20,636 research outputs found
Receptor localization of steroid hormones and drugs: discoveries through the use of thaw-mount and dry-mount autoradiography
Understanding Perceptions of Problematic Facebook Use: When People Experience Negative Life Impact and a Lack of Control
While many people use social network sites to connect with friends and
family, some feel that their use is problematic, seriously affecting their
sleep, work, or life. Pairing a survey of 20,000 Facebook users measuring
perceptions of problematic use with behavioral and demographic data, we
examined Facebook activities associated with problematic use as well as the
kinds of people most likely to experience it. People who feel their use is
problematic are more likely to be younger, male, and going through a major life
event such as a breakup. They spend more time on the platform, particularly at
night, and spend proportionally more time looking at profiles and less time
browsing their News Feeds. They also message their friends more frequently.
While they are more likely to respond to notifications, they are also more
likely to deactivate their accounts, perhaps in an effort to better manage
their time. Further, they are more likely to have seen content about social
media or phone addiction. Notably, people reporting problematic use rate the
site as more valuable to them, highlighting the complex relationship between
technology use and well-being. A better understanding of problematic Facebook
use can inform the design of context-appropriate and supportive tools to help
people become more in control.Comment: CHI 201
Fitting Precision Electroweak Data with Exotic Heavy Quarks
The 1999 precision electroweak data from LEP and SLC persist in showing some
slight discrepancies from the assumed standard model, mostly regarding and
quarks. We show how their mixing with exotic heavy quarks could result in a
more consistent fit of all the data, including two unconventional
interpretations of the top quark.Comment: 7 pages, no figure, 2 typos corrected, 1 reference update
Effects of Biofloc on Plankton Abundance in the Water
This study was conducted to evaluate the effects of biofloc on the species and quantity of plankton in pond water. There were four treatments in the experiment: the control, no supplementation; treatment I, pond water supplemented with glucose; treatment II, pond water supplemented with both glucose and Bacillus subtilis; and treatment III, pond water supplemented with Bacillus subtilis only. Water quality, plankton, and biofloc formation were monitored every five days. Results showed that biofloc formation was enhanced by adding glucose to the pond water. The addition of glucose together with Bacillus subtilis shortened the formation time of mature bioflocs by about five days than the supplementation with glucose only. In ponds supplemented with glucose and those supplemented with glucose + bacillus, the ammonia nitrogen, and nitrite nitrogen content in the water column decreased, and the number of cyanobacteria and green algae were significantly inhibited, while the number of zooplankton such as Rotatoria increased during the experimental period
Animal personality: What are behavioural ecologists measuring?
© 2012 The Authors. Biological Reviews © 2012 Cambridge Philosophical SocietyThis is the peer reviewed version of the article available in final published form via DOI: 10.1111/brv.12007.The discovery that an individual may be constrained, and even behave sub-optimally, because of its personality type has fundamental implications for understanding individual- to group-level processes. Despite recent interest in the study of animal personalities within behavioural ecology, the field is fraught with conceptual and methodological difficulties inherent in any young discipline. We review the current agreement of definitions and methods used in personality studies across taxa and systems, and find that current methods risk misclassifying traits. Fortunately, these problems have been faced before by other similar fields during their infancy, affording important opportunities to learn from past mistakes. We review the tools that were developed to overcome similar methodological problems in psychology. These tools emphasise the importance of attempting to measure animal personality traits using multiple tests and the care that needs to be taken when interpreting correlations between personality traits or their tests. Accordingly, we suggest an integrative theoretical framework that incorporates these tools to facilitate a robust and unified approach in the study of animal personality. © 2012 Cambridge Philosophical Society.FennerSchool of Environment and SocietyResearch School of BiologyZoological Society of LondonNatural Environment Research Council (NERC
Means and covariance functions for geostatistical compositional data: an axiomatic approach
This work focuses on the characterization of the central tendency of a sample
of compositional data. It provides new results about theoretical properties of
means and covariance functions for compositional data, with an axiomatic
perspective. Original results that shed new light on the geostatistical
modeling of compositional data are presented. As a first result, it is shown
that the weighted arithmetic mean is the only central tendency characteristic
satisfying a small set of axioms, namely continuity, reflexivity and marginal
stability. Moreover, this set of axioms also implies that the weights must be
identical for all parts of the composition. This result has deep consequences
on the spatial multivariate covariance modeling of compositional data. In a
geostatistical setting, it is shown as a second result that the proportional
model of covariance functions (i.e., the product of a covariance matrix and a
single correlation function) is the only model that provides identical kriging
weights for all components of the compositional data. As a consequence of these
two results, the proportional model of covariance function is the only
covariance model compatible with reflexivity and marginal stability
DFTCalc: reliability centered maintenance via fault tree analysis (tool paper)
Reliability, availability, maintenance and safety (RAMS) analysis is essential in the evaluation of safety critical systems like nuclear power plants and the railway infrastructure. A widely used methodology within RAMS analysis are fault trees, representing failure propagations throughout a system. We present DFTCalc, a tool-set to conduct quantitative analysis on dynamic fault trees including the effect of a maintenance strategy on the system dependability
The Real Combination Problem : Panpsychism, Micro-Subjects, and Emergence
Panpsychism harbors an unresolved tension, the seriousness of which has yet to be fully appreciated. I capture this tension as a dilemma, and offer panpsychists advice on how to resolve it. The dilemma, briefly, is as follows. Panpsychists are committed to the perspicuous explanation of macro-mentality in terms of micro-mentality. But panpsychists take the micro-material realm to feature not just mental properties, but also micro-subjects to whom these properties belong. Yet it is impossible to explain the constitution of a macro-subject (like one of us) in terms of the assembly of micro-subjects, for, I show, subjects cannot combine. Therefore the panpsychist explanatory project is derailed by the insistence that the world’s ultimate material constituents (ultimates) are subjects of experience. The panpsychist faces a choice of abandoning her explanatory project, or recanting the claim that the ultimates are subjects. This is the dilemma. I argue that the latter option is to be preferred. This needn’t constitute a wholesale abandonment of panpsychism, however, since panpsychists can maintain that the ultimates possess phenomenal qualities, despite not being subjects of those qualities. This proposal requires us to make sense of phenomenal qualities existing independently of experiencing subjects, a challenge I tackle in the penultimate section. The position eventually reached is a form of neutral monism, so another way to express the overall argument is to say that, keeping true to their philosophical motivations, panpsychists should really be neutral monists.Peer reviewedFinal Accepted Versio
Areas of natural occurrence of melipona scutellaris Latreille, 1811(Hymenoptera: Apidae) in the state of Bahia, Brazil.
The bee Melipona scutellaris is considered the reared meliponine species with the largest distribution in the North and Northeast regions of Brazil, with records from the state of Rio Grande do Norte down to the state of Bahia. Considering the importance of this species in the generation of income for family agriculture and in the preservation of areas with natural vegetation, this study aimed at providing knowledge on the distribution of natural colonies of M. scutellaris in the state of Bahia. Literature information, interviews with stinglessbee beekeepers, and expeditions were conducted to confirm the natural occurrence of the species. A total of 102 municipalities showed records for M. scutellaris, whose occurrence was observed in areas ranging from sea level up to 1,200-meter height. The occurrence of this species in the state of Bahia is considered to be restricted to municipalities on the coastal area and the Chapada Diamantina with its rainforests. Geographic coordinates, elevation, climate and vegetation data were obtained, which allowed a map to be prepared for the area of occurrence in order to support conservation and management policies for the species
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