Adult life stage and crisis as predictors of curiosity and authenticity: Testing inferences from Eriksons lifespan theory

During periods of developmental crisis, individuals experience uncomfortable internal incongruence and are motivated to reduce this through forms of exploration of self, other and world. From this, we inferred that crisis would relate positively to curiosity and negatively to a felt sense of authenticity. A quasi-experimental design using self-report data from a nationally representative UK sample (N = 963) of adults in early life (20-39 yrs.), midlife (40-59 yrs.) and later-life (60+) showed a pattern of findings supportive of the hypotheses. Three forms of curiosity (intrapersonal, perceptual and epistemic D-type) were significantly higher, while authenticity was lower, among those currently in crisis that those of the same age group not in crisis. Crisis was also related to curiosity about particular book genres; early adult crisis to self-help and spirituality, midlife to self-help and biography, and later life to food and eating

Intrapersonal curiosity: Inquisitiveness about the inner self

Intrapersonal Curiosity (InC) is the desire to learn more about one’s inner-self. A pool of 39 experimental InC items were administered to 988 participants (498 women), along with other measures of curiosity and personality. Three InC factors with acceptable model fit were identified, from which three internally consistent (alphas > .89) 4-item subscales were developed: “Understanding Emotions and Motives”, “Reflecting on the Past”, and “Exploring Identity and Purpose”. The InC scales correlated positively with other curiosity measures, evidencing convergent validity; divergent validity was demonstrated on the basis of weak relations to other constructs. The InC scales were positively associated with less self-awareness, poorer self-regulation, and experiences of distress, suggesting that InC tends to be higher in individuals who lack, but seek, new intrapersonal knowledge to reduce uncertainty about the self

Estimation of interdomain flexibility of N-terminus of factor H using residual dipolar couplings

Characterization of segmental flexibility is needed to understand the biological mechanisms of the very large category of functionally diverse proteins, exemplified by the regulators of complement activation, that consist of numerous compact modules or domains linked by short, potentially flexible, sequences of amino acid residues. The use of NMR-derived residual dipolar couplings (RDCs), in magnetically aligned media, to evaluate interdomain motion is established but only for two-domain proteins. We focused on the three N-terminal domains (called CCPs or SCRs) of the important complement regulator, human factor H (i.e. FH1-3). These domains cooperate to facilitate cleavage of the key complement activation-specific protein fragment, C3b, forming iC3b that no longer participates in the complement cascade. We refined a three-dimensional solution structure of recombinant FH1-3 based on nuclear Overhauser effects and RDCs. We then employed a rudimentary series of RDC datasets, collected in media containing magnetically aligned bicelles (disk-like particles formed from phospholipids) under three different conditions, to estimate interdomain motions. This circumvents a requirement of previous approaches for technically difficult collection of five independent RDC datasets. More than 80% of conformers of this predominantly extended three-domain molecule exhibit flexions of < 40 °. Such segmental flexibility (together with the local dynamics of the hypervariable loop within domain 3), could facilitate recognition of C3b via initial anchoring and eventual reorganization of modules to the conformation captured in the previously solved crystal structure of a C3b:FH1-4 complex

Assessment of energy efficiency and sustainability scenarios in the transport system

Background Energy Policy is one of the main drivers of Transport Policy. A number of strategies to reduce current energy consumption trends in the transport sector have been designed over the last decades. They include fuel taxes, more efficient technologies and changing travel behavior through demand regulation. But energy market has a high degree of uncertainty and the effectiveness of those policy options should be assessed. Methods A scenario based assessment methodology has been developed in the frame of the EU project STEPS. It provides an integrated view of Energy efficiency, environment, social and competitiveness impacts of the different strategies. It has been applied at European level and to five specific Regions. Concluding remarks The results are quite site specific dependent. However they show that regulation measures appear to be more effective than new technology investments. Higher energy prices could produce on their turn a deterioration of competitiveness and a threat for social goals

SHREC 2011: robust feature detection and description benchmark

Feature-based approaches have recently become very popular in computer vision and image analysis applications, and are becoming a promising direction in shape retrieval. SHREC'11 robust feature detection and description benchmark simulates the feature detection and description stages of feature-based shape retrieval algorithms. The benchmark tests the performance of shape feature detectors and descriptors under a wide variety of transformations. The benchmark allows evaluating how algorithms cope with certain classes of transformations and strength of the transformations that can be dealt with. The present paper is a report of the SHREC'11 robust feature detection and description benchmark results.Comment: This is a full version of the SHREC'11 report published in 3DO

Conversation acts in task-oriented spoken dialogue

A linguistic form\u27s compositional, timeless meaning can be surrounded or even contradicted by various social, aesthetic, or analogistic companion meanings. This paper addresses a series of problems in the structure of spoken language discourse, including turn-taking and grounding. It views these processes as composed of fine-grained actions, which resemble speech acts both in resulting from a computational mechanism of planning and in having a rich relationship to the specific linguistic features which serve to indicate their presence. The resulting notion of Conversation Acts is more general than speech act theory, encompassing not only the traditional speech acts but turn-taking, grounding, and higher-level argumentation acts as well. Furthermore, the traditional speech acts in this scheme become fully joint actions, whose successful performance requires full listener participation. This paper presents a detailed analysis of spoken language dialogue. It shows the role of each class of conversation acts in discourse structure, and discusses how members of each class can be recognized in conversation. Conversation acts, it will be seen, better account for the success of conversation than speech act theory alone

Analyzing collaborative learning processes automatically

In this article we describe the emerging area of text classification research focused on the problem of collaborative learning process analysis both from a broad perspective and more specifically in terms of a publicly available tool set called TagHelper tools. Analyzing the variety of pedagogically valuable facets of learners’ interactions is a time consuming and effortful process. Improving automated analyses of such highly valued processes of collaborative learning by adapting and applying recent text classification technologies would make it a less arduous task to obtain insights from corpus data. This endeavor also holds the potential for enabling substantially improved on-line instruction both by providing teachers and facilitators with reports about the groups they are moderating and by triggering context sensitive collaborative learning support on an as-needed basis. In this article, we report on an interdisciplinary research project, which has been investigating the effectiveness of applying text classification technology to a large CSCL corpus that has been analyzed by human coders using a theory-based multidimensional coding scheme. We report promising results and include an in-depth discussion of important issues such as reliability, validity, and efficiency that should be considered when deciding on the appropriateness of adopting a new technology such as TagHelper tools. One major technical contribution of this work is a demonstration that an important piece of the work towards making text classification technology effective for this purpose is designing and building linguistic pattern detectors, otherwise known as features, that can be extracted reliably from texts and that have high predictive power for the categories of discourse actions that the CSCL community is interested in

Optimal and Long-Term Dynamic Transport Policy Design: Seeking Maximum Social Welfare through a Pricing Scheme.

This article presents an alternative approach to the decision-making process in transport strategy design. The study explores the possibility of integrating forecasting, assessment and optimization procedures in support of a decision-making process designed to reach the best achievable scenario through mobility policies. Long-term evaluation, as required by a dynamic system such as a city, is provided by a strategic Land-Use and Transport Interaction (LUTI) model. The social welfare achieved by implementing mobility LUTI model policies is measured through a cost-benefit analysis and maximized through an optimization process throughout the evaluation period. The method is tested by optimizing a pricing policy scheme in Madrid on a cordon toll in a context requiring system efficiency, social equity and environmental quality. The optimized scheme yields an appreciable increase in social surplus through a relatively low rate compared to other similar pricing toll schemes. The results highlight the different considerations regarding mobility impacts on the case study area, as well as the major contributors to social welfare surplus. This leads the authors to reconsider the cost-analysis approach, as defined in the study, as the best option for formulating sustainability measures