187 research outputs found
Re-evaluation of the factorial validity of the Revised Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2
Anxiety is one of the most frequently researched constructs in the field of sport and exercise psychology. Although there are at least 22 published scales available to measure
anxiety (see Ostrow, 1996), the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2 (CSAI-2: Martens,
Burton, Vealey, Bump, & Smith, 1990) has generally been the scale of choice since its development. Given its prominence as a research tool, indeed it was described by Woodman
and Hardy (2003, p.453) as having 'near sine qua non status', the CSAI-2 has naturally been the subject of considerable scrutiny of its psychometric characteristics.
Several studies have now been published which have raised concerns about the factorial validity of the CSAI-2 in its English (Cox, Martens, & Russell, 2003; Lane, Sewell,
Terry, Bartram, & Nesti, 1999), Greek (Tsorbatzoudis, Varkoukis, Kaissidis-Rodafinos, &
Grouios, 1998), and Swedish (Lundqvist & Hassmen, in press) versions. Collectively, reevaluations
of its psychometric properties have raised serious doubts about the validity of the CSAI-2 in its original form and by implication have cast a shadow over the findings of
dozens of studies that have used it to measure anxiety. To address this situation, Cox et al. (2003) conducted a two-stage process using calibration and validation samples to arrive at an improved measure. Having deleted problematic items in the original CSAI-2 and having
subsequently supported the factorial validity of a revised version of the measure, termed the CSAI-2R, they recommended that researchers and clinicians should in future use the revised measure in preference to the original.
The purpose of the present study was to re-evaluate the factorial validity of the CSAI-2R, as recommended by Cox and colleagues. Considering the potential for the revised
measure to become the new scale of choice for researchers in the sport and exercise domains, this is judged to be an important contribution to the anxiety literature
Negation as failure. II
AbstractThe use of the negation as failure rule in logic programming is often considered to be tantamount to reasoning from Clark's “completed data base” [2]. Continuing the investigations of Clark and Shepherdson [2,7], we show that this is not fully equivalent to negation as failure either using classical logic or the more appropriate intuitionistic logic. We doubt whether there is any simple and useful logical meaning of negation as failure in the general case, and study in detail some special kinds of data base where the relationship of the completed data base to negation as failure is closer, e.g. where the data base is definite Horn or hierarchic
Computation with narrow CTCs
We examine some variants of computation with closed timelike curves (CTCs),
where various restrictions are imposed on the memory of the computer, and the
information carrying capacity and range of the CTC. We give full
characterizations of the classes of languages recognized by polynomial time
probabilistic and quantum computers that can send a single classical bit to
their own past. Such narrow CTCs are demonstrated to add the power of limited
nondeterminism to deterministic computers, and lead to exponential speedup in
constant-space probabilistic and quantum computation. We show that, given a
time machine with constant negative delay, one can implement CTC-based
computations without the need to know about the runtime beforehand.Comment: 16 pages. A few typo was correcte
Finite automata with advice tapes
We define a model of advised computation by finite automata where the advice
is provided on a separate tape. We consider several variants of the model where
the advice is deterministic or randomized, the input tape head is allowed
real-time, one-way, or two-way access, and the automaton is classical or
quantum. We prove several separation results among these variants, demonstrate
an infinite hierarchy of language classes recognized by automata with
increasing advice lengths, and establish the relationships between this and the
previously studied ways of providing advice to finite automata.Comment: Corrected typo
Weather and Climate Change Drive Annual Variation of Reproduction by an Aerial Insectivore
For many bird species, but especially aerial insectivores, reproduction depends on weather. Climate change is likely to intensify effects, but with uncertain consequences. We report 22 years of data on Eastern Kingbird (Tyrannus tyrannus) reproduction for two populations located in different hygric environments undergoing climate change; mesic central New York, USA, (NY; 12 years) and xeric southeastern Oregon, USA, (OR: 10 years). Laying date became earlier with increasing temperature in the 30-day period preceding laying in identical fashion at both sites, and in years of early laying, clutch size was larger, length of laying season increased, and failed initial nesting attempts were more often replaced. High temperature in the 10-days preceding mean laying date was associated with shorter laying seasons, while a site by 10-day temperature interaction reflected an increase and decrease of clutch size with increasing 10-day temperature in NY and OR, respectively. Seasonal rate of clutch size decline was higher when the laying season was short but also slowed in xeric OR when rain was abundant in the 10-days prior to mean laying date. Nest predation drove annual variation in young fledged/nest, but the latter also increased and decreased with increasing maximum temperature during the nestling phase in mesic NY and xeric OR, respectively. Potential effects of climate change on kingbird populations are thus high given the dependence of reproduction on weather, and climate change likely contributed to declines of kingbirds in OR. Declines of kingbirds in NY appear unrelated to warming climates because higher temperatures advanced laying dates and yielded greater nest productivity. However, length of laying season declined across years at both sites, and thus early season gains may be negated by poor conditions late in the season that may be causing shorter laying seasons. Further work is needed to identify causes for the latter changes
Extending scientific computing system with structural quantum programming capabilities
We present a basic high-level structures used for developing quantum
programming languages. The presented structures are commonly used in many
existing quantum programming languages and we use quantum pseudo-code based on
QCL quantum programming language to describe them. We also present the
implementation of introduced structures in GNU Octave language for scientific
computing. Procedures used in the implementation are available as a package
quantum-octave, providing a library of functions, which facilitates the
simulation of quantum computing. This package allows also to incorporate
high-level programming concepts into the simulation in GNU Octave and Matlab.
As such it connects features unique for high-level quantum programming
languages, with the full palette of efficient computational routines commonly
available in modern scientific computing systems. To present the major features
of the described package we provide the implementation of selected quantum
algorithms. We also show how quantum errors can be taken into account during
the simulation of quantum algorithms using quantum-octave package. This is
possible thanks to the ability to operate on density matrices
A system of relational syllogistic incorporating full Boolean reasoning
We present a system of relational syllogistic, based on classical
propositional logic, having primitives of the following form:
Some A are R-related to some B;
Some A are R-related to all B;
All A are R-related to some B;
All A are R-related to all B.
Such primitives formalize sentences from natural language like `All students
read some textbooks'. Here A and B denote arbitrary sets (of objects), and R
denotes an arbitrary binary relation between objects. The language of the logic
contains only variables denoting sets, determining the class of set terms, and
variables denoting binary relations between objects, determining the class of
relational terms. Both classes of terms are closed under the standard Boolean
operations. The set of relational terms is also closed under taking the
converse of a relation. The results of the paper are the completeness theorem
with respect to the intended semantics and the computational complexity of the
satisfiability problem.Comment: Available at
http://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10849-012-9165-
A coinductive semantics of the Unlimited Register Machine
We exploit (co)inductive specifications and proofs to approach the evaluation of low-level programs for the Unlimited Register Machine (URM) within the Coq system, a proof assistant based on the Calculus of (Co)Inductive Constructions type theory. Our formalization allows us to certify the implementation of partial functions, thus it can be regarded as a first step towards the development of a workbench for the formal analysis and verification of both converging and diverging computations
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