Must psychologists change the way they analyze their data?

Wagenmakers, Wetzels, Borsboom, and van der Maas (2011) argued that psychologists should replace the familiar “frequentist” statistical analyses of their data with Bayesian analyses. To illustrate their argument, they reanalyzed a set of psi experiments published recently in this journal by Bem (2011), maintaining that, contrary to his conclusion, his data do not yield evidence in favor of the psi hypothesis. We argue that they have incorrectly selected an unrealistic prior distribution for their analysis and that a Bayesian analysis using a more reasonable distribution yields strong evidence in favor of the psi hypothesis. More generally, we argue that there are advantages to Bayesian analyses that merit their increased use in the future. However, as Wagenmakers et al.'s analysis inadvertently revealed, they contain hidden traps that must be better understood before being more widely substituted for the familiar frequentist analyses currently employed by most research psychologists. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does psi exist? Comments on Milton and Wiseman's (1999) meta-analysis of Ganzfield research.

J. Milton and R. Wiseman (1999) attempted to replicate D. Bern and C. Honorton's (1994) meta-analysis, which yielded evidence that the ganzfeld is a suitable method for demonstrating anomalous communication. Using a database of 30 ganzfeld and autoganzfeld studies, Milton and Wiseman's meta-analysis yielded an effect size (ES) of only 0.013 (Stouffer Z?=?0.70, p?=?.24, one-tailed). Thus they failed to replicate Bem and Honorton's finding (ES?=?0.162, Stouffer Z?=?2.52, p?=?5.90?×?10-3, one-tailed). The authors conducted stepwise performance comparisons between all available databases of ganzfeld research. Larger aggregates of such studies were formed, including a database comprising 79 ganzfeld-autoganzfeld studies (ES?=?0.138, Stouffer Z?=?5.66, p?=?7.78?×?10-9). Thus Bern and Honorton's positive conclusion was confirmed. More accurate population parameters for the ganzfeld and autoganzfeld domains were calculated. Significant bidirectional psi effects were also found in all databases. The ganzfeld appears to be a replicable technique for producing psi effects in the laboratory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

管道全压设计分析研究

从管道等级确定,管道选材,阀门选用形式及连接方式几个方面进行了论述,为海洋平台高压管道选材提供了方案。     

电子资金处理系统数字签名算法的研究

从资金处理系统为安全保密要求出发,强调了识别签名的重要性,基于公开钥密码体制,为解决签名纠纷,提出了一种可用于电子资金处理系统的数字签名算法,对算法的正确性进行了证明,并对算法的保密强度进行了分析。     

The efficacy of disinfectant misting in the lairage of a pig abattoir to reduce Salmonella and Enterobacteriaceae on pigs prior to slaughter

Water misting/showers are used in abattoir lairages to improve meat quality, and to cool and calm pigs after transport and during hot weather. One novel approach, which has not been investigated to date, is to add a disinfectant to the misting water as a means of topically reducing Salmonella on pigs prior to slaughter, thereby potentially controlling this organism in the abattoir. The objective of this study was therefore to evaluate misting with water or with Virkon^® S (an approved disinfectant for use in the presence of animals), for their ability to topically reduce Salmonella on high seroprevalence pig herds before stunning and to reduce Enterobacteriaceae.Three experimental groups were investigated: control group (i.e., no misting); water group (misting with cold, 15–17 °C, water, herein referred to as water); and a disinfectant group (misting with 0.5% Virkon^® S). As pigs entered the abattoir, each animal was swabbed along its back before being allocated to its experimental group. Each group was randomly assigned to one of 3 lairage pens that were separated by non-trial pens. After 30 min of misting with water or disinfectant, pigs were moved to the stunning area, where each pig was again swabbed, as above. Swabs were analyzed for the presence of Salmonella and enumeration of Enterobacteriaceae.Before misting, Salmonella prevalence on the pigs was 79.0%, 72.1% and 83.6% for the control, water and disinfectant groups, respectively. After misting, Salmonella prevalence increased to 94.3% in the water group; whereas for the disinfectant group, the prevalence increased marginally to 85.9%. No change in Salmonella prevalence was detected for the control group. In line with the Salmonella results, no significant differences were observed in Enterobacteriaceae counts in the control group at either time point (4.37 and 5.01 log₁₀ CFU/cm², respectively) or in the disinfectant group before and after misting (4.02 and 4.26 log₁₀ CFU/cm², respectively). However, a 2.3 log₁₀ CFU/cm² increase in Enterobacteriaceae was recorded for the water group after misting as compared to before misting (p < 0.05).Since misting with water alone increased topical Salmonella contamination on pigs before slaughter, a risk assessment based on known Salmonella data, meat quality and welfare is recommended to determine whether its use is justifiable. On the other hand, the findings from this study suggest that misting with Virkon^® S at 0.5% could have a role in topical antisepsis of pigs contaminated with Salmonella prior to slaughter and as such this warrants further investigation.     

Feeling the future: Experimental evidence for anomalous retroactive influences on cognition and affect.

The term psi denotes anomalous processes of information or energy transfer that are currently unexplained in terms of known physical or biological mechanisms. Two variants of psi are precognition (conscious cognitive awareness) and premonition (affective apprehension) of a future event that could not otherwise be anticipated through any known inferential process. Precognition and premonition are themselves special cases of a more general phenomenon: the anomalous retroactive influence of some future event on an individual's current responses, whether those responses are conscious or nonconscious, cognitive or affective. This article reports 9 experiments, involving more than 1,000 participants, that test for retroactive influence by “time-reversing” well-established psychological effects so that the individual's responses are obtained before the putatively causal stimulus events occur. Data are presented for 4 time-reversed effects: precognitive approach to erotic stimuli and precognitive avoidance of negative stimuli; retroactive priming; retroactive habituation; and retroactive facilitation of recall. The mean effect size (d) in psi performance across all 9 experiments was 0.22, and all but one of the experiments yielded statistically significant results. The individual-difference variable of stimulus seeking, a component of extraversion, was significantly correlated with psi performance in 5 of the experiments, with participants who scored above the midpoint on a scale of stimulus seeking achieving a mean effect size of 0.43. Skepticism about psi, issues of replication, and theories of psi are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Does psi exist? Reply to Storm and Ertel (2001).

The authors recently published a nonsignificant meta-analysis of 30 extrasensory perception ganzfeld studies, all conducted after the 1986 publication of important methodological guidelines aimed at reducing sources of artifact noted in earlier studies. In response, L. Storm and S. Ertel (2001) presented a meta-analysis of 79 studies published between 1974 and 1996. They argued that the positive and highly statistically significant overall outcome indicates a replicable paranormal effect. In doing so, they ignored the well-documented and widely recognized methodological problems in the early studies, which make it impossible to interpret the results as evidence of extrasensory perception. In addition, Storm and Ertel's meta-analysis is not an accurate quantitative summary of ganzfeld research because of methodological problems such as their use of an inconsistent method for calculating study outcomes and inconsistent inclusion criteria. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A meta-analysis with nothing to hide: Reply to Hyman (2010).

In our article (Storm, Tressoldi, & Di Risio, 2010), we claimed that the ganzfeld experimental design has proved to be consistent and reliable. However, Hyman (2010) argues that the overall evidence for psi is, in fact, contradictory and elusive. We present a case for psi research that undermines Hyman's argument. First, we give examples from parapsychologists who do not outrightly dismiss psi, despite appearances, but actually support it. Second, we claim that Hyman does not tell the full story about the ganzfeld meta-analytic findings and thus presents a one-sided account. Third, we argue that our meta-analysis has followed standard procedures, that we have not broken any rules but have found a communications anomaly, often referred to as psi. Though we may be in agreement that the evidence is largely statistical, the evidence suggests that concealed targets are actually identified rather than guessed. We argue that further research is necessary. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identification of a Novel Cis-Acting Regulator of HIV-1 Genome Packaging

Human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) uptakes homo-dimerized viral RNA genome into its own particle. A cis-acting viral RNA segment responsible for this event, termed packaging signal (psi), is located at the 5′-end of the viral genome. Although the psi segment exhibits nucleotide variation in nature, its effects on the psi function largely remain unknown. Here we show that a psi sequence from an HIV-1 regional variant, subtype D, has a lower packaging ability compared with that from another regional variant, HIV-1 subtype B, despite maintaining similar genome dimerization activities. A series of molecular genetic investigations narrowed down the responsible element of the selective attenuation to the two sequential nucleotides at positions 226 and 227 in the psi segment. Molecular dynamics simulations predicted that the dinucleotide substitution alters structural dynamics, fold, and hydrogen-bond networks primarily of the psi-SL2 element that contains the binding interface of viral nucleocapsid protein for the genome packaging. In contrast, such structural changes were minimal within the SL1 element involved in genome dimerization. These results suggest that the psi 226/227 dinucleotide pair functions as a cis-acting regulator to control the psi structure to selectively tune the efficiency of packaging, but not dimerization of highly variable HIV-1 genomes.