Being tough doesn’t always pay off: The culture of honor vs dignity in negotiation

Early work on cross-cultural negotiation has focused on East-West differences. In the current study we investigate the negotiation scripts employed by Middle Eastern negotiators, more specifically Iranian negotiators, in an intracultural interaction, compared to North American negotiators. We examine how the Iranian worldviews, beliefs, norms, and social behavior influence their goals and aspirations, negotiation tactics, and ultimately final outcome. We formulated our hypotheses based on the theory of honor-dignity cultures and illustrate how the importance of preserving and maintaining honor influences the Iranian negotiation strategies in business dealings. Our results illustrate that consistent with the culture of honor, Iranian negotiators are more likely to be competitive, express emotions, and employ distributive tactics compared to Canadian negotiators. Moreover, this competitive mindset leaves Iranian negotiators at a disadvantage as the overall joint gain is significantly lower than Canadian negotiators

Surface tension induced convection in encapsulated liquid metals in microgravity: Apollo-Soyuz test project experiment no. MA-041

This experiment was designed to determine the extent of surface tension induced convection caused by a steplike compositional variation in a liquid metal. Preliminary results are presented

Toward a physiological explanation of juvenile growth curves

Juvenile growth curves are generally sigmoid in shape: Growth is initially nearly exponential, but it slows to near zero as the animal approaches maturity. The drop‐off in growth rate is puzzling because, everything else being equal, selection favors growing as fast as possible. Existing theory posits sublinear scaling of resource acquisition with juvenile body mass and linear scaling of the requirement for maintenance, so the difference, fuel for growth, decreases as the juvenile increases in size. Experimental evidence, however, suggests that maintenance metabolism increases sublinearly not linearly with size. Here, we develop a new theory consistent with the experimental evidence. Our theory is based on the plausible assumption that there is a trade‐off in the capacity of capillaries to supply growing and developed cells. As the proportion of non‐growing cells increases, they take up more macromolecules from the capillaries, leaving fewer to support growing cells. The predicted growth curves are realistic and similar to those of previous models (Bertalanffy, Gompertz, and Logistic) but have the advantage of being derived from a plausible physiological model. We hope that our focus on resource delivery in capillaries will encourage new experimental work to identify the detailed physiological basis of the trade‐off underlying juvenile growth curves

Texas Business Review, January 1976

The Business Situation in Texas; The Last Hundred Years; The Next Hundred Years; Electric Funds Transference: Development and Prospects; Texas Construction: Four Decades of ChangeBureau of Business Researc

Above and belowground community strategies respond to different global change drivers

Environmental changes alter the diversity and structure of communities. By shifting the range of species traits that will be successful under new conditions, environmental drivers can also dramatically impact ecosystem functioning and resilience. Above and belowground communities jointly regulate whole-ecosystem processes and responses to change, yet they are frequently studied separately. To determine whether these communities respond similarly to environmental changes, we measured taxonomic and trait-based responses of plant and soil microbial communities to four years of experimental warming and nitrogen deposition in a temperate grassland. Plant diversity responded strongly to N addition, whereas soil microbial communities responded primarily to warming, likely via an associated decrease in soil moisture. These above and belowground changes were associated with selection for more resource-conservative plant and microbe growth strategies, which reduced community functional diversity. Functional characteristics of plant and soil microbial communities were weakly correlated (P = 0.07) under control conditions, but not when above or belowground communities were altered by either global change driver. These results highlight the potential for global change drivers operating simultaneously to have asynchronous impacts on above and belowground components of ecosystems. Assessment of a single ecosystem component may therefore greatly underestimate the whole-system impact of global environmental changes

A threatening exchange: gender and life history strategy predict perceptions and reasoning about sexual harassment

Sexual harassment is a serious societal issue, with extensive economic and psychological consequences, yet it is also an ill-defined construct fundamentally defined in terms of subjective perception. The current work was designed to examine the ways in which individual differences between people are systematically related to different perceptions of sexual harassment scenarios, as well as reasoning about those harassment situations. Participants (N = 460) read several possible harassment scenarios and rated how uncomfortable they would find them. They then also evaluated a quid pro quo sexual harassment situation in terms of their interpretation of it as a threat or a social exchange and completed a deductive reasoning task about the same situation. Females and individuals with slow life history strategies were more uncomfortable with potential harassment situations and were more likely to interpret the quid pro quo scenario as a threat. Further, interpreting the scenario as a threat was associated with poorer performance on the deductive logic task, compared to those who interpreted the scenario as a social exchange

The sexual health needs of looked after young people; findings from qualitative interviews led through public health and health psychology.

Background - Looked after young people (LAYP) have poorer sexual health outcomes than their peers. However, research seldom examines the health needs of, or intervenes with, this group. The aim of the current study was to identify LAYP's perceived sexual health needs and explore sources of sexual health information, knowledge levels, concerns and service preferences. Methods - Looked after young people within Fife, Scotland, were recruited through their workers and carers to participate in qualitative semi-structured interviews. Those aged 12–19 years were targeted for recruitment. National Health Services ethics approval was granted. Thematic analysis was conducted using NVivo. Results - Interviews were conducted with 10 LAYP. Key themes included gaps in knowledge, and gaps between knowledge and behaviour. Being ‘looked after’ may have negative consequences on knowledge, sources of support and safer sex. A flexible, one-to-one service, aimed at several lifestyle issues, not solely sexual health, was preferred by respondents. Conclusion - Looked after young people require support to bridge the gap between knowledge and behaviour and several theories relevant to the findings have been identified. Participants desired more support around a range of health issues, which may come from school, workers and carers, as well as health professionals. Further research examining effective interventions with this group is crucial to improve outcomes

Influence of a humidor on the aerodynamics of baseballs

We investigate whether storing baseballs in a controlled humidity environment significantly affects their aerodynamic properties. To do this, we measure the change in diameter and mass of baseballs as a function of relative humidity (RH) in which the balls are stored. We then model trajectories for pitched and batted baseballs to assess the difference between those stored at 30% RH versus 50% RH. The results show that a drier baseball may be expected to curve slightly more than a humidified one for a given pitch velocity. We also find that the aerodynamics alone would add ~2 feet to the distance a moister ball is hit. However, this is compensated by a ~6 foot reduction in batted distance due to the well known change in coefficient of restitution of the ball. We discuss consequences of these results for baseball played at Coors Field in Denver, where baseballs have been stored in a humidor at 50% RH since 2002.Comment: 21 pages, 7 figures, modified and re-posted 2/2

Magnetic Studies of End-Chain Spin Effects in the Haldane Gap Material Ni(C3H10N2)2N3(ClO4)

Electron spin resonance (ESR), at 9, 94, and 190 GHz, and magnetization studies on polycrystalline, powder, and ultrafine powder samples of Ni(C3H10N2)2N3(ClO4) (NINAZ) have revealed several effects arising from the Haldane phase. Using the g value of the end-chain spin $S$ as determined by ESR, our results confirm that the end-chain spins are S=1/2 and show no evidence for S=1 end-chains. In addition, the ESR signals reveal spectral weight consistent with a model describing interactions between the end-chain spins on the shortest chains and between the magnetic excitations on the chains and the end-chain spins.Comment: Paper revised with additional data, to be published in Physical Review

Fano effect in a ring-dot system with tunable coupling

Transport measurements are presented on a quantum ring that is tunnel-coupled to a quantum dot. When the dot is in the Coulomb blockade regime, but strongly coupled to the open ring, Fano line shapes are observed in the current through the ring, when the electron number in the dot changes by one. The symmetry of the Fano resonances is found to depend on the magnetic flux penetrating the area of the ring and on the strength of the ring-dot coupling. At temperatures above T=0.65 K the Fano effect disappears while the Aharonov-Bohm interference in the ring persists up to T=4.2 K. Good agreement is found between these experimental observations and a single channel scattering matrix model including decoherence in the dot.Comment: 9 pages, 6 figure