperature. This product partially decomposes into condensible vapours. A fraction of them undergoes a thermal cracking producing gases inside or in the vicinity of the sample. For heat flux densities higher than approximately 9 x 10 W m, no char is observed. 

Because most hot flashes resolve in 1 to 3 years, short-term use may be all that is needed, and can significantly improve quality of life. Short-term use, however, may increase the risk for cardiovascular events due to thrombogenesis and coronary heart disease, and should generally be avoided in women with preexisting cardiovascular disease, prior history of blood clots, or any condition that increases the risk for thrombotic events. With each year of use the risk for breast cancer and gallbladder disease increases. Long-term use decreases the risk for colon cancer and hip fracture. The side effects, contraindications, and drug interactions with HRT are similar to those for oral contraception (see Case 34). 

The pharmaceutical and life science industries often deal with large, complex molecules, and separation via crystallization is an important practice. Robust flash algorithms for solid-liquid equilibrium, particularly systems with multiple polymorphs, are highly desirable. 

Similar results were obtained by Kelly and Morris (87) for the flash photolysis of Cr(C0)g and Mo(CO) in room temperature degassed cyclohexane solutions. With Cr(C0)g the decay of the first transient followed first-order kinetics with a half-life... 

High airborne concentrations of ethyiamine can form, given its vapor pressure, with the potential for severe eye, nose, and respiratory tract irritation escape impairment and possible death. The immediately dangerous to life or health (IDLH) concentration for ethyiamine is 600 ppm. Anhydrous ethyiamine is a flammable gas aqueous ethyiamine is a flammable liquid. Vapors can travel a considerable distance to an ignition source and flash back because ethyiamine vapor density is heavier than air. 

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