A General Attitude towards Shopping and Its Link with Basic Human Values in the UK

Prior literature about shopping has focused mostly on specific aspects such as on attitudes towards specific products or shopping practices. A General Shopping Attitude (GSA), capturing how much an individual is attracted by shopping in general, has rarely been explored. In an online questionnaire study conducted in the UK, here we developed and validated a self-report scale to assess GSA. Moreover, adopting Schwartz’s theory of basic human values as framework, we explored the relationship between GSA and general value orientations. We observed that people valuing more Self-enhancement versus Self-transcendence (i.e., valuing the own social status and wellbeing versus the wellbeing of others and of the environment) reported more positive GSA. This fits with theories proposing that, in consumer societies, shopping is appealing because it allows one to achieve social status. Contrary to perspectives claiming that shopping is appealing because it enables expressing creativity and freedom, a negative relation between GSA and Self-direction (i.e., a tendency to value freedom and creativity) emerged. Rather, this observation fits with proposals viewing the appeal of shopping in its ability to enable one to conform to a reference group’s standards. These findings shed light on general value orientations underlying the appeal of shopping

Competition of Mesoscales and Crossover to Tricriticality in Polymer Solutions

We show that the approach to asymptotic fluctuation-induced critical behavior in polymer solutions is governed by a competition between a correlation length diverging at the critical point and an additional mesoscopic length-scale, the radius of gyration. Accurate light-scattering experiments on polystyrene solutions in cyclohexane with polymer molecular weights ranging from 200,000 up to 11.4 million clearly demonstrate a crossover between two universal regimes: a regime with Ising asymptotic critical behavior, where the correlation length prevails, and a regime with tricritical theta-point behavior determined by a mesoscopic polymer-chain length.Comment: 4 pages in RevTeX with 4 figure

Probing structural relaxation in complex fluids by critical fluctuations

Complex fluids, such as polymer solutions and blends, colloids and gels, are of growing interest in fundamental and applied soft-condensed-matter science. A common feature of all such systems is the presence of a mesoscopic structural length scale intermediate between atomic and macroscopic scales. This mesoscopic structure of complex fluids is often fragile and sensitive to external perturbations. Complex fluids are frequently viscoelastic (showing a combination of viscous and elastic behaviour) with their dynamic response depending on the time and length scales. Recently, non-invasive methods to infer the rheological response of complex fluids have gained popularity through the technique of microrheology, where the diffusion of probe spheres in a viscoelastic fluid is monitored with the aid of light scattering or microscopy. Here we propose an alternative to traditional microrheology that does not require doping of probe particles in the fluid (which can sometimes drastically alter the molecular environment). Instead, our proposed method makes use of the phenomenon of "avoided crossing" between modes associated with the structural relaxation and critical fluctuations that are spontaneously generated in the system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure

On bi-integrable natural Hamiltonian systems on the Riemannian manifolds

We introduce the concept of natural Poisson bivectors, which generalizes the Benenti approach to construction of natural integrable systems on the Riemannian manifolds and allows us to consider almost the whole known zoo of integrable systems in framework of bi-hamiltonian geometry.Comment: 24 pages, LaTeX with AMSfonts (some new references were added

ПРОБЛЕМНЫЕ ВОПРОСЫ ДИВЕРСИФИКАЦИИ ГРАЖДАНСКОЙ ТЕХНИКИ В ТЕХНИКУ ВОЕННОГО НАЗНАЧЕНИЯ

Study of directions concerning development of military equipment, its modernization with the purpose to improve its military efficiency is an actual problem for the Armed Forces, military science, designers and researchers.The paper analyzes and estimates possibilities to use civil equipment for military purpose. Problems pertaining to technologies of double application, diversification of civil equipment in military engineering machinery are considered in the paper.Изучение направлений развития и модернизации военной техники, с целью повышения ее боеспособности – актуальная проблема для Вооруженных Сил, военной науки, конструкторов и исследователей.Проводится анализ и оценивается возможность использования техники народного хозяйства в военных целях, рассматриваются проблемные вопросы технологий двойного применения, диверсификации гражданской техники в машины инженерного вооружения

Vacuum-Ultraviolet Photoionization and Mass Spectrometric Characterization of Lignin Monomers Coniferyl and Sinapyl Alcohols

The fragmentation mechanisms of monolignols under various energetic processes are studied with jet-cooled thermal desorption molecular beam (TDMB) mass spectrometry (MS), 25 keV Bi3+ secondary ion MS (SIMS), synchrotron vacuum-ultraviolet secondary neutral MS (VUV-SNMS) and theoretical methods. Experimental and calculated appearance energies of fragments observed in TDMB MS indicate that the coniferyl alcohol photoionization mass spectra contain the molecular parent and several dissociative photoionization products. Similar results obtained for sinapyl alcohol are also discussed briefly. Ionization energies of 7.60 eV ? 0.05 eV for coniferyl alcohol and<7.4 eV for both sinapyl and dihydrosinapyl alcohols are determined. The positive ion SIMS spectrum of coniferyl alcohol shares few characteristic peaks (m/z = 137 and 151) with the TDMB mass spectra, shows extensive fragmentation, and does not exhibit clear molecular parent signals. VUV-SNMS spectra, on the other hand, are dominated by the parent ion and main fragments also present in the TDMB spectra. Molecular fragmentation in VUV-SNMS spectra can be reduced by increasing the extraction delay time. Some features resembling the SIMS spectra are also observed in the desorbed neutral products. The monolignol VUV-SNMS peaks shared with the TDMB mass spectra suggest that dissociative photoionization of ion-sputtered neutral molecules predominate in the VUV-SNMS mass spectra, despite the extra internal energy imparted in the initial ion impact. The potential applications of these results to imaging mass spectrometry of bio-molecules are discussed

Soft Ionization of Thermally Evaporated Hypergolic Ionic Liquid Aerosols

Isolated ion pairs of a conventional ionic liquid, 1-Ethyl-3-Methyl-Imidazolium Bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)imide ([Emim+][Tf2N?]), and a reactive hypergolic ionic liquid, 1-Butyl-3-Methyl-Imidazolium Dicyanamide ([Bmim+][Dca?]), are generated by vaporizing ionic liquid submicron aerosol particles for the first time; the vaporized species are investigated by dissociative ionization with tunable vacuum ultraviolet (VUV) light, exhibiting clear intact cations, Emim+ and Bmim+, presumably originating from intact ion pairs. Mass spectra of ion pair vapor from an effusive source of the hypergolic ionic liquid show substantial reactive decomposition due to the internal energy of the molecules emanating from the source. Photoionization efficiency curves in the near threshold ionization region of isolated ion pairs of [Emim+][Tf2N?]ionic liquid vapor are compared for an aerosol source and an effusive source, revealing changes in the appearance energy due to the amount of internal energy in the ion pairs. The aerosol source has a shift to higher threshold energy (~;;0.3 eV), attributed to reduced internal energy of the isolated ion pairs. The method of ionic liquid submicron aerosol particle vaporization, for reactive ionic liquids such as hypergolic species, is a convenient, thermally ?cooler? source of isolated intact ion pairs in the gas phase compared to effusive sources