Schizotypy: the dynamic relationship between trait and state processes

Importantly, elevations in emotional reactivity to stress are often found in individuals vulnerable for psychosis. This study investigated several meaningful factors that appear to either increase vulnerability to stress (degree of schizotypy traits, trait negative affect, low perceived control, and impaired selective attention), or increase resiliency to stress (trait positive affect). A modified Posner spatial-cueing task utilizing affective cues was employed to assess selective attention within a neutral and an uncontrollable stressor condition. Between group differences (high, medium and low in schizotypy traits) and interactions between affective traits, state affect, and perceived control were evaluated in order to shed light on how specific dispositional vulnerabilities increase risk for future psychosis. Findings suggest that individuals high in schizotypy traits overall displayed greater attention vigilance than the other two groups. Importantly, this heightened attention vigilance appeared to be influenced by increased stress (presumably mediated by their increase in negative affect and low perceived control) and threatening negative affective cues. Thus, while the high trait schizotypy group displayed “better” attention performance than those medium and low in schizotypy traits, it is important to consider the consequences (e.g., attentional vigilance appears to come at the cost of narrowing attentional focus) and the underlying mechanisms (e.g., activation of the stress response systems) that may have contributed to this performance enhancement

Toward the Next Generation of Galanter-Influenced Scholars: The Influential Reach of a Law-and-Society Founder

To say that Professor Marc Galanter\u27s scholarship is diverse would be a woeful understatement. In his over forty years of writing, Galanter\u27s work has covered topics including (but not limited to) torts, contracts, constitutional law, comparative law, empirical legal studies, the legal profession, legal anthropology, and South Asian studies. With Galanter\u27s scholarship so heavily cited and respected, we see it as only fitting, particularly upon his recently turning seventy-five, to acknowledge his achievements in a symposium that reflects back on the years of his work. Serving as special editors to an issue forthcoming in the Duke Law School journal, Law and Contemporary Problems, we offer here a short essay that briefly summarizes the various works of the contributors participating in this dedication. Our authors provide a set of papers that cover a range of disciplines: law, sociology, political science, anthropology, history, and philosophy. The works embody Galanter\u27s long-held belief that not only should law be studied in an interdisciplinary manner but that it can be instrumentally used by both elites and grassroots activists to effectuate social change. The symposium-contributors also share another connection. Each views her or himself to be a student of Galanter\u27s. Some of these students have been directly mentored by Galanter while at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and have since gone on to academic posts at other institutions. Others are more distance-students who have been influenced either while studying elsewhere or while working as academics at different universities. The common link though is that this cohort is part of the next generation of Galanter-influenced scholars who will be carrying-on the lessons of Galanter\u27s vast scholarship for decades to come

Toward the Next Generation of Galanter-Influenced Scholars: The Influential Reach of a Law-and-Society Founder

To say that Professor Marc Galanter\u27s scholarship is diverse would be a woeful understatement. In his over forty years of writing, Galanter\u27s work has covered topics including (but not limited to) torts, contracts, constitutional law, comparative law, empirical legal studies, the legal profession, legal anthropology, and South Asian studies. With Galanter\u27s scholarship so heavily cited and respected, we see it as only fitting, particularly upon his recently turning seventy-five, to acknowledge his achievements in a symposium that reflects back on the years of his work. Serving as special editors to an issue forthcoming in the Duke Law School journal, Law and Contemporary Problems, we offer here a short essay that briefly summarizes the various works of the contributors participating in this dedication. Our authors provide a set of papers that cover a range of disciplines: law, sociology, political science, anthropology, history, and philosophy. The works embody Galanter\u27s long-held belief that not only should law be studied in an interdisciplinary manner but that it can be instrumentally used by both elites and grassroots activists to effectuate social change. The symposium-contributors also share another connection. Each views her or himself to be a student of Galanter\u27s. Some of these students have been directly mentored by Galanter while at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and have since gone on to academic posts at other institutions. Others are more distance-students who have been influenced either while studying elsewhere or while working as academics at different universities. The common link though is that this cohort is part of the next generation of Galanter-influenced scholars who will be carrying-on the lessons of Galanter\u27s vast scholarship for decades to come

The Success Of Chains: Customer Loyalty Or Customer Comfort?

The quest to understand customer behaviour has led researchers down many interesting paths. Is it satisfaction with the product, a feeling of belonging, a basic need, or perhaps something more? The literature lends itself to many theories and constructs that try to pin point what makes the consumer tick. Generally the literature defines both physical and psychological aspects of the consumer, that can help better predict the behaviour of the market. The research leaves many questions: Does one rely on the other? Are we measuring too much? Or are we missing the main points? This paper will look at the psychological aspect of the literature in trying to develop the Consumer Comfort construct (Spake, Beatty, Brockman and Crutchfield 2003), and to identify the basic determinates needed to measure buyer behaviour

Prosody and Intonation in Formosan Languages

The Formosan languages are the languages of the Aboriginal peoples of Taiwan. These languages are part of the Austronesian language family, and represent all but one primary branch of this family of 1,200+ languages. The Formosan languages are endangered, some critically so. While these languages have seen attention in the literature for their syntactic and phonological systems, little work has been done on their prosodic structure or intonation. This dissertation analyzes the prosodic structure and intonational phonology of Mantauran Rukai, Budai Rukai, Tsou, Kanakanavu, Hla’alua, Sandimen Paiwan, Piuma Paiwan, Kavalan, Amis, Bunun, Tgdaya Seediq, Truku Seediq, and Pazeh, based on original fieldwork. In addition, archival materials are incorporated into analyses of Tsou, Truku Seediq, Tgdaya Seediq, and Puyuma. This study finds that the Formosan languages show rich tonal phonologies in their intonational systems, and have complex interactions between stress assignment and morphology. Some examples include the following: Mantauran Rukai, previously described as an initial-stress language, actually has a complex stress assignment system with an alternation between first- and third-syllable stress, which as a system is unique in descriptions of stress assignment in the world’s languages. Hla’alua (Saaroa), previously described as having free variation between antepenultimate and penultimate stress, actually has an accent system in which some lexical items are consistently produced without an accented syllable, while others are. Hla’alua also has a rich tonal phonology assigned at two higher levels of the prosodic hierarchy. Kavalan has a unique rule that causes spreading tones to shift to the opposite domain edge when a certain number of tonal elements are aligned to the same boundary. Elements of the intonational phonology in Amis and Kavalan include glottal stops in addition to tonal elements. Bunun has distinct pitch accent melodies for words vs. clitics. In addition to the unique features found in individual Formosan languages, this dissertation’s comparative study finds at least two geographic areas within Taiwan in which features of prosody and intonation cluster. One is southwestern Taiwan, including Tsou, Kanakanavu, Hla’alua, and Rukai, which share features including a lack of glide-vowel contrasts and variability of initial H vs. L elements in certain prosodic domains. The other is eastern Taiwan, including Amis, Kavalan, and Puyuma, which share features including suppression of non-IP-final pitch accents, alternations between ultimate and pre-ultimate F0 peaks across intonational contours, and interactions between glottal stop epenthesis and intonational phonology

Study of manufacturing and measurement reproducibility on a laser textured structured surface

In recent years there has been increasing interest in the use of structured surfaces to provide specific functional performance. Such surfaces often consist of localised micro-scale surface features with predetermined geometries. The performance of the feature manufacturing process affects the functional performance of the surface, and can be assessed by measurement of the resulting surface features. Measurement of the resulting micromanufactured surface features necessitates use of areal optical surface topography instruments. However, conventional characterisation methods, based on areal surface texture parameters, often prove inadequate, and may fail to capture the relevant geometric properties needed for an effective dimensional verification. This paper investigates an alternative route to verification, based on the determination of geometric attributes of the microfabricated features. This approach allows for direct assessment of manufacturing process performance, by comparison of the geometric attributes with their nominal values. An example application is shown in which a micromachining process (laser texturing) is used to fabricate a periodic pattern of dimples, which provide a low friction bearing surface. In this paper, manufacturing process performance is assessed by characterisation of the diameter and out-of-roundness. Sources of uncertainty associated with these geometric parameters are also considered

Overcoming challenges and improvements in best-worst elicitation: Determining what matters to Japanese wheat millers

Knowing how to produce what types of wheat with what characteristics and in what quantities is a key challenge for producer countries like Australia to successfully export wheat to various markets that consume it. Both producers and consumers would benefit by better matching what is produced to what the market(s) prefer and are willing to pay to have produced. Analysis of decision-maker choices is difficult as there are only a small number of millers in any one country that make buying decisions. Moreover, the buyers tend to use an extensive list of quality characteristics to inform their purchases. This research provides details of some of the insights that have been gained into this decision making context using best-worst scaling (BWS), as a choice-based measurement and modelling approach. The survey instrument was administered using CAPI in personal interviews with Japanese flour millers. A small number of flour millers in Japan supply the entire government regulated market with products like Udon and Ramen noodles. Face-to-face interviews were conducted with 14 individuals from four different companies that account for about 74 per cent of wheat flour production in Japan. These individuals play various roles in wheat buying, production, distribution and marketing, such as production managers, quality control specialists and new product and scientific development managers. Based on the literature and pilot discussions with wheat buyers, a list was compiled of 31 factors (attributes) that could be considered by the individuals who influence wheat buying decisions. These included technical attributes (e.g., viscograph peak height; farinograph dough stability, etc) as well as attributes common in most business-to-business trade settings that are often cited as important in many agricultural trade contexts (e.g., price; country of origin; uniformity of shipment, etc)

An immersive system for browsing and visualizing surveillance video

HouseFly is an interactive data browsing and visualization system that synthesizes audio-visual recordings from multiple sensors, as well as the meta-data derived from those recordings, into a unified viewing experience. The system is being applied to study human behavior in both domestic and retail situations grounded in longitudinal video recordings. HouseFly uses an immersive video technique to display multiple streams of high resolution video using a realtime warping procedure that projects the video onto a 3D model of the recorded space. The system interface provides the user with simultaneous control over both playback rate and vantage point, enabling the user to navigate the data spatially and temporally. Beyond applications in video browsing, this system serves as an intuitive platform for visualizing patterns over time in a variety of multi-modal data, including person tracks and speech transcripts.United States. Office of Naval Research (Award no. N000140910187