Review of Global Views on Military Stress and Resilience by Allister MacIntyre, Daniel Lagacé-Roy and Douglas R. Lindsay, eds.

Review of Global Views on Military Stress and Resilience by Allister MacIntyre, Daniel Lagacé-Roy and Douglas R. Lindsay, eds

Review of Global Views on Military Stress and Resilience by Allister MacIntyre, Daniel Lagacé-Roy and Douglas R. Lindsay, eds.

Review of Global Views on Military Stress and Resilience by Allister MacIntyre, Daniel Lagacé-Roy and Douglas R. Lindsay, eds

Musical complexity and cross-modal selective attention: the effects of irrelevant auditory distractors on a concurrent reaction-time task

University of the Witwatersrand MA Research Psychology 2014This study investigates the effects of complex music on concurrent task performance in a response-competition paradigm. Past research in this domain have produced disparate results, ranging from deleterious to facilitative effects. However, such research has failed to account for schematic expectancy violation in its operationalization of melodic complexity. Competing models of cross-modal cognition were therefore evaluated using atonal and tonal musical compositions in a quasi-experimental research design, with response times in the attentional network task (ANT) used to infer whether music had a facilitative or distracting effect on task performance. Participants were recruited from the University of the Witwatersrand’s School of Human and Community Development. The computer-based attentional network task (ANT) was administered using the E-prime software, while participants were concurrently exposed to music. Repeated-measure ANOVAs were run to determine whether differences in means attained were significant. The results were consistent with Hockey’s (1997) compensatory control model, which predicted faster reaction times during concurrent exposure to complex music due to the activation of a top-down cognitive mechanism which allots greater working memory resources to the primary task. This increase in working memory resources should have led to reduced involuntary attentional switching, thus focused selective attention and enhanced task performance. While the model also predicted a performance-cost tradeoff in the form of physiological distress, self-reported measures of affective and physiological states yielded no statistically significant differences between music conditions. These findings are discussed against a backdrop of past research findings, and recommendations for future studies made accordingly

“More than a Contract”: The Emergence of a State-Supported Marriage Welfare Service and the Politics of Emotional Life in Post-1945 Britain

This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.This article examines the seminal contributions of Britain's marriage counseling and therapy services toward cultivating a new emotional purpose for marriage in the decades following World War II. It presents two related narrative threads. First, it argues that psychologically oriented relationship services attracted government support because they supported the postwar ideal of a classless democratic society. Pioneering practitioners promoted a universalized view of citizens’ emotional relationships—rather than their socio-economic circumstances—as the determining fact of their lives. Second, it argues that these services provided a compelling language and set of concepts for articulating transforming understandings and expectations of marriage in the decades after 1945. To this end, the article reveals how the language and concepts of marriage therapists were mobilized by divorce reformers in the 1960s, and helped replace the offense model for divorce petitions with a less punitive psychological model of relationship “breakdown” in 1969. Britain's postwar marriage welfare services endowed stable harmonious families with crucial social and political importance as the bedrock for postwar social reconstruction and the most fitting environment for children and adults alike to develop into fully mature and self-realized democratic citizens.Peer Reviewe

A Novel Structure for Double Negative NIMs towards UV Spectrum with High FOM

A novel ring structure is proposed for double negative NIMs at visible light spectrum with high FOM (e.g. about 11 at a wavelength of 583 nm) and low loss. Besides the effective medium theory, an equivalent circuit model is also given to explain physically why our novel structure can give double negative behavior with low loss. Adapted from the original ring structure, two other types of structures, namely, disk and nanowire structures, are also given to further push double negative NIMs toward ultraviolet (UV) spectrum

Shear modulus and damping characteristics of soils

Ph.D.George F. Sower

X-RAY DOSE DEPENDENCE OF DARK CURRENT IN AMORPHOUS SELENIUM-ALLOY X-RAY PHOTOCONDUCTORS

The dark current is an important characteristic of a photoconductive X-ray detector, and can impact the dynamic range of the detector and its detective quantum efficiency. It is therefore essential that the dark current and its behavior with time and x-ray irradiation are well characterized and understood in amorphous selenium (a-Se) X-ray detectors for the future enhancement of these detectors. Throughout the course of this work, the dark current in practical a-Se multilayer photoconductors were studied as function of time and x-ray dose delivered to the detector material. The dark current in these multilayer structures has been measured as a function of different rest time periods, sample structure, single X-ray irradiation on the sample and multiple irradiation on the sample. Experiments were performed by resting the sample in dark for a period of time (24 hours) and then samples were exposed to X-ray radiation. It has been observed that most of the trapped charge carriers in the bulk of the material are discharged after resting the sample in dark for 24 hours. It was observed that multilayer sample structures p-i-n and n-i-p exhibit much less dark current compared to other samples with single layer and double layer structures, that is, i-layer only, n-i and p-i structures. The experiments support that the dark current is controlled by injection of charge carriers from contacts. Single X-ray irradiation and multiple irradiation experiments were performed on multilayer a-Se photoconductors at a dose rate of 0.51 Gy s-1 with an exposure duration of 3 s. Samples were exposed to single irradiation at 100 s and 400 s. The dark current following the photocurrent was recorded. Multiple irradiation experiments were also performed on these multilayer samples. With different reverse bias voltages, samples were irradiated 10 times from 200s to 2000s. It was found that the dark current tends to increase with repeated X-ray irradiation but the increase depends on the applied reverse bias; the increase is negligible at a field of 10 V μm-1. After the cessation of the irradiation, the dark current decays and tends to reach a steady state value at t = 4000s. After 24 hr of resting in the dark, the dark current was nearly as low as the original dark current before the X-ray irradiatio

Optical Frequency Mixing Through Nanoantenna Enhanced Difference Frequency Generation: Metatronic Mixer

A design for a subwavelength all-optical frequency mixer is proposed. The method relies on enhanced difference-frequency generation, which is achieved in two steps with the help of plasmonic nanoantennas. The interaction of the two input signals with the nonlinear material is increased through the use of input nanoantennas, which focus the incident energy of two different frequencies onto the nanoparticle formed by a nonlinear material. Next, the difference-frequency emission is enhanced through the Purcell effect by the use of a separate output nanoantenna that is resonant at the difference frequency. The application of this twofold approach allows for a significant enhancement in the difference-frequency generation efficiency. Simulation results are presented highlighting the features of the method. This multi-element nanostructure is indeed an optical mixer circuit element in the metatronic paradigm

An efficient way to reduce losses of left-handed metamaterials

We propose a simple and effective way to reduce the losses in left-handed metamaterials by manipulating the values of the effective parameters R, L, and C. We investigate the role of losses of the short-wire pairs and the fishnet structures. Increasing the effective inductance to capacitance ratio, L/C, reduces the losses and the figure of merit can increase substantially, especially at THz frequencies and in the optical regime

Design and Performance Analysis of Micro Wind Turbine for Fiji

Today’s major research area is based on finding alternatives to fossil fuels. Wind energy can contribute significantly towards renewable energy production. A functional wind turbine built locally proposes a huge impact for Fiji and the Pacific Islands renewable energy industry. The design has to take into consideration the wind speed of the pacific which is quite different from other countries. A low Reynolds number airfoil was selected and modified for horizontal axis wind turbine (HAWT) and its aerodynamic characteristic was studied. The analysis were done using XFoil software, the numerical results were validated with experimental results before analysis were done. The Q-blade Software is used to design the blade for the wind turbine. The cut in velocity of wind turbine is 3 ms-1 , which is a big achievement when it comes for the power generation. The rated power is 50 watts at rated velocity of 6.5 ms-1 and the cut of velocity is at 20 ms-1 . The numerical results were validated with experimental results. The peak power after measurement was 23.73 watts at wind speed of 8 ms-1