Psychological Time: The effect of task complexity upon the human estimation of duration.

The Appendix contains the raw data from all the experiments and a representative sample of the experimental software.This thesis was designed to investigate the effect of task complexity upon how humans estimate duration. Previous task complexity research suggests that duration is overestimated with simple tasks and underestimated with complex tasks. One-hundred and forty-two first and second year university students participated. Twelve experiments were conducted, which required participants to complete computer generated jigsaw puzzles and periodically estimate how long they thought they had been doing the puzzle. In Experiment 1, participants were required to complete a jigsaw puzzle before making an estimate. In the remaining eleven experiments, estimates were made throughout the session whilst participants worked on the jigsaw puzzle. In the first four experiments, a task was complex if there were more puzzle pieces and simpler if there were fewer puzzle pieces. There were no significant results obtained from the first four experiments. Given the lack of effect from the first four experiments, the next two experiments partially replicated two task complexity studies to determine how task complexity can be used as an explanation for why estimations of duration differ. Again, there were no significant results obtained from these two experiments. The next four experiments tested whether people's estimates of duration were affected by the rate of reinforcement they receive (i.e., successfully moving a puzzle piece to a new location per unit time). In the first of these two experiments (7 and 8) there was no effect of the manipulation, which consisted of decreasing the distance which a puzzle piece could be moved on the screen, relative to the distance the computer mouse was moved and fixing the speed at which a puzzle piece could be moved. In Experiments 9 and 10, more discriminative stimuli were used to indicate to participants that a change in the reinforcement rate was occurring. There was a significant result in Experiment 9 in one condition but this effect was not replicated in Experiment 10. In Experiment 11, the reinforcement rate was reduced to zero and there was a significant effect on participants' estimates of duration. However, these results suggested a confound between whether the reinforcement rate or not being able to access the jigsaw puzzle was affecting estimates of duration. In Experiment 12, access to the jigsaw puzzle was limited, whilst simultaneously controlling the reinforcement rate and the results showed that not having access to the jigsaw puzzle affected how participants estimate duration. These findings suggest that information can act as reinforcement, enabling a person to engage in private behaviour. When there is no access to reinforcement, time 'drags' for humans

How Notation Dictates Our Musical Understanding: Annotated Bibliography

Musical notation has a long and diverse history. The traditions of ancient Greece differ substantially from that of India or China in both content and technique, and even the Greek church has distinct notation from the Latin church. In our modern world there is an accepted notational style utilized for Western classical music, but the disparate regional and cultural styles that we may observe in history yields a deeper understanding of those cultures: what musical elements were prioritized over others, what performers were expected to interpret instead of purely reading, how their tonal structure is imparted. Contemporary musical notation has developed alongside technology which has enabled greater musical freedom, but in studying the history of music notation greater insights may be obtained and the understanding of general notation will be expanded

Models for Galactic cosmic-ray propagation

A new numerical model of particle propagation in the Galaxy has been developed, which allows the study of cosmic-ray and gamma-ray production and propagation in 2D or 3D, including a full reaction network. This is a further development of the code which has been used for studies of cosmic ray reacceleration, Galactic halo size, antiprotons and positrons in cosmic rays, the interpretation of diffuse continuum gamma rays, and dark matter. In this paper we illustrate recent results focussing on B/C, sub-Fe/Fe, ACE radioactive isotope data, source abundances and antiprotons. From the radioactive nuclei we derive a range of 3-7 kpc for the height of the cosmic-ray halo.Comment: Invited talk at the 33rd COSPAR Scientific Assembly (Warsaw 2000); 10 pages including 10 ps-figures and 2 tables, latex2e, uses cospar.sty. To appear in Advances in Space Research 2001. More details can be found at http://www.gamma.mpe-garching.mpg.de/~aws/aws.htm

Zoneamento aquícola: análise de contexto e abordagens técnicas.

Introdução. Zoneamento: conceitos e aplicações. Aquicultura: conceito e importância. Zoneamento Aquícola: critérios e configurações. Considerações Finais.bitstream/item/120400/1/cnpasa-2015-doc10.pd

Headache and type 2 diabetes association: a US national ambulatory case-control study

Objective We investigate the joint observation between type 2 diabetes and headache using a case-control study of a US ambulatory dataset. Background Recent whole-population cohort studies propose that type 2 diabetes may have a protective effect against headache prevalence. With headaches ranked as a leading cause of disability, headache-associated comorbidities could help identify shared molecular mechanisms. Methods We performed a case-control study using the US National Ambulatory Medical Care Survey, 2009, on the joint observation between headache and specific comorbidities, namely type 2 diabetes, hypertension and anxiety, for all patients between 18 and 65 years of age. The odds ratio of having a headache and a comorbidity were calculated using conditional logistic regression, controlling for gender and age over a study population of 3,327,947 electronic health records in the absence of prescription medication data. Results We observed estimated odds ratio of 0.89 (95% CI: 0.83-0.95) of having a headache and a record of type 2 diabetes over the population, and 0.83 (95% CI: 2.02-2.57) and 0.89 (95% CI: 3.00-3.49) for male and female, respectively. Conclusions We find that patients with type 2 diabetes are less likely to present a recorded headache indication. Patients with hypertension are almost twice as likely of having a headache indication and patients with an anxiety disorder are almost three times as likely. Given the possibility of confounding indications and prescribed medications, additional studies are recommended

Origin of light nuclei in near earth orbit

The possible sources of light nuclei populations observed recently below the geomagnetic cutoff by the AMS experiment are discussed in terms of nuclear processes: fragmentation of the incoming flux of cosmic helium on atmospheric nuclei, and nuclear coalescence from proton and helium induced reactions. Results of simulations for deuterium, tritium, helium 3 and 4, are presented.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figure