3,043 research outputs found
Social Intelligence of Undergraduates Enrolled in Traditional vs. Distance Higher Education Learning Programs
Participation in, and acceptance of, distance education has reached an all-time high. Yet many academics, policy makers, and laypeople remain concerned that distance education can adversely affect one\u27s social development. The purpose of this quantitative study was to test that concern by comparing the social intelligence of distance undergraduates with the social intelligence of traditional undergraduates at different class ranks (i.e., freshman, sophomore, junior, senior) while limiting the ages of the participants (n = 190) to 18-24. Social intelligence, an operationally defined measure of the construct often referred to as social development has been a popular focus of research in the last few decades, and the benefits of social intelligence are numerous. This study used Bandura\u27s social learning theory and Goleman\u27s theory of social intelligence as the theoretical framework. A 2-way ANOVA was used to measure the main effect of class rank, the main effect of learning environment (traditional vs. distance), and the interaction between these variables on social intelligence. There was no statistically significant difference in the level of social intelligence between distance and traditional undergraduates, there was a statistically significant difference in the level of social intelligence among undergraduate class ranks, and there was no significant difference between learning environments in social intelligence across levels of class rank. The results of this study can provide meaningful insights to course architects, educators, parents, and students who all have an interest, even if just exploratory, in distance education and its social implications by addressing concerns that distance learning environments might impede social intelligence development of undergraduates
High-level Cryptographic Abstractions
The interfaces exposed by commonly used cryptographic libraries are clumsy,
complicated, and assume an understanding of cryptographic algorithms. The
challenge is to design high-level abstractions that require minimum knowledge
and effort to use while also allowing maximum control when needed.
This paper proposes such high-level abstractions consisting of simple
cryptographic primitives and full declarative configuration. These abstractions
can be implemented on top of any cryptographic library in any language. We have
implemented these abstractions in Python, and used them to write a wide variety
of well-known security protocols, including Signal, Kerberos, and TLS.
We show that programs using our abstractions are much smaller and easier to
write than using low-level libraries, where size of security protocols
implemented is reduced by about a third on average. We show our implementation
incurs a small overhead, less than 5 microseconds for shared key operations and
less than 341 microseconds (< 1%) for public key operations. We also show our
abstractions are safe against main types of cryptographic misuse reported in
the literature
Helix-Helix Interactions in Phospholipid Model Membranes as a Function of Acyl Chain Unsaturation
Dynamics of genuine multipartite correlations in open quantum systems
We propose a measure for genuine multipartite correlations suited for the
study of dynamics in open quantum systems. This measure is contextual in the
sense that it depends on how information is read from the environment. It is
used to study an interacting collective system of atoms undergoing phase
transitions as external parameters are varied. We show that the steady state of
the system can have a significant degree of genuine multipartite quantum and
classical correlations, and that the proposed measure can serve as a witness of
critical behavior in quantum systems.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figure
Emotion word processing: does mood make a difference?
Visual emotion word processing has been in the focus of recent psycholinguistic research. In general, emotion words provoke differential responses in comparison to neutral words. However, words are typically processed within a context rather than in isolation. For instance, how does one's inner emotional state influence the comprehension of emotion words? To address this question, the current study examined lexical decision responses to emotionally positive, negative, and neutral words as a function of induced mood as well as their word frequency. Mood was manipulated by exposing participants to different types of music. Participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions—no music, positive music, and negative music. Participants' moods were assessed during the experiment to confirm the mood induction manipulation. Reaction time results confirmed prior demonstrations of an interaction between a word's emotionality and its frequency. Results also showed a significant interaction between participant mood and word emotionality. However, the pattern of results was not consistent with mood-congruency effects. Although positive and negative mood facilitated responses overall in comparison to the control group, neither positive nor negative mood appeared to additionally facilitate responses to mood-congruent words. Instead, the pattern of findings seemed to be the consequence of attentional effects arising from induced mood. Positive mood broadens attention to a global level, eliminating the category distinction of positive-negative valence but leaving the high-low arousal dimension intact. In contrast, negative mood narrows attention to a local level, enhancing within-category distinctions, in particular, for negative words, resulting in less effective facilitation
The Baryon-Dark Matter Ratio Via Moduli Decay After Affleck-Dine Baryogenesis
Low-scale supersymmetry breaking in string motivated theories implies the
presence of O(100) TeV scale moduli, which generically lead to a significant
modification of the history of the universe prior to Big Bang Nucleosynthesis.
Such an approach implies a non-thermal origin for dark matter resulting from
scalar decay, where the lightest supersymmetric particle can account for the
observed dark matter relic density. We study the further effect of the decay on
the baryon asymmetry of the universe, and find that this can satisfactorily
address the problem of the over-production of the baryon asymmetry by the
Affleck-Dine mechanism in the MSSM. Remarkably, there is a natural connection
between the baryon and dark matter abundances today, which leads to a solution
of the `Cosmic Coincidence Problem'.Comment: 12 pages, no figure. v2: references adde
Local Dividend Clienteles
We exploit demographic variation to identify the effect of dividend demand on corporate payout policy. Retail investors tend to hold local stocks and older investors prefer dividend-paying stocks. Together, these tendencies generate geographically-varying demand for dividends. Firms headquartered in areas in which seniors constitute a large fraction of the population are more likely to pay dividends, initiate dividends, and have higher dividend yields. We also provide indirect evidence as to why managers may respond to the demand for dividends from local seniors. Overall, these results are consistent with the notion that the investor base affects corporate policy choices.
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