Measuring the impact of connecting teams with the "whatsapp" for construction

The aim of this report is to evaluate and develop a solution, which can be used to measure overall the impact of using Letsbuild’s digital collaboration tool to better convince new clients about the benefits of using the tool rationally, during a sales meeting. While emotional benefits of using the tool are clear and visible, the lack of rational proof makes it difficult for project managers in construction companies to justify the investment internally to their management. Hence in order to solve this challenge, to ultimately enchance the overall sales experience, a research is carried out to identify and describe how Letsbuild impacts different aspects of a construction project both directly and indirectly by ensuring real time connectivity and collaboration between all stakeholders involved

Who Wants to Enhance Their Cognitive Abilities? Potential Predictors of the Acceptance of Cognitive Enhancement

With advances in new technologies, the topic of cognitive enhancement has been at the center of public debate in recent years. Various enhancement methods (e.g., brain stimulation, smart drugs, or working memory training) promise improvements in one’s cognitive abilities such as intelligence and memory. Although these methods have been rather ineffective so far, they are largely available to the general public and can be applied individually. As applying enhancement might be accompanied by certain risks, it is important to understand which individuals seek to enhance themselves. For instance, individuals’ intelligence, personality, and interests might predict their willingness to get enhanced. Thus, in a preregistered study, we asked 257 participants about their acceptance of various enhancement methods and tested predictors thereof, such as participants’ psychometrically measured and self-estimated intelligence. While both measured and self-estimated intelligence as well as participants’ implicit beliefs about intelligence, did not predict participants’ acceptance of enhancement; a younger age, higher interest in science-fiction, and (partially) higher openness as well as lower conscientiousness did. Thus, certain interests and personality traits might contribute to the willingness to enhance one’s cognition. Finally, we discuss the need for replication and argue for testing other potential predictors of the acceptance of cognitive enhancement

Leptin responsiveness of juvenile rats: proof of leptin function within the physiological range

To bridge the gap between studies demonstrating leptin’s role in protecting fat stores when food is scarce and other studies demonstrating the effects of treatment with leptin at doses that increase plasma levels to values found in overfed animals, we investigated whether leptin serves an adipostatic function within the normal range of free-feeding lean animals, i.e. within the very small range of endogenous plasma levels at which no leptin resistance occurs.For this purpose we applied recombinant leptin via mini-osmotic pumps to rats between 15 and 24 days of age and between 25 and 34 days of age and studied its dose-dependent effects on body mass and fat mass at plasma leptin concentrations extending down to the normal levels in lean animals.Using percentage change of fat mass (relative to that of saline-treated littermates) as the measure, a linear dose-response curve was found up to doses of 2 μg g−1 day−1, corresponding to plasma leptin concentrations between the normal physiological range and 50 ng ml−1. In 15- to 24-day-old animals, analysis of the correlation (r = -0.89) between individual plasma concentrations and the corresponding leptin-induced changes of body fat content for a range extending down towards zero (i.e. towards the average fat content of the controls) yielded a zero value of 3.1 ng ml−1, which was within the 2-4 ng ml−1 range of plasma leptin concentrations found in the control pups. Likewise, regression analysis for the data from the 25- to 34-day-old pups (r = -0.88), for which the control range was 1-3 ng ml−1, yielded a zero value of 1.9 ng ml−1.We conclude that normal plasma leptin levels represent an adipostatic signal. Steady-state levels of plasma leptin in free-feeding lean animals thus provide a signal not only for protecting sufficiency but also for limiting increases of body fat stores