British female academics and comparative psychology: Attempts to establish a research niche in the early 20th century.

Why was there a preponderance of women engaged in laboratory-based studies of animal behavior in Britain in the early years of the 20th century? As a new experimental subject with recently neglected potential, animal psychology then represented an opportunity for women to make further inroads into academic science. Because the study of psychology before World War I offered negligible professional opportunities for the application of the subject, the intake of students was restricted. Perhaps this encouraged academic access to it by aspiring female scientists who felt that career prospects, uncertain and socially unexpected of them in any case, were worth chancing for greater long-term rewards. The academic circumstances and contributions of 3 British female pioneers in experimental comparative psychology are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Absence makes the adaptations grow fonder: Proportion of time apart from partner, male sexual psychology, and sperm competition in humans (Homo sapiens).

Sperm competition occurs when the sperm of multiple males concurrently occupy the reproductive tract of a female and compete to fertilize an egg. We used a questionnaire to investigate psychological responses to the risk of sperm competition for 237 men in committed, sexual relationships. As predicted, a man who spends a greater (relative to a man who spends a lesser) proportion of time apart from his partner since the couple's last copulation reported (a) greater sexual interest in his partner, (b) greater distress in response to his partner's sexual rejection, and (c) greater sexual persistence in response to his partner's sexual rejection. All effects were independent of total time since the couple's last copulation and the man's relationship satisfaction. Discussion addresses limitations of the current research and situates the current results within the broader comparative literature on adaptation to sperm competition. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Comparative Judgments as an Alternative to Ratings: Identifying the Scale Origin.

Although comparative judgment methods have a number of distinct advantages over ratings, they share one common problem: On the basis of comparative judgments, it is not possible to recover the origin of item evaluations. One item may be judged more positively than another, but this result does not allow any conclusions about whether either of the items are attractive or unattractive. This article discusses the implications of this limitation for the interpretation of individual differences in comparative judgments. It also presents 3 different methods that may allow determination of the scale origin using a nested model comparison approach. An application illustrates the proposed approach as well as the benefits of determining the scale origin in understanding value judgments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A comparative study of color measurement lntstrumentation

A multiplant Quality Improvement Team [QIT] was firmed to develop and implement an evaluation program for various color measurement .systems as potential replacements for the then-current aging systems. The emphasis qf this article is the analytical methodology utilized to evaluate the various color systems. The evaluation program consisted cf two phases. Phase I was a general overview/review of several systems, while Phase II was an extensive internal comparative evaluation measurement systems. These were Milton-Roy's ColorMate HDS, HunterLab's Ultrascan, Datacolor's CS-5, and BYK-Gardner's The Color Sphere [TCS]. The main comparison criteria were interinstrument agreement [agreement between two instruments ofthe same system], user-friendly software and computer interface capability, vendor amenability to a long-term logistical and maintenance relationship, and price. All systems were evaluated by duplicate measurements on various color tiles, yarns, and polymer flakes-over 1600 measurements on each system. The systems were compared with an instrument matrix, a decision matrix, and a product matrix. The instrument matrix was a comparison qfinstrument parameters, software/math treatments, and economics. The decision matrix was a forced ranking of each system by each criteria category [1–4 scale, with 1 representing the best and 4 representing the worst]. The product matrix accentuated the relative importance ofone criterion category over another by multiplying the forced ranking by the criticality of the category. The criticality of a given category wus determined by consensus within the QIT. Thr combination qf the three matrices allowed the evaluator[.s] t o select the color rneasuremmt system that best satixfied the color measurement needs and requirements of their facility and their products. For this evaluation, all ofthe evaluated systems were superior to the then-current agingsystems. As a result of this methodology, one instrument emerged as clearly superior. © 1994 John Wrley & Sons, Inc.     

Incorporating If...Then...Personality Signatures in Person Perception: Beyond the Person-Situation Dichotomy.

Three studies investigated conditions in which perceivers view dispositions and situations as interactive, rather than independent, causal forces when making judgments about another's personality. Study 1 showed that perceivers associated 5 common trait terms (e.g., friendly and shy) with characteristic if...then... (if situation a, then the person does x, but if situation b, then the person does y) personality signatures. Study 2 demonstrated that perceivers used information about a target's stable if...then... signature to infer the target's motives and traits; dispositional judgments were mediated by inferences about the target's motivations. Study 3 tested whether perceivers draw on if...then... signatures when making judgments about Big Five trait dimensions. Together, the findings indicate that perceivers take account of person-situation interactions (reflected in if...then... signatures) in everyday explanations of social behavior and personality dispositions. Boundary conditions are also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

A Further Comparison of Splitting Rules for Decision-Tree Induction

One approach to learning classification rules from examples is to build decision trees. A review and comparison paper by Mingers (Mingers, 1989) looked at the first stage of tree building, which uses a splitting rule to grow trees with a greedy recursive partitioning algorithm. That paper considered a number of different measures and experimentally examined their behavior on four domains. The main conclusion was that a random splitting rule does not significantly decrease classificational accuracy. This note suggests an alternative experimental method and presents additional results on further domains. Our results indicate that random splitting leads to increased error. These results are at variance with those presented by Mingers.     

An evaluation of the performance of an automated procedure for comparative modelling of protein tertiary structure

A 3-D model of a protein can be constructed from its amino acidsequence and the 3-D structures of one or more homologues byannealing three sets of fragments: the structurally conservedregions, structurally variable regions and the side chains.The method encoded in the computer program COMPOSER was assessedby generating 3-D models of eight proteins whose crystal structuresare already known and for which 3-D structures of homologuesare available. In the structurally conserved regions, differencesbetween modelled and X-ray structures are smaller than the differencesbetween the X-ray structures of the modelled protein and thehomologues used to build the model. When several homologuesare used, the contributions of the known structures are weighted,preferably by the square of sequence similarity; this is especiallyimportant when the similarities of the homologues to the modelledstructure differ greatly. The ‘collar’ extensionapproach, in which a similar region of different length in ahomologue is used to extend the framework, can result in a moreaccurate model. If known homologues comprise more than one relatedgroup of proteins and they are both distantly related to theunknown, then alignment of the sequence to be modelled witheach group of homologues facilitates identification of structurallyconserved regions of the unknown and leads to an improved model.Models have root mean square differences (r.m.s.d.s) with thestructures defined by X-ray analysis of between 0.73 and 1.56Å for all C atoms, for seven of the eight models. Forthe model of mucor pepsin, where the closest homologue has 33%sequence identity and 20% of the residues are in structurallyvariable regions, the r.m.s.d. for the framework region is 1.71Å and the r.m.s.d. for all C atoms is 3.47 Â.     

生产建设项目不同水土保持监测方法的比较分析

生产建设项目的水土保持监测内容由1个目标层、6个控制层、29个要素和96个指标构成。介绍了长江流域水土保持监测中心站开展水土保持工作主要采取的方法,即资料分析法、实地量测监测、定点地面监测、遥感监测、三维激光扫描测量、摄影测量和远程实时监控技术等。比较了各监测方法的原理、适应性及特点。由于各种监测方法均不是独立运用于某一个项目工程,因此,根据项目工程总体布局和工程施工可能造成的水土流失部位的特点,应相互结合各自特点,选择适合的监测方法,对生产建设项目水土流失及水土保持措施进行全过程监测。     

基于自适应定位的传感器频率的对比研究

为了研究传感器的运动频率对目标定位的影响,运用传感器与目标之间的距离信息,提出一种能在连续时间内进行目标定位的线性自适应算法。借助定位算法的稳定性条件,理论分析了传感器的频率对目标定位的作用。进一步通过Matlab仿真,对比研究了不同频率的传感器对固定目标以及持续漂移目标的定位效果。实验表明,传感器的频率会影响目标定位的时间以及定位结果的准确性;高频率的传感器可以减少目标定位所需的时间;在三维空间中,当传感器在每个坐标方向上的振幅相同时,为取得准确的定位结果,传感器的频率分量不能完全相同。对持续漂移的目标进行准确定位,传感器的运动频率要比目标漂移频率高。     

基于语义分类的比较句识别与比较要素抽取研究

比较是人们常用的评估不同事物优劣、异同的表达方式,利用机器识别比较句并进一步抽取比较要素是语言信息处理领域一项新颖又有实用价值的课题。该文依据比较句与比较要素之间是一种“你中有我,我中有你”的共生关系,将比较句识别与比较要素抽取两个任务合二为一完成;根据词意分类,构建由领域词典、情感词典、标记词典、普通词典构成的词典系统;根据汉语比较句句义分类,构建比较句识别与比较要素抽取规则库。以第四届中文倾向性评测(COAE2012)发布的测试语料为实验对象,该系统取得了较好的实验(评测)结果。