Linking metacognition and mindreading: Evidence from autism and dual-task investigations

Questions of how we know our own and other minds, and whether metacognition and mindreading rely on the same processes, are longstanding in psychology and philosophy. In Experiment 1, children/adolescents with autism (who tend to show attenuated mindreading) showed significantly lower accuracy on an explicit metacognition task than neurotypical children/adolescents, but not on an allegedly metacognitive implicit one. In Experiment 2, neurotypical adults completed these tasks in a single-task condition, or a dual-task condition that required concurrent completion of a secondary task that tapped mindreading. Metacognitive accuracy was significantly diminished by the dual-mindreading-task on the explicit task, but not the implicit task. In Experiment 3, we included additional dual-tasks to rule out the possibility that any secondary task (regardless of whether it required mindreading) would diminish metacognitive accuracy. Finally, in both experiments 1 and 2, metacognitive accuracy on the explicit task, but not the implicit task, was associated significantly with performance on a measure of mindreading ability. These results suggest that explicit metacognitive tasks (used frequently to measure metacognition in humans) share metarepresentational processing resources with mindreading, whereas implicit tasks (which are claimed by some comparative psychologists to measure metacognition in non-human animals) do not

Behaviour change at work: Empowering energy efficiency in the workplace through user-centred design

Copyright @ 2011 University of California eScholarship RepositoryCO2 emissions from non-domestic buildings - primarily workplaces - make up 18 percent of the UK's carbon footprint. A combination of technology advances and behavioural changes have the potential to make significant impact, but interventions have often been planned in ways which do not take into account the needs, levels of understanding and everyday behavioural contexts of building users - and hence do not achieve the hoped-for success.This paper provides a brief introduction to the Empower project, a current industrial-academic collaboration in the UK which is applying methods from user-centred design practice to understand diverse users' needs, priorities, mental models of energy and decision-making heuristics - as well as the affordances available to them - in a number of office buildings. We are developing and trialling a set of low-cost, simple software interventions tailored to multiple user groups with different degrees of agency over their energy use, which seek to influence more energy efficient behaviour at work in areas such as HVAC, lighting and equipment use. The project comprises an ethnographic research phase, a participatory design programme involving building users in the design of interventions, and iterative trials in a large office building in central London

The effects of pesticides on the diversity of culturable soil bacteria

The numbers of culturable soil bacteria in plots that had received either no pesticides or the full combination (aldicarb, chlorfenvinphos, benomyl, glyphosate, plus chlorotoluron or triadimefon) over a 20 year period were compared. Differences were very small although there were consistently higher numbers on the treated plot, possibly reflecting the greater crop yields which had been reported previously. There was no significant difference in numbers of bacterial colonies with homology to a nif gene probe in soils from the two plots. Genetic fingerprinting of Pseudomonas fluorescens isolates from the plots, using ERIC-PCR, showed that the dominant strains in the two populations were not the same although there was no obvious difference in the degree of diversity. Substrate utilization by microbial populations from the two plots was compared using Biolog plates. The population from the pesticide-treated plot showed a higher rate of substrate utilization which could reflect a slightly higher inoculum of heterotrophic bacteria, but could also indicate greater metabolic diversity in the population

Assessing the Impact of Infrastructure Projects on Global Sustainable Development Goals

While sustainability of civil infrastructure is critical to professionals, project owners, regulators, funding agencies and the public, little is done to link individual project sustainability to the United Nation’s 17 global sustainable development goals for 2030. This paper provides some answers but also exposes many questions that need resolution by the infrastructure sector. Using empirical evidence, the authors have identified a ‘golden thread’ between best-practice sustainability-reporting frameworks at project level with those at organisational level. In doing so, they find there is sufficient linkage to embed sustainable-development-goal impact targets into the design stage of an infrastructure project. This would provide a more robust investment appraisal at the project design phase, helping to define project success more widely across the triple bottom line of economic, social and environmental outcomes and associated impact

High Efficiency-High Frequency Transducers for Ceramic Inspection

The compressional-wave ultrasonic transducer is the heart of ultrasonic NDE inspection systems. New piezoelectric ceramics, have been developed with very high electromechanical coupling (kt\u3e70%) and have been used for transmission and reception of ultrasonic waves. This paper discusses ways to improve the signal-to-noise ratio (i.e. efficiency) of \u3e30 MHz transducers (i.e. selection of materials, selection of diameter etc.) Application of the transducers developed to inspect creep-failed siliconized-SiC ceramics are discussed

Origin and evolution of the zodiacal dust cloud

The astrophysical importance of the zodiacal cloud became more apparent. The most useful source of information on the structure of the zodiacal cloud is the Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) observations. A substantial fraction of the extensive IRAS data set was analyzed. Also, a numerical model was developed (SIMUL) that allows to calculate the distribution of night-sky brightness that would be produced by any particular distribution of dust particle orbits. This model includes the effects of orbital perturbations by both the planets and solar radiation, it reproduces the exact viewing geometry of the IRAS telescope, and allows for the eccentricity of the Earth's orbit. SIMUL now is used to model not just the solar system dust bands discovered by IRAS but the whole zodiacal cloud

Systematic study of Optical Feshbach Resonances in an ideal gas

Using a narrow intercombination line in alkaline earth atoms to mitigate large inelastic losses, we explore the Optical Feshbach Resonance (OFR) effect in an ultracold gas of bosonic $^{88}$Sr. A systematic measurement of three resonances allows precise determinations of the OFR strength and scaling law, in agreement with coupled-channels theory. Resonant enhancement of the complex scattering length leads to thermalization mediated by elastic and inelastic collisions in an otherwise ideal gas. OFR could be used to control atomic interactions with high spatial and temporal resolution.Comment: Significant changes to text and figure presentation to improve clarity. Extended supplementary material. 4 pages, 4 figures; includes supplementary material 8 pages, 4 figures. Submitted to Physical Review Letter