1,702 research outputs found
Content Analysis of the Holtzman Inkblot Test with Regard to the Projection of Hostility
This investigation is a study of hostility using the hostility scoring system of the Holtzman Inkblot Technique, a new projective technique that became available to psychologists in May of 1961 when it was released by the Psychological Corporation. Its development is the result of several years work by Wayne H. Holtzman and his associates. The Holtzman Inkblot Technique will hereafter be referred to as the HIT
Parents’ Ethnotheories of Maladaptive Behavior in Young Children
Parents’ culturally influenced belief systems, or ethnotheories, are critical components of children’s socialization. Beliefs about children’s desirable characteristics motivate specific parenting activities and moderate the effectiveness of childrearing practices. However, relatively little attention has been given to parents’ ethnotheories of children’s undesirable behavior. From a few studies, we know that parents have culturally specific theories about the nature and management of children’s maladaptive behavior that motivate their socialization practices. In this review, we identify gaps in the research and suggest that qualitative studies of parents’ ethnotheories about the nature and management of children’s deviant behavior have strong theoretical, empirical, and practical benefits for developmental science.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151344/1/cdep12330.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/151344/2/cdep12330_am.pd
The relationships between stressors, macroinvertebrate community structure and leaf processing in stream ecosystems.
In the face of major threats to global biodiversity, and in order that ecosystem managers might act to reduce the impacts of anthropogenic stressors on ecosystems, it is critical that we understand how ecosystem structure and function respond to stressors. I focussed on investigating the relationship between macroinvertebrate community structure and function, measured as the rate of leaf processing. An initial meta-analysis of previous studies revealed no association between structure and function in streams exposed to three distinct pollutant stressors (heavy metal contamination, acidification and organic pollution). Interpretation of patterns was hindered by low sample sizes, and so a field study was conducted to clarify patterns in response to heavy metal contamination. Stream sites were located in Cornwall and Lanarkshire. Associations between structure and function were driven by the direct effects of stressors in Cornwall, but not in Lanarkshire. The results indicate that the only way to assess function effectively in natural streams may be to make direct assessment of functional aspects of the system, in addition to structural assessment.
Experimental stream mesocosms were used to determine whether structure reveals function, in so much that the rates of leaf processing by mixed-species assemblages were predictable from the rates of species in isolation. Rates of leaf processing were greater than predicted, indicative of complementarity between shredder species. Finally, species-specific feeding trials were used to determine the effect of fungal species richness on rates of leaf processing by macroinvertebrate shredders. While there was some evidence for complementarity between fungal species, which resulted in increases in leaf processing between 1 and 3 fungal species, overall there was no effect of increasing fungal species richness. Results of both experimental studies indicate that the relationship between structure and function is idiosyncratic. The implication of this for the management of freshwater ecosystems is that it is difficult to predict the consequences of species’ losses for ecosystem processes
Studies of segregation leading to blowhole formation in steel ingots.
The theoretical model of another author, dealing with gas reactions, producing CO, H2 and N2 within an interdendritic cell during solidification, has been developed to the extent that it can be applied to steels containing up to 0.5% carbon, deoxidised with silicon and manganese. The total gas pressures (= PCO + PH2 + PN2) developed in a number of steels, all onthe borderline betv/een being porous and solid, aiid containing various amounts of CO, and have been computed. It has been shown that the gas pressures in steels of borderline porosity fall within discrete ranges, which can be used to predict other borderline compositions. The model has been applied to the production of ladle balanced steels. Good agreement has been found between plant data and predicted results from the model.An attempt has also been made to account for blowhole nucleation and growth in terms of the computed gas pressures developed during solidification. The model has the advantage over others so far described in the literature in that it deals comprehensively with the effect of hydrogen and nitrogen in promoting blowholes in steel ingots
Fatigue reliability method with in-service inspections
The first reliability method (FORM) has traditionally been applied in a fatigue reliability setting to one inspection interval at a time, so that the random distribution of crack lengths must be recharacterized following each inspection. The FORM presented here allow each analysis to span several inspection periods without explicit characterization of the crack length distribution upon each inspection. The method thereby preserves the attractive feature of FORM in that relatively few realizations in the random variable space need to be considered. Examples are given which show that the present methodology gives estimates which are in good agreement with Monte Carlo simulations and is efficient even for complex components
Why We Read Wikipedia
Wikipedia is one of the most popular sites on the Web, with millions of users
relying on it to satisfy a broad range of information needs every day. Although
it is crucial to understand what exactly these needs are in order to be able to
meet them, little is currently known about why users visit Wikipedia. The goal
of this paper is to fill this gap by combining a survey of Wikipedia readers
with a log-based analysis of user activity. Based on an initial series of user
surveys, we build a taxonomy of Wikipedia use cases along several dimensions,
capturing users' motivations to visit Wikipedia, the depth of knowledge they
are seeking, and their knowledge of the topic of interest prior to visiting
Wikipedia. Then, we quantify the prevalence of these use cases via a
large-scale user survey conducted on live Wikipedia with almost 30,000
responses. Our analyses highlight the variety of factors driving users to
Wikipedia, such as current events, media coverage of a topic, personal
curiosity, work or school assignments, or boredom. Finally, we match survey
responses to the respondents' digital traces in Wikipedia's server logs,
enabling the discovery of behavioral patterns associated with specific use
cases. For instance, we observe long and fast-paced page sequences across
topics for users who are bored or exploring randomly, whereas those using
Wikipedia for work or school spend more time on individual articles focused on
topics such as science. Our findings advance our understanding of reader
motivations and behavior on Wikipedia and can have implications for developers
aiming to improve Wikipedia's user experience, editors striving to cater to
their readers' needs, third-party services (such as search engines) providing
access to Wikipedia content, and researchers aiming to build tools such as
recommendation engines.Comment: Published in WWW'17; v2 fixes caption of Table
The formation of helium lines in the spectrum of COM J1740-5340
The He I 5876A absorption line recently discovered in the spectrum of the
companion to the millisecond pulsar PSR J1740-5340 is tentatively attributed to
electron impact excitations due to the irradiation of its atmosphere by
gamma-rays emitted by the pulsar's magnetosphere. Numerical calculations,
similar to those carried out previously for Type Ib SNe, indicate that a pulsar
beam with photon energies ~ 1 MeV gives rise to a 5876A line of the observed
strength if the beam's spin-down conversion efficiency approaches 1%. However,
a significant difficulty for the proposed mechanism is the strength of the
singlet line at 6678A. Compared to the corresponding triplets, singlet lines
are weak because of the loss of excitation when photons emitted in decays to
the ground state ionize hydrogen atoms, an effect absent in the hydrogen-free
atmospheres of Type Ib SNe.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&
An avatar-based system for identifying individuals likely to develop dementia
This paper presents work on developing an automatic dementia screening test based on patients’ ability to interact and communicate — a highly cognitively demanding process where early signs of dementia can often be detected. Such a test would help general practitioners, with no specialist knowledge, make better diagnostic decisions as current tests lack specificity and sensitivity. We investigate the feasibility of basing the test on conversations between a ‘talking head’ (avatar) and a patient and we present a system for analysing such conversations for signs of dementia in the patient’s speech and language. Previously we proposed a semi-automatic system that transcribed conversations between patients and neurologists and extracted conversation analysis style features in order to differentiate between patients with progressive neurodegenerative dementia (ND) and functional memory disorders (FMD). Determining who talks when in the conversations was performed manually. In this study, we investigate a fully automatic system including speaker diarisation, and the use of additional acoustic and lexical features. Initial results from a pilot study are presented which shows that the avatar conversations can successfully classify ND/FMD with around 91% accuracy, which is in line with previous results for conversations that were led by a neurologist
Toward the Automation of Diagnostic Conversation Analysis in Patients with Memory Complaints.
BACKGROUND: The early diagnosis of dementia is of great clinical and social importance. A recent study using the qualitative methodology of conversation analysis (CA) demonstrated that language and communication problems are evident during interactions between patients and neurologists, and that interactional observations can be used to differentiate between cognitive difficulties due to neurodegenerative disorders (ND) or functional memory disorders (FMD). OBJECTIVE: This study explores whether the differential diagnostic analysis of doctor-patient interactions in a memory clinic can be automated. METHODS: Verbatim transcripts of conversations between neurologists and patients initially presenting with memory problems to a specialist clinic were produced manually (15 with FMD, and 15 with ND). A range of automatically detectable features focusing on acoustic, lexical, semantic, and visual information contained in the transcripts were defined aiming to replicate the diagnostic qualitative observations. The features were used to train a set of five machine learning classifiers to distinguish between ND and FMD. RESULTS: The mean rate of correct classification between ND and FMD was 93% ranging from 97% by the Perceptron classifier to 90% by the Random Forest classifier.Using only the ten best features, the mean correct classification score increased to 95%. CONCLUSION: This pilot study provides proof-of-principle that a machine learning approach to analyzing transcripts of interactions between neurologists and patients describing memory problems can distinguish people with neurodegenerative dementia from people with FMD
- …