Older Norwegians' understanding of loneliness

This interpretive study explored older people's understanding of loneliness and what they considered appropriate and effective ways of dealing with it. Thirty elderly people were interviewed in-depth; 12 described themselves as “lonely” and 18 as “not lonely.” We found a striking difference in the way “lonely” and “not lonely” people talked about loneliness. The “not lonely” participants described loneliness as painful, caused by the person's negative way of behaving and a state they should pull themselves out of. The “lonely” participants also described loneliness as painful, and gave more detailed descriptions of loneliness as disconnection from others, from their former home and from today's society. The “lonely” participants were more reserved and subdued in trying to explain loneliness, attributing it partly to themselves, but mostly to the lack of social contact with important others. Some felt able to handle their loneliness, while others felt unable to cope. This study underlines the importance of subjective experiences in trying to understand a phenomenon like loneliness and of developing support for lonely older people unable to cope on their own

Optical links for detector instrumentation: on-detector multi-wavelength silicon photonic transmitters

We report on our recent progress in developing an optical transmission system based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to enhance the read-out data rate of future particle detectors. The design and experimental results of the prototype of a monolithically integrated multi-wavelength transmitter are presented as well as temperature studies of electro-optic modulators. Furthermore, we show the successful permanent coupling of optical fibers to photonic chips, which is an essential step towards packaging of the opto-electronic components

Altering Preferences For Suicide Crisis Resources Using the Decoy Nudge: Evidence of Context-Dependent Effects In Suicide Prevention Decision Making

Objective Suicide is the 10th leading cause of death in the United States. There are several important decisions that could confer later risk to a suicide attempt (e.g., how to store lethal means). Therefore, understanding how people make decisions that are relevant for suicide risk is an important area of study for suicidology. Human behavior diverges from perfectly rational economic decision making according to observable patterns based on predictable cognitive processes. Nudges attempt to diminish, leverage, or circumvent these deviations to increase the probability of a desired choice being selected or behavior being performed. One deviation from rationality is that human choice is context dependent. This deviation can be observed by introducing an objectively inferior alternative option (a decoy) into a choice array that alters an individual\u27s preference. Using decoys could be one way to nudge people toward best practices in suicide prevention work. Method This study examined if decoys could reliably alter participant preferences for suicide prevention resources using a hypothetical scenario in three separate online samples (i.e., general population, participants with recent suicidal thoughts, gun owners). Results Our results found that introducing a slightly (but objectively) worse version of an existing suicide prevention resource increased the preference toward the slightly better option. Conclusions These findings indicate that using decoys could be an effective nudge for influencing people\u27s preference toward best practices. Most important, these findings highlight the importance of context effects on choice preference in suicide research and prevention efforts, as well as suggest irrational decision-making processes in suicide-relevant decision making. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2021 APA, all rights reserved)

Optical links for detector instrumentation: on-detector multi-wavelength silicon photonic transmitters

We report on our recent progress in developing an optical transmission system based on wavelength division multiplexing (WDM) to enhance the read-out data rate of future particle detectors. The design and experimental results of the prototype of a monolithically integrated multi-wavelength transmitter are presented as well as temperature studies of electro-optic modulators. Furthermore, we show the successful permanent coupling of optical fibers to photonic chips, which is an essential step towards packaging of the opto-electronic components

Colorless FDMA-PON with flexible bandwidth allocation and colorless, low-speed ONUs [invited]

We demonstrate a remotely seeded flexible passive optical network (PON) with multiple low-speed subscribers but only a single optical line terminal transceiver operating at a data rate of 31.25 Gbits/s. The scheme is based on a colorless frequency division multiplexing (FDM)-PON with centralized wavelength control. Multiplexing and demultiplexing in the optical network unit (ONU) is performed in the electronic domain and relies either on FDM with Nyquist sinc-pulse shaping or on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM). This way the ONU can perform processing at low speed in the baseband. Further, the ONU is colorless by means of a remote seed for upstream transmission and a remote local oscillator for heterodyne reception, all of which helps in keeping maintenance and costs for an ONU potentially low and will simplify wavelength allocation in a future software defined network architecture. To extend the reach, semiconductor optical amplifiers are used for optical amplification in the downstream and upstream.Peer reviewe