UNDER-CONFIDENT WOMEN AND OVER-CONFIDENT MEN: GENDER AND SENSE OF COMPETENCE IN A SIMULATED NEGOTIATION

Our careers as negotiators start early; students enter law school with years of experience in the art. It was therefore surprising to us that many of our students in the Lawyering Program at New York University School of Law seemed to feel inadequate after conducting a simulated negotiation. In this exercise, students were cast as attorneys for either a homeowner or for a contractor in a dispute over a botched construction project, and were instructed to resolve the matter. In teaching the exercise, we were repeatedly struck by a jarring sense of disjunction between our perceptions of students\u27 success in planning for and executing the negotiation and the students\u27 sense of their own success in these matters. Some students appeared to be consistently self-deprecating, although their work was usually adequate and often exemplary. Our impression was that this group was predominantly comprised of women. We thought that other students, usually men, seemed inordinately satisfied with performances that we found lacking in important respects; often students in this latter group had overlooked entire dimensions of planning or conducting the negotiation, and did not expect to learn appreciably from the critique process that followed the performance phase. The gender split among the students appeared to be more prominent in this negotiation simulation than in other work that students did during the course of the year, including client interviewing and counseling, advocating in informal and formal settings, and presenting evidence to a tribunal

Media Equation Revisited: Do Users Show Polite Reactions towards an Embodied Agent?

Hoffmann L, Krämer NC, Lam-chi A, Kopp S. Media Equation Revisited: Do Users Show Polite Reactions towards an Embodied Agent? In: Proc. of Intelligent Virtual Agents (IVA 2009). Lecture Notes in Computer Science, 5773. Berlin, Heidelberg: Springer; 2009: 159-165.In human-computer interaction social behavior towards computers like flattery, reciprocity, and politeness have been observed [1]. In order to determine whether the results can be replicated when interacting with embodied conversational agents (ECA), we conducted an experimental study. 63 participants evaluated the ECA Max after a 10-minute conversation. The interview situation was manipulated in three conditions: Being questioned by Max himself, being questioned by paper-and-pencil questionnaire in the same room facing Max, and being questioned by means of a paper-and-pencil questionnaire in another room. Results show that participants were more polite to the ECA in terms of a better evaluation when they were questioned by Max himself compared to when they were questioned more indirectly by paper-and- pencil questionnaire in the same room. In contrast to previous studies [2] it was ruled out that some participants thought of the programmer when they were asked to evaluate the ECA. Additionally, user variables (e.g. gender, computer literacy) show an impact on the on the evaluation of the ECA

Fatty acids negatively regulate platelet function through formation of noncanonical 15‐lipoxygenase‐derived eicosanoids

The antiplatelet effect of polyunsaturated fatty acids is primarily attributed to its metabolism to bioactive metabolites by oxygenases, such as lipoxygenases (LOX). Platelets have demonstrated the ability to generate 15-LOX-derived metabolites (15-oxylipins); however, whether 15-LOX is in the platelet or is required for the formation of 15-oxylipins remains unclear. This study seeks to elucidate whether 15-LOX is required for the formation of 15-oxylipins in the platelet and determine their mechanistic effects on platelet reactivity. In this study, 15-HETrE, 15-HETE, and 15-HEPE attenuated collagen-induced platelet aggregation, and 15-HETrE inhibited platelet aggregation induced by different agonists. The observed anti-aggregatory effect was due to the inhibition of intracellular signaling including αIIbβ3 and protein kinase C activities, calcium mobilization, and granule secretion. While 15-HETrE inhibited platelets partially through activation of peroxisome proliferator-activated receptor β (PPARβ), 15-HETE also inhibited platelets partially through activation of PPARα. 15-HETrE, 15-HETE, or 15-HEPE inhibited 12-LOX in vitro, with arachidonic acid as the substrate. Additionally, a 15-oxylipin-dependent attenuation of 12-HETE level was observed in platelets following ex vivo treatment with 15-HETrE, 15-HETE, or 15-HEPE. Platelets treated with DGLA formed 15-HETrE and collagen-induced platelet aggregation was attenuated only in the presence of ML355 or aspirin, but not in the presence of 15-LOX-1 or 15-LOX-2 inhibitors. Expression of 15-LOX-1, but not 15-LOX-2, was decreased in leukocyte-depleted platelets compared to non-depleted platelets. Taken together, these findings suggest that 15-oxylipins regulate platelet reactivity; however, platelet expression of 15-LOX-1 is low, suggesting that 15-oxylipins may be formed in the platelet through a 15-LOX-independent pathway