1,670 research outputs found
Compulsory military service and personality development
Compulsory military service is a uniformed life event disrupting the lives of young men (and sometimes women) in countries with conscription. Consequently, the development of personality and subjective well-being during service was investigated using representative population data from the German Socio-Economic Panel. In line with previous findings, men who chose military service revealed descriptively lower agreeableness than those who did civil service (d = -0.33). Contrasting previous research, agreeableness ratings remained stable in both groups. Conscientiousness increased in both groups (n2 = .067). The potentially disruptive nature of conscription is not reflected in the present longitudinal results.Overall, personality traits and life satisfaction appear to remain remarkably stable despite the substantial changes of living environments and daily routines associated with military service
How to Get Better: Taking Notes Mediates the Effect of a Video Tutorial on Number Series
In recent studies, test-score increases have been shown in rule-based intelligence test tasks,
such as number series, after watching a corresponding video tutorial. An open question remains
regarding the mechanisms involved. Specifically, taking notes to describe the relations between
numbers might be linked to test scores, and is hypothesized to mediate the effect of a number series
video tutorial on number series test scores. Therefore, an experimental group (EG) watching a
number series video tutorial (n = 58) was compared with a control group (CG) watching an irrelevant
tutorial (n = 52) before working on number series items. Results revealed higher number series
scores in the EG than the CG (d = .48), more items with provided notes in the EG than in the CG
(d = .41), and substantial correlations between the number of items with notes and the number series
sum scores in both groups (EG: r = .66; CG: r = .75). The effect of the video tutorial on the number
series sum score was mediated by the number of items with notes (indirect effect = 3.41, SE = 1.74).
Theoretical and practical implications as well as future research directions are discussed
Network of recurrent events for the Olami-Feder-Christensen model
We numerically study the dynamics of a discrete spring-block model introduced
by Olami, Feder and Christensen (OFC) to mimic earthquakes and investigate to
which extent this simple model is able to reproduce the observed spatiotemporal
clustering of seismicty. Following a recently proposed method to characterize
such clustering by networks of recurrent events [Geophys. Res. Lett. {\bf 33},
L1304, 2006], we find that for synthetic catalogs generated by the OFC model
these networks have many non-trivial statistical properties. This includes
characteristic degree distributions -- very similar to what has been observed
for real seismicity. There are, however, also significant differences between
the OFC model and earthquake catalogs indicating that this simple model is
insufficient to account for certain aspects of the spatiotemporal clustering of
seismicity.Comment: 11 pages, 16 figure
Inferring functional extinction based on sighting records
© The Author(s), 2016. This is the author's version of the work and is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License. The definitive version was published in Biological Conservation 199 (2016): 84-87, doi:10.1016/j.biocon.2016.04.034.The term functional extinction is used to describe a permanent failure of reproduction or
recruitment in a population. Functional extinction results in a truncation of the age distribution,
but this can be very difficult to detect in poorly studied populations. Here, we describe a novel
statistical method for detecting functional extinction based on a sighting record of individuals of
known or estimated ages. The method is based on a simple population dynamics model and
simulation results show that it works well even with limited data. The method is illustrated using
a sighting record of the ship sturgeon (Acipenser nudiventris) in the Danube River. The results
indicate that this population is functionally extinct, most likely by 2002. Management
implications of this finding are discussed.The authors also acknowledge the sponsorship
provided by the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Federal German Ministry for
Education and Research, as well as the support by the Project No. 173045, funded by the
Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development of the Republic of Serbia.2017-05-1
Seismic Interferometry at the TIMO2-network, Germany
Using seismic interferometry, we analyze the seismic noise wavefield around the city of Landau, Germany. The crosscorrelation functions (CCFs) are investigated with respect to signals which might contain information on the underground and its temporal variations. The used data set comes from the TIMO2-project (TIMO: Deep Structure of the Central Upper Rhine Graben). Since the summer of 2009, seismic stations have been installed especially to detect induced seismicity in the region of Landau. The obtained CCFs are dominated by signals with frequencies between 0.4 and 0.8 Hz which are strongly asymmetric. We will present the results of the ongoing work to characterize and identify the source(s) of these signals
Extreme value and record statistics in heavy-tailed processes with long-range memory
Extreme events are an important theme in various areas of science because of
their typically devastating effects on society and their scientific
complexities. The latter is particularly true if the underlying dynamics does
not lead to independent extreme events as often observed in natural systems.
Here, we focus on this case and consider stationary stochastic processes that
are characterized by long-range memory and heavy-tailed distributions, often
called fractional L\'evy noise. While the size distribution of extreme events
is not affected by the long-range memory in the asymptotic limit and remains a
Fr\'echet distribution, there are strong finite-size effects if the memory
leads to persistence in the underlying dynamics. Moreover, we show that this
persistence is also present in the extreme events, which allows one to make a
time-dependent hazard assessment of future extreme events based on events
observed in the past. This has direct applications in the field of space
weather as we discuss specifically for the case of the solar power influx into
the magnetosphere. Finally, we show how the statistics of records, or
record-breaking extreme events, is affected by the presence of long-range
memory.Comment: 15 pages, 20 figures, accepted for publication in AGU Monographs:
Complexity and Extreme Events in Geoscienc
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