Dopant for sodium niobate capacitor dielectric

Sodium niobate dielectric doped with barium titanate has potential application in integrated circuits with high packing densities and voltage levels below 5 to 8 volts

Benign familial neonatal convulsions: abnormal intrauterine movements, provocation by feeding and ICTAL EEG

An infant with benign familial neonatal convulsions had abnormal movements during the last 2 months of pregnancy suggestive of intrauterine seizures. His postnatal seizures, one of which was captured by electroencephalography, had both partial and generalized features. Most seizures appeared to be provoked by feeding

Ультрафлокуляция – как метод повышения эффективности процесса извлечения тонкодисперсного угля из хвостов обогащения

На прикладі хвостів вуглезбагачення ОФ "Распадська" (р. Междуріченськ Кемеровської області, РФ) встановлено, що використання ультрафлокулярної обробки дає нижче-наступні переваги при витяганні тонкодисперсного вугілля методом седиментації в радіальному згущувачі: • зниження витрати флокулянтів – в 2,5-3,5 разу. • збільшення витягання вугільного концентрату з хвостів на 23…26%. • зменшення зольності концентрату, вилученого з хвостів з 18 до 12%. • зменшення вологості прес-фільтраційного кека концентрату, вилученого з хвостів з 40 до 35%.На примере хвостов углеобогащения ОФ "Распадская" (г. Междуреченск Кемеровской области, РФ) установлено, что использование ультрафлокулярной обработки дает нижеследующие преимущества при извлечении тонкодисперсного угля методом седиментации в радиальном сгустителе: • снижение расхода флокулянтов – в 2,5-3,5 раза. • увеличение извлечения угольного концентрата из хвостов на 23…26%. • уменьшение зольности концентрата, извлекаемого из хвостов с 18 до 12%. • уменьшение влажности пресс-фильтрационного кека концентрата, извлекаемого из хвостов с 40 до 35%

Personality traits below facets: The consensual validity, longitudinal stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances

It has been argued that facets do not represent the bottom of the personality hierarchy-even more specific personality characteristics, nuances, could be useful for describing and understanding individuals and their differences. Combining 2 samples of German twins, we assessed the consensual validity (correlations across different observers), rank-order stability, and heritability of nuances. Personality nuances were operationalized as the 240 items of the Revised NEO Personality Inventory (NEO-PI-R). Their attributes were examined by analyzing item residuals, controlling for the variance of the facet the item had been assigned to and all other facets. Most nuances demonstrated significant (p < .0002) cross-method agreement and rank-order stability. A substantial proportion of them (48% in self-reports, 20% in informant ratings, and 50% in combined ratings) demonstrated a significant (p < .0002) component of additive genetic variance, whereas evidence for environmental influences shared by twins was modest. Applying a procedure to estimate stability and heritability of true scores of item residuals yielded estimates comparable with those of higher-order personality traits, with median estimates of rank-order stability and heritability being .77 and .52, respectively. Few nuances demonstrated robust associations with age and gender, but many showed incremental, conceptually meaningful, and replicable (across methods and/or samples) predictive validity for a range of interest domains and body mass index. We argue that these narrow personality characteristics constitute a valid level of the personality hierarchy. They may be especially useful for providing a deep and contextualized description of the individual, but also for the prediction of specific outcomes

The Genetic Foundations of Attitude Formation: The Case of Left-Right Political Orientations

Kandler C, Bell E, Shikishima C, Yamagata S, Riemann R. The Genetic Foundations of Attitude Formation: The Case of Left-Right Political Orientations. In: R. A. S, S. M. K, eds. Emerging Trends in the Social and Behavioral Sciences: Interdisciplinary Directions. In Press.Since the pioneering work of Eaves and Eysenck (1974) appeared in Nature some 40 years ago,psychologists, sociologists, political scientists, and behavioral geneticists have investigated the effects of nature and nurture on the formation of social attitudes. It has consistently been found that manifestations of social attitudes (i.e., preferences, values, and beliefs pertaining to things like politics, religion, the treatment of ingroups and outgroups, etc.) are genetically influenced. More recently, researchers have focused their efforts on the psycho-physiological pathways between gene activity and attitudes. In particular, a broad body of research examines how personality traits may be a link between genetic factors and political orientations. The latter are typically treated as either a single left-right dimension or divided into two core aspects: resistance to change/authoritarian conservatism and acceptance of inequality/social dominance orientation. In this article, we provide an overview of this research, present some findings from our recent international behavioral genetic study on the topic, and identify key issues for future research. We suggest that future studies treat attitude formation as a complex process in which genetic factors and the psycho-physiological phenomena that stem from them are affected by the surrounding social environment and culture. Such research will require: (1) international study designs capturing individual and cultural levels of variation; and: (2) interdisciplinary collaboration among scientists and researchers in various fields of study such as genetics, psychology, sociology, political science, neuroscience, and human biology

A generative inference framework for analysing patterns of cultural change in sparse population data with evidence for fashion trends in LBK culture

Cultural change can be quantified by temporal changes in frequency of different cultural artefacts and it is a central question to identify what underlying cultural transmission processes could have caused the observed frequency changes. Observed changes, however, often describe the dynamics in samples of the population of artefacts, whereas transmission processes act on the whole population. Here we develop a modelling framework aimed at addressing this inference problem. To do so, we firstly generate population structures from which the observed sample could have been drawn randomly and then determine theoretical samples at a later time t2 produced under the assumption that changes in frequencies are caused by a specific transmission process. Thereby we also account for the potential effect of time-averaging processes in the generation of the observed sample. Subsequent statistical comparisons (e.g. using Bayesian inference) of the theoretical and observed samples at t2 can establish which processes could have produced the observed frequency data. In this way, we infer underlying transmission processes directly from available data without any equilibrium assumption. We apply this framework to a dataset describing pottery from settlements of some of the first farmers in Europe (the LBK culture) and conclude that the observed frequency dynamic of different types of decorated pottery is consistent with age-dependent selection, a preference for 'young' pottery types which is potentially indicative of fashion trends

Personality traits below facets:The consensual validity, longitudinal stability, heritability, and utility of personality nuances

Mõttus R, Kandler C, Bleidorn W, Riemann R, McCrae RR. Personality Traits Below Facets: The Consensual Validity, Longitudinal Stability, Heritability, and Utility of Personality Nuances. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology. 2016;112(3):474-490

Airborne observations of the Eyjafjalla volcano ash cloud over Europe during air space closure in April and May 2010

© Author(s) 2011. This work is distributed under the Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 LicenseAirborne lidar and in-situ measurements of aerosols and trace gases were performed in volcanic ash plumes over Europe between Southern Germany and Iceland with the Falcon aircraft during the eruption period of the Eyjafjalla1 volcano between 19 April and 18 May 2010. Flight planning and measurement analyses were supported by a refined Meteosat ash product and trajectory model analysis. The volcanic ash plume was observed with lidar directly over the volcano and up to a distance of 2700 km downwind, and up to 120 h plume ages. Aged ash layers were between a few 100 m to 3 km deep, occurred between 1 and 7 km altitude, and were typically 100 to 300 km wide. Particles collected by impactors had diameters up to 20 μm diameter, with size and age dependent composition. Ash mass concentrations were derived from optical particle spectrometers for a particle density of 2.6 g cm-3 and various values of the refractive index (RI, real part: 1.59; 3 values for the imaginary part: 0, 0.004 and 0.008). The mass concentrations, effective diameters and related optical properties were compared with ground-based lidar observations. Theoretical considerations of particle sedimentation constrain the particle diameters to those obtained for the lower RI values. The ash mass concentration results have an uncertainty of a factor of two. The maximum ash mass concentration encountered during the 17 flights with 34 ash plume penetrations was below 1 mg m-3. The Falcon flew in ash clouds up to about 0.8 mg m-3 for a few minutes and in an ash cloud with approximately 0.2 mg -3 mean-concentration for about one hour without engine damage. The ash plumes were rather dry and correlated with considerable CO and SO2 increases and O3 decreases. To first order, ash concentration and SO2 mixing ratio in the plumes decreased by a factor of two within less than a day. In fresh plumes, the SO2 and CO concentration increases were correlated with the ash mass concentration. The ash plumes were often visible slantwise as faint dark layers, even for concentrations below 0.1 mg m-3. The large abundance of volatile Aitken mode particles suggests previous nucleation of sulfuric acid droplets. The effective diameters range between 0.2 and 3 μm with considerable surface and volume contributions from the Aitken and coarse mode aerosol, respectively. The distal ash mass flux on 2 May was of the order of 500 (240-1600) kgs -1. The volcano induced about 10 (2.5-50) Tg of distal ash mass and about 3 (0.6-23) Tg of SO2 during the whole eruption period. The results of the Falcon flights were used to support the responsible agencies in their decisions concerning air traffic in the presence of volcanic ash.Peer reviewe