Numbers and Units Affect Goal Pursuit Organization and Motivation

Goals are one of the most ubiquitous drivers of behavior. Despite the wealth of research on goal pursuit, less is known about how individuals organize their goal pursuit in the first place. This manuscript represents one of the first studies to provide insight into quantitative goal organization, proposing that the unit/numerical value in which a goal is described influences goal pursuit organization. Specifying a superordinate goal in units with larger numbers (e.g., studying for an exam for 120 minutes per week), rather than with smaller numbers (2 hours per week), leads to a goal pursuit structure that consists of more, but smaller subgoals. We also find that units with larger compared to smaller numbers tend to have a positive effect on goal motivation (i.e. more likely to start the goal earlier and to finish it). Finally, this positive effect on goal motivation is attenuated when consumers focus is on the number of subgoals left (rather than completed) while pursuing the overarching goal. We believe that changing units may be an easyto-implement nudge for anyone (e.g., marketers, managers, public policymakers, behavioral therapists, etc.) who wants to increase the likelihood that individuals use a particular goal pursuit structure

An Analysis Grid for Privacy-related Properties of Social Network Systems

International audienceSocial Network Systems (SNSs) are the predominant kind of web service around the world. They attract many users seeking popularity, entertainment and network building, along with ease of use. Most current SNSs are based on centralized designs, which are less likely to improve privacy since there is a single and central authority with exclusive administration control over user information. Many proposals have been introduced that work towards decentralizing the infrastructure support in order to enhance privacy in SNSs. However, designing decentralized social network systems (DSNS) driven by privacy is a hard task because privacy is impacted by most design choices. This paper proposes a multicriteria analysis grid designed to evaluate several properties of SNSs related to privacy trade-offs. Based on the analysis grid result, this paper also presents the application of lattice-based tools to classify and visualize social network systems in privacy-related hierarchies

An approach for detection of glomeruli in multisite digital pathology

peer reviewedWe present a novel bioimage informatics workflow that combines Icy and Cytomine software and their algorithms to enable large-scale analysis of digital slides from multiple sites. In particular, we apply this workflow on renal biopsies and evaluate empirically our approach for the automatic detection of glomeruli in hundreds of tissue sections

Détection automatique de glomérules en pathologie digitale

Dans cet article, nous proposons une méthodologie de détection de glomérules au sein d’images de biopsies rénales. Elle combine des techniques de traitement d’images et d’apprentissage supervisé. Nous évaluons l’approche sur des images présentant plusieurs sources de variations et montrons que les comptages automatiques sont très bien corrélés avec les comptages des expert

Super-dry reforming of methane intensifies CO2 utilization via Le Chatelier's principle

Efficient CO2 transformation from a waste product to a carbon source for chemicals and fuels will require reaction conditions that effect its reduction. We developed a "super-dry" CH4 reforming reaction for enhanced CO production from CH4 and CO2. We used Ni/MgAl2O4 as a CH4-reforming catalyst, Fe2O3/MgAl2O4 as a solid oxygen carrier, and CaO/Al2O3 as a CO2 sorbent. The isothermal coupling of these three different processes resulted in higher CO production as compared with that of conventional dry reforming, by avoiding back reactions with water. The reduction of iron oxide was intensified through CH4 conversion to syngas over Ni and CO2 extraction and storage as CaCO3. CO2 is then used for iron reoxidation and CO production, exploiting equilibrium shifts effected with inert gas sweeping (Le Chatelier's principle). Super-dry reforming uses up to three CO2 molecules per CH4 and offers a high CO space-time yield of 7.5 millimole CO per second per kilogram of iron at 1023 kelvin