One Hundred Years of Social Psychology Quantitatively Described.

This article compiles results from a century of social psychological research, more than 25,000 studies of 8 million people. A large number of social psychological conclusions are listed alongside meta-analytic information about the magnitude and variability of the corresponding effects. References to 322 meta-analyses of social psychological phenomena are presented, as well as statistical effect-size summaries. Analyses reveal that social psychological effects typically yield a value of r equal to .21 and that, in the typical research literature, effects vary from study to study in ways that produce a standard deviation in r of .15. Uses, limitations, and implications of this large-scale compilation are noted. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The time course of spoken word learning and recognition: Studies with artificial lexicons.

The time course of spoken word recognition depends largely on the frequencies of a word and its competitors, or neighbors (similar-sounding words). However, variability in natural lexicons makes systematic analysis of frequency and neighbor similarity difficult. Artificial lexicons were used to achieve precise control over word frequency and phonological similarity. Eye tracking provided time course measures of lexical activation and competition (during spoken instructions to perform visually guided tasks) both during and after word learning, as a function of word frequency, neighbor type, and neighbor frequency. Apparent shifts from holistic to incremental competitor effects were observed in adults and neural network simulations, suggesting such shifts reflect general properties of learning rather than changes in the nature of lexical representations. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An intelligent decision theoretic approach to producibility optimization in conceptual design

Product optimization involves selecting design, manufacturing, and support attributes that can produce the best system. Producibility or manufacturability is the term often used to describe the relative ease of manufacturing a product. In complex systems, productibility optimization is a very difficult process, particularly when the values of many attributes are restricted by constraints. One challenge is to develop more universal producibility metrics for the conceptual design phase when design information is limited and drawings are nondimensional. This paper develops a new method for producibility optimization in conceptual design based on a combination of both decision theoretic and expert system techniques. Decision theoretic techniques provide the means to model the design for producibility problem in a manner that can deal with risk, uncertainty, and user (or corporate) preferences, and can effectively integrate diverse factors to provide a measure of the overall worth of a design. The particular decision theoretic approach employed is based on multi-attribute utility theory. An illustrative example of the methodology is applied to the conceptual design of a structural composite part.     

The Brittle Versus the Ductile Nature of Fracture Modes I and II

Failure surface orientations are determined for states of uniaxail tensile stress and shiar stree appropriate to fracture Modes I and II. The method uses a newly developed failure criterion along with the associated flow rule. The failure angles show a sharp demarcation between ductile and brittle material types. Only the brittle materials class show consistency and likely represents a shear localization effect rether than explicit fracture.     

A heuristic for dynamic yard crane deployment in a container terminal

Rubber Tired Gantry Cranes (RTGCs) are the most widely used pieces of equipment in the Hong Kong sea-freight container yards. Workload distribution in the yard changes continuously over time. The dynamic deployment of RTGCs is an important issue in yard operation management. This paper investigates the dynamic crane deployment problem with the objective of determining the crane deployment frequency and routes over a planning horizon to minimize the total workload overflow. The problem is formulated as a mixed integer programming model. A heuristic algorithm is then developed to solve problems of practical sizes. The heuristic quickly finds a near optimal solution for crane deployment operation.     

The effects of glycol methacrylate as a dehydrating agent on the dimensional changes of liver tissue

The dimensional changes of liver sections during the course of processing with glycol methacrylate (GMA) or with ethanol are described. Tissue processing with ethanol served as a control. During prolonged processing steps (24 h each), linear shrinkage of tissue specimens dehydrated with GMA at room temperature was 13.2%. Subsequent infiltration with GMA resulted in trivial swelling, and polymerization in slight shrinkage (2.3%). In comparison, processing with cold GMA resulted in shrinkage during dehydration (about 10.8%), a slight swelling in pure GMA, followed by shrinkage during polymerization (2.2%). Short routine processing schedules resulted in similar shrinkage/swelling patterns, although precise values differed slightly. In all experiments, ethanolic dehydration resulted in smaller dimensional tissue changes than did GMA dehydration. The dimensional changes of tissue sections during stretching on water, mounting and drying compensated for the major part of the shrinkage manifested during processing.     

Comprehension of arithmetic word problems: A comparison of successful and unsuccessful problem solvers.

It is proposed that when solving an arithmetic word problem, unsuccessful problem solvers base their solution plan on numbers and keywords that they select from the problem (the direct translation strategy), whereas successful problem solvers construct a model of the situation described in the problem and base their solution plan on this model (the problem-model strategy). Evidence for this hypothesis was obtained in 2 experiments. In Experiment 1, the eye fixations of successful and unsuccessful problem solvers on words and numbers in the problem statement were compared. In Experiment 2, the degree to which successful and unsuccessful problem solvers remember the meaning and exact wording of word problems was examined. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Swords to plowshares: Shock wave applications to advanced lithography

xtreme ltra iolet ithography (EUVL) seeks to apply radiation in a wavelength region centered near 13 nm to produce microcircuits having feature sizes 0.1 micron or less. A critical requirement for the commercial application of this technology is the development of an economical, compact source of this radiation which is suitable for lithographic applications. A good candidate is a laser-plasma source, which is generated by the interaction of an intermediate intensity laser pulse (up to 10¹² W/cm²) with a metallic target. While such a source has radiative characteristics which satisfy the needs of an EUVL source, the debris generated during the laser-target interaction strikes at the economy of the source. Here, we review the use of concepts and computer modeling, originally developed for hypervelocity impact analysis, to study this problem.     

New Tractable Classes From Old

The constraint satisfaction problem is known to be NP-hard in general, but a number of restrictions of the problem have been identified over the years which ensure tractability. This paper introduces two simple methods of combining two or more tractable classes over disjoint domains, in order to synthesise larger, more expressive tractable classes. We demonstrate that the classes so obtained are genuinely novel, and have not been previously identified. In addition, we use algebraic techniques to extend the tractable classes which we identify, and to show that the algorithms for solving these extended classes can be less than obvious.