Early reasoning about desires: Evidence from 14- and 18-month-olds.

Although there is substantial evidence that 30-mo-old children can reason about other people's desires, little is known about the developmental antecedents of this ability. A food-request procedure was devised to explore this understanding in 14- and 18-mo-olds. Children observed an experimenter expressing disgust as she tasted 1 type of food and happiness as she tasted another type of food. They were then required to predict which food the experimenter would subsequently desire. The 14-mo-olds responded egocentrically, offering whichever food they themselves preferred. However, 18-mo-olds correctly inferred that the experimenter wanted the food associated with her prior positive affect. They were able to make this inference even when the experimenter's desires differed from their own. These data constitute the first empirical evidence that 18-mo-olds are able to engage in some form of desire reasoning. Children not only inferred that another person held a desire, but also recognized how desires are related to emotions and understood something about the subjectivity of these desires. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An operation strategy for using a ground heat exchanger system for industrial waste heat storage and extraction

A ground heat exchanger system is applied as a way to improve the heat recovery ratio in a project using industrial waste heat recovery for district heating. In order to meet the requirements of industrial processes, the outlet water temperature of the system should be strictly controlled within a range, but the heat transfer power varies with the warming or cooling of the soil. An operation strategy named “block by block” is implemented and a corresponding model is established. In this strategy, the total area of the system is divided into several blocks. The water flows by a specific combination of blocks at any given time, ensuring the outlet water temperature is relatively stable. By simulation, it is concluded that the strategy is fit for the practice of industrial waste heat storage and extraction.     

Rating Accessibility of Packaging: A Medical Packaging Example

Few previous work has been undertaken in understanding issues surrounding dexterity and access to packaging. Researchers had access to users who had known dexterity issues and had been advised by their doctor to decant their medication into bottles rather than use unit‐dose blister packaging. Hence, it was decided to use a range of techniques to understand this problem. It was further proposed to develop a methodology by which the relative performance of packaging could be assessed with respect to dexterity issues. In this study, there were three objectives to carry out: motion‐capture analysis, grip analysis and dexterity analysis when opening the blister packs. Motion capture was carried out on eight people aged 55 years and older, a classification of the grips used when opening blister packs was performed on 57 people aged 18 years and older, and a Purdue Pegboard test was administered to 54 people aged 18 years and older. It was found out that there were four common types of grips used, out of which two of the grips were used by more than 88% of participants. With the motion capture, it was found that each grip and their various associated techniques were compared with each other. Grip 2 utilized the least finger movement. Using the dexterity test results, it was corroborated that dexterity decreases with age, and an accessibility score was developed that can be used by pack designers and manufacturers to assess pack performance. Future work is proposed to develop this methodology further. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Optical helicity of interfering waves

Helicity is a property of light which is familiar from particle physics but less well-known in optics. In this paper we recall the explicit form taken by the helicity of light within classical electromagnetic theory and reflect upon some of its remarkable characteristics. The helicity of light is related to, but is distinct from, the spin of light. To emphasise this fact, we draw a simple analogy between the helicity of light and electric charge and between the spin of light and electric current. We illustrate this and other observations by examining various superpositions of plane waves explicitly.     

Electrochemical Synthesis of Magnetostrictive Fe–Ga/Cu Multilayered Nanowire Arrays with Tailored Magnetic Response

Arrays of nanowires are fabricated with alternating segments of the magnetostrictive alloy Fe_1–xGa_x and Cu using electrochemical deposition in nanoporous anodic aluminium oxide (AAO) templates. The difficult nature of Ga‐alloy electrochemistry is overcome by controlling mass‐transfer and hydrodynamic conditions using novel rotating disk electrode templates to obtain highly uniform segment lengths throughout the arrays. Extensive structural characterization by XRD, EBSD and TEM reveals a strong <110> textured Fe_1–xGa_x growth. Furthermore, using vibrating sample magnetometry (VSM), we demonstrate that control of magnetization reversal processes is possible once uniform aspect ratios are obtained for both the Fe–Ga and Cu segments.     

Calibration of multiplexed fiber-optic spectroscopy

Large-scale commercial bioprocesses that manufacture biopharmaceutical products such as monoclonal antibodies generally involve multiple bioreactors operated in parallel. Spectra recorded during in situ monitoring of multiple bioreactors by multiplexed fiber-optic spectroscopies contain not only spectral information of the chemical constituents but also contributions resulting from differences in the optical properties of the probes. Spectra with variations induced by probe differences cannot be efficiently modeled by the commonly used multivariate linear calibration models or effectively removed by popular empirical preprocessing methods. In this study, for the first time, a calibration model is proposed for the analysis of complex spectral data sets arising from multiplexed probes. In the proposed calibration model, the spectral variations introduced by probe differences are explicitly modeled by introducing a multiplicative parameter for each optical probe, and then their detrimental effects are effectively mitigated through a "dual calibration" strategy. The performance of the proposed multiplex calibration model has been tested on two multiplexed spectral data sets (i.e., MIR data of ternary mixtures and NIR data of bioprocesses). Experimental results suggest that the proposed calibration model can effectively mitigate the detrimental effects of probe differences and hence provide much more accurate predictions than commonly used multivariate linear calibration models (such as PLS) with and without empirical data preprocessing methods such as orthogonal signal correction, standard normal variate, or multiplicative signal correction.     

Choosing the Path to Bargaining Power: An Empirical Comparison of BATNAs and Contributions in Negotiation.

Although the negotiations literature identifies a variety of approaches for improving one's power position, the relative benefits of these approaches remain largely unexplored. The empirical study presented in this article begins to address this issue by examining how the size of the bargaining zone affects the relative benefit of an advantage in one's BATNA (i.e., having a better alternative than one's counterpart) versus contribution (i.e., contributing more to the relationship than one's counterpart) for negotiator performance. Results indicate that whereas BATNAs exerted a stronger effect on resource allocations than contributions when the bargaining zone was small, an advantage in contributions exerted a stronger effect on resource allocations than BATNAs when the bargaining zone was large. These findings provide needed insight and supporting evidence for how to alter one's power relationship in negotiation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Stress and smoking in adolescence: A test of directional hypotheses.

The authors conducted a comparative test of the hypotheses that (a) stress is an etiological factor for smoking and (b) cigarette smoking causes increases in stress (A. C. Parrott, 1999). Participants were a sample of 1,364 adolescents, initially surveyed at mean age 12.4 years and followed at 3 yearly intervals. Measures of negative affect, negative life events, and cigarette smoking were obtained at all 4 assessments. Latent growth modeling showed negative affect was related to increase in smoking over time; there was no path from initial smoking to change in negative affect. Comparable results were found for negative life events, with no evidence for reverse causation. Results are discussed with respect to theoretical models of nicotine effects and implications for prevention. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

IMing, Text Messaging, and Adolescent Social Networks

Building on previous research in computer-mediated communication, social and communication networks, and adolescent development, this article raises three issues regarding adolescent use of socially interactive technologies (SITs) and their relationship to offline social networks: 1) whether adolescents are creating more, but weaker ties using SITs, 2) to what extent adolescent SIT-facilitated networks overlap with friendship networks, and 3) whether SIT relationships are important for adolescents who have fewer offline peer ties. In order to investigate these questions, network data collection and analysis were integrated with more traditional questionnaire methodology and statistical analysis. The results show that the adolescents in the study were not creating more ties using SITs, nor were they necessarily creating weaker SIT-based ties; that there was little overlap between SIT-facilitated and offline social networks; and that socially isolated adolescents were less likely than other adolescents to use SITs.