Social Media and Cognition

Social media is an inescapable platform for sharing media and connecting with others. This thesis investigated how social media impacts cognition; specifically, attention. Study 1 investigated typical social media usage patterns and helped gauge which SM platform was most popular. Study 1 revealed three main platforms people used most often: Facebook, Instagram, and Snapchat. Facebook was reported as the most popular social media platform. Study 2 investigated how a social media post impacts cognition. It was hypothesized that participants who posted, with the intention of provoking a reaction from their followers, on their social media prior to performing a cognitive task would be distracted and have lower performance than a control group. However, there was no significant difference between the conditions. Therefore, the main hypothesis was not supported. An external factor that undermined the experiment (i.e. age) was discussed. Social media’s impact on cognition remains unclear and requires future research

Reexamining the “brain drain” effect: A replication of Ward et al. (2017)

The present study was a pre-registered direct replication of Ward et al.\u27s (2017) second experiment (OSF pre-registration found at: https://osf.io/5fq4r). This replication assigned both smartphone location (on desk, in pocket/bag, or outside of the testing room) and smartphone power (on, or off) for a total of six conditions. Participants completed an automated operation span (OSpan) task, a Cue-Dependent Go/No-Go task, and the smartphone attachment and dependency inventory. It was hypothesized that performance on an attention-demanding task (i.e., the OSpan task) would be worse for those in closer proximity to their smartphone (on desk) and that those with greater smartphone attachment and dependency would have a larger “brain drain” effect. Using the same tasks and conditions as in Ward et al.\u27s (2017) second experiment, the present study found that the “brain drain” effect did not replicate: there was no difference between smartphone location conditions on performance on either the o-span task or the go/no-go task. These findings demonstrate that the mere presence of one\u27s smartphone may not be enough to affect cognitive performance. Understanding these effects is crucial in a time where smartphones are a basic necessity

It\u27s Not My Phone, It’s Me: Investigating Smartphone Presence and Predictors of Smartphone Reliance

Objectives: Smartphones are nearly ubiquitous and as a result, researchers have sought to study whether there are negative consequences that result from this inescapable device. Extended exposure to seemingly endless resources, entertainment, and communications has brought forward the issue of smartphone reliance and the effect of smartphone presence on cognition. This dissertation investigated the effect of smartphone presence on cognition and predictors of smartphone reliance using six studies. Chapter 2 (one study): A replication of Ward et al.\u27s (2017) second study was completed. Participants completed a difficult working memory task and a response inhibition task while leaving their smartphone either on their desk, in their pocket or bag, or outside of the testing room (powered on or off in each location). Smartphone use tendencies and a measure of smartphone attachment and dependency were collected. Results did not replicate the original study\u27s main findings: there was no effect of smartphone location on working memory. Chapter 3 (three studies): A battery of 12 cognitive tests were used to investigate which aspect of cognition, if any, was affected by smartphone location. Measures of smartphone reliance (nomophobia-the modern fear of being without your phone or the internet, smartphone attachment and dependency, and mobile phone involvement) and smartphone tendencies were also measured. Results from the in-lab study revealed an effect of smartphone location on verbal ability (specifically, verbal short-term memory) but these results were not replicated in a subsequent online-based study. Chapter 4 (two studies): The final studies explored personality traits and well-being measures as predictors for smartphone reliance (nomophobia, and smartphone attachment and dependency). Results revealed that higher emotional intelligence and neuroticism were the best and most consistent predictors of smartphone reliance. Conclusions: These studies imply that smartphone presence may impact a small aspect of cognition, but not in a reliable manner. Smartphone reliance measures (and their predictors) should be incorporated into future studies to assess if some people are more likely to experience negative effects from smartphone presence or use

Should it Stay or Should it Go? Smartphone Dependency

As smartphones grow in use and popularity, it is important to understand the possible effects that varying levels of smartphone use may have on human cognition. Although smartphones provide many advantages for daily activities, one must also recognize the potential disadvantages. For example, smartphone use may lead to nomophobia, which is defined as the modern fear of not being able to access your smartphone or the internet (Yildirim & Correia, 2015). The present study used a pilot and main study to examine the effects smartphones have on human cognition. The pilot study was conducted to measure nomophobia, mobile phone involvement, smartphone attachment and dependency, and general smartphone use. This portion was also used to determine the paradigm for the main study. Participants in the main study completed the 12 Cambridge Brain Science tasks, which measured different aspects of

Il progetto HUM2006-05196: “Nautica mediterranea e navigazioni oceaniche nell’antichità. Fondamenti interdisciplinari per lo studio (storici, archeologici, iconografici ed etnografici). Il problema del versante atlantico”

info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Biogeographical origin and timing of the founder ichthyosis TGM1 c.1187G > A mutation in an isolated Ecuadorian population

An unusually high frequency of the lamellar ichthyosis TGM1 mutation, c.1187G > A, has been observed in the Ecuadorian province of Manabi. Recently, the same mutation has been detected in a Galician patient (Northwest of Spain). By analyzing patterns of genetic variation around this mutation in Ecuadorian patients and population matched controls, we were able to estimate the age of c.1187G > A and the time to their most recent common ancestor (TMRCA) of c.1187G > A Ecuadorian carriers. While the estimated mutation age is 41 generations ago (~1,025 years ago [ya]), the TMRCA of Ecuadorian c.1187G > A carrier haplotypes dates to just 17 generations (~425 ya). Probabilistic-based inferences of local ancestry allowed us to infer a most likely European origin of a few (16% to 30%) Ecuadorian haplotypes carrying this mutation. In addition, inferences on demographic historical changes based on c.1187G > A Ecuadorian carrier haplotypes estimated an exponential population growth starting ~20 generations, compatible with a recent founder effect occurring in Manabi. Two main hypotheses can be considered for the origin of c.1187G > A: (i) the mutation could have arisen in Spain >1,000 ya (being Galicia the possible homeland) and then carried to Ecuador by Spaniards in colonial times ~400 ya, and (ii) two independent mutational events originated this mutation in Ecuador and Galicia. The geographic and cultural characteristics of Manabi could have favored a founder effect that explains the high prevalence of TGM1 c.1187G > A in this region

Search for the Standard Model Higgs Boson in the Decay Channel H→ZZ→4l in pp Collisions at √s=7 TeV

A search for a Higgs boson in the four-lepton decay channel H→ZZ, with each Z boson decaying to an electron or muon pair, is reported. The search covers Higgs boson mass hypotheses in the range of 110100GeV (with 13 below 160GeV), while 67.1±6.0 (9.5±1.3) events are expected from background. The four-lepton mass distribution is consistent with the expectation of standard model background production of ZZ pairs. Upper limits at 95% confidence level exclude the standard model Higgs boson in the ranges of 134-158GeV, 180-305GeV, and 340-465GeV. Small excesses of events are observed around masses of 119, 126, and 320GeV, making the observed limits weaker than expected in the absence of a signal. © 2012 CERN.European Commission; Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (Austria); Agency for Innovation by Science and Technology (Belgium); Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Brasil); Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Brasil); Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo; Colciencias (Colombia); Ministry of Science, Education and Sports of the Republic of Croatia; Research Promotion Foundation (Cyprus); Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France); Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Deutschland); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; General Secretariat of Research and Technology (Greece); National Office for Research and Technology (Hungary); Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (Iran); Science Foundation Ireland; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italia); National Research Foundation of Korea; Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (México); Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (México); Secretaría de Educación Pública (México); Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí; Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission; Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal); Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Russia); Russian Foundation for Basic Research; Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development (Serbia); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España); Centro Nacional de Física de Partículas, Astropartículas y Nuclear (España); Swiss National Science Foundation; The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey; Turkish Atomic Energy Authority; Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK); Department of Energy (US); National Science Foundation (US).Peer Reviewe

Search for neutral Higgs bosons decaying to tau pairs in pp collisions at √s=7 TeV

Open access: This article is published Open Access at sciencedirect.com. It is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 3.0.-- et al.A search for neutral Higgs bosons decaying to tau pairs at a center-of-mass energy of 7 TeV is performed using a dataset corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 4.6 fb -1 recorded by the CMS experiment at the LHC. The search is sensitive to both the standard model Higgs boson and to the neutral Higgs bosons predicted by the minimal supersymmetric extension of the standard model (MSSM). No excess of events is observed in the tau-pair invariant-mass spectrum. For a standard model Higgs boson in the mass range of 110-145 GeV upper limits at 95% confidence level (CL) on the production cross section are determined. We exclude a Higgs boson with m H=115GeV with a production cross section 3.2 times of that predicted by the standard model. In the MSSM, upper limits on the neutral Higgs boson production cross section times branching fraction to tau pairs, as a function of the pseudoscalar Higgs boson mass, m A, sets stringent new bounds in the parameter space, excluding at 95% CL values of tanβ as low as 7.1 at m A=160GeV in the mhmax benchmark scenario. © 2012 CERN.European Commission; Federal Ministry of Science, Research and Economy (Austria); National Fund for Scientific Research (Belgium); Research Foundation – Flanders; Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico (Brasil); Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (Brasil); Fundação Carlos Chagas Filho de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado do Rio de Janeiro; Fundação de Amparo à Pesquisa do Estado de São Paulo; Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science; Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (France); Commissariat à l'énergie atomique et aux énergies alternatives (France); Ministry of Science and Technology of the People's Republic of China; Chinese Academy of Sciences; National Natural Science Foundation of China; Colciencias (Colombia); Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport; Academy of Finland; Helsinki Institute of Physics; Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung (Deutschland); Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft; Helmholtz Association; General Secretariat of Research and Technology (Greece); Hungarian Scientific Research Fund; National Office for Research and Technology (Hungary); Department of Atomic Energy (India); Department of Science and Technology (India); Council of Science and Industrial Research (India); Institute for Research in Fundamental Sciences (Iran); Science Foundation Ireland; Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare (Italia); Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology; Lithuanian Academy of Sciences; Centro de Investigación y de Estudios Avanzados del Instituto Politécnico Nacional (México); Consejo Nacional de Ciencia y Tecnología (México); Secretaría de Educación Pública (México); Universidad Autónoma de San Luis Potosí; Ministry of Science and Innovation (New Zealand); Ministry of Science and Higher Education and the National Science Centre (Poland); Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia (Portugal); Joint Institute for Nuclear Research (Russia); Russian Academy of Sciences; Russian Foundation for Basic Research; Ministry of Education, Science and Technological Development (Serbia); Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación (España); Swiss Funding Agencies; Swiss National Science Foundation; National Science Council (Taiwan); The Scientific and Technological Research Council of Turkey; Turkish Atomic Energy Authority; Science and Technology Facilities Council (UK); Department of Energy (US); National Science Foundation (US); A. G. Leventis Foundation; Alfred P. Sloan Foundation; Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; Foundation for Polish Science.Peer Reviewe

Measurement of the inclusive W and Z production cross sections in pp collisions at ps = 7TeV with the CMS experiment

76 páginas, 29 figuras, 20 tablas.-- Open Access: This article is distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution Noncommercial License.-- CMS Collaboration: et al.A measurement of inclusive W and Z production cross sections in pp collisions at ps = 7TeV is presented. The electron and muon decay channels are analyzed in a data sample collected with the CMS detector at the LHC and corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36 pb-1. The measured inclusive cross sections are (pp - WX) B(W - lv) = 10:31 0:02 (stat:) 0:09 (syst:) 0:10 (th:) 0:41 (lumi:) nb and (pp - ZX) B(Z - l+l-) = 0:974 0:007 (stat:) 0:007 (syst:) 0:018 (th:) 0:039 (lumi:) nb, limited to the dilepton invariant mass range 60 to 120 GeV. The luminosity-independent cross section ratios are ( (pp - WX) * B(W - lv)) / ( (pp - ZX) * B(Z - l+l-)) = 10:54 0:07 (stat:) 0:08 (syst:) 0:16 (th:) and ( (pp - W+X) B(W+ - l+v )) / ( (pp ! W-X) B(W- ! l-v)) = 1:421 0:006 (stat:) 0:014 (syst:) 0:029 (th:). The measured values agree with next-to-next-to-leading order QCD cross section calculations based on recent parton distribution functions.This work was supported by the Austrian Federal Ministry of Science and Research; the Belgium Fonds de la Recherche Scienti que, and Fonds voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek; the Brazilian Funding Agencies (CNPq, CAPES, FAPERJ, and FAPESP); the Bulgarian Ministry of Education and Science; CERN; the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Ministry of Science and Technology, and National Natural Science Foundation of China; the Colombian Funding Agency (COLCIENCIAS); the Croatian Ministry of Science, Education and Sport; the Research Promotion Foundation, Cyprus; the Estonian Academy of Sciences and NICPB; the Academy of Finland, Finnish Ministry of Education and Culture, and Helsinki Institute of Physics; the Institut National de Physique Nuclèaire et de Physique des Particules / CNRS, and Commissariat á l'Énergie Atomique et aux Énergies Alternatives / CEA, France; the Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung, Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft, and Helmholtz-Gemeinschaft Deutscher Forschungszentren, Germany; the General Secretariat for Research and Technology, Greece; the National Scienti c Research Foundation, and National Office for Research and Technology, Hungary; the Department of Atomic Energy and the Department of Science and Technology, India; the Institute for Studies in Theoretical Physics and Mathematics, Iran; the Science Foundation, Ireland; the Istituto Nazionale di Fisica Nucleare, Italy; the Korean Ministry of Education, Science and Technology and the World Class University program of VESTAV, CONACYT, SEP, and UASLP-FAI); the Ministry of Science and Innovation, New Zealand; the Pakistan Atomic Energy Commission; the State Commission for Scienti c Research, Poland; the Fundaçào para a Ciència e a Tecnologia, Portugal; JINR (Armenia, Belarus, Georgia, Ukraine, Uzbekistan); the Ministry of Science and Technologies of the Russian Federation, the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy and the Russian Foundation for Basic Research; the Ministry of Science and Technological Development of Serbia; the Ministerio de Ciencia e Innovación, and Programa Consolider-Ingenio 2010, Spain; the Swiss Funding Agencies (ETH Board, ETH Zurich, PSI, SNF, UniZH, Canton Zurich, and SER); the National Science Council, Taipei; the Scienti c and Technical Research Council of Turkey, and Turkish Atomic Energy Authority; the Science and Technology Facilities Council, UK; the US Department of Energy, and the US National Science Foundation. Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie programme and the European Research Council (European Union); the Leventis Foundation; the A. P. Sloan Foundation; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Associazione per lo Sviluppo Scienti co e Tecnologico del Piemonte (Italy); the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office; the Fonds pour la Formation á la Recherche dans l'Industrie et dans l'Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium); the Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium); and the Council of Science and Industrial Research, India.Peer reviewe

Determination of jet energy calibration and transverse momentum resolution in CMS

66 páginas, 41 figuras, 1 tabla.-- Open Access.-- CMS Collaboration: et al.Measurements of the jet energy calibration and transverse momentum resolution in CMS are presented, performed with a data sample collected in proton-proton collisions at a centre-of-mass energy of 7TeV, corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 36pb−1. The transverse momentum balance in dijet and γ/Z+jets events is used to measure the jet energy response in the CMS detector, as well as the transverse momentum resolution. The results are presented for three different methods to reconstruct jets: a calorimeter-based approach, the ``Jet-Plus-Track'' approach, which improves the measurement of calorimeter jets by exploiting the associated tracks, and the ``Particle Flow'' approach, which attempts to reconstruct individually each particle in the event, prior to the jet clustering, based on information from all relevant subdetectors.Individuals have received support from the Marie-Curie programme and the European Research Council (European Union); the Leventis Foundation; the A. P. Sloan Foundation; the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation; the Associazione per lo Sviluppo Scientifico e Tecnologico del Piemonte (Italy); the Belgian Federal Science Policy Office; the Fonds pour la Formation `a la Recherche dans l’Industrie et dans l’Agriculture (FRIA-Belgium); the Agentschap voor Innovatie door Wetenschap en Technologie (IWT-Belgium); and the Council of Science and Industrial Research, India.Peer reviewe