Moral decision-making in real life: <br /> factors affecting moral orientation and behaviour justification

The study addresses two separate but related issues in connection with people"s real-life moral decisions and judgements. First, the notion of moral orientation is examined in terms of its consistency across varying contexts, its relation to gender and to gender role. Secondly, a new aspect of moral reasoning is explored—the influence on moral decision-making of considering the consequences of an action. Fifty-eight undergraduate students were asked to discuss two personal and two impersonal real-life moral dilemmas. The results reveal a significant interaction between gender role and type of dilemma. However, moral orientation was not consistent across various dilemmas and gender was not related to any particular orientation. Also the results indicate a significant difference between the reasoning of consequences of personal-antisocial conflicts and impersonal-antisocial conflicts. These findings suggest that different moral orientations may be embedded in life experience and connect with an individual"s sense of his or her moral identity in real-life situations

Moral decision-making in real life: &lt;br /&gt; factors affecting moral orientation and behaviour justification

The study addresses two separate but related issues in connection with people"s real-life moral decisions and judgements. First, the notion of moral orientation is examined in terms of its consistency across varying contexts, its relation to gender and to gender role. Secondly, a new aspect of moral reasoning is explored—the influence on moral decision-making of considering the consequences of an action. Fifty-eight undergraduate students were asked to discuss two personal and two impersonal real-life moral dilemmas. The results reveal a significant interaction between gender role and type of dilemma. However, moral orientation was not consistent across various dilemmas and gender was not related to any particular orientation. Also the results indicate a significant difference between the reasoning of consequences of personal-antisocial conflicts and impersonal-antisocial conflicts. These findings suggest that different moral orientations may be embedded in life experience and connect with an individual"s sense of his or her moral identity in real-life situations

Experimental inoculation of plants and animals with Ebola virus.

Thirty-three varieties of 24 species of plants and 19 species of vertebrates and invertebrates were experimentally inoculated with Ebola Zaire virus. Fruit and insectivorous bats supported replication and circulation of high titers of virus without necessarily becoming ill; deaths occurred only among bats that had not adapted to the diet fed in the laboratory

Comparison of CDMS [100] and [111] oriented germanium detectors

The Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS) utilizes large mass, 3" diameter $\times$ 1" thick target masses as particle detectors. The target is instrumented with both phonon and ionization sensors and comparison of energy in each channel provides event-by-event classification of electron and nuclear recoils. Fiducial volume is determined by the ability to obtain good phonon and ionization signal at a particular location. Due to electronic band structure in germanium, electron mass is described by an anisotropic tensor with heavy mass aligned along the symmetry axis defined by the [111] Miller index (L valley), resulting in large lateral component to the transport. The spatial distribution of electrons varies significantly for detectors which have their longitudinal axis orientations described by either the [100] or [111] Miller indices. Electric fields with large fringing component at high detector radius also affect the spatial distribution of electrons and holes. Both effects are studied in a 3 dimensional Monte Carlo and the impact on fiducial volume is discussed.Comment: Low Temperature Detector 14 conference proceedings to be published in the Journal of Low Temperature Physic

The mechanical performance of sugar palm fibres (Ijuk) reinforced phenolic composites

Sugar palm fibres are one of the natural fibres which have many features and need further study to understand their properties. The aim of this work is to investigate the flexural, compressive and impact properties of sugar palm fibres reinforced phenolic composites. Sugar palm fibres were used as a filler (particle size 150 μm) and with loading of 0, 10, 20, 30, and 40 vol.%. The fibres were treated by sea water and then fabricated into composites by hot press technique. Flexural, compressive, and impact tests were carried out as per ASTM D790, ASTM D695-08a, and ASTM D256 standards, respectively. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to investigate the morphology and the interfacial bonding of the fibres-matrix in composites. The results show that the mechanical properties of the composites improve with the incorporation of fibres. The composite of 30 vol.% particle loading exhibit optimum values which are 32.23 MPa, 61.66 MPa, and 4.12 kJ/m2 for flexural, compressive, and impact strength, respectively. This was because good compatibility of fibre-matrix bonding. Consequently, sugar palm fibre is one of the prospective fibres and could be used as a potential resource to reinforcement polymer composite

Analysis of the low-energy electron-recoil spectrum of the CDMS experiment

We report on the analysis of the low-energy electron-recoil spectrum from the CDMS II experiment using data with an exposure of 443.2 kg-days. The analysis provides details on the observed counting rate and possible background sources in the energy range of 2 - 8.5 keV. We find no significant excess in the counting rate above background, and compare this observation to the recent DAMA results. In the framework of a conversion of a dark matter particle into electromagnetic energy, our 90% confidence level upper limit of 0.246 events/kg/day at 3.15 keV is lower than the total rate above background observed by DAMA by 8.9$\sigma$. In absence of any specific particle physics model to provide the scaling in cross section between NaI and Ge, we assume a Z^2 scaling. With this assumption the observed rate in DAMA differs from the upper limit in CDMS by 6.8$\sigma$. Under the conservative assumption that the modulation amplitude is 6% of the total rate we obtain upper limits on the modulation amplitude a factor of ~2 less than observed by DAMA, constraining some possible interpretations of this modulation.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figure

Search for inelastic dark matter with the CDMS II experiment

Results are presented from a reanalysis of the entire five-tower data set acquired with the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment at the Soudan Underground Laboratory, with an exposure of 969 kg-days. The analysis window was extended to a recoil energy of 150 keV, and an improved surface-event background-rejection cut was defined to increase the sensitivity of the experiment to the inelastic dark matter (iDM) model. Three dark matter candidates were found between 25 keV and 150 keV. The probability to observe three or more background events in this energy range is 11%. Because of the occurrence of these events the constraints on the iDM parameter space are slightly less stringent than those from our previous analysis, which used an energy window of 10-100 keV.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, minor changes to match published version, conclusion unchange

Results from a Low-Energy Analysis of the CDMS II Germanium Data

We report results from a reanalysis of data from the Cryogenic Dark Matter Search (CDMS II) experiment at the Soudan Underground Laboratory. Data taken between October 2006 and September 2008 using eight germanium detectors are reanalyzed with a lowered, 2 keV recoil-energy threshold, to give increased sensitivity to interactions from Weakly Interacting Massive Particles (WIMPs) with masses below ~10 GeV/c^2. This analysis provides stronger constraints than previous CDMS II results for WIMP masses below 9 GeV/c^2 and excludes parameter space associated with possible low-mass WIMP signals from the DAMA/LIBRA and CoGeNT experiments.Comment: 9 pages, 8 figures. Supplemental material included as ancillary files. v3) Added appendix with additional details regarding energy scale and background

Toward homochiral protocells in noncatalytic peptide systems

The activation-polymerization-epimerization-depolymerization (APED) model of Plasson et al. has recently been proposed as a mechanism for the evolution of homochirality on prebiotic Earth. The dynamics of the APED model in two-dimensional spatially-extended systems is investigated for various realistic reaction parameters. It is found that the APED system allows for the formation of isolated homochiral proto-domains surrounded by a racemate. A diffusive slowdown of the APED network such as induced through tidal motion or evaporating pools and lagoons leads to the stabilization of homochiral bounded structures as expected in the first self-assembled protocells.Comment: 10 pages, 5 figure

Someone is pulling the strings: hypersensitive agency detection and belief in conspiracy theories

We hypothesized that belief in conspiracy theories would be predicted by the general tendency to attribute agency and intentionality where it is unlikely to exist. We further hypothesized that this tendency would explain the relationship between education level and belief in conspiracy theories, where lower levels of education have been found to be associated with higher conspiracy belief. In Study 1 (N=202) participants were more likely to agree with a range of conspiracy theories if they also tended to attribute intentionality and agency to inanimate objects. As predicted, this relationship accounted for the link between education level and belief in conspiracy theories. We replicated this finding in Study 2 (N=330), whilst taking into account beliefs in paranormal phenomena. These results suggest that education may undermine the reasoning processes and assumptions that are reflected in conspiracy belief