When Happiness is Both Joy and Purpose: The Complexity of the Pursuit of Happiness and Well-Being is Related to Actual Well-Being

People differ in how they define and pursue happiness and well-being (HWB). Previous studies suggested that the best way to achieve a high level of well-being might be to pursue different facets of HWB simultaneously. We expand on this idea and introduce the concept of complexity of HWB definitions to describe how many HWB definitions people endorse simultaneously, and the complexity of HWB-related intentions to describe how many unique facets of HWB people intend to pursue in everyday life. To operationalize these novel concepts, we developed two parallel measures that integrate psychological and philosophical definitions of HWB. In two independent studies (total N = 542), exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses revealed eight reliable and valid factors for both parallel scales: absence of negativity, positive attitude, tranquility, personal development, luck, joy and desires, purpose, and belonging. Complexity of HWB-related intentions was positively associated with all facets of well-being, whereas complexity of HWB definitions was only positively associated with some facets of well-being. HWB-related intentions and their complexity emerged as more important for the experience of well-being than HWB definitions and their complexity. These studies highlight the importance of a multifaceted conceptualization of HWB when investigating how the pursuit of HWB is related to actual levels of well-being

Development and three-dimensional morphology of the zygomaticotemporal suture in primate skulls

Cranial sutures are an essential part of the growing skull, allowing bones to increase in size during growth, with their morphology widely believed to be dictated by the forces and displacements that they experience. The zygomaticotemporal suture in primates is located in the relatively weak zygomatic arch, and externally it appears a very simple connection. However, large forces are almost certainly transmitted across this suture, suggesting that it requires some level of stability while also allowing controlled movements under high loading. Here we examine the 2- and 3-dimensional (3D) morphology of the zygomaticotemporal suture in an ontogenetic series of Macaca fascicularis skulls. High resolution microcomputed tomography data sets were examined, and virtual and physical 3D replicas were created to assess both structure and general stability. The zygomaticotemporal suture is much more complex than its external appearance suggests, with interlocking facets between the adjacent zygomatic and temporal bones. It appears as if some movement is permitted across the suture in younger animals, but as they approach adulthood the complexity of the suture's interlocking bone facets reaches a level where these movements become minimal

Effects of the Generation Size and Overlap on Throughput and Complexity in Randomized Linear Network Coding

To reduce computational complexity and delay in randomized network coded content distribution, and for some other practical reasons, coding is not performed simultaneously over all content blocks, but over much smaller, possibly overlapping subsets of these blocks, known as generations. A penalty of this strategy is throughput reduction. To analyze the throughput loss, we model coding over generations with random generation scheduling as a coupon collector's brotherhood problem. This model enables us to derive the expected number of coded packets needed for successful decoding of the entire content as well as the probability of decoding failure (the latter only when generations do not overlap) and further, to quantify the tradeoff between computational complexity and throughput. Interestingly, with a moderate increase in the generation size, throughput quickly approaches link capacity. Overlaps between generations can further improve throughput substantially for relatively small generation sizes.Comment: To appear in IEEE Transactions on Information Theory Special Issue: Facets of Coding Theory: From Algorithms to Networks, Feb 201

A Linear Bound on the Complexity of the Delaunay triangulation of points on polyhedral surfaces

Delaunay triangulations and Voronoi diagrams have found numerous applications in surface modeling, surface mesh generation, deformable surface modeling and surface reconstruction. Many algorithms in these applications begin by constructing the three-dimensional Delaunay triangulation of a finite set of points scattered over a surface. Their running-time therefore depends on the complexity of the Delaunay triangulation of such point sets. Although the Delaunay triangulation of points in ^3 can be quadratic in the worst-case, we show that, under some mild sampling condition, the complexity of the 3D Delaunay triangulation of points distributed on a fixed number of facets of ^3 (e.g. the facets of a polyhedron) is linear. Our bound is deterministic and the constants are explicitly given