Sensing Subjective Well-being from Social Media

Subjective Well-being(SWB), which refers to how people experience the quality of their lives, is of great use to public policy-makers as well as economic, sociological research, etc. Traditionally, the measurement of SWB relies on time-consuming and costly self-report questionnaires. Nowadays, people are motivated to share their experiences and feelings on social media, so we propose to sense SWB from the vast user generated data on social media. By utilizing 1785 users' social media data with SWB labels, we train machine learning models that are able to "sense" individual SWB from users' social media. Our model, which attains the state-by-art prediction accuracy, can then be used to identify SWB of large population of social media users in time with very low cost.Comment: 12 pages, 1 figures, 2 tables, 10th International Conference, AMT 2014, Warsaw, Poland, August 11-14, 2014. Proceeding

A Mach-Zehnder Interferometer for a Two-Photon Wave Packet

We propose an experiment that permits observation of the de Broglie two-photon wave packet behavior for a pair of photons, using a Mach-Zehnder interferometer. It is based on the use of pulsed lasers to generate pairs of photons via spontaneous parametric down-conversion and the post-selection of events. It differs from previous realizations by the use of a third time-correlated photon to engineer the state of the photons. The same technique can give us which-path information via an ``interaction-free'' experiment and can be used in other experiments on the foundations of quantum mechanics related to wave-particle duality and to nonlocality.Comment: Submmited for publication in Physical Review

Composition Operators and Endomorphisms

If $b$ is an inner function, then composition with $b$ induces an endomorphism, $\beta$, of $L^\infty(\mathbb{T})$ that leaves $H^\infty(\mathbb{T})$ invariant. We investigate the structure of the endomorphisms of $B(L^2(\mathbb{T}))$ and $B(H^2(\mathbb{T}))$ that implement $\beta$ through the representations of $L^\infty(\mathbb{T})$ and $H^\infty(\mathbb{T})$ in terms of multiplication operators on $L^2(\mathbb{T})$ and $H^2(\mathbb{T})$. Our analysis, which is based on work of R. Rochberg and J. McDonald, will wind its way through the theory of composition operators on spaces of analytic functions to recent work on Cuntz families of isometries and Hilbert $C^*$-modules

Conscientiousness predicts greater recovery from negative emotion

Greater levels of conscientiousness have been associated with lower levels of negative affect. We focus on one mechanism through which conscientiousness may decrease negative affect: effective emotion regulation, as reflected by greater recovery from negative stimuli. In 273 adults who were 35 - 85 years old, we collected self-report measures of personality including conscientiousness and its self-control facet, followed on average 2 years later by psychophysiological measures of emotional reactivity and recovery. Among middle-aged adults (35 - 65 years old), the measures of conscientiousness and self-control predicted greater recovery from, but not reactivity to, negative emotional stimuli. The effect of conscientiousness and self-control on recovery was not driven by other personality variables or by greater task adherence on the part of high conscientiousness individuals. In addition, the effect was specific to negative emotional stimuli and did not hold for neutral or positive emotional stimuli

Purpose in life predicts better emotional recovery from negative stimuli

Purpose in life predicts both health and longevity suggesting that the ability to find meaning from life’s experiences, especially when confronting life’s challenges, may be a mechanism underlying resilience. Having purpose in life may motivate reframing stressful situations to deal with them more productively, thereby facilitating recovery from stress and trauma. In turn, enhanced ability to recover from negative events may allow a person to achieve or maintain a feeling of greater purpose in life over time. In a large sample of adults (aged 36-84 years) from the MIDUS study (Midlife in the U.S., http://www.midus.wisc.edu/), we tested whether purpose in life was associated with better emotional recovery following exposure to negative picture stimuli indexed by the magnitude of the eyeblink startle reflex (EBR), a measure sensitive to emotional state. We differentiated between initial emotional reactivity (during stimulus presentation) and emotional recovery (occurring after stimulus offset). Greater purpose in life, assessed over two years prior, predicted better recovery from negative stimuli indexed by a smaller eyeblink after negative pictures offset, even after controlling for initial reactivity to the stimuli during the picture presentation, gender, age, trait affect, and other well-being dimensions. These data suggest a proximal mechanism by which purpose in life may afford protection from negative events and confer resilience is through enhanced automatic emotion regulation after negative emotional provocation

Four-photon interference: a realizable experiment to demonstrate violation of EPR postulates for perfect correlations

Bell's theorem reveals contradictions between the predictions of quantum mechanics and the EPR postulates for a pair of particles only in situations involving imperfect statistical correlations. However, with three or more particles, contradictions emerge even for perfect correlations. We describe an experiment which can be realized in the laboratory, using four-photon entangled states generated by parametric down-conversion, to demonstrate this contradiction at the level of perfect correlations.Comment: publishe

Inner wellbeing: concept and validation of a new approach to subjective perceptions of wellbeing-India

© The Author(s) 2013. This article is published with open access at Springerlink.com. This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License which permits any use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author(s) and the source are credited.This paper describes the conceptual development of a multi-domain, psychosocial model of 'Inner Wellbeing' (IWB) and assesses the construct validity of the scale designed to measure it. IWB expresses what people think and feel they are able to be and do. Drawing together scholarship in wellbeing and international development it is grounded in field research in marginalised, rural communities in the global South. Results from research in India at two points in time (2011 and 2013) are reported. At Time 1 (n = 287), we were unable to confirm an eight-factor, correlated model as distinct yet interrelated domains. However, at Time 2 (n = 335), we were able to confirm a revised, seven-factor correlated model with economic confidence, agency and participation, social connections, close relationships, physical and mental health, competence and self-worth, and values and meaning (five items per domain) as distinct yet interrelated domains. In particular, at Time 2, a seven-factor, correlated model provided a significantly better fit to the data than did a one-factor model.This work is supported by the Economic and Social Research Council/Department for International Development Joint Scheme for Research on International Development (Poverty Alleviation) grant number RES-167-25-0507 ES/H033769/1. Special thanks are due to Chaupal and Gangaram Paikra, Pritam Das, Usha Kujur, Kanti Minjh, Susanna Siddiqui, and Dinesh Tirkey

Null-Result Detection and Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) Correlations

It follows from Bell's theorem and quantum mechanics that the detection of a particle of an entangled pair can (somehow) "force" the other distant particle of the pair into a well-defined state (which is equivalente to a reduction of the state vector): no property previously shared by the particles can explain the predicted correlations. This result has been corroborated by experiment. However, it has not been experimantally proved-and it is far from obvious-that the absence of detection, as in null-result (NR) experiments could have the very same effect. In this paper a way to try to bridge this gap is suggested. As already shown for the case of EPR correlations, if NR detections cannot induce a reduction of the state vector, then faster-than-light (FTL) communication becomes possible, at least in pr\'inciple. But it will be demonstrated that-as entertained by Bohm-this does not necessarily lead to a causal paradox, or to the rejection of the Lorentz transformations.Comment: 16 pages, 1 figure. Similar to the version published in Foundations of Physics with an appendix on superluminal signalling without causal paradox include

Development of a self-report measure of capability wellbeing for adults: the ICECAP-A

Purpose The benefits of health and social care are not confined to patient health alone and therefore broader measures of wellbeing may be useful for economic evaluation.\ud This paper reports the development of a simple measure of capability wellbeing for adults (ICECAP-A).\ud Methods In-depth, informant-led, interviews to identify the attributes of capability wellbeing were conducted with 36 adults in the UK. Eighteen semi-structured, repeat interviews were carried out to develop a capability-based descriptive system for the measure. Informants were purposively selected to ensure variation in socio-economic status, age, sex, ethnicity and health. Data analysis was carried out inductively and iteratively alongside interviews, and findings were used to shape the questions in later interviews.\ud Results Five over-arching attributes of capability wellbeing were identified for the measure: ‘‘stability’’,‘‘attachment’’, ‘‘achievement’’, ‘‘autonomy’’ and ‘‘enjoyment’’. One item, with four response categories, was developed for each attribute for the ICECAP-A descriptive system.\ud Conclusions The ICECAP-A capability measure represents a departure from traditional health economics outcome measures, by treating health status as an influence over broader attributes of capability wellbeing. Further work is required to value and validate the attributes and test the sensitivity of the ICECAP-A to healthcare interventions