The effects of music on helping behavior: A field study

Several studies indicate that mood can influence the likelihood of an individual demonstrating instances of helping behavior, and one previous laboratory study has indicated that music can be used to bring about manipulations of mood to such an end. To investigate this in a naturalistic setting, 646 users of a university gym were played either uplifting or annoying music while theyworked out. Upon completionof theirworkout, they were asked to either sign a petition in support of a fictitious sporting charity (i.e., a low-cost task) or to distribute leaflets on their behalf (i.e., a high-cost task). Responses to the petition-signing measure indicated a ceiling effect with almost all participants offering to help. However, consistent with previous research on mood and helping behavior, uplifting music led to participants offering to help more on the high-cost, leaflet-distributing task than did annoying music

Exploring Halo Substructure with Giant Stars: The Dynamics and Metallicity of the Dwarf Spheroidal in Bootes

We report the results of a spectroscopic study of the Bootes (Boo) dwarf spheroidal (dSph) galaxy carried out with the WIYN telescope and the Hydra multifiber spectrograph. Radial velocities have been measured for 58 Boo candidate stars selected to have magnitudes and colors consistent with its red and asymptotic giant branches. Within the 13' half-light radius, seven members of Boo yield a systemic velocity of V_r=95.6+-3.4 km/s and a velocity dispersion of 6.6+-2.3 km/s. This implies a mass on the order of 1 x 10^7 M_sun, similar to the inferred masses of other Galactic dSphs. Adopting a total Boo luminosity of L=1.8 x 10^4 L_sun to 8.6 x 10^4 L_sun implies M/L ~ 610 to 130, making Boo, the most distorted known Milky Way dwarf galaxy, potentially also the darkest. From the spectra of Boo member stars we estimate its metallicity to be [Fe/H] ~ -2.5, which would make it the most metal poor dSph known to date.Comment: Accepted for publication in ApJ Letter

Affective and evaluative responses to pop music

From reviews published in the “serious” pop music press, twenty recordings were selected which had received consistently favourable appraisals on affective and evaluative bases. A further twenty recordings were selected on the basis of high levels of chart performance but a lack of critical acclaim. Sixty-four subjects rated representative excerpts of these recordings on 11-point scales of either liking or artistic merit. The results indicated significantly lower liking and artistic merit ratings of critically praised excerpts; a positive liking-artistic merit correlation; and some “fragmentation” between affective and evaluative responses. The apparent discrepancy between the attitudes of the music press and subjects' ratings is discussed in terms of the availability and sophistication of evaluation cues

Participatory politics, environmental journalism and newspaper campaigns

This is an Author's Accepted Manuscript of an article published in Journalism Studies, 13(2), 210 - 225, 2012, copyright Taylor & Francis, available online at: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/1461670X.2011.646398.This article explores the extent to which approaches to participatory politics might offer a more useful alternative to understanding the role of environmental journalism in a society where the old certainties have collapsed, only to be replaced by acute uncertainty. This uncertainty not only generates acute public anxiety about risks, it has also undermined confidence in the validity of long-standing premises about the ideal role of the media in society and journalistic professionalism. The consequence, this article argues, is that aspirations of objective reportage are outdated and ill-equipped to deal with many of the new risk stories environmental journalism covers. It is not a redrawing of boundaries that is needed but a wholesale relocation of our frameworks into approaches better suited to the socio-political conditions and uncertainties of late modernity. The exploration of participatory approaches is an attempt to suggest one way this might be done

No evidence of direct association between GLUT4 and glycogen in human skeletal muscle

Previous studies have demonstrated that exercise increases whole body and skeletal muscle insulin sensitivity that is linked with increased GLUT4 at the plasma membrane following insulin stimulation and associated with muscle glycogen depletion. To assess the potential direct association between muscle glycogen and GLUT4, seven untrained, male subjects exercised for 60 min at ~75% VO2 peak, with muscle samples obtained by percutaneous needle biopsy immediately before and after exercise. Exercise reduced muscle glycogen content by ~43%. An ultracentrifugation protocol resulted in a ~2-3-fold enriched glycogen fraction from muscle samples for analysis. Total GLUT4 content was unaltered by exercise and we were unable to detect any GLUT4 in glycogen fractions, either with or without amylase treatment. In skinned muscle fiber segments, there was very little, if any, GLUT4 detected in wash solutions, except following exposure to 1% Triton X-100. Amylase treatment of single fibers did not increase GLUT4 in the wash solution and there were no differences in GLUT4 content between fibers obtained before or after exercise for any of the wash treatments. Our results indicate no direct association between GLUT4 and glycogen in human skeletal muscle, before or after exercise, and suggest that alterations in GLUT4 translocation associated with exercise-induced muscle glycogen depletion are mediated via other mechanisms

Vortex-induced vibration of a 5:1 rectangular cylinder: A comparison of wind tunnel sectional model tests and computational simulations

Considered to be representative of a generic bridge deck geometry and characterised by a highly unsteady flow field, the 5:1 rectangular cylinder has been the main case study in a number of studies including the “Benchmark on the Aerodynamics of a Rectangular 5:1 Cylinder” (BARC). There are still a number of limitations in the knowledge of (i) the mechanism of the vortex-induced vibration (VIV) and (ii) of the turbulence-induced effect for this particular geometry. Extended computational and wind tunnel studies were therefore conducted by the authors to address these issues. This paper primarily describes wind tunnel and computational studies using a sectional model in an attempt to bring more insight into Point (i). By analysing the distribution and correlation of the surface pressure around an elastically mounted 5:1 rectangular cylinders in smooth and turbulent flow, it revealed that the VIV was triggered by the motion-induced leading-edge vortex; a strongly correlated flow feature close to the trailing edge was then responsible for an increase in the structural response

The pairwise interaction of coalescing air bubbles in water

There is a relative scarcity of experimental data relating to the interaction of a pair of millimetre-scale air bubbles rising having an offset configuration through stagnant water. To add to this dataset was the motivation behind this work. A series of experiments are presented, which can add to the understanding of bubble-bubble interaction. The trajectories of bubble pairs were tracked using a high speed camera. The diameter and relative positions of the nozzles were varied to produce different separation distances between the rising bubbles. It was found that when the trailing bubble is slightly smaller (as little as 2.3%) than the leading bubble it would approach the leading bubble. Hence, a greater tendency to coalesce between the rising pairs has been noticed. The initial relative angle between the coalesced bubbles, , was also correlated which has agreed well with others’ previous work. A proportional relationship has been presented to link the time required for coalescence with the ratio of the bubbles radii. A complementary set of numerical simulations, using a multiphase CFD model with adaptive meshing, have confirmed some of the experimental observations and added insights into the flow structures responsible for coalescence. Finally, a map for the boundaries of coalescence from the numerical and experimental observations is suggested which relates the separation of the bubbles and their radii ratio to the likelihood of coalescence

Lifestyle correlates of musical preference: 1. Relationships, living arrangements, beliefs, and crime

Several studies indicate that musical preferences provide a means of discriminating between social groups, and suggest indirectly that musical preferences should correlate with a variety of different lifestyle choices. In this study, 2532 participants responded to a questionnaire asking them to state their musical preference and also to provide data on various aspects of their lifestyle (namely interpersonal relationships, living arrangements, moral and political beliefs, and criminal behaviour). Numerous associations existed between musical preference and these aspects of participants’ lifestyle. The nature of these associations was generally consistent with previous research concerning aputative liberal–conservative divide between differing groups of fans. It is concluded that participants’ musical preferences provided a meaningful way of distinguishing different lifestyle choices

Modelling of Droplet Capture in an Open-Cell Metal Foam at the Pore and Macroscopic Scales

Open-cell metal foams are often used in applications where particulate and/or droplet capture is important. Here a Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) modelling approach is described which models the metal foam at both the pore-scale and the macroscopic scale. At the pore-scale, the detailed internal geometry of the foam is included and the flow field and droplet tracking and capture is modelled explicitly. At this scale, a coefficient is found for each metal foam that relates the distance a droplet can freely travel through the foam to both the droplet diameter and the Darcian velocity in the porous medium. Then, at the macroscopic scale, the coefficient from the pore-scale droplet capture simulations is used in a novel stochastic particle extinction model. Here, the droplets travel through a porous zone and are removed from the model, the probability of which is determined by the coefficient from the pore-scale modelling. A test case is described in which the macroscopic model is verified against the pore-scale model with acceptable levels of accuracy

Seeing the way: visual sociology and the distance runner's perspective

Employing visual and autoethnographic data from a two‐year research project on distance runners, this article seeks to examine the activity of seeing in relation to the activity of distance running. One of its methodological aims is to develop the linkage between visual and autoethnographic data in combining an observation‐based narrative and sociological analysis with photographs. This combination aims to convey to the reader not only some of the specific subcultural knowledge and particular ways of seeing, but also something of the runner's embodied feelings and experience of momentum en route. Via the combination of narrative and photographs we seek a more effective way of communicating just how distance runners see and experience their training terrain. The importance of subjecting mundane everyday practices to detailed sociological analysis has been highlighted by many sociologists, including those of an ethnomethodological perspective. Indeed, without the competence of social actors in accomplishing these mundane, routine understandings and practices, it is argued, there would in fact be no social order