Direct stamping of silver nanoparticles toward residue-free thick electrode

Direct stamping of functional materials has been developed for cost-effective and process-effective manufacturing of nano/micro patterns. However, there remain several challenging issues like the perfect removal of the residual layer and realization of high aspect ratio. We have demonstrated facile fabrication of flexible strain sensors that have microscale thick interdigitated capacitors with no residual layer by a simple direct stamping with silver nanoparticles (AgNPs). Polyurethane (PU) prepolymer was utilized as an adhesive layer to transfer AgNPs more efficiently during the separation step of the flexible stamp from directly stamped AgNPs. Scanning electron microscopy images and energy dispersive x-ray spectroscopy analysis revealed residue-free transfer of microscale thick interdigitated electrodes onto two different flexible substrates (elastomeric and brittle) for the application to highly sensitive strain sensors.     

The method of lines and exponential fitting

When the method of lines is used for solving time-dependent partial differential equations, finite differences are commonly employed to obtain the semidiscrete equations. Usually, if the solution is expected to be smooth, symmetric difference formulae are chosen for approximating the spatial derivatives. These difference formulae are almost invariably based on Lagrange type differentiation formulae. However, if it is known in advance that periodic components of given frequency are dominating in the solution, more accurate difference formulae, based on exponentials with imaginary exponent, are available. This paper derives such formulae and presents numerical results which clearly indicate that the accuracy can be improved considerably by exploiting additional knowledge on the frequencies of the solution.     

Complexity and valence in ethnophaulisms and exclusion of ethnic out-groups: What puts the "hate" into hate speech?

Ethnophaulisms (A. A. Roback, 1944) are the words used as ethnic slurs to refer to out-groups in hate speech. The results of previous archival research have suggested that it is the complexity, more so than the valence, of ethnophaulisms that predicts the exclusion of ethnic immigrant out-groups from the receiving society. This article reports the results of 3 experimental examinations of the relative contributions of complexity and valence in ethnophaulisms to the exclusion of an ethnic out-group. Experiment 1 demonstrated that exclusion of the ethnic out-group was increased by the use of low-complexity ethnophaulisms. Experiment 2 demonstrated that exclusion of the ethnic out-group decreased by the use of high-complexity ethnophaulisms. Experiment 3 confirmed the demonstration that exclusion decreased by the use of a different set of high-complexity ethnophaulisms. The results of these three experiments converge to indicate that low complexity exerts more of an effect than negative valences on the exclusion of an ethnic out-group. The implications of these results for theoretical approaches to intergroup behavior are considered. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Individual differences in negative affect repair.

The extant literature implicates affect repair ability as one source of individual differences in negative affect. Emerging from this literature are three regulatory traits that should predict repair ability (negative mood regulation expectancies, monitoring, labeling), yet no experimental examination of this possibility exists. Two studies explored this issue. Participants (Ns = 305, 146) watched negative affect-inducing videos and completed a repair or control writing task, before and after which they reported their affect. Results revealed wide individual differences in repair ability. Specifically, participants with high expectancies of repair success and those who attend to and understand their affect experienced the largest decreases in negative affect and largest increases in positive affect following the repair tasks. These findings advance understanding of individual differences in affect regulation and have implications for future research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A social psychological study of ethnonyms: Cognitive representation of the in-group and intergroup hostility.

Ethnonyms (M. G. Levin & L. P. Potapov, 1964; from the Greek roots meaning "a national group" and "name") are the names an in-group uses to distinguish itself from out-groups. There has been no social psychological research to date exploring the effects of ethnonyms. The authors report the results of 3 studies examining the potential effects of various features of ethnonyms on intergroup behavior. Analyses of archival data indicate that among indigenous African cultures (Study 1), indigenous Native American cultures (Study 2), and African Americans (Study 3), intergroup hostility was greater among in-groups characterized by less complex ethnonyms. Discussion considers the implications of these results and suggests new directions for research in the social psychological study of ethnonyms. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alternation and Bounded Concurrency Are Reverse Equivalent

Numerous models of concurrency have been considered in the framework of automata. Among the more interesting concurrency models are classical nondeterminism and pure concurrency, the two facets of alternation, and the bounded concurrency model. Bounded concurrency was previously considered to be similar to nondeterminism and pure concurrency in the sense of the succinctness of automata augmented with these features. In this paper we show that, when viewed more broadly, the power (of succinctness) of bounded concurrency is in fact most similar to the power of alternation. Our contribution is that, just like nondeterminism and pure concurrency are “complement equivalent,” bounded concurrency and alternation are “reverse equivalent” over finite automata. The reverse equivalence is expressed by the existence of polynomial transformations, in both directions, between bounded concurrency and alternation for the reverse of the language accepted by the other. It follows, that bounded concurrency is double-exponentially more succinct than DFAs with respect to reverse, while alternation only saves one exponent. This is as opposed to the direct case where alternation saves two exponents and bounded concurrency saves only one. An immediate corollary is that for languages over a one-letter alphabet, bounded concurrency and alternation are equivalent. We complete the picture of succinctness results for these languages by considering the different combinations of the concurrency models using additional lower bounds.     

Age Differences in Adults’ Use of Referring Expressions

The aim of this article is to investigate whether choosing the appropriate referring expression requires taking into account the hearer’s perspective, as is predicted under some versions of bidirectional Optimality Theory but is unexpected under other versions. We did this by comparing the results of 25 young and 25 elderly adults on an elicitation task based on eight different picture stories, and a comprehension task based on eight similar written stories. With respect to the elicitation task, we found that elderly adults produce pronouns significantly more often than young adults when referring to the old topic in the presence of a new topic. With respect to the comprehension task, no significant differences were found between elderly and young adults. These results support the hypothesis that speakers optimize bidirectionally and take into account hearers when selecting a referring expression. If the use of a pronoun will lead to an unintended interpretation by the hearer, the speaker will use an unambiguous definite noun phrase instead. Because elderly adults are more limited in their processing capacities, as is indicated by their smaller working memory capacity, as speakers they will not always be able to reason about the hearer’s choices. As a result, they frequently produce non-recoverable pronouns.     

A Hamiltonian approach to fairly low and fairly long gravity waves

The propagation of nonlinear dispersive gravity waves in an inviscid irrotational fluid can be described by a Hamiltonian system. The canonical equations contain a boundary integral which is computationally expensive. However, for fairly low and fairly long waves an approximation can be made that gives rise to the solution of computationally more attractive Helmholtz-type equations. In an earlier attempt by Broer et al. [4, 6] canonical equations were derived that are stable for all wavenumbers. However, two Helmholtz-type equations need to be solved per right-hand side evaluation. In this paper, canonical equations are presented with the same qualities, but now only once per right-hand side evaluation a Helmholz-type equation needs to be solved, which is optimal.