Rater confidence and social influence in performance appraisals.

The influence of rater confidence on combined evaluations was examined when information from multiple sources was available. Confidence was related to evaluation extremity for novice raters when no other rater information was available. Information from multiple raters differentially affected the relationship between confidence and rating extremity. Evaluation information supplied by a highly confident, extreme rater significantly influenced evaluations from noninteracting novice raters but only minimally influenced evaluations from interacting novice raters. Among experts, raters seen as raising the greatest number of and the most persuasive arguments were most influential. The most accurate rater in a group had little effect on combined evaluations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Ex situ growth and biomass of Populus bioenergy crops irrigated and fertilized with landfill leachate

Merging traditional intensive forestry with waste management offers dual goals of fiber and bioenergy production, along with environmental benefits such as soil/water remediation and carbon sequestration. As part of an ongoing effort to acquire data about initial genotypic performance, we evaluated: (1) the early aboveground growth of trees belonging to currently utilized Populus genotypes subjected to irrigation with municipal solid waste landfill leachate or non-fertilized well water (control), and (2) the above- and below-ground biomass of the trees after 70 days of growth. We determined height, diameter, and number of leaves at 28, 42, 56, and 70 days after planting (DAP), along with stem, leaf, and root dry mass by testing six Populus clones (DN34, DN5, I4551, NC14104, NM2, NM6) grown in a greenhouse in a split–split plot, repeated measures design with two blocks, two treatments (whole-plots), six clones (sub-plots), and four sampling dates (sub–sub-plots, repeated measure). Treatments (leachate, water) were applied every other day beginning 42 DAP. The leachate-treated trees exhibited greater height, diameter, and number of leaves at 56 and 70 DAP (P<0.05). There was broad variation in clonal responses to leachate treatment for dry mass, with a general trend of leachate-treated trees exhibiting greater stem and leaf dry mass (P<0.05), but negligible differences for root dry mass (P> 0.05). Overall, genotypic responses to the leachate treatment were clone-specific for all traits.     

Interlayer‐Sensitized Linear and Nonlinear Photoluminescence of Quasi‐2D Hybrid Perovskites Using Aggregation‐Induced Enhanced Emission Active Organic Cation Layers

A concept of interlayer‐sensitized photoluminescence (PL) of quasi‐2D hybrid perovskite (PVK) with a π‐conjugated optically interacting organic cation layer is introduced and demonstrated. A rod‐shaped aggregation‐induced enhanced emission (AIEE) organic cation (BPCSA+), well fitted into the lattice size of 2D PVK layers, is designed and synthesized to prolong the exciton lifetime in a condensed layer assembly in the PVK. The BPCSA+ promotes the PL of this hybrid PVK up to 10‐folds from that of a non‐π‐conjugated organic cation (OA) 2D PVK. Notably, different from PL of OA 2D PVK, the increased PL intensity of BPCSA 2D PVKs with an increase of the BPCSA ratio in the PVK indicates a critical photon‐harvesting contribution of BPCSA. The films of BPCSA 2D PVKs are incredibly stable in ambient environments for more than 4 months and even upon direct contact with water. Additionally, due to the strong two‐photon absorption property of BPCSA, the BPCSA 2D PVK displays superior emission properties upon two‐photon excitation with a short wavelength IR laser. Thus, the AIEE sensitization system for quasi‐2D PVK hybrid system can make a drastic improvement in performance as well as in the stability of the PVK emitter and PVK based nonlinear optical devices.     

Comparison of economic and noneconomic factors in predicting faculty vote preference in a union representation election.

Assessed the strength of economic and noneconomic perspectives in predicting vote preferences before and after a faculty union representation election by surveying 712 full- and part-time faculty members in degree-granting departments and other instructional and support units at a large midwestern public university. The major economic and noneconomic variables that have been investigated as correlates and predictors of union vote attitudes and behavior were of primary interest. Results show that faculty vote preferences were best predicted by attitudes toward collective bargaining at the institution, social forces acting on the faculty, and the perceived instrumentality of a collective bargaining agent in bringing about various desired outcomes. A generally accepted model of the unionization process is revised to reflect the finding that attitudes contribute significantly in explaining variability in vote preferences beyond that accounted for by instrumentality or satisfaction alone. (39 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Composite Texture Synthesis

Many textures require complex models to describe their intricate structures. Their modeling can be simplified if they are considered composites of simpler subtextures. After an initial, unsupervised segmentation of the composite texture into the subtextures, it can be described at two levels. One is a label map texture, which captures the layout of the different subtextures. The other consists of the different subtextures. This scheme has to be refined to also include mutual influences between textures, mainly found near their boundaries. The proposed composite texture model also includes these. The paper describes an improved implementation of this idea. Whereas in a previous implementation subtextures and their interactions were synthesized sequentially, this paper proposes a parallel implementation, which yields results of higher quality.     

Low-level bayesian segmentation of piecewise-homogeneous noisy and textured images

We present a novel approach to image segmentation, differing from the known “simulated annealing” method in the following ways: the compound Bayesian decision rule and consequent maximal marginal a posteriori probability (MMAP) estimates of desired region labels in pixels; the two- or three-level piecewise-homogeneous Gibbs random field with constant control parameters as the probabilistic model of the images and region maps (in the general case such a model integrates the submodels of the region map, of the ideal intensities within each region, and of the noise distorting the ideal intensities); the stochastic relaxation with the constant control parameters of the Gibbs probability distribution only as a tool to obtain the samples of this field and estimate the unknown marginal a posteriori probabilities of the region labels by collecting in each pixel the histogram of labels for these samples; the like stochastic relaxation with directed variation of the control parameters of the Gibbs probability distribution as a tool to find maximal likelihood estimates of the unknown these parameters. Some experimental results are presented.