The Moderating Effect of Religiosity on the Relation Between Moral Intensity and Moral Awareness

The study investigated the importance of religiosity in the moral decision making process. Using social cognition theory as a basis, we proposed that greater religiosity would be expected to influence the vividness, salience, and accessibility of the moral content in a situation, both from a focus on social norms, and in the sensitivity towards negative outcomes impacting others. We used a random block, mixed quasi-experimental design, with both within-subjects and between-subjects components. Moral intensity was manipulated in high and low harm conditions for four ethical scenarios presented. Completed surveys were returned by 372 adult respondents (average age = 47). Findings indicate that intrinsic religiosity moderated the relation between moral intensity and moral awareness, such that those who are more intrinsically religious were found to have higher levels of moral awareness at lower levels of moral intensity. Individuals with low reported levels of intrinsic religiosity were less likely to recognize the moral component of a low harm situation. Extrinsic religiosity was not found to be a significant moral agent characteristic when considering the relation between harm to others and moral awareness. The results of this study add to the understanding of how characteristics of the moral issue interact with characteristics of the moral agent to impact moral awareness

The Moderating Effect of Religiosity on the Relation Between Moral Intensity and Moral Awareness

The study investigated the importance of religiosity in the moral decision making process. Using social cognition theory as a basis, we proposed that greater religiosity would be expected to influence the vividness, salience, and accessibility of the moral content in a situation, both from a focus on social norms, and in the sensitivity towards negative outcomes impacting others. We used a random block, mixed quasi-experimental design, with both within-subjects and between-subjects components. Moral intensity was manipulated in high and low harm conditions for four ethical scenarios presented. Completed surveys were returned by 372 adult respondents (average age = 47). Findings indicate that intrinsic religiosity moderated the relation between moral intensity and moral awareness, such that those who are more intrinsically religious were found to have higher levels of moral awareness at lower levels of moral intensity. Individuals with low reported levels of intrinsic religiosity were less likely to recognize the moral component of a low harm situation. Extrinsic religiosity was not found to be a significant moral agent characteristic when considering the relation between harm to others and moral awareness. The results of this study add to the understanding of how characteristics of the moral issue interact with characteristics of the moral agent to impact moral awareness

Short-Chained Oligo(Ethylene Oxide)-Functionalized Gold Nanoparticles: Realization Of Significant Protein Resistance

Protein corona formed on nanomaterial surfaces play an important role in the bioavailability and cellular uptake of nanomaterials. Modification of surfaces with oligoethylene glycols (OEG) are a common way to improve the resistivity of nanomaterials to protein adsorption. Short-chain ethylene oxide (EO) oligomers have been shown to improve the protein resistance of planar Au surfaces. We describe the application of these EO oligomers for improved protein resistance of 30 nm spherical gold nanoparticles (AuNPs). Functionalized AuNPs were characterized using UV-Vis spectroscopy, dynamic light scattering (DLS), and zeta potential measurements. Capillary electrophoresis (CE) was used for separation and quantitation of AuNPs and AuNP-protein mixtures. Specifically, nonequilibrium capillary electrophoresis of equilibrium mixtures (NECEEM) was employed for the determination of equilibrium and rate constants for binding between citrate-stabilized AuNPs and two model proteins, lysozyme and fibrinogen. Semi-quantitative CE analysis was carried out for mixtures of EO-functionalized AuNPs and proteins, and results demonstrated a 2.5-fold to 10-fold increase in protein binding resistance to lysozyme depending on the AuNP surface functionalization and a 15-fold increase in protein binding resistance to fibrinogen for both EO oligomers examined in this study

Effect of Fertilizer Rates and Placement Practices on Yield of Burley Tobacco

Management of fertilizer practices in production of burley tobacco is very important in control of manganese (Mn) toxicity of the crop. In addition to the use of agricultural limestone, the use of fertilizers in the appropriate amounts, the appropriate kinds, and in the appropriate manner can strongly influence acidity in the rooting zone during the growth of burley. Studies of these effects have made up a major thrust of the University of Kentucky\u27s research programs on fertility of burley, and have largely been conducted by J.L. Sims and his students during the past 15 years

Beagle to the Moon: nn experiment package to measure polar ice and volatiles in permanently shadowed areas or beneath the lunar surface

The Beagle Science Package is a flight qualified set of instruments which should be deployed to the lunar surface to answer the questions about water and volatiles present in permanently shadowed regions and/or beneath the surface

Interpreting Sequence-to-Sequence Models for Russian Inflectional Morphology

Morphological inflection, as an engineering task in NLP, has seen a rise in the use of neural sequence-to-sequence models (Kann et al. 2016, Cotterell et al. 2018, Aharoni et al. 2017). While these outperform traditional systems based on edit rule induction, it is hard to interpret what they are learning in linguistic terms. We propose a new method of analyzing morphological sequence-to-sequence models which groups errors into linguistically meaningful classes, making what the model learns more transparent. As a case study, we analyze a seq2seq model on Russian, finding that semantic and lexically conditioned allomorphy (e.g. inanimate nouns like zavod `factory\u27 and animates like otec `father\u27 have different, animacy-conditioned accusative forms) are responsible for its relatively low accuracy. Augmenting the model with word embeddings as a proxy for lexical semantics leads to significant improvements in predicted wordform accuracy

Racial/Ethnic Differences in Bone Mineral Density of Young Adults

An estimated 1.5 million people suffer a bone disease-related fracture every year. Most work investigating bone mineral density (BMD) focuses on post-menopausal females but a report from the Surgeon General in 2004 stated that of particular concern are men, racial and ethnic minorities, poor individuals, individuals with disabilities, and individuals living in rural areas. The purpose of this study was to examine the racial/ethnic differences in bone mineral density of young adults and to investigate any correlations with variables suggested to influence BMD. BMD was assessed at a younger age than most studies based on the assumption that osteoporosis is a pediatric disorder that manifests in old age. Whole-body BMD, percent body fat (BF), fat mass (FM), and lean mass (LM) of 103 college-aged Blacks, Whites, and Hispanics (18 – 34 years of age) were measured using a Lunar Prodigy Dual Energy X-ray Absorptiometry (DEXA). Blacks and Whites were taller than Hispanics. Blacks had higher BMD than Whites and Hispanics. Blacks and Whites had higher t-scores than Hispanics. Weight and LM correlated with BMD for all three groups. Height correlated with BMD for Blacks only. FM correlated with BMD for Hispanics only. In conclusion, BMD is suggested to be higher in Blacks than Whites and Hispanics. LM is suggested to be an important component of bone health. It is important to stress resistance training for building and maintaining bone health throughout life