Propfan Test Assessment (PTA): Flight test report

The Propfan Test Assessment (PTA) aircraft was flown to obtain glade stress and noise data for a 2.74m (9 ft.) diameter single rotation propfan. Tests were performed at Mach numbers to 0.85 and altitudes to 12,192m (40,000 ft.). The propfan was well-behaved structurally over the entire flight envelope, demonstrating that the blade design technology was completely adequate. Noise data were characterized by strong signals at blade passage frequency and up to 10 harmonics. Cabin noise was not so high as to preclude attainment of comfortable levels with suitable wall treatment. Community noise was not excessive

The measurement of low pay in the UK labour force survey

Consideration of the National Minimum Wage requires estimates of the distribution of hourly pay. The UK Labour Force Survey (LFS) is a key source of such estimates. The approach most frequently adopted by researchers has been to measure hourly earnings from several questions on pay and hours. The Office for National Statistics is now applying a new approach, based on an alternative more direct measurement introduced in March 1999. These two measures do not produce identical values and this paper investigates sources of discrepancies and concludes that the new variable is more accurate. The difficulty with using the new variable is that it is only available on a subset of respondents. An approach is developed in which missing values of the new variable are replaced by imputed values. The assumptions underlying this imputation approach and results of applying it to LFS data are presented. The relation to weighting approaches is also discussed

Elasticity Theory Connection Rules for Epitaxial Interfaces

Elasticity theory provides an accurate description of the long-wavelength vibrational dynamics of homogeneous crystalline solids, and with supplemental boundary conditions on the displacement field can also be applied to abrupt heterojunctions and interfaces. The conventional interface boundary conditions, or connection rules, require that the displacement field and its associated stress field be continuous through the interface. We argue, however, that these boundary conditions are generally incorrect for epitaxial interfaces, and we give the general procedure for deriving the correct conditions, which depend essentially on the detailed microscopic structure of the interface. As a simple application of our theory we analyze in detail a one-dimensional model of an inhomogeneous crystal, a chain of harmonic oscillators with an abrupt change in mass and spring stiffness parameters. Our results have implications for phonon dynamics in nanostructures such as superlattices and nanoparticles, as well as for the thermal boundary resistance at epitaxial interfaces.Comment: 7 pages, Revte

Body odor quality predicts behavioral attractiveness in humans

Growing effort is being made to understand how different attractive physical traits co-vary within individuals, partly because this might indicate an underlying index of genetic quality. In humans, attention has focused on potential markers of quality such as facial attractiveness, axillary odor quality, the second-to-fourth digit (2D:4D) ratio and body mass index (BMI). Here we extend this approach to include visually-assessed kinesic cues (nonverbal behavior linked to movement) which are statistically independent of structural physical traits. The utility of such kinesic cues in mate assessment is controversial, particularly during everyday conversational contexts, as they could be unreliable and susceptible to deception. However, we show here that the attractiveness of nonverbal behavior, in 20 male participants, is predicted by perceived quality of their axillary body odor. This finding indicates covariation between two desirable traits in different sensory modalities. Depending on two different rating contexts (either a simple attractiveness rating or a rating for long-term partners by 10 female raters not using hormonal contraception), we also found significant relationships between perceived attractiveness of nonverbal behavior and BMI, and between axillary odor ratings and 2D:4D ratio. Axillary odor pleasantness was the single attribute that consistently predicted attractiveness of nonverbal behavior. Our results demonstrate that nonverbal kinesic cues could reliably reveal mate quality, at least in males, and could corroborate and contribute to mate assessment based on other physical traits

Recovering the Primordial Density Fluctuations: A comparison of methods

We present a comparative study of six different methods for reversing the gravitational evolution of a cosmological density field to recover the primordial fluctuations: linear theory, the Gaussianization mapping scheme, two different quasi-linear dynamical schemes based on the Zel'dovich approximation, a Hybrid dynamical-Gaussianization method and the Path Interchange Zel'dovich Approximation (PIZA). The final evolved density field from an N-body simulation constitutes our test case. We use a variety of statistical measures to compare the initial density field recovered from it to the true initial density field, using each of the six different schemes. These include point-by-point comparisons of the density fields in real space, the individual modes in Fourier space, as well as global statistical properties such as the genus, the PDF of the density, and the distribution of peak heights and their shapes. We find linear theory to be the most inaccurate of all the schemes. The Gaussianization scheme is the least accurate after linear theory. The two quasi-linear dynamical schemes are more accurate than Gaussianization, although they break down quite drastically when used outside their range of validity - the quasi-linear regime. The complementary beneficial aspects of the dynamical and the Gaussianization schemes are combined in the Hybrid method. We find this Hybrid scheme to be more accurate and robust than either Gaussianization or the dynamical method alone. The PIZA scheme performs substantially better than the others in all point-by-point comparisons. However, it produces an oversmoothed initial density field, with a smaller number of peaks than expected, but recovers the PDF of the initial density with impressive accuracy on scales as small as 3Mpc/h.Comment: 39 pages, including 13 Figures, submitted to Ap

The discrimination of self from other as a component of empathy.

Despite the centrality of empathy in human social life, there is no widely agreed definition or characterization of the concept of empathy. A common thread in many of the proposed definitions, however, is that empathy presupposes the discrimination of self and other on the grounds that, to empathize with another individual, the mental state of the target individual must first be distinguished from the empathizer's own mental state. The purpose of this study is to investigate this proposal empirically. We employed a paradigm in which participants rated the emotional valence and degree of arousal of 93 facial expressions of mental states. We asked participants to infer the mental state represented by each facial expression (the Other condition) as well as to describe the effect of the expression on their own mental state (the Self condition). An absolute difference score between the Other and the Self conditions was used as an index of a capacity for self-other discrimination. Empathy was measured using the Interpersonal Reactivity Index. Results show that individuals high in trait empathy discriminate between self and other to a significantly greater degree when judging mental states than individuals low in trait empathy. This suggests that the capacity for self-other discrimination may be a component of the capacity for empathy and that future investigations of the concept of empathy ought to retain it. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2022 APA, all rights reserved)

A new software for automated counting of glistenings in intraocular lenses in vivo

AIM: To assess the performance of a bespoke software for automated counting of intraocular lens (IOL) glistenings in slit-lamp images. METHODS: IOL glistenings from slit-lamp-derived digital images were counted manually and automatically by the bespoke software. The images of one randomly selected eye from each of 34 participants were used as a training set to determine the threshold setting that gave the best agreement between manual and automatic grading. A second set of 63 images, selected using randomised stratified sampling from 290 images, were used for software validation. The images were obtained using a previously described protocol. Software-derived automated glistenings counts were compared to manual counts produced by three ophthalmologists. RESULTS: A threshold value of 140 was determined that minimised the total deviation in the number of glistenings for the 34 images in the training set. Using this threshold value, only slight agreement was found between automated software counts and manual expert counts for the validating set of 63 images (κ=0.104, 95%CI, 0.040-0.168). Ten images (15.9%) had glistenings counts that agreed between the software and manual counting. There were 49 images (77.8%) where the software overestimated the number of glistenings. CONCLUSION: The low levels of agreement show between an initial release of software used to automatically count glistenings in in vivo slit-lamp images and manual counting indicates that this is a non-trivial application. Iterative improvement involving a dialogue between software developers and experienced ophthalmologists is required to optimise agreement. The results suggest that validation of software is necessary for studies involving semi-automatic evaluation of glistenings

Sex Differences in the Perceived Dominance and Prestige of Women With and Without Cosmetics

Human social status has long been of interest to evolutionary and social psychologists. The question of who gets to control resources and be a leader has garnered a lot of attention from these and other fields, and this thesis examines evidence for there being two different mechanisms of achieving high status, and their correlates. The mechanisms are 1) Dominance: being aggressive, manipulative and forcing others to follow you, and 2) Prestige: possessing qualities which make others freely follow you. Chapter 1 is an introductory chapter in which I explain selection pressures, group formation, and the need for social hierarchies; I then describe the two proposed methods of attaining social status and how facial characteristics can give clues as to an individual’s social status. In Chapter 2, my first experimental chapter, I examined how faces created to appear either high in dominance or high in prestige were judged with respect to those traits as well as personality characteristics. Taking this further, in Chapter 3, I looked at how natural variation in real faces would reflect differences in other- and self-perceived ratings of dominance and prestige. Chapter 4 served to examine whether, given a set of words related to social status, I would find differences in what words were placed into dominant or prestige categories. Findings within these chapters are consistent with dominance and prestige being separable methods of attaining high status, from differences in facial appearance (Chapter 2 and 3), to personality characteristics (Chapter 2), to word usage (Chapter 4). Once I had established that these were two distinct routes to achieving high status, I chose to focus on dominance in Chapter 5 and explored the conceptual relationships between dominance and facial expressions. I found that manipulating perceptions of dominance affected how intense expressions of anger, sadness, and fear were perceived (Chapter 5). As there has been a paucity of research in the area of women’s social status, in Chapter 6, I went on to explore what effects cosmetics use in women would have on their perceived social status. I found differences in how men and women perceived women wearing cosmetics, which again points to a distinction between dominance and prestige. My thesis then presents a broad view of the two different mechanisms for attaining high status. Using new methods not otherwise used in exploring dominance and prestige I was able to explore correlates and indicators, as well as perceptions of both strategies. These findings will allow us to determine who might be capable of attaining social status, which of the two methods they might use, as well as what implicit associations we hold about each. They will also open doors for future research into the two strategies, and even help interpret previous research, as many previous studies simply relate to high status and do not distinguish between dominance and prestige