Merit Based Values for Economic Success: A Compensatory Control Function of Ideology

System Justification theory has long considered the motivational reasons for legitimizing the status quo. Recent work has identified a compensatory control mechanism that motivates the endorsement of `external' systems of control, or those systems found outside of individual aspects of the subject. This paper builds on this work by showing that people can use the individualized ideology of merit to satisfy the epistemic need to perceive personal control in life. Across three studies, we find strong empirical support for this prediction, showing that greater endorsement of merit based values for success is associated with greater perceptions of personal control leading to positive perceptions of future economic success (Study 1). Lowered levels of personal control can be attenuated by reaffirming the value of specific meritocratic methods for economic success, and this affirmation leads to a positive evaluation of future economic prospects (Study 2). Threats to merit based prescriptions for economic success, such as hard work and effort, lead to a decrease in perceived personal control (Study 3). Over three studies we show that merit based values directly influence perceptions of personal control and future economic success

Weepie

WEEPIE is an early and unpublished play by Chris Goode, called by The Guardian, ‘British theatre’s greatest maverick talent’. It tells the true story of a murder perpetrated by two nineteen-year-olds in January of 1994, two years before the play was written. The victim, Mohammed el-Sayed, was unknown to his murderers; he was chosen by them because he was the tenth motorist to pull up at the lights where the boys waited with their knife. There was no racial motive. The murderers were students at a crammer in Oxford where their enthusiasm for the military and the SAS became an obsession with killing and death

My group, our beliefs: Compensating for threats to individual control through the collective

Compensatory control theory proposes that people can compensate for a loss of personal control through endorsement of external sources of structure like ideologies. Social identity and self-categorization theories provide evidence that ideologies, as group-based beliefs, are endorsed more strongly by highly identified group members compared to those lower in identification. The present studies integrate these perspectives in order to investigate the use of ideology as a source of compensation. In all three studies a group-based control threat (vs. control boost) was employed to manipulate the perceived personal control of women participants. Study 1 (N = 151) investigated the potential interaction of threat and identification on the endorsement of gender egalitarianism and benevolent sexism. Study 2 (N = 161) investigated the degree to which identification and threat interacted to predict perceptions of order and structure for a gender-equal society, and whether these perceptions affect support for gender egalitarianism (a moderated-mediation model was tested). Study 3 (N = 190) investigated the degree to which identification and threat interacted to predict perceived personal control following a group-based threat to personal control, and the indirect effect of threat on perceived control through the endorsement of gender egalitarianism (a moderated-mediation model was tested). Across all 3 studies results revealed significant interactions between gender identification and a group-based threat to control on ideology endorsement, perceived structure of social relations, and perceived personal control. The integration of these theoretical perspectives on control threat, identification, and ideology is proposed as a more specific account of control compensation

Glass microsphere lubrication

The harsh lunar environment eliminated the consideration of most lubricants used on earth. Considering that the majority of the surface of the moon consists of sand, the elements that make up this mixture were analyzed. According to previous space missions, a large portion of the moon's surface is made up of fine grained crystalline rock, about 0.02 to 0.05 mm in size. These fine grained particles can be divided into four groups: lunar rock fragments, glasses, agglutinates (rock particles, crystals, or glasses), and fragments of meteorite material (rare). Analysis of the soil obtained from the missions has given chemical compositions of its materials. It is about 53 to 63 percent oxygen, 16 to 22 percent silicon, 10 to 16 percent sulfur, 5 to 9 percent aluminum, and has lesser amounts of magnesium, carbon, and sodium. To be self-supporting, the lubricant must utilize one or more of the above elements. Considering that the element must be easy to extract and readily manipulated, silicon or glass was the most logical choice. Being a ceramic, glass has a high strength and excellent resistance to temperature. The glass would also not contaminate the environment as it comes directly from it. If sand entered a bearing lubricated with grease, the lubricant would eventually fail and the shaft would bind, causing damage to the system. In a bearing lubricated with a solid glass lubricant, sand would be ground up and have little effect on the system. The next issue was what shape to form the glass in. Solid glass spheres was the only logical choice. The strength of the glass and its endurance would be optimal in this form. To behave as an effective lubricant, the diameter of the spheres would have to be very small, on the order of hundreds of microns or less. This would allow smaller clearances between the bearing and the shaft, and less material would be needed. The production of glass microspheres was divided into two parts, production and sorting. Production includes the manufacturing of the microspheres, while sorting entails deciphering the good microspheres from the bad ones. Each process is discussed in detail

Unsupervised machine learning for transient discovery in deeper, wider, faster light curves

Identification of anomalous light curves within time-domain surveys is often challenging. In addition, with the growing number of wide-field surveys and the volume of data produced exceeding astronomers’ ability for manual evaluation, outlier and anomaly detection is becoming vital for transient science. We present an unsupervised method for transient discovery using a clustering technique and the ASTRONOMALY package. As proof of concept, we evaluate 85 553 min-cadenced light curves collected over two ∼1.5 h periods as part of the Deeper, Wider, Faster program, using two different telescope dithering strategies. By combining the clustering technique HDBSCAN with the isolation forest anomaly detection algorithm via the visual interface of ASTRONOMALY, we are able to rapidly isolate anomalous sources for further analysis. We successfully recover the known variable sources, across a range of catalogues from within the fields, and find a further seven uncatalogued variables and two stellar flare events, including a rarely observed ultrafast flare (∼5 min) from a likely M-dwarf

Unsupervised machine learning for transient discovery in deeper, wider, faster light curves

Identification of anomalous light curves within time-domain surveys is often challenging. In addition, with the growing number of wide-field surveys and the volume of data produced exceeding astronomers’ ability for manual evaluation, outlier and anomaly detection is becoming vital for transient science. We present an unsupervised method for transient discovery using a clustering technique and the ASTRONOMALY package. As proof of concept, we evaluate 85 553 min-cadenced light curves collected over two ∼1.5 h periods as part of the Deeper, Wider, Faster program, using two different telescope dithering strategies

Conceivable security risks and authentication techniques for smart devices

With the rapidly escalating use of smart devices and fraudulent transaction of users’ data from their devices, efficient and reliable techniques for authentication of the smart devices have become an obligatory issue. This paper reviews the security risks for mobile devices and studies several authentication techniques available for smart devices. The results from field studies enable a comparative evaluation of user-preferred authentication mechanisms and their opinions about reliability, biometric authentication and visual authentication techniques

Whitefield News

File includes: January 2017 Volume 4, Issue 7 February 2017 Volume 4, Issue 8 March 2017 Volume 4, Issue 9 April 2017 Volume 4, Issue 10 May 2017 Volume 4, Issue 11 June 2017 Volume 4, Issue 12 July 2017 Volume 5, Issue 1 August 2017 Volume 5, Issue 2 September 2017 Volume 5, Issue 3 October 2017 Volume 5, Issue 4 November 2017 Volume 5, Issue 5 December 2017 Volume 5, Issue