Microstructure dependence of nanometre corrosion in Al-Ni-Y glassy alloys

The study reports the discovery of a new structure and spacing versus angle relation for a prevalent type of small-angle grain boundary in YBa     

National identity and ethno-religious identity: A critical inquiry into Chinese religious policy,with reference to the Uighurs in Xinjiang

Abstract

On the basis of data from the survey of religion and values in Central and Eastern Europe Aufbruch – 2007 this article questions the applicability of the basic theoretical propositions about the relations between religion and modernity, such as theory of secularisation (classically understood) and rational choice theory, and the thesis about the vicarious nature of religion, to the religious situation in the traditionally Orthodox part of Eastern Europe (Romania, Moldova, Serbia, Bulgaria, Belarus' and Ukraine). Following Shmuel Eisenstadt's concept of multiple modernities and Grace Davie's thesis of the secular character of Western European societies, it explores the possibility of viewing the religious modernity/modernities in the postcommunist traditionally Orthodox area of Eastern Europe as an alternative to the (secular) modernity of Western Europe, and the region itself as an ‘other-worldly’ Europe. After an overview of the specific features of Orthodox Christianity enabling this traditional religion to respond successfully to the demands of modern society, the article turns to the survey data covering a range of standard and also less frequently researched aspects of religiosity. The analysis concludes with a summary of the challenges that Orthodox Europe presents to the basic theoretical propositions about religion and modernity and stresses the important role that religion (and traditional churches) play in the social and political life of this region – a role that should not be ignored.     

Impact of organ transplantation in heart,lung and liver recipients: Assessment of positive life changes

Objective: The majority of psychological studies with organ transplant recipients have examined negative psychological effects. This study aimed to further investigate the positive effects of organ transplantation and to construct a specific measurement instrument.

Design: The initial pool of 14 items for the Positive Effects of Transplant Scale (PETS) was derived from organ recipient interviews. A cross-sectional postal study included 87 heart, 46 lung and 193 liver transplant recipients. The PETS was subjected to principal components analysis (PCA) using varimax rotation, and associations with other measures investigated.

Main outcome measures: PETS and an open-ended item about positive effects.

Results: Coding of the open-ended item revealed that the majority of recipients attributed positive life changes to the transplant experience. PCA of the PETS indicated three factors that accounted for 58.82% of the variance. The 12-item questionnaire assesses improvements in: (1) life philosophy, (2) gratitude and (3) health. The total PETS scores exhibited adequate internal consistency and validity.

Discussion: Most transplant patients report positive psychological effects, which suggests this may be an understudied area. The initial development of an assessment tool provides researchers and clinicians a way to assess the degree and nature of these life changes.     

Leverpress escape/avoidance training increases neurotrophin levels in rat brain

In addition to their well-known role in neural development, the neurotrophins BDNF and NGF help mediate the plasticity that occurs in the brain to promote learning. Exposure to learning procedures often leads to increases in neurotrophins, while exposure to stress often results in decreases. It is unclear how the neurotrophins would respond to an aversive learning task. Therefore, BDNF and NGF content in the dorsal striatum, hippocampus, and basal forebrain was measured following discrete trial lever-press escape/avoidance conditioning. Conditioning significantly increased levels of both neurotrophins in hippocampus and basal forebrain, relative to home cage controls (HCC). Contrary to expectations, the dorsal striatum did not show any significant changes. However, significant correlations were observed between dorsal striatal neurotrophins and aspects of avoidance performance. This may indicate that the dorsal striatum is involved in the performance aspects of the task. Results are discussed in terms of the role of neurotrophins in the acquisition of new information, and the neural structures involved in different types of memory.     

Beyond Impression Management: Evaluating three measures of response distortion and their relationship to job performance

Three measures of response distortion (i.e., social desirability, covariance index, and implausible answers) were examined in both applicant and incumbent samples. Performance data, including supervisor ratings of task and contextual performance as well as objective performance criteria such as tardiness, work‐related accidents, and a customized work simulation, were obtained for the incumbent sample. Results provided further support for the existence of applicant faking behavior and shed light into the relationship between faking and job performance, largely depending on how one defines and measures faking as well as the performance criteria evaluated. Implications for future research and practice in personality assessment for selection purposes were discussed.     

The pursuit of multiple goals

Juggling multiple goals is an inescapable reality of human life. Over the past two decades, the study of the nature of multiple (vs. single) goals has emerged to become an influential topic. To facilitate the understanding of the current state of the literature, this article presents an overview of the study of multiple goals. It first addresses the nature and impact of dual‐goal relations and reviews strategies people use to manage goal conflict (i.e., choosing, multitasking, and prioritizing). It then examines ways to conceptualize the relations among a collection of goals (i.e., goal structure), highlights emerging research in this area, and discusses factors that contribute to optimizing the pursuit of multiple goals. Throughout, the review highlights knowledge gaps and the need for future research to study subjective experiences in managing multiple goals.     

A model of rotated mirror/normal letter discriminations

Rotated mirror/normal letter discriminations are thought to require mental rotation in order to determine the direction of facing of the stimulus. The response time (RT) function over orientation tends to be curved, rather than the linear function found for other mental rotation tasks. The present study investigated the possibility that the curved RT function is a result of a mixture of trials requiring and not requiring mental rotation. The results suggested that the frequency of mental rotation is also a linear function of stimulus orientation. Moreover, the relationship between an individual's rate of plane rotation and the mean difference in RT between mirror and normal stimuli was replicated, supporting the suggestion that mirrored stimuli are flipped after they are spun (Hamm, Johnson, & Corballis, 2004). On the basis of the present findings, the entire RT function can be modeled by using only the mean RTs for upright and inverted stimuli.     

Assessing the merits and faults of holistic and disaggregated judgments

Three studies explored both the advantages of and subjects' preferences for a disaggregated judgment procedure and a holistic one. The task in our first two studies consisted of evaluating colleges; the third study asked participants to evaluate job applicants. Holistic ratings consisted of providing an overall evaluation while considering all of the characteristics of the evaluation objects; disaggregated ratings consisted of evaluating each cue independently. Participants also made paired comparisons of the evaluation objects. We constructed preference orders for the disaggregated method by aggregating these ratings (unweighted or weighted characteristics). To compare the holistic, disaggregated, and weighted‐disaggregated method we regressed the four cues on the participant's holistic rating, on the linearly aggregated disaggregated ratings, and on the average weighted disaggregated rating, using the participant's “importance points” for each cue as weights. Both types of combined disaggregated ratings related more closely to the cues in terms of proportion of variance accounted for in Experiments 1 and 2. In addition, the disaggregated ratings were more closely related to the paired‐comparison orderings, but Experiment 2 showed that this was true for a small set (10) but not a large set (60) of evaluation objects. Experiment 3 tested the “gamesmanship” hypothesis: People prefer holistic ratings because it is easier to incorporate illegitimate but appealing criteria into one's judgment. The results suggested that the disaggregated procedure generally produced sharper distinctions between the most relevant and least relevant cues. Participants in all three of these studies preferred the holistic ratings despite their statistical inferiority. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

On the Possibility of Skeptical Scenarios

Abstract: It is generally accepted that skeptical scenarios must be possible to raise legitimate skeptical doubt. I argue that if the possibility in question is supposed to be genuine metaphysical possibility, the skeptic's reasoning does not straightforwardly succeed. I first motivate the metaphysical possibility requirement on skeptical scenarios: it's a plausible position that several authors accept and that a family of prominent views—sensitivity, safety, relevant alternatives—are committed to. I argue that plausible constraints in modal epistemology show that justification for believing that certain global skeptical scenarios are metaphysically possible rests on some justified beliefs about the external world, and that this undermines the skeptical argument. While there may still be local skeptical challenges, skeptics cannot appeal to the metaphysical possibility of skeptical scenarios to generate global external world skepticism.