1,070 research outputs found
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Communal resources in open source software development
Introduction: Virtual communities play an important role in innovation. The paper focuses on the particular form of collective action in virtual communities underlying as Open Source software development projects.
Method: Building on resource mobilization theory and private-collective innovation, we propose a theory of collective action in innovative virtual communities. We identify three communal resources (reputation, control over technology and learning opportunities) that appear as a byproduct while developing open source software.
Analysis:Constructs are derived from exiting literature. Empirical data from Freenet, an open source software project for peer-to-peer software, illustrates both the levels of involvement and the communal resources.
Results & conclusions: Communal resources are able to solve the collective action dilemma for virtual communities. We show that they increase in value for individuals along with their involvement in the community
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Carrots and Rainbows: Motivation and Social Practice in Open Source Software Development
Open source software (OSS) is a social and economic phenomenon that raises fundamental questions about the motivations of contributors to information systems development. Some developers are unpaid volunteers who seek to solve their own technical problems, while others create OSS as part of their employment contract. For the past 10 years, a substantial amount of academic work has theorized about and empirically examined developer motivations. We review this work and suggest considering motivation in terms of the values of the social practice in which developers participate. Based on the social philosophy of Alasdair MacIntyre, we construct a theoretical framework that expands our assumptions about individual motivation to include the idea of a long-term, value-informed quest beyond short-term rewards. This motivation-practice framework depicts how the social practice and its supporting institutions mediate between individual motivation and outcome. The framework contains three theoretical conjectures that seek to explain how collectively elaborated standards of excellence prompt developers to produce high-quality software, change institutions, and sustain OSS development. From the framework, we derive six concrete propositions and suggest a new research agenda on motivation in OSS
Validation of a clinical and genetic model for predicting severe COVID-19
Using nested case-control data from the Lifelines COVID-19 cohort, we undertook a validation study of a clinical and genetic model to predict the risk of severe COVID-19 in people with confirmed COVID-19 and in people with confirmed or self-reported COVID-19. The model performed well in terms of discrimination of cases and controls for all ages (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve (AUC) = 0.680 for confirmed COVID-19 and AUC = 0.689 for confirmed and self-reported COVID-19) and in the age group in which the model was developed (50 years and older; AUC = 0.658 for confirmed COVID-19 and AUC = 0.651 for confirmed and self-reported COVID-19). There was no evidence of over- or under-dispersion of risk scores but there was evidence of overall over-estimation of risk in all analyses (all P < 0.0001). In the light of large numbers of people worldwide remaining unvaccinated and continuing uncertainty regarding vaccine efficacy over time and against variants of concern, identification of people at high risk of severe COVID-19 may encourage the uptake of vaccinations (including boosters) and the use of non-pharmaceutical inventions
Are depressive symptoms linked to a reduced pupillary response to novel positive information?:An eye tracking proof-of-concept study
Introduction:Depressive symptoms have been linked to difficulties in revising established negative beliefs in response to novel positive information. Recent predictive processing accounts have suggested that this bias in belief updating may be related to a blunted processing of positive prediction errors at the neural level. In this proof-of-concept study, pupil dilation in response to unexpected positive emotional information was examined as a psychophysiological marker of an attenuated processing of positive prediction errors associated with depressive symptoms.Methods: Participants (N = 34) completed a modified version of the emotional Bias Against Disconfirmatory Evidence (BADE) task in which scenarios initially suggest negative interpretations that are later either confirmed or disconfirmed by additional information. Pupil dilation in response to the confirmatory and disconfirmatory information was recorded. Results: Behavioral results showed that depressive symptoms were related to difficulties in revising negative interpretations despite disconfirmatory positive information. The eye tracking results pointed to a reduced pupil response to unexpected positive information among people with elevated depressive symptoms. Discussion: Altogether, the present study demonstrates that the adapted emotional BADE task can be appropriate for examining psychophysiological aspects such as changes in pupil size along with behavioral responses. Furthermore, the results suggest that depression may be characterized by deviations in both behavioral (i.e., reduced updating of negative beliefs) and psychophysiological (i.e., decreased pupil dilation) responses to unexpected positive information. Future work should focus on a larger sample including clinically depressed patients to further explore these findings.</p
Electrical Detection and Magnetic-Field Control of Spin States in Phosphorus-Doped Silicon
Electron paramagnetic resonance of ensembles of phosphorus donors in silicon
has been detected electrically with externally applied magnetic fields lower
than 200 G. Because the spin Hamiltonian was dominated by the contact hyperfine
term rather than by the Zeeman terms at such low magnetic fields, superposition
states and
were formed
between phosphorus electron and nuclear spins, and electron paramagnetic
resonance transitions between these superposition states and or states are observed clearly. A
continuous change of and with the magnetic field was
observed with a behavior fully consistent with theory of phosphorus donors in
silicon.Comment: 6 pages, 5 figure
Transport and recombination through weakly coupled localized spin pairs in semiconductors during coherent spin excitation
Semi-analytical predictions for the transients of spin-dependent transport
and recombination rates through localized states in semiconductors during
coherent electron spin excitation are made for the case of weakly spin-coupled
charge carrier ensembles. The results show that the on-resonant Rabi frequency
of electrically or optically detected spin-oscillation doubles abruptly as the
strength of the resonant microwave field gamma B_1 exceeds the Larmor frequency
separation within the pair of charge carrier states between which the transport
or recombination transition takes place. For the case of a Larmor frequency
separation of the order of gamma B_1 and arbitrary excitation frequencies, the
charge carrier pairs exhibit four different nutation frequencies. From the
calculations, a simple set of equations for the prediction of these frequencies
is derived
Magnetization Switching of Single Magnetite Nanoparticles Monitored Optically
Magnetic nanomaterials record information as fast as picoseconds in computer
memories but retain it for millions of years in ancient rocks. This exceedingly
broad range of times is covered by hopping over a potential energy barrier
through temperature, ultrafast optical excitation for demagnetization or
magnetization manipulation, mechanical stress, or microwaves. As switching
depends on nanoparticle size, shape, orientation, and material properties, only
single-nanoparticle studies can eliminate ensemble heterogeneity. Here, we push
the sensitivity of photothermal magnetic circular dichroism down to individual
20-nm magnetite nanoparticles. Single-particle magnetization curves display
superparamagnetic to ferromagnetic behaviors, depending on size, shape, and
orientation. Some nanoparticles undergo thermally activated switching on time
scales of milliseconds to minutes. Surprisingly, the switching barrier appears
to vary in time, leading to dynamical heterogeneity. Our observations will help
to identify and eventually control the nanoscale parameters influencing the
switching of magnetic nanoparticles, an important step for applications in many
fields
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