(Dis)orientation and Design Preferences Within an Unfamiliar Care Environment: A Content Analysis of Older Adults’ Qualitative Reports After Route Learning

© The Author(s) 2020. Ensuring that environments are designed to cater for those with decreasing orientation, perceptual and mobility skills, is an example of how environments are being changed to become more age and dementia friendly. However, environmental design should directly involve potential users of the environment to ensure that their views are accounted for. Four open-ended questions, focusing on orientation strategies, reasons for disorientation, and design preferences, were given to 32 older adults after they had completed a route learning task through an unfamiliar environment. A Content Analysis found a strong focus on participants’ ability to memorize routes based on verbally encoding the route and on their ability to remember landmarks, with the reports linking closely to cognitive theories of navigation. Design suggestions included the importance of a homely and welcoming environment, memorable features, and access to the outdoors. The findings can be used inform age and dementia friendly design principles

Minimum drinking age laws effects on American youth 1976-1987

https://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/137895/1/occ28.pd

Renormalization of the singular attractive 1/r41/r^4 potential

We study the radial Schr\"odinger equation for a particle of mass $m$ in the field of a singular attractive $g^2/{r^4}$ potential with particular emphasis on the bound states problem. Using the regularization method of Beane \textit{et al.}, we solve analytically the corresponding ``renormalization group flow" equation. We find in agreement with previous studies that its solution exhibits a limit cycle behavior and has infinitely many branches. We show that a continuous choice for the solution corresponds to a given fixed number of bound states and to low energy phase shifts that vary continuously with energy. We study in detail the connection between this regularization method and a conventional method modifying the short range part of the potential with an infinitely repulsive hard core. We show that both methods yield bound states results in close agreement even though the regularization method of Beane \textit{et al.} does not include explicitly any new scale in the problem. We further illustrate the use of the regularization method in the computation of electron bound states in the field of neutral polarizable molecules without dipole moment. We find the binding energy of s-wave polarization bound electrons in the field of C$_{60}$ molecules to be 17 meV for a scattering length corresponding to a hard core radius of the size of the molecule radius ($\sim 3.37$ \AA). This result can be further compared with recent two-parameter fits using the Lennard-Jones potential yielding binding energies ranging from 3 to 25 meV.Comment: 8 page

Reproductive success through high pollinator visitation rates despite self incompatibility in an endangered wallflower

PREMISE OF THE STUDY: Self incompatibility (SI) in rare plants presents a unique challenge—SI protects plants from inbreeding depression, but requires a sufficient number of mates and xenogamous pollination. Does SI persist in an endangered polyploid? Is pollinator visitation sufficient to ensure reproductive success? Is there evidence of inbreeding/outbreeding depression? We characterized the mating system, primary pollinators, pollen limitation, and inbreeding/outbreeding depression in Erysimum teretifolium to guide conservation efforts. METHODS: We compared seed production following self pollination and within- and between-population crosses. Pollen tubes were visualized after self pollinations and between-population pollinations. Pollen limitation was tested in the field. Pollinator observations were quantified using digital video. Inbreeding/outbreeding depression was assessed in progeny from self and outcross pollinations at early and later developmental stages. KEY RESULTS: Self-pollination reduced seed set by 6.5× and quadrupled reproductive failure compared with outcross pollination. Pollen tubes of some self pollinations were arrested at the stigmatic surface. Seed-set data indicated strong SI, and fruit-set data suggested partial SI. Pollinator diversity and visitation rates were high, and there was no evidence of pollen limitation. Inbreeding depression (δ) was weak for early developmental stages and strong for later developmental stages, with no evidence of outbreeding depression. CONCLUSIONS: The rare hexaploid E. teretifolium is largely self incompatible and suffers from late-acting inbreeding depression. Reproductive success in natural populations was accomplished through high pollinator visitation rates consistent with a lack of pollen limitation. Future reproductive health for this species will require large population sizes with sufficient mates and a robust pollinator community

Epitaxial checkerboard arrangement of nanorods in ZnMnGaO4 films studied by x-ray diffraction

The intriguing nano-structural properties of a ZnMnGaO4 film epitaxially grown on MgO (001) substrate have been investigated using synchrotron radiation-based x-ray diffraction. The ZnMnGaO4 film consisted of a self-assembled checkerboard (CB) structure with perfectly aligned and regularly spaced vertical nanorods. The lattice parameters of the orthorhombic and rotated tetragonal phases of the CB structure were analyzed using H-K, H-L, and K-L cross sections of the reciprocal space maps measured around various symmetric and asymmetric reflections of the spinel structure. We demonstrate that the symmetry of atomic displacements at the phases boundaries provides the means for coherent coexistence of two domains types within the volume of the film

Non-Adiabatic Potential-Energy Surfaces by Constrained Density-Functional Theory

Non-adiabatic effects play an important role in many chemical processes. In order to study the underlying non-adiabatic potential-energy surfaces (PESs), we present a locally-constrained density-functional theory approach, which enables us to confine electrons to sub-spaces of the Hilbert space, e.g. to selected atoms or groups of atoms. This allows to calculate non-adiabatic PESs for defined charge and spin states of the chosen subsystems. The capability of the method is demonstrated by calculating non-adiabatic PESs for the scattering of a sodium and a chlorine atom, for the interaction of a chlorine molecule with a small metal cluster, and for the dissociation of an oxygen molecule at the Al(111) surface.Comment: 11 pages including 7 figures; related publications can be found at http://www.fhi-berlin.mpg.de/th/th.htm

Lights, Camera, Action! Exploring Effects of Visual Distractions on Completion of Security Tasks

Human errors in performing security-critical tasks are typically blamed on the complexity of those tasks. However, such errors can also occur because of (possibly unexpected) sensory distractions. A sensory distraction that produces negative effects can be abused by the adversary that controls the environment. Meanwhile, a distraction with positive effects can be artificially introduced to improve user performance. The goal of this work is to explore the effects of visual stimuli on the performance of security-critical tasks. To this end, we experimented with a large number of subjects who were exposed to a range of unexpected visual stimuli while attempting to perform Bluetooth Pairing. Our results clearly demonstrate substantially increased task completion times and markedly lower task success rates. These negative effects are noteworthy, especially, when contrasted with prior results on audio distractions which had positive effects on performance of similar tasks. Experiments were conducted in a novel (fully automated and completely unattended) experimental environment. This yielded more uniform experiments, better scalability and significantly lower financial and logistical burdens. We discuss this experience, including benefits and limitations of the unattended automated experiment paradigm

Excitation of superconducting qubits from hot non-equilibrium quasiparticles

Superconducting qubits probe environmental defects such as non-equilibrium quasiparticles, an important source of decoherence. We show that "hot" non-equilibrium quasiparticles, with energies above the superconducting gap, affect qubits differently from quasiparticles at the gap, implying qubits can probe the dynamic quasiparticle energy distribution. For hot quasiparticles, we predict a non-neligable increase in the qubit excited state probability P_e. By injecting hot quasiparticles into a qubit, we experimentally measure an increase of P_e in semi-quantitative agreement with the model and rule out the typically assumed thermal distribution.Comment: Main paper: 5 pages, 5 figures. Supplement: 1 page, 1 figure, 1 table. Updated to user-prepared accepted version. Key changes: Supplement added, Introduction rewritten, Figs.2,3,5 revised, Fig.4 adde

Grounding knowledge and normative valuation in agent-based action and scientific commitment

Philosophical investigation in synthetic biology has focused on the knowledge-seeking questions pursued, the kind of engineering techniques used, and on the ethical impact of the products produced. However, little work has been done to investigate the processes by which these epistemological, metaphysical, and ethical forms of inquiry arise in the course of synthetic biology research. An attempt at this work relying on a particular area of synthetic biology will be the aim of this chapter. I focus on the reengineering of metabolic pathways through the manipulation and construction of small DNA-based devices and systems synthetic biology. Rather than focusing on the engineered products or ethical principles that result, I will investigate the processes by which these arise. As such, the attention will be directed to the activities of practitioners, their manipulation of tools, and the use they make of techniques to construct new metabolic devices. Using a science-in-practice approach, I investigate problems at the intersection of science, philosophy of science, and sociology of science. I consider how practitioners within this area of synthetic biology reconfigure biological understanding and ethical categories through active modelling and manipulation of known functional parts, biological pathways for use in the design of microbial machines to solve problems in medicine, technology, and the environment. We might describe this kind of problem-solving as relying on what Helen Longino referred to as “social cognition” or the type of scientific work done within what Hasok Chang calls “systems of practice”. My aim in this chapter will be to investigate the relationship that holds between systems of practice within metabolic engineering research and social cognition. I will attempt to show how knowledge and normative valuation are generated from this particular network of practitioners. In doing so, I suggest that the social nature of scientific inquiry is ineliminable to both knowledge acquisition and ethical evaluations

Unbound states of 32Cl and the 31S(p,\gamma)32Cl reaction rate

The 31S(p,\gamma)32Cl reaction is expected to provide the dominant break-out path from the SiP cycle in novae and is important for understanding enrichments of sulfur observed in some nova ejecta. We studied the 32S(3He,t)32Cl charge-exchange reaction to determine properties of proton-unbound levels in 32Cl that have previously contributed significant uncertainties to the 31S(p,\gamma)32Cl reaction rate. Measured triton magnetic rigidities were used to determine excitation energies in 32Cl. Proton-branching ratios were obtained by detecting decay protons from unbound 32Cl states in coincidence with tritons. An improved 31S(p,\gamma)32Cl reaction rate was calculated including robust statistical and systematic uncertainties