Rainbows in the society: A measure of hope for society

The aim of this study was to develop and validate a measure of social hope. Previous studies have extensively reported on personal hope and its outcomes. Although a few studies have suggested the concept of collective or social hope, there is no instrument to assess the construct. In this study, we created a 5‐item scale, drawing on Snyder's hope theory, and collected two sets of survey data online. Analysis of these data sets revealed that the new scale was structurally unidimensional and internally consistent. In association with Snyder's State Hope Scale, the Social Hope Scale showed convergent and discriminant validity. The social hope construct also exhibited theoretically meaningful relationships with political efficacy and self‐construal (concurrent validity). Finally, social hope was higher for those who had participated in certain types of social activism than it was for those who had not (predictive validity). These results suggest that the Social Hope Scale is a reliable and valid self‐report measure of hopeful thinking for society.     

Is the History of our Universe Finite?

Modern cosmology indicates that our universe has a finite age. However, it is not understood whether the initial state before the Big Bang is finite in history or not. In this article, I show by simple arguments that the initial state must be finite in history if it is real. If the initial state is not real, a special transition is needed to specify the beginning of the real time. Moreover, if our universe is just one of the many universes, it can be shown that the history of the universe generator must also be finite.     

Reach/Grasp Times with Lateral Reach Obstructions

When moving to grasp an object having adjacent obstacles that limit the space available for placing the fingers, the time for the reach/grasp is dependent on the distance of reaching and the space available for finger placement. Here we model the time taken in terms of these variables and develop mathematical models for the reach and grasp phases of the task and the location of obstacles. Data show that the movement to the target may be made under visual control and that, when the obstacles are close to the target object, a visually-controlled movement is made that is modeled by a modified form of Fitts' law. The time for the two components of the reach/grasp appear to be independent and linearly additive.     

Display polarity, stimulus exposure duration, and visual lobe shape

This study investigated the effects of visual display polarity and stimulus exposure duration on visual lobe shape. Analysis showed that regardless of display polarity and exposure duration combinations tested here, visual lobe contours were slightly irregular and asymmetric, of medium roundness, with a moderately rough boundary, and horizontally elongated with a mean length-width ratio of 1.53. Visual lobes mapped with negative display polarity were significantly rounder, slightly more regular and more symmetric along the vertical axis, compared with those mapped with positive polarity. Under the different polarity conditions, there were no significant differences in visual lobe area, perimeter, boundary smoothness, and elongation. When stimulus exposure duration increased from 200 to 400 msec. and from 200 to 300 msec., there were significant increases in the visual lobe area, perimeter, roundness, boundary smoothness, and regularity. No such changes were found when duration increased from 300 to 400 msec. Exposure durations did not have a significant effect on the shape categories of elongation and horizontal symmetry for the different stimuli. There were no statistically significant interactions between polarity and stimulus exposure duration for any of the lobe shape indexes used here.     

The use of health technology and information: e-learning technological approach.

The Internet is becoming the preferred place for finding information. Millions of people go online in search of health and medical information. Likewise, health care professionals must be able to retrieve and manage information in an efficient, effective manner. The development of health technology and informatics (HTI) has been rapid, yet little is known about the knowledge and attitudes of nursing students with regard to using HTI. Therefore, the objective of the present study was to explore nursing students' knowledge of and attitudes toward using HTI and to use an e-learning workshop to enhance the effective use of HTI. In Phase I, 115 first-year full-time nursing students were invited to complete a 13-item questionnaire regarding knowledge of and attitudes toward computer and Internet use, knowledge of HTI, and attitudes toward the future development of HTI. Participants perceived themselves to be knowledgeable in computer and Internet use, while knowledge of HTI was perceived to be low and attitudes toward the future development of HTI were generally positive. Phase II was an e-learning HTI workshop; topics included an introduction to HTI, examples of HTI in use, and the application and implementation of various HTI projects. There were 30 participants in the E-learning workshop, and their feedback was positive. Nurses and all health care professionals must be prepared to participate in the development of health technology and informatics. Teaching and learning activities should be geared toward mastery of HTI in the nursing education curriculum in order to enhance health care quality and safety.     

An experimentally confirmed statistical model on arm movement

The purpose of this research work was to develop a methodology to model arm movement in normal subjects and neurologically impaired individuals through the application of a statistical modelling method. Thirteen subjects with Parkinson's disease and 29 normal controls were recruited to participate in an arm motor task. An infrared optoelectronic kinematic movement analysis system was employed to record arm movement at 50 times per second. This study identified the modified extended Freundlich model as one that could be used to describe this task. Results showed that this model fit the data well and that it has a good correspondence between the observed and the predicted data. However, verification of the model showed that the residuals contained a sizeable autocorrelation factor. The Cochrane and Orcutt method was applied to remove this factor, which improved the fit of the model. Results showed that Parkinson's disease subjects had a higher autocorrelation coefficient than the normal subjects for this task. A positive correlation (r(s) = 0.72, p < 0.001) was found between the Langton-Hewer stage and the autocorrelation coefficient of PD subjects. This finding suggests that if autocorrelation is positively correlated with disease progression, clinicians in their clinical practice might use the autocorrelation value as a useful indicator to quantify the progression of a subjects' disease. Significant differences in model parameters were seen between normal and Parkinson's disease subjects. The use of such a model to represent and quantify movement patterns provides an important base for future study.     

The contributions of static visual cues, nonvisual cues, and optic flow in distance estimation

By systematically varying cue availability in the stimulus and response phases of a series of same-modality and cross-modality distance matching tasks, we examined the contributions of static visual information, idiothetic information, and optic flow information. The experiment was conducted in a large-scale, open, outdoor environment. Subjects were presented with information about a distance and were then required to turn 180 before producing a distance estimate. Distance encoding and responding occurred via: (i) visually perceived target distance, or (ii) traversed distance through either blindfolded locomotion or during sighted locomotion. The results demonstrated that subjects performed with similar accuracy across all conditions. In conditions in which the stimulus and the response were delivered in the same mode, when visual information was absent, constant error was minimal; whereas, when visual information was present, overestimation was observed. In conditions in which the stimulus and response modes differed, a consistent error pattern was observed. By systematically comparing complementary conditions, we found that the availability of visual information during locomotion (particularly optic flow) led to an 'under-perception' of movement relative to conditions in which visual information was absent during locomotion.     

When children ask, "What is it?" what do they want to know about artifacts?

When children ask, "What is it?" are they seeking information about what something is called or what kind of thing it is? To find out, we gave 2-, 3-, and 4-year-olds (32 at each age) the opportunity to inquire about unfamiliar artifacts. An ambiguous question was answered with a name or with functional information, depending on the group to which the children were assigned. Children were inclined to follow up with additional questions about the object when they had been told its name, but seemed satisfied with the answer when they had been told the object's function. Moreover, children in the name condition tended to substitute questions about function for ambiguous questions over the course of the session. These results indicate that children are motivated to discover what kinds of things novel artifacts are, and that young children, like adults, conceive of artifact kinds in terms of their functions.     

A brief version of the geriatric depression scale for the chinese

Elderly persons (N=310) attending outpatient psychiatric clinics were given an interview on the 30-item Geriatric Depression Scale (T. L. Brink et al., 1982; J. A. Yesavage et al., 1983) and received an independent psychiatric evaluation. A 3-step binary logistic regression showed that 2 items measuring positive affect and 2 others measuring negative affect combined to produce diagnostic performance comparable with the full scale. This result was cross-validated on a different sample (N=134). A hierarchical measurement model in which the 4 items tapped 2 first-order factors (positive and negative affect), which in turn tapped a higher order construct of depression, provided excellent fit to the data.