Do Right-Wing Authoritarianism and Social Dominance Orientation Predict Anti-China Attitudes?

This paper addresses the question of why some Americans hold negative attitudes toward China’s government and people, and the impact that such attitudes have on their preferred China policies. We hypothesized that the effects of right-wing authoritarianism (RWA) and social dominance orientation (SDO) on support for tougher (containment) policies towards China would be mediated through negative attitudes toward China’s government and its people. We found only weak evidence of a mediated effect between SDO and containment attitudes in Study 1 and no evidence of mediated effects on containment attitudes in Study 2. Our findings indicate that the effects of RWA and SDO on containment attitudes are direct and account for incremental variation in containment attitudes beyond the effects of negative attitudes towards China’s government and people.N

Automated Generation of User Guidance by Combining Computation and Deduction

Herewith, a fairly old concept is published for the first time and named "Lucas Interpretation". This has been implemented in a prototype, which has been proved useful in educational practice and has gained academic relevance with an emerging generation of educational mathematics assistants (EMA) based on Computer Theorem Proving (CTP). Automated Theorem Proving (ATP), i.e. deduction, is the most reliable technology used to check user input. However ATP is inherently weak in automatically generating solutions for arbitrary problems in applied mathematics. This weakness is crucial for EMAs: when ATP checks user input as incorrect and the learner gets stuck then the system should be able to suggest possible next steps. The key idea of Lucas Interpretation is to compute the steps of a calculation following a program written in a novel CTP-based programming language, i.e. computation provides the next steps. User guidance is generated by combining deduction and computation: the latter is performed by a specific language interpreter, which works like a debugger and hands over control to the learner at breakpoints, i.e. tactics generating the steps of calculation. The interpreter also builds up logical contexts providing ATP with the data required for checking user input, thus combining computation and deduction. The paper describes the concepts underlying Lucas Interpretation so that open questions can adequately be addressed, and prerequisites for further work are provided.Comment: In Proceedings THedu'11, arXiv:1202.453

Customized Woven Carbon Fiber Electrodes for Bioelectrochemical Systems—A Study of Structural Parameters

Commercial carbon fiber (CF) fabrics are popular electrode materials for bioelectrochemical systems (BES), but are usually not optimized for the specific application. This study investigates BES-relevant material characteristics on fabric level, such as weave types and weave parameters. The two contrasting weave types plain and leno weave were characterized with respect to their envisaged application types: 1) BES with mainly advective flow regimes and 2) stirred systems, which could benefit from fluid flow through a fabric electrode. Experiments with batch and continuously fed pure cultures of Geobacter sulfurreducens PCA and Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 reveal that µm-scale electrode topologies are of limited use for the thick biofilms of G. sulfurreducens , but can boost S. oneidensis ’ current generation especially in batch and fed-batch reactors. For advective flow regimes, deeper layers of biofilm inside microporous electrodes are often mass transport limited, even with thin biofilms of S. oneidensis . Therefore, low porosity plain weave electrodes for advective flow operation as in wastewater treating BES should be thin and flat. A trade-off between maximized current density and electrode material utilization exists, which is optimized exemplarily for an advective flow operation. For stirred BES of biotechnological applications, a flow-through of electrolyte is desired. For this, leno weave fabrics with pores at cm-scale are produced from 100% CF for the first time. In a preliminary evaluation, they outperform plain weave fabrics. Mass transfer investigations in stirred BES demonstrate that the large pores enable efficient electrode utilization at lower power input in terms of stirring speed

Biomineral repair of Abalone shell apertures

The shell of the gastropod mollusc, abalone, is comprised of nacre with an outer prismatic layer that is composed of either calcite or aragonite or both, depending on the species. A striking characteristic of the abalone shell is the row of apertures along the dorsal margin. As the organism and shell grow, new apertures are formed and the preceding ones are filled in. Detailed investigations, using electron backscatter diffraction, of the infill in three species of abalone: Haliotis asinina, Haliotis gigantea and Haliotis rufescens reveals that, like the shell, the infill is composed mainly of nacre with an outer prismatic layer. The infill prismatic layer has identical mineralogy as the original shell prismatic layer. In H. asinina and H. gigantea, the prismatic layer of the shell and infill are made of aragonite while in H. rufescens both are composed of calcite. Abalone builds the infill material with the same high level of biological control, replicating the structure, mineralogy and crystallographic orientation as for the shell. The infill of abalone apertures presents us with insight into what is, effectively, shell repair

Исследование последовательности импульсов тормозного излучения малогабаритного бетатрона

Разработана имитационная модель потока импульсного тормозного излучения и реализована в подпрограмме на MathCad. Адаптирована модель потока импульсного тормозного излучения к имитационной модели формирования цифровых радиографических изображений. Исследовано влияние параметров исходного потока тормозного излучения на качество цифровых радиографических изображений. Проведён цикл натурных экспериментов по оценке изменения параметров потока импульсов регистрируемого излучения с цифровых детекторов на этапах формирования радиографического изображения на комплексе высокоэнергетической цифровой радиографии Томского политехнического университета.A simulation model of pulsed radiation flux and implemented in a subroutine on MathCad is available. Pulse bremsstrahlung flow model for a simulation model of digital radiographic image formation Adapted. Effect of source stream parameters. Experiments on the study of changes in the parameters of the pulse flux are recorded using digital detectors at the stages of radiographic image formation on the complexes of high-energy digital radiography of the Tomsk Polytechnic University

A paradox of syntactic priming: why response tendencies show priming for passives, and response latencies show priming for actives

Speakers tend to repeat syntactic structures across sentences, a phenomenon called syntactic priming. Although it has been suggested that repeating syntactic structures should result in speeded responses, previous research has focused on effects in response tendencies. We investigated syntactic priming effects simultaneously in response tendencies and response latencies for active and passive transitive sentences in a picture description task. In Experiment 1, there were priming effects in response tendencies for passives and in response latencies for actives. However, when participants' pre-existing preference for actives was altered in Experiment 2, syntactic priming occurred for both actives and passives in response tendencies as well as in response latencies. This is the first investigation of the effects of structure frequency on both response tendencies and latencies in syntactic priming. We discuss the implications of these data for current theories of syntactic processing