Accelerating heterogeneous nucleation to increase hardness and electrical conductivity by deformation prior to ageing for Cu-4 at.% Ti alloy

ABSTRACT

Deformation bands, especially shear bands were intentionally formed in supersaturated Cu-4 at.% Ti alloy by groove-rolling with 75% area reduction. Cold deformation prior to the ageing process changed the precipitation behaviour of the alloy. The deformed structure with shear bands was maintained, without showing recovery and recrystallisation, even after prolonged ageing at 450°C for more than one day. The thermally stable shear bands act as nucleation initiation sites and prevent the expansion of discontinuous cellular precipitates. The hardness reached a value of 305?Hv and an electrical conductivity of 15% IACS (IACS?=?International Annealed Copper Standard. 100% IACS is defined as the conductivity corresponding to a volume resistivity at 20°C of 17.241?nΩ), compared to 283?Hv and 13% IACS for conventional solid-solutioned and peak-hardened alloy. In addition, the ageing time to reach the highest hardness was shortened from 720 to 180?min at 450°C.     

Happy People Become Happier through Kindness: A Counting Kindnesses Intervention

We examined the relationship between the character strength of kindness and subjective happiness (Study 1), and the effects of a counting kindnesses intervention on subjective happiness (Study 2). In Study 1, participants were 175 Japanese undergraduate students and in Study 2, participants were 119 Japanese women (71 in the intervention group and 48 in the control group). Results showed that: (a) Happy people scored higher on their motivation to perform, and their recognition and enactment of kind behaviors. (b) Happy people have more happy memories in daily life in terms of both quantity and quality. (c) Subjective happiness was increased simply by counting one’s own acts of kindness for one week. (d) Happy people became more kind and grateful through the counting kindnesses intervention. Discussion centers on the importance of kindness in producing subjective happiness.     

Reducing Inappropriate Bicycle Parking Through Persuasive Communication

In this study, the effectiveness of persuasive communication in reducing inappropriate bicycle parking was investigated. We hypothesized that persuasive communication aimed at promoting behavioral intention with respect to reducing the frequency of inappropriate bicycle parking would not actually achieve its objective, but that persuasive communication aimed at promoting implementation intention, as well as behavioral intention, would be successful. We conducted a field experiment using 99 participants who were daily bicycle users. They were randomly assigned to a control group and to 3 experimental groups. The results indicated that participants in the with-advice group and planning group had stronger implementation intentions, and thus reduced their incidence of inappropriate bicycle parking, than did the control and the without-advice groups. However, there were no differences in behavioral intention.     

Right hemispheric dominance in processing of unconscious negative emotion

Right hemispheric dominance in unconscious emotional processing has been suggested, but remains controversial. This issue was investigated using the subliminal affective priming paradigm combined with unilateral visual presentation in 40 normal subjects. In either left or right visual fields, angry facial expressions, happy facial expressions, or plain gray images were briefly presented as negative, positive, and control primes, followed by a mosaic mask. Then nonsense target ideographs were presented, and the subjects evaluated their partiality toward the targets. When the stimuli were presented in the left, but not the right, visual fields, the negative primes reduced the subjects' liking for the targets, relative to the case of the positive or control primes. These results provided behavioral evidence supporting the hypothesis that the right hemisphere is dominant for unconscious negative emotional processing.     

Postsaccadic processing of the retinal image during picture scanning

Eye movements were monitored while observers inspected photographs of natural scenes. At the end of each saccade (i.e., at the beginning of each period of steady fixation), the stimulus was replaced for a certain period of time by a uniform field (Experiment 1) or a blurred version of the stimulus scene (Experiment 2). Total fixation duration was measured as a function of the duration of the initial uniform field or the blurred image that followed the saccade. It was found that fixation duration increased proportionally with the duration of the initial replacement field, even for durations as short as 25 msec. These results suggest that the visual system uses information on the retina right after each saccade is completed and that the blurred, low-resolution information used in Experiment 2 (cutoff frequency of 0.8 cpd) is not sufficient for the requirements of picture processing in this task.     

Is There Really a Beauty Premium or an Ugliness Penalty on Earnings?

Purpose

Economists have widely documented the “beauty premium” and “ugliness penalty” on earnings. Explanations based on employer and client discrimination would predict a monotonic association between physical attractiveness and earnings; explanations based on occupational self-selection would explain the beauty premium as a function of workers’ occupations; and explanations based on individual differences would predict that the beauty premium would disappear once appropriate individual differences are controlled. In this paper, we empirically tested the three competing hypotheses about the “beauty premium”.

Design/Methodology/Approach

We analyzed a nationally representative and prospectively longitudinal sample from the National Longitudinal Survey of Adolescent Health (Add Health).

Findings

The results contradicted the discrimination and self-selection explanations and strongly supported the individual differences explanation. Very unattractive respondents always earned significantly more than unattractive respondents, sometimes more than average-looking or attractive respondents. Multiple regression analyses showed that there was very weak evidence for the beauty premium, and it disappeared completely once individual differences, such as health, intelligence, and Big Five personality factors, were statistically controlled.

Implications

Past findings of beauty premium and ugliness penalty may possibly be due to the fact that: 1) “very unattractive” and “unattractive” categories are usually collapsed into “below average” category; and 2) health, intelligence (as opposed to education) and Big Five personality factors are not controlled. It appears that more beautiful workers earn more, not because they are beautiful, but because they are healthier, more intelligent, and have better (more Conscientious and Extraverted, and less Neurotic) personality.

Originality/Value

This is the first study to show that: 1) very unattractive workers have extremely high earnings and earn more than physically more attractive workers, suggesting evidence for the potential ugliness premium; and 2) the apparent beauty premium and ugliness penalty may be a function of unmeasured traits correlated with physical attractiveness, such as health, intelligence, and personality.

     

The meaningful life in Japan and the United States: Levels and correlates of meaning in life

Culture supplies people with the provisions to derive meaning from life. However, no research has examined cultural variation in the two principal dimensions of meaning in life, presence of meaning and search for meaning. The present investigation adapted theories of self-concept and cognitive styles to develop a dialectical model of meaning in life, which predicted cultural differences in the tendency to experience search for meaning as opposed to, or harmonious with, presence of meaning. Using data from American (N = 1183) and Japanese (N = 982) young adults, mean levels and correlates of presence of meaning and search for meaning were examined. As predicted, Americans reported greater presence of meaning; Japanese reported greater search for meaning. In accordance with the model, search for meaning was negatively related to presence of meaning and well-being in the United States (opposed) and positively related to these variables in Japan (harmonious). Thus, the search for meaning appears to be influenced by culture, and search for meaning appears to moderate cultural influences on presence of meaning.     

Why night owls are more intelligent

The origin of values and preferences is an unresolved theoretical problem in social and behavioral sciences. The Savanna–IQ Interaction Hypothesis suggests that more intelligent individuals are more likely to acquire and espouse evolutionarily novel values and preferences than less intelligent individuals, but general intelligence has no effect on the acquisition and espousal of evolutionarily familiar values and preferences. Individuals can often choose their values and preferences even in the face of genetic predisposition. One example of such choice within genetic constraint is circadian rhythms. Survey of ethnographies of traditional societies suggests that nocturnal activities were probably rare in the ancestral environment, so the Hypothesis would predict that more intelligent individuals are more likely to be nocturnal than less intelligent individuals. The analysis of the National Longitudinal Study of Adolescent Health (Add Health) confirms the prediction.     

After-effects induced by interactions between hydrogen and the martensite transformation in Ni–Ti superelastic alloy

The effects of dynamic interactions between hydrogen and a stress-induced martensite transformation on the recovery of deteriorated tensile properties by ageing in air at room temperature have been investigated for a Ni–Ti superelastic alloy. A specimen is subjected to single stress-induced martensite and reverse transformations immediately after hydrogen charging. Upon tensile testing, brittle fracture occurs in the latter half of the elastic deformation region of the martensite phase after the stress-induced martensite transformation. Upon ageing before the tensile test, fracture occurs during the stress-induced martensite transformation. In addition, the nano- and micro-morphologies of the brittle outer part of the fracture surface of the specimen are changed by ageing. Thus, the tensile properties markedly deteriorate, rather than recover, by ageing. The present results clearly indicate that dynamic interactions between hydrogen and the stress-induced martensite transformation have serious after-effects on hydrogen embrittlement of Ni–Ti superelastic alloy.     

Tactics to obtain a hidden food item in chimpanzee pairs (Pan troglodytes)

Five dyads of chimpanzees were tested in a competitive situation, as a pilot study to examine chimpanzees' understanding of conspecifics' knowledge. A human experimenter baited one of five containers in an outdoor enclosure. Chimpanzee A (witness) could see where the food was hidden, while chimpanzee B (witness-of-witness) could not see the baited place but could observe the chimpanzee A watching the food being hidden. Then the two were released into the enclosure. This procedure was repeated for a certain number of days along with a control condition in which neither could see the baited location. The witness-of-witness developed tactics to forestall the witness in two pairs. The witness misled the witness-of-witness by taking a route to an empty container in several cases. These episodes might represent examples of deception. Tactics and counter-tactics thus developed through the interaction between the witness and the witness-of-witness, illustrating the high social intelligence of chimpanzees. An examination of the changes in tactics suggests a possibility that the witness-of-witness understands the witness's knowledge of the location of hidden food. Accepted after revision: 22 May 2001 Electronic Publication