Interpersonal Emotion Regulation: Strategies, Behaviors, and Goals

Interpersonal emotion regulation (ER) happens constantly in daily life and plays a role in the success of friendships and relationships. Interpersonal ER refers to the process in which an individual makes efforts to change the emotional experience of another person. Understanding the relationship between interpersonal ER strategies and goals proves necessary towards discerning the effectiveness of different interpersonal ER strategies in various situations. Building on existing research, common strategies used to regulate others’ emotions include helping a partner to accept their emotions (acceptance), change the way they think about their emotions (reappraisal), or inhibit their emotions (suppression). However, alternative strategies may prove to be equally, if not more, common. Additionally, the goals and behaviors associated with interpersonal ER have not been extensively studied. In the present study, I examine the goals associated with interpersonal ER strategies, including the exploration of an additional strategy: distraction. To examine which strategies and goals people are likely to use in a scenario in which a friend is expressing negative feelings, 347 students wrote narratives regarding how they would respond. As expected, acceptance and reappraisal were found to be the most common, while suppression was used least frequently. Results point to the importance of distraction as a common interpersonal ER strategy. Significant relationships were found between four distinct strategies and related goals and behaviors, suggesting that individuals are motivated by specific regulatory, instrumental, and social outcomes beyond basic regulation of emotions. Discussion focuses on how these findings point to newavenues in interpersonal ER research

Order Statistics Based List Decoding Techniques for Linear Binary Block Codes

The order statistics based list decoding techniques for linear binary block codes of small to medium block length are investigated. The construction of the list of the test error patterns is considered. The original order statistics decoding is generalized by assuming segmentation of the most reliable independent positions of the received bits. The segmentation is shown to overcome several drawbacks of the original order statistics decoding. The complexity of the order statistics based decoding is further reduced by assuming a partial ordering of the received bits in order to avoid the complex Gauss elimination. The probability of the test error patterns in the decoding list is derived. The bit error rate performance and the decoding complexity trade-off of the proposed decoding algorithms is studied by computer simulations. Numerical examples show that, in some cases, the proposed decoding schemes are superior to the original order statistics decoding in terms of both the bit error rate performance as well as the decoding complexity.Comment: 17 pages, 2 tables, 6 figures, submitted to IEEE Transactions on Information Theor

Portable clouds for provisioning of computing services in networks with very limited connectivity

In this paper, portable clouds are devised after observing similarities between providing the Internet access to users onboard vehicles and to users in remote resources-constrained communities. In both cases, a gateway connection to the core network is bandwidth-limited and unreliable. Portable clouds are intended to provide applications and services in scenarios even when the gateway link is not available at all for extended periods of time. Portable clouds exploit cache to store contents and provide computing resources locally while the applications are modified to facilitate acceptable QoE. The cache is updated infrequently and only when a fast connection becomes available, or when the contents are physically delivered to the cache using a memory medium

Mitigating the current energy crisis in Nepal with renewable energy sources

Nepal has been suffering from a serious energy crisis for decades. It has severely affected its economic, social and political developments. Owing to the continuously evolving energy situation in Nepal, and the recent progress in renewable energy technologies, this study aims to provide an up to date perspective on the current energy crisis in Nepal. In particular, the current energy production and consumption profiles are reviewed, and the main factors contributing to a widening gap between the energy supply and demand are identified. These factors concern delayed and overpriced hydropower projects, outdated and insufficient energy infrastructure, transmission and distribution losses, energy theft, deficient energy management, lack of energy conservation, low efficiency of equipment, unsustainable energy pricing strategies and unsatisfying energy market regulations. Other essential factors worsening the energy crisis can be attributed to specific geographical and geopolitical problems, the strong dependence on energy imports, and inadequate exploitation of the vast amounts of renewable energy resources. The status of existing and planned large hydropower projects is summarized. The recent policies and investment initiatives of the Nepalese government to support green and sustainable energy are discussed. Furthermore, a long-term outlook on the energy situation in Nepal is outlined using the energy modeling software LEAP in order to show how to exploit the tremendous renewable energy resources in Nepal. Our findings suggest that renewable resources are crucial not only for mitigating the present energy crisis, but also to ultimately provide energy independence for Nepal by establishing reliable and secure sources of energy

A Query-Response Causal Analysis of Reaction Events in Biochemical Reaction Networks

The stochastic kinetics of BRN are described by a chemical master equation (CME) and the underlying laws of mass action. The CME must be usually solved numerically by generating enough traces of random reaction events. The resulting event-time series can be evaluated statistically to identify, for example, the reaction clusters, rare reaction events, and the periods of increased or steady-state activity. The aim of this paper is to newly exploit the empirical statistics of the reaction events in order to obtain causally and anti-causally related sub-sequences of reactions. This allows discovering some of the causal dynamics of the reaction networks as well as uncovering their more deterministic behaviors. In particular, it is proposed that the reaction sub-sequences that are conditionally nearly certain or nearly uncertain can be considered as being causally related or unrelated, respectively. Moreover, since time-ordering of reactions is locally irrelevant, the reaction sub-sequences can be transformed into the reaction event sets or multi-sets. The appropriately defined distance metrics can be then used to define equivalences between the reaction sub-sequences. The proposed framework for identifying causally associated reaction sub-sequences has been implemented as a computationally efficient query-response mechanism. The framework was evaluated assuming five selected models of genetic reaction networks in seven defined numerical experiments. The models were simulated in BioNetGen using NFsim, which had to be modified to allow recording of the traces of reaction events. The generated event time-series were analyzed by Python and Matlab scripts. The whole process of data generation, analysis and visualization has been nearly fully automated using shell scripts.Comment: 7 figures and supplementary file include

Too high and too low: The problems with energy prices in the EU. OSW Commentary No. 122, 03.12.2013

On 11 October, the top executives of ten European energy companies, which jointly own about half of the European Union’s electricity generating capacity, warned that “energy security is no longer guaranteed” and once again called for changes to EU energy policy. Due to persistent adverse conditions in the energy market (linked to, for example, the exceptionally low wholesale energy prices) more and more conventional power plants are being closed down. According to sector representatives, this could lead to energy shortages being seen as early as this winter. Meanwhile, in an interview with The Daily Telegraph published in September of this year, the European industry commissioner Antonio Tajani warned – in a rather alarmist tone – of the disastrous consequences the rising energy prices could have on European industry. Amongst the reasons for the high prices of energy, Tajani mentioned the overambitious pace and methods used to increase the share of renewables in the sector. In a similar vein, EU President Herman Van Rompuy has highlighted the need to reduce energy costs as a top priority for EU energy policy1. The price of energy has become one of the central issues in the current EU energy debate. The high consumer price of energy – which has been rising steadily over the past several years – poses a serious challenge to both household and industrial users. Meanwhile, the declining wholesale prices are affecting the cost-effectiveness of energy production and the profits of energy companies. The current difficulties, however, are first and foremost a symptom of much wider problems related to the functioning of both the EU energy market as well as to the EU’s climate and energy policies

Understanding energy crisis in nepal: Assessment of the country's energy demand and supply in 2016

The world is facing an enormous challenge to provide sufficient quantity of clean energy to its burgeoning population. Energy is a fundamental asset for enabling socio-economic development and poverty eradication in any country. Nepal has been suffering from the chaotic energy crisis for about a decade now despite having a potential for generating 43,000 MW of hydroelectricity, 2,100 MW of solar power, and 3,000 MW of wind power. A normal life of its citizens is being crippled with long hours of load shedding and never ending queues in front of the gas stations reflecting the state of the energy-hungry country. This paper gives a perspective on the energy crisis in Nepal in order to point out how serious the problem is and also presents some ways how to obtain an immediate relieve through the use of green energy commodities. In addition, the strategic advantages to potential investors are explored that encourage investments into national priority projects facilitated by the progressive policies of the Government of Nepal