Observing workplace incivility towards women: The roles of target reactions, actor motives, and actor-target relationships

The current study conceptualized observer reactions to uncivil behavior towards women as an ethical behavior and examined three factors (target reaction, actor motive, and actor-target relationship) that influence these reactions. Two vignette studies with women and men undergraduate and graduate students in western Switzerland were conducted. Study 1 (N=148) was a written vignette study that assessed how the reaction of female targets to incivility and the motives of actors influenced observer reactions. Results showed that a female target's reaction influenced observers' evaluations of the harm caused by an uncivil incident, and that an actor's motive affected observers' assessments of the necessity to intervene. Study 2 (N=81) was a video vignette study that assessed the effects of the reactions by female targets to incivility and the relationship between the target and the actor on observer reactions.We found that female targets' reactions influenced observers' evaluations of harm and the perceived necessity to intervene. Furthermore, the effect of a female target's reaction on observers' evaluations of harm was moderated by the relationship between the actor and the target: a female target who laughed at the uncivil behavior was perceived as less harmed, when she and the actor had a personal relationship than when they had a professional relationship. When the female target reacted hurt or neutrally, actor-target relationship did not affect observers' evaluations of harm. We conclude by discussing the implications of our findings for theory and practice

Psychometric Characteristics of Cognitive Reserve: How High Education Might Improve Certain Cognitive Abilities in Aging

Background: The capacity to mitigate dementia symptomology despite the prevailing brain pathology has been attributed to cognitive reserve. Objectives: This study aimed to investigate how psychometric performance differs between individuals with a high school versus college education (surrogate measures for medium and high cognitive reserves) given the same level of brain pathology assessed using quantitative structural MRI. Methods: We used data from the Aging Brain: Vasculature, Ischemia, and Behavior Study (ABVIB). Cognition was assessed using a neuropsychological battery that included those contained in the National Alzheimer’s Coordinating Center (NACC) uniform data set. Participants with a medium and high cognitive reserve were matched by level of structural MRI changes, gender, and age. Results: Matched-pair regression analyses indicated that individuals with a higher education had a significantly better performance in recognition and verbal fluency animals, workin

Phase separation and vortex states in binary mixture of Bose-Einstein condensates in the trapping potentials with displaced centers

The system of two simultaneously trapped codensates consisting of $^{87}Rb$ atoms in two different hyperfine states is investigated theoretically in the case when the minima of the trapping potentials are displaced with respect to each other. It is shown that the small shift of the minima of the trapping potentials leads to the considerable displacement of the centers of mass of the condensates, in agreement with the experiment. It is also shown that the critical angular velocities of the vortex states of the system drastically depend on the shift and the relative number of particles in the condensates, and there is a possibility to exchange the vortex states between condensates by shifting the centers of the trapping potentials.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figure

Wigner crystallization and metal-insulator transition of two-dimensional holes in GaAs/AlGaAs at B=0

We report the transport properties of a low disorder two-dimensional hole system (2DHS) in the GaAs/AlGaAs heterostructure, which has an unprecedentedly high peak mobility of $7\times 10^5cm^2/Vs$, with hole density of $4.8\times 10^9 cm^{-2}<p<3.72\times 10^{10}cm^{-2}$ in the temperature range of $50mK<T<1.3K$. From their T, p, and electric field dependences, we find that the metal-insulator transition in zero magnetic field in this exceptionally clean 2DHS occurs at $r_s=35.1\pm0.9$, which is in good agreement with the critical $r_s$ for Wigner crystallization ${r_s}^c=37\pm 5$, predicted by Tanatar and Ceperley for an ideally clean 2D system.Comment: 4 pages, 4 Postscript figure

Co-composting of palm oil mill wastes.

Co-composting is one of the important bio-waste treatments in the palm oil industry for achieving sustainable process and zero waste. However, improper conditions of composting may cause several problems such as gas emission, bad odour, low quality product, production delay and high handling cost. Enhancing the efficiency of waste composting becomes a vital issue to overcome these problems. This review provides information on the practices and developments related to co-composting of the palm oil mill waste. The description on a typical palm oil mill process and the wastes generated, i.e. empty fruit bunch and palm oil mill effluent, as composting substrates are given. The common windrow composting system is described. The recent venture of using microorganisms in composting processes are also covered under the pretext of several researchers’ interpretation that composting can be accelerated by the introduction of microorganism to the process through its influence on the physical, dynamic and biological behaviours of organic material. The criteria of choosing functional microbes for fast composting are discussed

Dynamical Properties of a Growing Surface on a Random Substrate

The dynamics of the discrete Gaussian model for the surface of a crystal deposited on a disordered substrate is investigated by Monte Carlo simulations. The mobility of the growing surface was studied as a function of a small driving force $F$ and temperature $T$. A continuous transition is found from high-temperature phase characterized by linear response to a low-temperature phase with nonlinear, temperature dependent response. In the simulated regime of driving force the numerical results are in general agreement with recent dynamic renormalization group predictions.Comment: 10 pages, latex, 3 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev. E (RC

Co-ordination between Rashba spin-orbital interaction and space charge effect and enhanced spin injection into semiconductors

We consider the effect of the Rashba spin-orbital interaction and space charge in a ferromagnet-insulator/semiconductor/insulator-ferromagnet junction where the spin current is severely affected by the doping, band structure and charge screening in the semiconductor. In diffusion region, if the the resistance of the tunneling barriers is comparable to the semiconductor resistance, the magnetoresistance of this junction can be greatly enhanced under appropriate doping by the co-ordination between the Rashba effect and screened Coulomb interaction in the nonequilibrium transport processes within Hartree approximation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Acceleration effects of microbial inoculum on palm oil mill organic waste composting.

ABSTRACT The acceleration effects of inoculum in composting of empty fruit bunches were investigated. Composting of empty fruit bunches fibres in two sizes, 4 cm and 2 cm length, were treated with microbial inoculum consisting of Agromonas, Aspergillus, Azotobacter, Bacillus, Celhdomonas, Chaetomium, Clostridium, Coprinus, Microbispora, Penicillium, Pseudomonas, Thermoactinomyces, Trichoderma and Trichurus in separate laboratory scale in-vessel of 30 liters volume. A control without inoculum with 4 cm length empty fruit bunches was also conducted in parallel. The compost piles were shift-turned weekly. Parameters such as moisture content, temperature, pH, and electrical conductivity were used to monitor the composting processes. The carbon-nitrogen ratio, UV-vis spectrophotometer test, and germination test were used to assess the maturity of compost. The results showed that the inoculum was effective in reducing the C/N ratio by 54% compared to control 46% and rapidly increasing the UV-vis absorption ratio in first three weeks. By using functional microbes, the composting of empty fruit bunches was reduced to 5 weeks compared to 9 weeks for those without inoculation. The acceleration effect was more prominent for the 2 cm length samples