To stop or not to stop? - Investigating the differential effects of two self-control stategies on self-regulatory resource depletion

Self-regulation is a vital function to humanity, and is an important factor in the dominant paradigm of consumer research, whereby consumer decisions are characterised by the battle between long- and short-term interests. The current research examined the relative effectiveness of two self-regulatory strategies: stopping an already-commenced consumption episode, or to not commence one at all. Traditional economic theories, including the principle of diminishing marginal utility, would predict that not starting is harder to accomplish; whereas a proposal by Thaler (1983) suggests that not starting is in fact the optimal strategy. Two studies were conducted whereby participants were asked to either perform a less-favoured task and resist from starting a more-favoured one (Not Start), or to cease performing a more-favoured task to complete the less-favoured task (Stop). Study 1 found that Stop was more difficult than Not Start, which tentatively supported Thaler’s argument; however there was an explanation which could not be ruled out, namely the psychological distance of the anticipated second task. Study 2 addressed this issue by manipulating that factor by incorporating it into the experimental design. It was found that Not Start became as depleting as Stop when psychological distance of the second task was reduced. This research contributed to the literature by establishing a boundary condition upon the strength model of self-regulatory resource depletion, and adds to the discussion on the descriptive validity of the principle of diminishing marginal utility

Revisiting the 40Ar/39Ar Chronology of Lunar Meteorite NWA 773 Provides New Constraints on its Diachronous Geologic History

No abstract available

Severe anal bleeding in Proteus syndrome: a case report

Proteus syndrome was originally described by Cohen and Hayden in 1979. The disorder was named Proteus syndrome by Wiedmann and colleagues in 1983 after Proteus, the giant Greek god of the sea. Proteus syndrome is a rare, sporadic, congenital polymorphic condition. Approximately 200 cases have been reported in the literature, but none has been associated with anal bleeding from hemorrhoids. We describe the case of a 21-year-old man with Proteus syndrome with severe anal bleeding. A hemorrhoidectomy was assumed to be too risky because of the massive venous abnormalities seen on CT. The patient was successfully treated by Doppler-guided haemorrhoidal artery ligation (DG-HAL). Six months after surgery, the patient has had no further episodes of anal bleeding

Knot soliton in Weinberg-Salam model

We study numerically the topological knot solution suggested recently in the Weinberg-Salam model. Applying the SU(2) gauge invariant Abelian projection we demonstrate that the restricted part of the Weinberg-Salam Lagrangian containing the interaction of the neutral boson with the Higgs scalar can be reduced to the Ginzburg-Landau model with the hidden SU(2) symmetry. The energy of the knot composed from the neutral boson and Higgs field has been evaluated by using the variational method with a modified Ward ansatz. The obtained numerical value is 39 Tev which provides the upper bound on the electroweak knot energy.Comment: 6 pages, 3 figures, analysis of stability adde

Neutralino Decays at the CERN LHC

We study the distribution of lepton pairs from the second lightest neutralino decay \tchi^0_2\to\tchi^0_1 l^+l^-. This decay mode is important to measure the mass difference between \tchi^0_2 and the lightest neutralino \tchi^0_1, which helps to determine the parameters of the minimal supersymmetric standard model at the CERN LHC. We found that the decay distribution strongly depends on the values of underlying MSSM parameters. For some extreme cases, the amplitude near the end point of the lepton invariant mass distribution can be suppressed so strongly that one needs the information of the whole m_{ll} distribution to extract m_{\tchi^0_2}-m_{\tchi^0_1}. On the other hand, if systematic errors on the acceptance can be controlled, this distribution can be used to constrain slepton masses and the Z\tchi^0_2\tchi^0_1 coupling. Measurements of the velocity distribution of \tchi^0_2 from samples near the end point of the m_{ll} distribution, and of the asymmetry of the p_T of leptons, would be useful to reduce the systematic errors.Comment: 23 pages, latex2e, 9 figures, minor change, accepted to PR

Exploratory Comparison of Expert and Novice Pair Programmers

We conducted quasi-experiment comparing novice pair programmers to expert pair programmers. The expert pairs wrote tests with a higher instruction, line, and method coverage than the novice pairs and changed the given program skeleton to a larger extent. However, the expert pairs were also slower than the novice pairs. The pairs within both groups switched keyboard and mouse possession frequently. Furthermore, most pairs did not share the input devices equally but rather had one partner who is more active than the other

Regularization of Non-commutative SYM by Orbifolds with Discrete Torsion and SL(2,Z) Duality

We construct a nonperturbative regularization for Euclidean noncommutative supersymmetric Yang-Mills theories with four (N= (2,2)), eight (N= (4,4)) and sixteen (N= (8,8)) supercharges in two dimensions. The construction relies on orbifolds with discrete torsion, which allows noncommuting space dimensions to be generated dynamically from zero dimensional matrix model in the deconstruction limit. We also nonperturbatively prove that the twisted topological sectors of ordinary supersymmetric Yang-Mills theory are equivalent to a noncommutative field theory on the topologically trivial sector with reduced rank and quantized noncommutativity parameter. The key point of the proof is to reinterpret 't Hooft's twisted boundary condition as an orbifold with discrete torsion by lifting the lattice theory to a zero dimensional matrix theory.Comment: 36 pages, references added, minor typos fixe

Use of variability in national and regional data to estimate the prevalence of lymphangioleiomyomatosis

Background: Understanding the true prevalence of lymphangioleiomyomatosis (LAM) is important in estimating disease burden and targeting specific interventions. As with all rare diseases, obtaining reliable epidemiological data is difficult and requires innovative approaches. Aim: To determine the prevalence and incidence of LAM using data from patient organizations in seven countries, and to use the extent to which the prevalence of LAM varies regionally and nationally to determine whether prevalence estimates are related to health-care provision. Methods: Numbers of women with LAM were obtained from patient groups and national databases from seven countries (n = 1001). Prevalence was calculated for regions within countries using female population figures from census data. Incidence estimates were calculated for the USA, UK and Switzerland. Regional variation in prevalence and changes in incidence over time were analysed using Poisson regression and linear regression. Results: Prevalence of LAM in the seven countries ranged from 3.4 to 7.8/million women with significant variation, both between countries and between states in the USA. This variation did not relate to the number of pulmonary specialists in the region nor the percentage of population with health insurance, but suggests a large number of patients remain undiagnosed. The incidence of LAM from 2004 to 2008 ranged from 0.23 to 0.31/million women/per year in the USA, UK and Switzerland. Conclusions: Using this method, we have found that the prevalence of LAM is higher than that previously recorded and that many patients with LAM are undiagnose