Self-Views and Behaviors

Body-Focused Repetitive Behaviors (BFRB) are significantly underrepresented in psychology research, and little is known on their characteristics and relationship to self-esteem, despite the serious impairments they cause many individuals. Two hundred and ninety-five undergraduate students (M=18.61 years, SD=0.78) completed an online survey composed of measures related to BFRB presence and severity, personality, perfectionism, emotion regulation, emotional reactivity, narcissism, and global and contingent self-esteem. There were no consistent patterns of association between BFRB severity and contingencies of self-esteem. However, BFRBs disorder severities were associated consistently with measures of global self-esteem, vulnerable narcissism, emotion regulation, emotional reactivity, and body dysmorphia. These findings suggest that attention to adaptive and maladaptive contingencies of self-esteem for treating BFRBs might be questionable. Instead, attention to maladaptive global self-views and other constructs might be more useful. Moreover an individual approach must be taken in clinical practice when considering the effects of contingencies on a person’s disorder severity

Citizen scientists are not just quiz takers: information about project type influences data disclosure in online psychological surveys

Traditionally, citizen science has centred on giving lay people opportunities to learn about science by participating in it. Lately, psychological citizen science projects have increasingly aimed to attract participants by providing an opportunity for self-learning. Unfortunately, these citizen science projects sometimes resemble quizzes hosted by private companies that have been criticised for suboptimal privacy practices. We were interested in whether similarity to these dubious quizzes could jeopardise the ability of citizen science projects to collect sensitive personal data. We found that people who join an online quiz disclose a lower volume of sensitive data than those who join a citizen science project. Moreover, post-recruitment encouragement to learn about science influenced data disclosure among quiz takers but not among citizen scientists. These findings have implications not only for the effective design of citizen science but also for the broader debate about consent to disclose data in research, academic or otherwise

Crowdworkers' temporal flexibility is being traded for the convenience of requesters through 19 'invisible mechanisms' employed by crowdworking platforms

Crowdworking platforms are a prime example of a product that sells flexibility to its consumers. In this paper, we argue that crowdworking platforms sell temporal flexibility to requesters to the detriment of workers. We begin by identifying a list of 19 features employed by crowdworking platforms that facilitate the trade of temporal flexibility from crowdworkers to requesters. Using the list of features, we conduct a comparative analysis of nine crowdworking platforms available to U.S.-based workers, in which we describe key differences and similarities between the platforms. We find that crowdworking platforms strongly favour features that promote requesters’ temporal flexibility over workers’ by limiting the predictability of workers’ working hours and restricting paid time. Further, we identify which platforms employ the highest number of features that facilitate the trade of temporal flexibility from workers to requesters, consequently increasing workers’ temporal precarity. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of the results

Remote Work, Work Measurement and the State of Work Research in Human-Centred Computing

Over the past few decades, a small but growing group of people have worked remotely from their homes. With the arrival of the coronavirus pandemic, millions of people found themselves joining this group overnight. In this position paper, we examine the kinds of work that ‘went remote’ in response to the pandemic, and consider the ways in which this transition was influenced by (and in turn came to influence) contemporary trends in digital workplace measurement and evaluation. We see that employers appeared reluctant to let certain classes of employee work remotely. When the pandemic forced staff home, employers compensated by turning to digital surveillance tools, even though, as we argue, these tools seem unable to overcome the significant conceptual barriers to understanding how people are working. We also observed that, in the United Kingdom context, the pandemic didn’t mean remote work for a significant proportion of the population. We assert that, to maximize its impact, ‘future of work’ research in human-centred computing must be more inclusive and representative of work, rather than focusing on the experiences of knowledge workers and those involved in new forms of work

Nanopore direct RNA sequencing maps the complexity of Arabidopsis mRNA processing and m6A modification

Understanding genome organization and gene regulation requires insight into RNA transcription, processing and modification. We adapted nanopore direct RNA sequencing to examine RNA from a wild-type accession of the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana and a mutant defective in mRNA methylation (m6A). Here we show that m6A can be mapped in full-length mRNAs transcriptome-wide and reveal the combinatorial diversity of cap-associated transcription start sites, splicing events, poly(A) site choice and poly(A) tail length. Loss of m6A from 3’ untranslated regions is associated with decreased relative transcript abundance and defective RNA 30 end formation. A functional consequence of disrupted m6A is a lengthening of the circadian period. We conclude that nanopore direct RNA sequencing can reveal the complexity of mRNA processing and modification in full-length single molecule reads. These findings can refine Arabidopsis genome annotation. Further, applying this approach to less well-studied species could transform our understanding of what their genomes encode

How to run an Errordiary Workshop: Exploring errors and resilience strategies with patients, professionals and the public

Errordiary is a public engagement initiative that aims to raise awareness and debate about error and resilience strategies. Errordiary in healthcare targeted patients, healthcare professionals and members of the public to see if it had potential for healthcare. To engage with these groups we ran a competition, surveys, focus groups and presentations. After a recent presentation about Errordiary one of the doctors that attended remarked, “I will be running a session on error and resilience strategies in my clinical practice, inspired by you!”. However, at that stage, it was not clear to us how to run such a session. In this paper we present a format that could be adapted by others. This format was successful in getting people with diabetes, healthcare professionals and the public to talk about and share their own errors and resilience strategies in three separate focus groups

Hormones and temporal components of speech: sex differences and effects of menstrual cyclicity on speech

Voice onset time (VOT) is a salient acoustic parameter of speech which signals the “voiced” and “voiceless” status of plosives in English (e.g. the initial sound in ‘bat’ vs. the initial sound in ‘pat’). As a micro-temporal acoustic parameter, VOT may be sensitive to changes in hormones which may affect the neuromuscular systems involved in speech production. This study adopted a novel approach by investigating the effects of menstrual cycle phase and sex on VOT. VOT data representing the 6 plosives of English (/p b t d k g/) were examined for 7 women (age 20-23 years) at two phases of the menstrual cycle (day 18-25: High Estrogen and Progesterone; day 2-5: Low Estrogen and Progesterone). Results indicated that menstrual cycle phase had a significant interaction with the identity of the plosive (F (5,30) = 5.869, P .05), or the contrast between voiced and voiceless cognates (F (1,10) = .407, P > .05). In contrast, the high hormone phase VOT samples displayed significant plosive by sex interactions (F (5,50) = 4.442, P < .005). In addition, significant sex differences were found for the contrasts between cognate voiced and voiceless plosives (F (1,10) = 5.019, P < .05); the women displayed a more marked voiced/voiceless contrast. The findings suggest that ovarian hormones play some role in shaping some temporal components of speech

High-throughput detection of ethanol-producing cyanobacteria in a microdroplet platform.

Ethanol production by microorganisms is an important renewable energy source. Most processes involve fermentation of sugars from plant feedstock, but there is increasing interest in direct ethanol production by photosynthetic organisms. To facilitate this, a high-throughput screening technique for the detection of ethanol is required. Here, a method for the quantitative detection of ethanol in a microdroplet-based platform is described that can be used for screening cyanobacterial strains to identify those with the highest ethanol productivity levels. The detection of ethanol by enzymatic assay was optimized both in bulk and in microdroplets. In parallel, the encapsulation of engineered ethanol-producing cyanobacteria in microdroplets and their growth dynamics in microdroplet reservoirs were demonstrated. The combination of modular microdroplet operations including droplet generation for cyanobacteria encapsulation, droplet re-injection and pico-injection, and laser-induced fluorescence, were used to create this new platform to screen genetically engineered strains of cyanobacteria with different levels of ethanol production.This research has received funding from EC within the FP7 DEMA project, grant agreement no. 309086. Both S.A.C. and E.K. are supported by DEMA funding.This is the final published version. It first appeared at http://rsif.royalsocietypublishing.org/content/12/106/20150216#ack-1