Investment choice and perceived mating intentions regulated by external resource cues and internal fluctuation in blood glucose levels

We examined resource allocation priorities in the framework of an updated Maslow hierarchy of fundamental human needs. In Experiment 1, the participants in the food abundance priming condition viewing photos of high-calorie food allocated more money to savings than to spending. However, the participants preferred spending to savings under the condition of mating availability priming with romantic photographs. In Experiment 2, before and after drinking either water or a sugary beverage, fasting participants rated photos of a conversation between a man and a woman. Water drinking lowered the rating scores of mating intentions as well as blood glucose (BG) levels. The sugary drink buffered this decline in sexual perceptivity. Overall, the change in BG levels was positively associated with changes in the ratings of mating intentions but was not associated with other likelihood ratings. These results suggest that both external cues of food and mating resources and internal BG fluctuation regulate the cognitive priority of physiological needs vs. mate acquisition and retention.</p

Prediction of nonlinear interface dynamics in the unidirectional freezing of particle suspensions with rigid compacted layer

Water freezing in particle suspensions widely exists in nature. As a typical physical system of free boundary problem, the spatiotemporal evolution of the solid/liquid interface not only origins from phase transformation but also from permeation flow in front of ice. Physical models have been proposed in previous efforts to describe the interface dynamic behaviors in unidirectional freezing of particle suspensions. However, there are several physical parameters difficult to be determined in previous investigations dedicated to describing the spatiotemporal evolution in unidirectional freezing of particle suspensions. Here, based on the fundamental momentum theorem, we propose a consistent theoretical framework to address the unidirectional freezing process in the particle suspensions coupled with the effect of water permeation. An interface undercooling-dependent pushing force exerted on the compacted layer with a specific formula is derived based on the surface tension. Then a dynamic compacted layer is considered and analyzed. Numerical solutions of the nonlinear models reveal the dependence of system dynamics on some typical physical parameters, particle radius, initial particle concentration in the suspensions, freezing velocity and so on. The system dynamics are characterized by interface velocity, interface undercooling and interface recoil as functions of time. The models allow us to reconsider the formation mechanism of ice spears in freezing of particle suspensions in a simpler but novel way, with potential implications for both understanding and controlling not only ice formation in porous media but also crystallization processes in other complex systems

On-demand Multi-factor Authentication for Automated Assistant Interactions

Techniques set forth herein are related to on-demand dynamic requests for multi-factor authentication (“MFA”) challenges, such as two factor authentication (“2FA”) challenges. The MFA challenges can be selectively provided to a user in response to an interaction of the user with an automated assistant. In some instances, an MFA challenge is selectively provided by an automated assistant in response to a user interaction, with the automated assistant, that is an attempt to control a smart device of a third party, an attempt to transact with a third party, or other attempted interaction with a third party. In some of those instances, the automated assistant submits a corresponding request to a third party computer system of the third party, and the third party computer system dictates whether the MFA challenge is to be provided. For example, the third party computer system can either implement the corresponding request without requesting MFA, or can respond to the corresponding request with a request for the automated assistant to provide a MFA challenge (in which case the corresponding request will not be implemented unless an appropriate response to the MFA challenge is received)