Characteristics of the interaction of Cu-rich precipitates with irradiation-produced defects in α-Fe

The interaction between copper-rich precipitates in α-iron and either vacancies or self-interstitial atoms and their clusters is studied by atomic-scale modelling. Results are compared with predictions of elasticity theory and interpreted in terms of size misfit of precipitates and defects, and the modulus and cohesive energy differences between iron and copper. Interstitial defects are repelled by precipitates at large distance but, like vacancies, attracted at small distance. Hence, copper precipitates in iron can be sinks for both vacancy and interstitial defects, and can act as strong recombination centres under irradiation conditions. This leads to a tentative explanation for the mixed Cu–Fe structure of precipitates and the absence of precipitate growth under neutron irradiation conditions. More generally, both vacancy and interstitial defects may be strongly bound to precipitates with weaker cohesion than the matrix.     

Information-Hierarchical Organization of Natural Systems II: Futures of Man–Biosphere Interactions and Climate Control

The informational influence of both the vegetation and human society on climate dynamics in moderate and arid zones is revealed. The stability of the Eurasia climate during the last 2,000 years was determined by the specific structure of the Christianity-Judaism sociobiosystem. The study has also revealed the potential information-hierarchical organization of human society with a 71,874-year existence. This organization includes three world religions (Buddhism, Christianity, and Islam) as subsystems and provides both the global stability of climate processes and the conservation of evolutionary developed information-hierarchical organization of the biosphere.     

Monologic and Dialogic Styles of Argumentation: A Bakhtinian Analysis of Academic Debates between Mainland China and Taiwan

This study applies the concept of reported speech advanced by the renowned Russian literary scholar Mikhail Bakhtin to compare the argumentative styles of Mainland China and Taiwan. These societies in question are considered by many scholars as sharing the same argumentative style. The study reports that the Mainland debaters more frequently than the Taiwanese debaters maintained the authenticity of the quotations cited from ancient Confucian sources, whereas Taiwanese debaters paraphrased more frequently. On the other hand, this difference cannot be found when debaters quoted from sources other than Ancient Confucians. The findings, according to Bakhtin, imply a contrast of monologic and dialogic tendencies toward authority, which results in a style difference between Mainland and Taiwan argumentation.     

苏辙与佛教

北宋文人苏辙,一生与佛教有着密切的关系。如果说他早年对待佛教的态度,更多是一种文化层面的欣赏的话,那么中年由于新旧党争,二度贬谪,佛教便越来越成为他精神上的支柱。晚年苏辙退居颖上,著书立说,三教调和的思想更加明显。所著《老子解》,宣扬“复性”论,融通儒、释、道。所有这些,在他的诗文中也都有所反映。他的佛教信仰,综合了文化、宗教、哲学、实践多个层面,而这一切,又和他一生的遭际、交游、个性是分不开的。     

Amae in Japan and the United States: an exploration of a "culturally unique" emotion

The experience of an emotion considered to be culturally unique (i.e., Japanese Amae) was tested in the United States, where there is no word to describe the concept. North American and Japanese participants read scenarios in which a friend made an inappropriate request (Amae), made no request, or made the request to another friend. Both American and Japanese participants felt more positive emotion and perceived the requester as feeling closer to them in the Amae condition than in the other two conditions. However, Americans felt more in control when asked for a favor than when not asked, a pattern that did not emerge among the Japanese. Cultural specificity of hypocognized emotions is discussed.     

Predicting the relative efficacy of three presentation methods for assessing preferences of persons with developmental disabilities

Choices were presented to 9 individuals with developmental disabilities using a two-choice format. Each pair of items, selected based on prior preference assessment, was presented to each participant in three conditions (actual items, pictures of the items, and spoken-name presentation) using a reversal design. The evaluation was conducted using food items, and was then repeated using nonfood items. The participants were also given a test to measure their skills on discrimination tasks ranging in difficulty from simple to conditional discriminations. The participants' abilities to make consistent choices with food and nonfood items were predicted, with 94% accuracy, by their discrimination skills. The findings suggest that presentation methods can affect the accuracy of a choice assessment, and that the systematic assessment of basic discrimination skills can be used to predict the effectiveness of different presentation methods in this population.     

Quantifying visual field shape for improving accuracy of search performance prediction

The current study calculated a set of 16 shape indices of six subjects (4 men and 2 women, 21-28 years old) for easy and precise quantification of visual lobe shapes using Visual Lobe Measurement System (VILOMS) software. The indices can be used in mathematical models of visual search for better understanding of search behaviour and higher accuracy of search performance prediction. General patterns in the shape indices showed that visual lobes of the subjects were slightly irregular, with low sphericity, a moderately rough boundary, horizontally elongated and slightly asymmetric along both axes. Given the complex relationships among visual lobe area, lobe shape, and search strategy, it seems that a more detailed analysis than hitherto attempted will be necessary. Quantifying lobe shape with the 16 shape indexes is a useful step to performing such analysis.     

Scrub jays (Aphelocoma coerulescens) form integrated memories of the multiple features of caching episodes

Four experiments examined whether food-storing scrub jays remember when and where they cached different foods. The scrub jays cached and recovered perishable and nonperishable foods in visuospatially distinct and trial-unique cache sites. They rapidly learned to avoid searching for foods that had perished by the time of recovery, while continuing to search for the same foods after shorter retention intervals when the foods were still fresh. The temporal control of searching at recovery was also observed when the familiarity of cache sites did not provide any information about the time of caching and when the same food was cached in distinct sites at different times. The authors argue that the jays formed an integrated memory for the location and time of caching of particular foods.     

Interacting Cache memories: evidence for flexible memory use by Western Scrub-Jays (Aphelocoma californica)

When Western Scrub-Jays (Aphelocoma californica) cached and recovered perishable crickets, N. S. Clayton, K. S. Yu, and A. Dickinson (2001) reported that the jays rapidly learned to search for fresh crickets after a 1-day retention interval (RI) between caching and recovery but to avoid searching for perished crickets after a 4-day RI. In the present experiments, the jays generalized their search preference for crickets to intermediate RIs and used novel information about the rate of decay of crickets presented during the RI to reverse these search preferences at recovery. The authors interpret this reversal as evidence that the birds can integrate information about the caching episode with new information presented during the RI.     

Looking is not enough: Multimodal attention supports the real-time learning of new words

Most research on early language learning focuses on the objects that infants see and the words they hear in their daily lives, although growing evidence suggests that motor development is also closely tied to language development. To study the real-time behaviors required for learning new words during free-flowing toy play, we measured infants’ visual attention and manual actions on to-be-learned toys. Parents and 12-to-26-month-old infants wore wireless head-mounted eye trackers, allowing them to move freely around a home-like lab environment. After the play session, infants were tested on their knowledge of object-label mappings. We found that how often parents named objects during play did not predict learning, but instead, it was infants’ attention during and around a labeling utterance that predicted whether an object-label mapping was learned. More specifically, we found that infant visual attention alone did not predict word learning. Instead, coordinated, multimodal attention–when infants’ hands and eyes were attending to the same object–predicted word learning. Our results implicate a causal pathway through which infants’ bodily actions play a critical role in early word learning.