Trust your instincts:The relationship between intuitive decision making and happiness

Epstein (1994; 2003) proposed that there are two cognitive information processing systems that operate in parallel: the intuitive thinking style and the rational thinking style. Decisional fit occurs when the preferred thinking style is applied to making a decision and research has shown that this fit increases the value of the outcome of a decision. Additionally, decisional fit leads to less regret, even when post hoc evaluations show the decision to be incorrect. It has not yet been determined whether decisional fit correlates with greater happiness and hence, the purpose of the current study was to investigate the difference between styles of thinking, styles of decision making and the impact of decisional fit on happiness scores. Individual differences in thinking and decision style were measured using an online interactive questionnaire (N = 100), and an ANOVA, hierarchical multiple regression, and a series of t-tests, were used to investigate the relationship between thinking style, decision style, decisional fit, and happiness, thereby addressing a gap in the existing literature. The major findings from the current study show that intuitive thinking has a strong positive correlation with happiness; that intuitive thinkers are more likely to utilize intuitive decisional style, than rational thinkers; and that when both rational and intuitive thinkers experienced decisional fit, higher ratings of happiness were reported. Explanations and recommendations for future studies are outlined in the discussion

Anisotropic Acoustic Plasmons in Black Phosphorus

Recently, it was demonstrated that a graphene/dielectric/metal configuration can support acoustic plasmons, which exhibit extreme plasmon confinement an order of magnitude higher than that of conventional graphene plasmons. Here, we investigate acoustic plasmons supported in a monolayer and multilayers of black phosphorus (BP) placed just a few nanometers above a conducting plate. In the presence of a conducting plate, the acoustic plasmon dispersion for the armchair direction is found to exhibit the characteristic linear scaling in the mid- and far-infrared regime while it largely deviates from that in the long wavelength limit and near-infrared regime. For the zigzag direction, such scaling behavior is not evident due to relatively tighter plasmon confinement. Further, we demonstrate a new design for an acoustic plasmon resonator that exhibits higher plasmon confinement and resonance efficiency than BP ribbon resonators in the mid-infrared and longer wavelength regime. Theoretical framework and new resonator design studied here provide a practical route toward the experimental verification of the acoustic plasmons in BP and open up the possibility to develop novel plasmonic and optoelectronic devices that can leverage its strong in-plane anisotropy and thickness-dependent band gap

Transduktion und Zellzyklusregulation durch das rekombinante Tat-p27(KIP1)-Fusionsprotein in Neuroblastomzellen

Das Neuroblastom ist eine der häufigsten Tumorerkrankung im Kindesalter. Das Tumorsuppressorprotein, p27(KIP1), ist ein prognostischer Faktor bei Neuroblastomerkrankungen und korreliert positiv mit einer guten Prognose der Erkrankung. Das Tat-Fusionsprotein ist ein erst kürzlich beschriebenes Konstrukt für die Proteintransduktion und stellt eine Alternative zur konventionellen Gentherapie dar. In der vorliegenden Arbeit wurde das Tat-p27(KIP1)-Fusionsprotein hergestellt und dieses in die Neuroblastomzellen substituiert und die darausfolgende Konsequenz bezüglich des Zellzyklus untersucht, um so die prognosebestimmende Wirkung des p27(KIP1)-Proteins bei Neuroblastomen besser verstehen zu können

Crossing Boundaries and Valuing Diversity

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Environmental enteric dysfunction and the fecal microbiota in malawian children

Environmental enteric dysfunction (EED) is often measured with a dual sugar absorption test and implicated as a causative factor in childhood stunting. Disturbances in the gut microbiota are hypothesized to be a mechanism by which EED is exacerbated, although this supposition lacks support. We performed 16S ribosomal RNA gene sequencing of fecal samples from 81 rural Malawian children with varying degrees of EED to determine which bacterial taxa were associated with EED. At the phyla level, Proteobacteria abundance is reduced with severe EED. Among bacterial genera, Megasphaera, Mitsuokella, and Sutterella were higher in EED and Succinivibrio, Klebsiella, and Clostridium_XI were lower in EED. Bacterial diversity did not vary with the extent of EED. Though EED is a condition that is typically believed to affect the proximal small bowel, and our focus was on stool, our data do suggest that there are intraluminal microbial differences that reflect, or plausibly lead to, EED

Water turned into wine : comparing and contrasting classical Arabic, Lebanese, Moroccan and Maltese versions

Typologically, the modem Maltese language is poised between the Arabic dialectal bundle, on the one hand, and Romance languages, particularly Sicilian and Italian, on the other. Moreover, Maltese is unevenly poised between eastern and western dialectal varieties of Arabic, with a considerable inclination towards the Maghribi dialects. One way of observing the varying degrees of correspondence between Maltese and Arabic is to compare and contrast Arabic (Classical, Lebanese, and Moroccan) and Maltese translations of a literary text, in this case, an excerpt from the Gospel of St. John. Lebanese and Moroccan represent eastern and western Arabic typologies respectively. The arbitrary choice of a relatively short excerpt - John 2: 1-12 - precludes any accurate pronouncements about the areal affiliationls of the Arabic element in Maltese. The aim of this study is limited to the consideration of issues of fonnal correspondence and translation equivalence via the textual segmentation of the four versions under consideration.peer-reviewe

'Nordic values’ and schooling during COVID-19 : how to balance comprehensive education and sustainable pandemic regulations

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Modeling of system knowledge for efficient agile manufacturing : tool evaluation, selection and implementation scenario in SMEs

In the manufacturing world, knowledge is fundamental in order to achieve effective and efficient real time decision making. In order to make manufacturing system knowledge available to the decision maker it has to be first captured and then modelled. Therefore tools that provide a suitable means for capturing and representation of manufacturing system knowledge are required in several types of industrial sectors and types of company’s (large, SME). A literature review about best practice for capturing requirements for simulation development and system knowledge modeling has been conducted. The aim of this study was to select the best tool for manufacturing system knowledge modelling in an open-source environment. In order to select this tool, different criteria were selected, based on which several tools were analyzed and rated. An exemplary use case was then developed using the selected tool, Systems Modeling Language (SysML). Therefore, the best practice has been studied, evaluated, selected and then applied to two industrial use cases by the use of a selected opens source tool.peer-reviewe