Did You Get My Text? How text emojis impact perceptions of appropriateness, likeability, social dominance, and creepiness

Does the presence/absence of certain emojis impact perceptions of the sender? How do gendered combinations of sender/recipient impact perceptions of the appropriateness of emoji use? Six text message exchanges were composed by the lab members: a text message of a burgeoning relationship and text messages between two friends, roommates, or romantic partners. In a between-subjects design text messages were presented to one group with emojis present, and the other with different emojis or no emojis at all. The gender of the dyad (male/male, female/female, male/female) was also randomized in order to examine effects of gender on perceptions of emoji use

Wild Bird Influenza Survey, Canada, 2005

Of 4,268 wild ducks sampled in Canada in 2005, real-time reverse transcriptase–PCR detected influenza A matrix protein (M1) gene sequence in 37% and H5 gene sequence in 5%. Mallards accounted for 61% of samples, 73% of M1-positive ducks, and 90% of H5-positive ducks. Ducks hatched in 2005 accounted for 80% of the sample

The PREDICTS database: a global database of how local terrestrial biodiversity responds to human impacts

Biodiversity continues to decline in the face of increasing anthropogenic pressures such as habitat destruction, exploitation, pollution and introduction of alien species. Existing global databases of species’ threat status or population time series are dominated by charismatic species. The collation of datasets with broad taxonomic and biogeographic extents, and that support computation of a range of biodiversity indicators, is necessary to enable better understanding of historical declines and to project – and avert – future declines. We describe and assess a new database of more than 1.6 million samples from 78 countries representing over 28,000 species, collated from existing spatial comparisons of local-scale biodiversity exposed to different intensities and types of anthropogenic pressures, from terrestrial sites around the world. The database contains measurements taken in 208 (of 814) ecoregions, 13 (of 14) biomes, 25 (of 35) biodiversity hotspots and 16 (of 17) megadiverse countries. The database contains more than 1% of the total number of all species described, and more than 1% of the described species within many taxonomic groups – including flowering plants, gymnosperms, birds, mammals, reptiles, amphibians, beetles, lepidopterans and hymenopterans. The dataset, which is still being added to, is therefore already considerably larger and more representative than those used by previous quantitative models of biodiversity trends and responses. The database is being assembled as part of the PREDICTS project (Projecting Responses of Ecological Diversity In Changing Terrestrial Systems – www.predicts.org.uk). We make site-level summary data available alongside this article. The full database will be publicly available in 2015

26th Annual Computational Neuroscience Meeting (CNS*2017): Part 3 - Meeting Abstracts - Antwerp, Belgium. 15–20 July 2017

This work was produced as part of the activities of FAPESP Research,\ud Disseminations and Innovation Center for Neuromathematics (grant\ud 2013/07699-0, S. Paulo Research Foundation). NLK is supported by a\ud FAPESP postdoctoral fellowship (grant 2016/03855-5). ACR is partially\ud supported by a CNPq fellowship (grant 306251/2014-0)

Rome Study Abroad Program

STEP Category: Education AbroadThis program was a 6 week long study abroad program in Rome, Italy. This program was directed towards Architecture/ Landscaping students to help develope their hand drawing abilities. We would have classes Monday through Thursday and then had the weekend to travel as we pleased. We would spend many hours a day just walking around the city of Rome. We had Roman professors show us around the city, and point out things most people wouldn’t pay any attention to. Rome has amazing archietcture and so much history, you need way more than a month to soak it all up, but this course did a great job of covering all the amazing parts of the city. We also did some traveling to other Italian cities as a class as well. Like Orvietto, Almal , Florence and Bolognia.My motovation to go on this project was mostly for the architecture. As an architecture major, this program was perfect for me since it was architecture based, and was in one of the most beautiful cities in the world. There are so many buildings that i had learned so much about right in Rome, it was amazing to actually get to see and understand their grandeur. I also liked this program because I got to really soak up one culture for an entire month. And i also got small tastes of other cities in Italy as well!I gained so many valuable things on this study abroad trip. One was better drawing skills. That was what the whole trip was about. We did multiple drawing exercises, and got valuable experience drawing by hand. I also got great exposure to amazing architecture. You cant fully comprehend a piece of art until you see it in person, so seeing these famous buildings gave me a new respect for my major. I also gained great world experience. I got to better understand a new culture and try many new things.The Ohio State University Second-year Transformational Experience Program (STEP)Academic Major: Architectur

Sequentially localizable functionals.

A standard way of finding the unique zero on (0, 1) of a continuous decreasing functions with f(0) f(1)0), etc. In this way, the zero of f is localized in n steps to an interval of length 2⁻ⁿ. The unique maximum of a unimodal function on [0,1] can be similarly localized, but the unique maximum of a unimodal function on the unit square cannot. We start by generalizing these problems: let A be a compact subset of Eⁿ, let F be a set of real-valued functions on A, and for each f in F let S(f) be a point in the Cartesian product Aᵏ; S(f) is called a functional on F. Examples of such functionals are zeros, extrema, inflexion points, saddle points, etc., as well as sets of these. A test function T is a function of m real variables, which takes up only a finite number (≥2) of distinct values. An abscissa set Xᵢ is an ordered m-tuple (xlᵢ,...xmᵢ) ,, with each Xji in A. A sequential strategy is a way of selecting abscissa sets X₁, X₂,...,where the knowledge of T(f (xlᵢ, . ., f (xmᵢ)) is used to determine Xi+i. The N-th set of indeterminacy for S(f) is the largest subset of in which S(f) can lies consistent with the results of the first N-1 tests. A functional S(f) is sequentially localizable if a test function T and a sequential strategy exist, such that for every f in F the sets of indeterminacy shrink to a point (which must then be S(f) itself). First, several conditions are given to ensure the sequential localizability of a functional, these are presented in terms of certain topologies induced on Aᵏ and in terms of contraction maps. It is then shown that if a functional is localizable, there exists an optimal strategy under which the sets of indeterminacy converge fastest; further, the speed of localization is always exponential. Next, the concept of a random strategy and of random localizability is introduced, and it is shown that in many cases random localizability and sequential localizability are equivalent. Also, the speed of the former is not too much worse than the speed of the latter. Finally, optimal and near-optimal strategies are worked out for some functionals of interest.Science, Faculty ofMathematics, Department ofGraduat

Exactly Solvable and Unsolvable Shortest Network problems in 3d-space

GERMAN