Divergent thinking ability is related to faster relatedness judgments.

Creativity is commonly defined as the novel and useful combination of concepts previously thought to be unrelated. Fundamentally, this process rests on the ability to judge relatedness between concepts. The authors conducted an experiment to test the connection between divergent thinking ability and the speed of judging relatedness. Our results demonstrated that people with higher divergent thinking ability are faster in judging whether two concepts are related or unrelated. In real life, this can lead to a substantial advantage in the number of potentially useful relationships that could be assessed per unit of time. Equally important, there was no link between IQ and speed of judging relatedness. These results are interpreted in relation to a recently proposed model of creative cognition suggesting that creative people are faster in information processing under conditions of low ambiguity. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Carbon Nanotube Growth on Calcium Carbonate Supported Molybdenum-Transition Bimetal Catalysts

A comparison of different catalyst systems (Fe–Mo, Co–Mo or Ni–Mo nanoparticles supported on calcium carbonate) has been performed in order to optimize the carbon nanotube (CNT) growth. The influences of the reaction temperature, metal loading and carbon source on the synthesis of CNTs were investigated. Dense CNT networks have been synthesized by thermal chemical vapor deposition (CVD) of acetylene at 720 °C using the Co–Mo/CaCO₃ catalyst. The dependence of the CNT growth on the most important parameters was discussed exemplarily on the Co catalyst system. Based on the experimental observations, a phenomenological growth model for CVD synthesis of CNTs was proposed. The synergy effect of Mo and active metals was also discussed.     

Frontotemporal dementia selectively impairs transitive reasoning about familiar spatial environments.

Although patients with frontotemporal dementia (FTD) are known to exhibit a wide range of cognitive and personality difficulties, some evidence suggests that there may be a degree of selectivity in their reasoning impairments. Based on a recent review of the neuroimaging literature on reasoning, the authors hypothesized that the presence or absence of familiar content may have a selective impact on the reasoning abilities of patients with FTD. Specifically, the authors predicted that patients with frontal-variant FTD would be more impaired when reasoning about transitive arguments involving familiar spatial environments than when reasoning about identical logical arguments involving unfamiliar spatial environments. As predicted, patients with FTD were less accurate than normal controls only when the content of arguments involved familiar spatial environments. These results indicate a degree of selectivity in the cognitive deficits of this patient population and suggest that the frontal-temporal lobe system may play a necessary role in reasoning about familiar material. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Elemental composition of Nigerian coals

Three analytical techniques (ASTM, FNAA and INAA) have been used to determine the major elemental composition, the percentage concentrations of Si, Fe, Al, as well as the concentrations of the trace elements Ca, K, Cl, Mg, Na and Ti of coals from seven major deposits in Nigeria. The results show that Nigerian coals are of weak or noncoking grades with low sulphur (0.52-2.04%) and high hydrogen (3.7-6.60%) contents. The coals possess properties which make them suitable feedstocks in gasification processes. They may also be used as blends with coking coals for sintering. Their potentials in the production of form coke in metallurgical and domestic applications, in addition to their suitability as thermal coals for electricity generation and steam raising in industries, provide incentives for their utilization.     

Money or life: Behavioral and neural context effects on choice under uncertainty.

Despite robust evidence from behavioral decision making demonstrating context effects on choice, most neural studies on choice under risk and uncertainty have involved monetary gambles. We instructed participants to make choices under uncertainty in life and cash domains. Participants exhibited greater risk aversion, conflict, and sensitivity to negative feedback in the life domain, which we attribute to valuation of human lives. Supporting this assertion, choices to save lives activated the dorsal striatum, consistent with its role in context-sensitive reward processing. In contrast, choices to save cash activated the posterior insula, which we attribute to its role in probability signaling and risk prediction. Our findings highlight dissociable and context-dependent neural systems underlying choice under uncertainty. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Controlled growth of self-organized hexagonal arrays of metallic nanorods using template-assisted glancing angle deposition for superhydrophobic applications

The fabrication of controlled, self-organized, highly ordered tungsten and aluminum nanorods was accomplished via the aluminum lattice template-assisted glancing angle sputtering technique. The typical growth mechanism of traditional glancing angle deposition technique was biased by self-organized aluminum lattice seeds resulting in superior quality nanorods in terms of size control, distribution, and long range order. The morphology, size, and distribution of the nanorods were highly controlled by the characteristics of the template seeds indicating the ability to obtain metallic nanorods with tunable distributions and morphologies that can be grown to suit a particular application. Water wettability of hexagonally arranged tungsten and aluminum nanorods was studied after modifying their surface with 5 nm of Teflon AF 2400, as an example, to exhibit the significance of such a controlled growth of metallic nanorods. This facile and scalable approach to generate nano seeds to guide GLAD, with nano seeds fabricated by anodic oxidization of aluminum followed by chemical etching, for the growth of highly ordered nanorods could have significant impact in a wide range of applications such as anti-icing coating, sensors, super capacitors, and solar cells.     

An improved model to predict performance under mental fatigue

Fatigue has become an increasing problem in our modern society. Using MATLAB as a generic modelling tool, a fatigue model was developed based on an existing one and compared with a commercial fatigue software for prediction of cognitive performance under total and partial sleep deprivation. The flexibility of our fatigue model allowed additions of new algorithms and mechanisms for non-sleep factors and countermeasures and thus improved model predictions and usability for both civilian and military applications. This was demonstrated by model simulations of various scenarios and comparison with experimental studies. Our future work will be focused on model validation and integration with other modelling tools.

Practitioner Summary: Mental fatigue affects health, safety and quality of life in our modern society. In this paper, we reported a cognitive fatigue model based on existing models with newly incorporated components taking both the operator’s state of alertness and task demand into account. The model provided the additional capability for prediction of cognitive performance in scenarios involving pharmaceutical countermeasures, different task demands and shift work.     

Colin Martindale (1943–2008).

When Colin Martindale passed away on November 16, 2008, psychology lost one of its greatest patrons. In the course of a career that spanned four decades, he worked tirelessly to promote the scientific study of aesthetics and creativity, in the process making important contributions not only to his primary focal areas but also to psycholinguistics, computerized content analysis, author attribution, psychoanalytic theory, statistical method, personality, abnormal psychology, interpersonal attraction, and oligonucleotide frequencies in DNA. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Variable attention facilitates creative problem solving.

Traditionally, researchers have associated creativity with defocused attention. Recent experimental evidence contradicts this notion by demonstrating that in creative people, defocused attention is a variable state rather than a stable trait. Specifically, creative people are better at adjusting their focus of attention as a function of task demands. When the task is ill defined and ambiguity is high, attention is defocused, resulting in slower processing on the task. In contrast, when the task is well defined and ambiguity is low, attention is focused, resulting in faster processing on the task. This flexibility can confer distinct advantages to creative people in the course of problem solving as changes in the structure of the problem necessitate corresponding adjustments in solution strategy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Leveraging AI-enabled 6G-driven IoT for sustainable smart cities

Many scholastic researches have begun around the globe about the competitive technological interventions like 5G communication networks and its challenges. The incipient technology of 6G networks has emerged to facilitate ultrareliable and low-latency applications for sustainable smart cities which are infeasible with the existing 4G/5G standards. Therefore, the advanced technologies like machine learning (ML), block chain, and Internet of Things (IoT) utilizing 6G network are leveraged to develop cost-efficient mechanisms to address the issues of excess communication overhead in the present state of the art. Initially, the authors discussed the key vision of 6G communication technologies, its core technologies (such as visible light communication [VLC] and THz), and the existing issues with the existing network generations (such as 5G and 4G). A detailed analysis of benefits, challenges, and applications of blockchain-enabled IoT devices with application verticals like Smart city, smart factory plus, automation, and XR that form the key highlights for 6G wireless communication network is also presented. In addition, the key applications and latest research of artificial intelligence (AI) in 6G are discussed facilitating the dynamic spectrum allocation mechanism and mobile edge computing. Lastly, an in-depth study of the existing open issues and challenges in green 6G communication network technology, as well as review of solutions and potential research recommendations are also presented.