Personal Factors Affecting Oral Hygiene

When it comes to dating and social interaction people use different levels of self-presentation to avoid awkward situations. Self-presentation is used to display a certain image of oneself to others and make certain, often positive, qualities appear more prominent for an individual (Tsee_lon, 1992). The concerns of self-presentation are motivated by social interaction, namely friendship, mating, and generally being accepted into society at large (Barber, 1996). / Humans have adapted certain grooming tasks, many relating to cleanliness, to signal that they are in search of a new mate (Buss, 2012). Oral hygiene is often understated in social psychology research, specifically related to mating. Our hypothesis states that if people are made to think that oral hygiene is important to mating success they will be more likely to maintain a regular dental hygiene regimen than the control condition. / The participants for this study were eighty introductory psychology students from ECU. These students volunteered for the study for two weeks in exchange for partial credit towards course completion. / The participants were given questionnaires to fill out confidentially to measure subject variables, then randomly assigned to one of our three conditions. For one condition we gave the students an article about the health benefits of good oral hygiene. For the second condition the article was about the mating advantages associated with good oral hygiene and the third read an article strictly about general dental hygiene care and statistics. At the end of the session they were given a tube of toothpaste, to use for the next two weeks. At the debriefing session we asked for the items back, to measure them. They were also given instructions on how to get to and fill out self-reports and journals every day, for additional data gathering. We debriefed the participants on the experiment in its entirety and our hypothesis to the participants in our final session. / Our results were not supportive of our main hypothesis. This may have been due to the difficulty in changing a behavioral trait, such as our dependent variable, the amount the participant brushed their teeth

Force and energy dissipation variations in non-contact atomic force spectroscopy on composite carbon nanotube systems

UHV dynamic force and energy dissipation spectroscopy in non-contact atomic force microscopy were used to probe specific interactions with composite systems formed by encapsulating inorganic compounds inside single-walled carbon nanotubes. It is found that forces due to nano-scale van der Waals interaction can be made to decrease by combining an Ag core and a carbon nanotube shell in the Ag@SWNT system. This specific behaviour was attributed to a significantly different effective dielectric function compared to the individual constituents, evaluated using a simple core-shell optical model. Energy dissipation measurements showed that by filling dissipation increases, explained here by softening of C-C bonds resulting in a more deformable nanotube cage. Thus, filled and unfilled nanotubes can be discriminated based on force and dissipation measurements. These findings have two different implications for potential applications: tuning the effective optical properties and tuning the interaction force for molecular absorption by appropriately choosing the filling with respect to the nanotube.Comment: 22 pages, 6 figure

Introduced Marine Species in the Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) Region, British Columbia

This historical review of a marine area’s introduced species was facilitated by geo-referenced marine species inventories of the Haida Gwaii (Queen Charlotte Islands) region. One plant, 14 invertebrate, and two fish introduced species have been recorded since the early 20th century from the marine waters around Haida Gwaii. Records of species occurrences are listed and mapped, and modes of introduction are discussed. It will be important to continue documenting areas’ introduced species locations to track the progress of invasions that could affect local marine ecosystem well-being. Erratum for figure included

Adaptive Multidimensional Integration Based on Rank-1 Lattices

Quasi-Monte Carlo methods are used for numerically integrating multivariate functions. However, the error bounds for these methods typically rely on a priori knowledge of some semi-norm of the integrand, not on the sampled function values. In this article, we propose an error bound based on the discrete Fourier coefficients of the integrand. If these Fourier coefficients decay more quickly, the integrand has less fine scale structure, and the accuracy is higher. We focus on rank-1 lattices because they are a commonly used quasi-Monte Carlo design and because their algebraic structure facilitates an error analysis based on a Fourier decomposition of the integrand. This leads to a guaranteed adaptive cubature algorithm with computational cost $O(mb^m)$, where $b$ is some fixed prime number and $b^m$ is the number of data points

Further to the Occurrence of Red Abalone, Haliotis rufescens, in British Columbia

We report on additional occurrences of Red Abalone (Haliotis rufescens Swainson, 1822) that bring the total to seven from British Columbia coastal waters. Possible causes of the presence of Red Abalone include northward (winter) transport via kelp rafts from the Oregon-California area. We tested this hypothesis by performing DNA barcoding analyses on a fragment of kelp holdfast on the surface of one such shell establishing its identity as Nereocystis luetkeana (Mertens) Postels & Ruprecht - a giant kelp with a hollow stipe terminating in a bulbous pneumatocyst (gas-filled float). The occurrence of Red Abalone due to natural processes, besides being important biogeographically, has had important implications for indigenous peoples' pre- and post-contact trade and material culture

Detection and evaluation of damage in aircraft composites using electromagnetically coupled inductors

The paper presents a quantitative damage evaluation of carbon-fibre reinforced polymer (CFRP) plates using a non-contact electromagnetic (EM) sensor. The EM sensor with coupled spiral inductors (CSI) is employed here to detect both impact induced and simulated damage leading to an accurate evaluation of the location, depth and width of sub-surface defects. The effect of inspection frequency, standoff distance and signal power are also investigated leading to the development of an engineering circuit design tool that relates the set up and calibration of the sensor to its detection performance. It is found that the dynamic range of the transmission coefficient is the limiting factor in the original Salski CSI sensor and this problem is addressed by adding ferrite layers to reduce the reluctance of the magnetic circuit, improving damage sensing by 22%. The study leads to a further development of utilising an open ferrite yoke with a pair of encircling coils, which shows a 57% sensitivity improvement and clearer identification of air gaps (voids) and delamination in CFRP laminates. The proposed EM yoke design CSI sensor is low cost and could be assembled into an array for non-contact, in situ mechatronic scanning of aircraft composite wings