Community Attitudes Toward Local Foods and Producers: The Role of Warmth Versus Competence Across Demographics for Social Media Engagement.

Connecting local food producers with consumers is useful for ensuring individuals have access to healthy, fresh, foods. Small farmers, however, lack the resources to effectively connecting with consumers through traditional forms of marketing. Marketing to consumers through social media is a low-cost method that local food producers can use to promote their products. Creating engaging content on social media can be challenging, thus there is a need for guidance on how to effectively engage with local consumers through social media. Studies in advertising have shown dimensions of warmth and competence can be useful frames for engaging consumers across a variety of consumer goods. In this study we ran a nationally representative survey (n = 966) with an experimental component to determine if videos were an effective method of connecting with consumers, and if so, how this varies across demographics. We further investigated whether aspects of warmth of competence influence consumer willingness to purchase locally produced foods. We find warmth does have a small effect on consumer perceptions of local foods and videos help reduce the lack of familiarity of a farm, a barrier to purchasing local foods. Consumers across demographics demonstrate high levels of interest in purchasing local foods yet access to continues to be a barrier to purchasing. Additionally, we find consumers are willing to purchase locally produced foods at a higher price if available in more convenient locations, such as grocery stores, provided they were clearly labeled and from a farm that is familiar

Perspectives from Naive Participants and Experienced Social Science Researchers on Addressing Embodiment in a Virtual Cyberball Task

We describe the design of an immersive virtual Cyberball task that included avatar customization, and user feedback on this design. We first created a prototype of an avatar customization template and added it to a Cyberball prototype built in the Unity3D game engine. Then, we conducted in-depth user testing and feedback sessions with 15 Cyberball stakeholders: five naive participants with no prior knowledge of Cyberball and ten experienced researchers with extensive experience using the Cyberball paradigm. We report the divergent perspectives of the two groups on the following design insights; designing for intuitive use, inclusivity, and realistic experiences versus minimalism. Participant responses shed light on how system design problems may contribute to or perpetuate negative experiences when customizing avatars. They also demonstrate the value of considering multiple stakeholders' feedback in the design process for virtual reality, presenting a more comprehensive view in designing future Cyberball prototypes and interactive systems for social science research.Comment: 6 pages, 8 figures, In Companion Proceedings of the 26th ACM Conference On Computer-Supported Cooperative Work And Social Computing (CSCW'23

Working Together on Diverse Tasks: A Longitudinal Study on Individual Workload, Presence and Emotional Recognition in Collaborative Virtual Environments

Numerous studies have shown the potential benefits of collaborative virtual environments (CVEs) for distributed teams. However, there are few longitudinal studies on collaboration in immersive virtual environments, and existing studies mostly examine how pairs or groups adapt over time. In a longitudinal study, we examined what does and does not change over time as individual users adapt to collaboration in virtual environments. In our mixed-methods, exploratory study, we matched 20 participants in random pairs over five sessions. We assigned each participant to complete a different collaborative task, with a different partner, in each session. Our quantitative data analysis and qualitative interview data show that adaptation to VR increased significantly over time. Presence ratings did not show change over time, but participants reported developing new ways to communicate in VR. We also identified patterns indicating a relationship between a person’s emotional state and their partner’s ability to recognize their emotion. We conclude with a discussion of our findings and provide design implications and future directions for designers and researchers in the field

Designing Immersive Virtual Environments for Human Behavior Research

What are strategies for the design of immersive virtual environments (IVEs) to understand environments’ influence on behaviors? To answer this question, we conducted a systematic review to assess peer-reviewed publications and conference proceedings on experimental and proof-of-concept studies that described the design, manipulation, and setup of the IVEs to examine behaviors influenced by the environment. Eighteen articles met the inclusion criteria. Our review identified key categories and proposed strategies in the following areas for consideration when deciding on the level of detail that should be included when prototyping IVEs for human behavior research: 1) the appropriate level of detail (primarily visual) in the environment: important commonly found environmental accessories, realistic textures, computational costs associated with increased details, and minimizing unnecessary details, 2) context: contextual element, cues, and animation social interactions, 3) social cues: including computer-controlled agent-avatars when necessary and animating social interactions, 4) self-avatars, navigation concerns, and changes in participants’ head directions, and 5) nonvisual sensory information: haptic feedback, audio, and olfactory cues

An Agenda for Open Science in Communication

In the last 10 years, many canonical findings in the social sciences appear unreliable. This so-called “replication crisis” has spurred calls for open science practices, which aim to increase the reproducibility, replicability, and generalizability of findings. Communication research is subject to many of the same challenges that have caused low replicability in other fields. As a result, we propose an agenda for adopting open science practices in Communication, which includes the following seven suggestions: (1) publish materials, data, and code; (2) preregister studies and submit registered reports; (3) conduct replications; (4) collaborate; (5) foster open science skills; (6) implement Transparency and Openness Promotion Guidelines; and (7) incentivize open science practices. Although in our agenda we focus mostly on quantitative research, we also reflect on open science practices relevant to qualitative research. We conclude by discussing potential objections and concerns associated with open science practices

Measurement of the Z/gamma* + b-jet cross section in pp collisions at 7 TeV

The production of b jets in association with a Z/gamma* boson is studied using proton-proton collisions delivered by the LHC at a centre-of-mass energy of 7 TeV and recorded by the CMS detector. The inclusive cross section for Z/gamma* + b-jet production is measured in a sample corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 2.2 inverse femtobarns. The Z/gamma* + b-jet cross section with Z/gamma* to ll (where ll = ee or mu mu) for events with the invariant mass 60 < M(ll) < 120 GeV, at least one b jet at the hadron level with pT > 25 GeV and abs(eta) < 2.1, and a separation between the leptons and the jets of Delta R > 0.5 is found to be 5.84 +/- 0.08 (stat.) +/- 0.72 (syst.) +(0.25)/-(0.55) (theory) pb. The kinematic properties of the events are also studied and found to be in agreement with the predictions made by the MadGraph event generator with the parton shower and the hadronisation performed by PYTHIA.Comment: Submitted to the Journal of High Energy Physic

Performance of the CMS Cathode Strip Chambers with Cosmic Rays

The Cathode Strip Chambers (CSCs) constitute the primary muon tracking device in the CMS endcaps. Their performance has been evaluated using data taken during a cosmic ray run in fall 2008. Measured noise levels are low, with the number of noisy channels well below 1%. Coordinate resolution was measured for all types of chambers, and fall in the range 47 microns to 243 microns. The efficiencies for local charged track triggers, for hit and for segments reconstruction were measured, and are above 99%. The timing resolution per layer is approximately 5 ns

Aligning the CMS Muon Chambers with the Muon Alignment System during an Extended Cosmic Ray Run

Peer reviewe

Companionship

This is the project and associated pre-registration for the following publication: Won, Andrea Stevenson, Swati Pandita, and Kaylee Payne Kruzan. "Social Interaction and Pain Threshold in Virtual Reality." Cyberpsychology, Behavior, and Social Networking (2020). https://doi.org/10.1089/cyber.2020.005