Exceptions that prove the rule--Using a theory of motivated social cognition to account for ideological incongruities and political anomalies: Reply to Greenberg and Jonas (2003).

A meta-analysis by J. T. Jost, J. Glaser, A. W. Kruglanski, and F. J. Sulloway (2003) concluded that political conservatism is partially motivated by the management of uncertainty and threat. In this reply to J. Greenberg and E. Jonas (2003), conceptual issues are clarified, numerous political anomalies are explained, and alleged counterexamples are incorporated with a dynamic model that takes into account differences between "young" and "old" movements. Studies directly pitting the rigidity-of-the-right hypothesis against the ideological extremity hypothesis demonstrate strong support for the former. Medium to large effect sizes describe relations between political conservatism and dogmatism and intolerance of ambiguity; lack of openness to experience; uncertainty avoidance; personal needs for order, structure, and closure; fear of death; and system threat. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

It takes two to mimic: Behavioral consequences of self-construals.

The present studies demonstrated the moderation of self-construal orientation on mimicry. Recent research has indicated that an interdependent self-construal is associated with assimilation of the other to the self whereas an independent self-construal is associated with minimizing the influence of others on the self (H. R. Markus & S. Kitayama, 1991; D. Stapel & W. Koomen, 2001). Therefore, the authors hypothesized that an interdependent self-construal would be associated with more mimicry than an independent self-construal. When self-construal orientations were experimentally primed. as in Studies 1 and 2, independent self-construals produced less nonconscious mimicry than interdependent self-construals. When self-construals were examined as cultural differences with either a chronically dominant independent (Americans) or interdependent (Japanese) construal of the self, these results were replicated. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Labor-Management Cooperation and Customer Satisfaction

The satisfaction that a customer has with the construction product and construction services provided by a contractor has a direct influence on the customer’s willingness to select that contractor for future work. Labor and management working together have the opportunity to influence customer satisfaction. Activities at the contractor/craft worker level, the contractor/local union level, and the contractor association/local union level have the greatest potential to influence customer satisfaction. A precisely defined plan incorporating labor-management activities targeted at specific satisfaction factors will have the greatest likelihood of creating high customer satisfaction.     

Revisiting the need for formal education in visualization.

Defining visualization education is still a work in progress. Visualization education is not just a subject within computer science. Computer scientists are not always the appropriate choice to teach visualization courses on their own. Visualization is not just mastering a set of concepts but acquiring skills. Student should learn by doing, either using one tool or a variety of tools, depending on the course's focus.     

On the complexity of simulating space-bounded quantum computations

This paper studies the space-complexity of predicting the long-term behavior of a class of stochastic processes based on evolutions and measurements of quantum mechanical systems. These processes generalize a wide range of both quantum and classical space-bounded computations, including unbounded error computations given by machines having algebraic number transition amplitudes or probabilities. It is proved that any space s quantum stochastic process from this class can be simulated probabilistically with unbounded error in space O(s), and therefore deterministically in space O(s²).     

Douglas W. Bray (1918-2006).

Presents an obituary for Douglas W. Bray, the inventor of the modern-day assessment center, a method used by thousands of organizations around the world to identify the best people for critical roles and to guide individuals in optimizing their talents. Bray's death in Englewood, New Jersey, on May 9, 2006, ended the extraordinary career of a pioneer in industrial/organizational (I/O) psychology who optimized the interplay of research and application. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Capture of Airborne Particulate Using Surface Applied Emulsions: Potential for Postdetonation Dirty Bomb Cleanup

Recent research has proposed the use of asphalt and tall-oil-pitch emulsions for stabilizing radioactive contamination deposited on surfaces in urban areas. The objective of this project was to investigate whether surface applied emulsions could capture airborne radioactive particulate. Laboratory experiments included wind-blown particulate capture studies using an acrylic column and particulate retainment experiments using a wind box capable of producing wind speeds of 96?km/h. A probe methodology was developed to relate particulate retainment to a tack force on the emulsion surface. Experiments were also performed to determine the potential for such emulsions to absorb particulate matter into their emulsion matrix. Tall-oil-pitch emulsions outperformed asphalt emulsions in terms of particulate retention, tack force, and the ability to absorb magnesium silicate. Both tall-oil-pitch and asphalt emulsions were capable of extracting 22–24?g?m?2 of powder from particulate-laden airflow. Tall-oil-pitch emulsions were capable of retaining as much as 5–10% of magnesium silicate powder applied (i.e., retainment densities of 10–20?g?m?2) even after seven?days of curing and after applying 96.5?km/h (60?mph) wind. Tall-oil-pitch emulsions were able to absorb surface-applied magnesium silicate (approximately 0.1–0.2?g of magnesium silicate per 1.0?g of emulsion within three?days) into their emulsion matrix, preventing the magnesium silicate from being exposed to the external environment. Initial results with these five different emulsion formulations suggested particulate capture was feasible. Future emulsion formulations (i.e., longer curing times with greater acid concentrations) should be tested to optimize this postdetonation response strategy.     

Proposed Design of a CFRP Flange-to-Flange Connection for Precast Prestressed Double Tee Systems

The current methods of connecting the flanges of precast double tee members, and their respective short comings in specific situations, are described. A new carbon fiber-reinforced polymer (CFRP) flange-to-flange connection is proposed to eliminate the problems associated with repair requirements for the current connections. Design expressions for the currently used mechanical anchorage and the proposed CFRP connection are presented. A comparative calculation for the two systems is given.     

An Optimized Content-Aware Authentication Scheme for Streaming JPEG-2000 Images Over Lossy Networks

This paper proposes an optimized content-aware authentication scheme for JPEG-2000 streams over lossy networks, where a received packet is consumed only when it is both decodable and authenticated. In a JPEG-2000 codestream, some packets are more important than others in terms of coding dependency and image quality. This naturally motivates allocating more redundant authentication information for the more important packets in order to maximize their probability of authentication and thereby minimize the distortion at the receiver. Towards this goal, with the awareness of its corresponding image content, we formulate an optimization framework to compute an authentication graph to maximize the expected media quality at the receiver, given specific authentication overhead and knowledge of network loss rate. System analysis and experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme achieves our design goal in that the rate-distortion (R-D) curve of the authenticated image is very close to the R-D curve when no authentication is required