‘The Greening of Business?’

Summary The general public in many countries throughout the world has become increasingly cynical about the extent to which large companies have engaged in genuine attempts to reduce their impact on the environment. As the century draws to a close, stakeholders are becoming even more demanding and are now insisting that companies help lead society into a new more sustainable age. How have companies responded to this challenge? To what extent is industry's poor reputation warranted? And how far have companies gone in wrestling with their environmental and social responsibilities? This article draws on some quantitative research as well as statements made by business leaders in assessing the extent to which genuine greening has taken hold within the business community. Some tentative conclusions are also offered, suggesting that some significant progress has been made, but that even more significant challenges remain for industry to grapple with

Adaptive working memory training can reduce anxiety and depression vulnerability in adolescents

Adolescents can be at heightened risk for anxiety and depression, with accumulating research reporting on associations between anxiety and depression and cognitive impairments, implicating working memory and attentional control deficits. Several studies now point to the promise of adaptive working memory training to increase attentional control in depressed and anxious participants and reduce anxiety and depression symptoms, but this has not been explored in a non-clinical adolescent population. The current study explored the effects of adaptive dual n-back working memory training on sub-clinical anxiety and depression symptomology in adolescents. Participants trained on either an online adaptive working memory task or non-adaptive control task for up to 20 days. Primary outcome measures were self-reported anxiety and depression symptomology, before and after intervention, and at 1-month follow-up. Self-reported depression (p = .003) and anxiety (p = .04) decreased after training in the adaptive n-back group relative to the non-adaptive control group in the intention-to-treat sample (n = 120). These effects were sustained at follow-up. Our findings constitute proof of principle evidence that working memory training may help reduce anxiety and depression vulnerability in a non-clinical adolescent population. We discuss the findings’ implications for reducing risk of internalising disorders in youth and the need for replication

Reinforcement Learning-based Thermal Comfort Control for Vehicle Cabins

Vehicle climate control systems aim to keep passengers thermally comfortable. However, current systems control temperature rather than thermal comfort and tend to be energy hungry, which is of particular concern when considering electric vehicles. This paper poses energy-efficient vehicle comfort control as a Markov Decision Process, which is then solved numerically using Sarsa({\lambda}) and an empirically validated, single-zone, 1D thermal model of the cabin. The resulting controller was tested in simulation using 200 randomly selected scenarios and found to exceed the performance of bang-bang, proportional, simple fuzzy logic, and commercial controllers with 23%, 43%, 40%, 56% increase, respectively. Compared to the next best performing controller, energy consumption is reduced by 13% while the proportion of time spent thermally comfortable is increased by 23%. These results indicate that this is a viable approach that promises to translate into substantial comfort and energy improvements in the car

Raising Our Game: Can We Sustain Globalization?

Depicts four alternate scenarios of the state of sustainable development and globalization in the year 2027, and looks at the associated environmental and societal wins and losses of each situation

Investigating neurocognitive mechanisms of adolescent vulnerability to emotional disorder via experimental methods and cognitive training in typically developing adolescents

The aim of this thesis was to examine mechanisms involved in cognitive vulnerability to emotional disorder in adolescence through the lens of Attentional Control Theory (ACT; Eysencket al., 2007) integrated with the Strength Model of Control (Baumeisteret al., 1998;2018),and investigate the use of attentional control training to reduce vulnerability to emotional disorder in typically developing adolescents. Study 1 used behavioral and ERP methods to investigate the differential age effects of resource depletion on negative thought proliferations, examining the association between the Error Related Negativity (ERN), an electrophysiological measure of compensatory control during depletion, and subsequent emotional reactivity. Findings indicated no effect of cognitive depletion on emotional reactivity, however an elevated ERN predicted higher emotional reactivity in adults contrasted with a converse association in adolescents. Moreover, a larger ERN also predicted burnout and worry increases in adolescents18 months later. Study 2 explored the efficacy of computerized working memory training to boost processing efficiency and adolescent emotional resilience. Study 2’s findings showed training improved working memory performance and was instrumental in immediate and sustained reductions in self-reported anxiety and depression symptoms in the training group relative to active controls. Study 3 aimed to replicate study 2’s finding in adolescent worriers, exploring more extensive behavioral and emotional vulnerability measures. It also explored neural correlates of training transfer, with the ERN as the primary neural outcome, plus several other ERP markers of cognitive control relevant to emotion processing. Although working memory performance improved, there were no significant group effects of training transfer to internalizing symptoms, emotional regulation, inhibitory control, behavioral interference or neural outcomes post-training or 3-months later. Nevertheless, the rate of training improvement was associated with declining anxiety symptoms from pre-training to follow-up and decreased P(e) amplitudes, an ERP involved in performance monitoring and associated with the motivational significance of errors. P(e) reductions were in turn associated with lower worry, rumination and depression at follow-up. Findings suggested it was possible to reduce anxiety and depression symptoms in typically developing adolescents using a low cost computerized training intervention targeting attentional control. However, the efficacy of training in reducing emotional vulnerability may not be consistent, with training transfer to emotional and neurocognitive processing subject to individual differences in training responsivity. The findings also provide novel insight into a potential neurocognitive mechanism underlying vulnerability to the onset and maintenance of emotional disorder which may modulate susceptibility to negative thought proliferation and is subject to developmental differences. These findings have implications for developing interventions to reduce the burden of mental health problems in adolescence, in addition to general relevance for cognitive models of psychopathology

Herodotus /

v. 1. Biographical sketch of Herodotus. Argument. Clio. Euterpe.--v. 2. Thalia. Melpomene. Terpsicore.--v. 3. Erato. Polymenia. Urania. Calliope.Mode of access: Internet

Herodotus,

Mode of access: Internet