Take over! A video-clip study measuring attention,situation awareness,and decision-making in the face of an impending hazard

In highly automated driving, drivers occasionally need to take over control of the car due to limitations of the automated driving system. Research has shown that visually distracted drivers need about 7 s to regain situation awareness (SA). However, it is unknown whether the presence of a hazard affects SA. In the present experiment, 32 participants watched animated video clips from a driver’s perspective while their eyes were recorded using eye-tracking equipment. The videos had lengths between 1 and 20 s and contained either no hazard or an impending crash in the form of a stationary car in the ego lane. After each video, participants had to (1) decide (no need to take over, evade left, evade right, brake only), (2) rate the danger of the situation, (3) rebuild the situation from a top-down perspective, and (4) rate the difficulty of the rebuilding task. The results showed that the hazard situations were experienced as more dangerous than the non-hazard situations, as inferred from self-reported danger and pupil diameter. However, there were no major differences in SA: hazard and non-hazard situations yielded equivalent speed and distance errors in the rebuilding task and equivalent self-reported difficulty scores. An exception occurred for the shortest time budget (1 s) videos, where participants showed impaired SA in the hazard condition, presumably because the threat inhibited participants from looking into the rear-view mirror. Correlations between measures of SA and decision-making accuracy were low to moderate. It is concluded that hazards do not substantially affect the global awareness of the traffic situation, except for short time budgets.     

On the nature of sustainable Economic systems

The theme of the 1982 Tokyo Conference of the Club of Rome is ‘Approaching the 21st Century: Global Problems and Human Choices.’ This is a topic of crucial importance that our generations will have to tackle in all its breadth and depth. Within its context are presented some ideas about the alternatives of the human future.     

Quantum Paradoxes, Time, and Derivation of Thermodynamic Law: Opportunities from Change of Energy Paradigm

Summary  Well known quantum and time paradoxes, and the difficulty to derive the second law of thermodynamics, are proposed to be the result of our historically grown paradigm for energy: it is just there, the capacity to do work, not directly related to change. When the asymmetric nature of energy is considered, as well as the involvement of energy turnover in any change, so that energy can be understood as fundamentally “dynamic”, and time-oriented (new paradigm), these paradoxes and problems dissolve. The most basic consequence concerns the particle-wave dualism. For a reversible inter-conversion of a particle into a wave, subject to a dynamic energy, a self-image of information has to be generated: quantum theory has to be complemented by a theory of information. Then, quantum processes can be derived from classical ones and the second law of thermodynamics with the tendency of increasing entropy follows in a straightforward way.     

The effect of exercise intensity on joint power and dynamics in ergometer double-poling performed by cross-country skiers

The purpose of this study was to examine the effect of increasing exercise intensity on the role of joint powers in ergometer double poling (DP), while taking specific dynamic constraints into account. One main question was whether lower-body power contribution increased or decreased with increasing intensity. Nine male Norwegian national-level cross-country skiers performed ergometer DP at low, moderate, high and maximal intensity. Kinematics, and ground (GRF) and poling (F_poling) reaction forces were recorded and used in link segment modeling to obtain joint and whole-body dynamics. Joint powers were averaged over the cycle, the poling (PP) and recovery (RP) phases. The contribution of these average powers was their ratios to cycle average poling power. At all intensities, the shoulder (in PP) and hip (mostly in RP) generated most power. Averaged over the cycle, lower-body contribution (sum of ankle, knee and hip power) increased from ∼37% at low to ∼54% at maximal intensity (p < .001), originating mostly from increased hip contribution within PP, not RP. The generation of larger F_poling at higher intensities demanded a reversal of hip and knee moment. This was necessary to appropriately direct the GRF vector as required to balance the moment about center of mass generated by F_poling (control of angular momentum). This was reflected in that the hip changed from mostly absorbing to generating power in PP at lower and higher intensities, respectively. Our data indicate that power-transfer rather than stretch-shortening mechanisms may occur in/between the shoulder and elbow during PP. For the lower extremities, stretch-shortening mechanisms may occur in hip, knee and trunk extensors, ensuring energy conservation or force potentiation during the countermovement-like transition from body lowering to heightening. In DP locomotion, increasing intensity and power output is achieved by increased lower-body contribution. This is, at least in ergometer DP, partly due to changes in joint dynamics in how to handle dynamic constraints at different intensities.     

WHAT IS CLIMATE CHANGE DOING TO US AND FOR US?

What are we doing to our climate? Emissions from fossil fuel burning have raised carbon dioxide concentrations 35 percent higher than in the past millions of years. This increase is warming our planet via the greenhouse effect. What is climate change doing to and for us ? Dry regions are drier and wet ones wetter. Wildfires have increased threefold, hurricanes more violent, floods setting record heights, glaciers melting, and seas rising. Parts of Earth are increasingly uninhabitable. Climate change requires us to act as a global community. Climate justice enjoins emitters to pay the social‐environmental costs of fossil fuel burning. This would expedite green solar, wind, and next‐generation nuclear energy sources. Individuals should conserve resources, waste less food, and eat a plant‐rich diet.     

CLIMATE CHANGE AND CONFLICTING FUTURE VISIONS

Dealing with the effects of climate change requires the consideration of multiple conflicting moral claims. The prioritization of these claims depends on the vision of a desired future, eschatology broadly defined. These visions, sometimes implicit rather than explicit, shape our decision making by influencing our sense of how things “ought to be.” The role of future visions in economics, technology, and preservation of nature are explored as secular eschatologies. Four aspects of such visions are especially relevant to climate change decisions: distributive justice, land use, the relationship among humans, and our relationship to the rest of nature. Effectively dealing with such wicked problems requires that we scrutinize our visions of how the future ought to be, both technically and morally. Finally, we must foster a dialogue between competing visions so that we can forge a path that strives for consent.     

一种基于进化算法的概化理论最佳样本量估计新方法：兼与三种传统方法比较

概化理论在心理与教育测量领域应用较广。如何使测量程序在预算限制的情况下达到较优的可靠性是研究者需要考虑的重要问题, 这个问题可以转换为最佳样本量估计的问题。提出了一种基于进化算法的估计概化理论下最佳样本量的新方法——约束进化算法, 并采用模拟研究的方法比较了微分优化法、拉格朗日法、柯西不等式法等三种传统方法与约束进化算法的优劣。结果表明：在两侧面交叉设计、两侧面嵌套设计和三侧面交叉设计中都证明了约束进化算法更具优越性, 建议研究者在今后的研究中优先使用。     

Affect and between-meal snacking in daily life: the moderating role of gender and age

Objective: Affect-related energy intake from snacks remains relatively unexplored in daily life. This study examines the associations between momentary positive affect (PA) and momentary negative affect (NA) and subsequent energy intake from snacks. In addition, the moderating role of BMI, gender, age and level of education is investigated.

Design: Adults (N = 269), aged 20–50, participated in this study. Demographics were assessed in an online composite questionnaire. An experience sampling smartphone application was used to map momentary NA/PA and energy intake (kilocalories) from snacks in the context of daily life.

Main outcome measures: Energy intake from moment-to-moment self-reported snacks in real-life settings.

Results: A significant negative main effect of momentary NA on moment-to-moment energy intake was found. The higher the momentary NA, the lower the subsequent amount of kilocalories consumed. There was no main effect with regard to PA. Interaction analyses showed that men decreased their energy intake after experiencing NA, and increased their intake after experiencing PA. No associations were found in women. Additionally, young adults (20–30) increased their energy intake after experiencing PA. No associations were found in the other age groups.

Conclusion: Interventions aiming at reducing energy intake might also address PA-related snacking in young adults and men.     

The personal life of the behavior analyst

The human species faces crises of critical proportions. Excessive population, global warming, and the anticipated descent from peak fossil-fuel extraction promise to change our future in far-reaching ways. Operant conditioning prepares the individual for a world similar to the selecting past, but our world is changing more rapidly than our adaptation. As individuals, we cannot make substantial changes in the world at large because we do not control enough reinforcers, but we can turn to the sources of our personal behavior and manipulate them. We will need help. Better organized social networks and the self-management techniques they support can promote immediate changes in consumption at home, work, and moving about in our personal worlds. Surprisingly, consuming less can lead to more satisfying and happier lives, but a better understanding of reinforcement contingencies is necessary. We can recover the strengthening effects of personal daily accomplishments that are eroded when conditioned generalized reinforcers intervene. When we get our own personal lives in order we can reduce our carbon footprints, restore the connections between our behavior and its strengthening effects, and become models worthy of imitation.     

Counselling and psychotherapy,complementary and alternative medicine and the future of healthcare

The counselling and psychotherapy profession is undergoing considerable change as a result of government intervention in the form of regulation, funding and efficacy research. In this paper we argue that these changes, even though they challenge some of the basic ways of thinking which have come to underpin the profession since its inception, also offer an opportunity to stimulate debate and thought in regard to how the profession might contribute to the development of healthcare systems in the future. We argue that this could be enhanced if therapists can learn from the experience of practitioners in the field of complementary and alternative medicine (CAM), which has been experiencing similar changes in recent years. Indeed, both fields of clinical activity adopt many similar underlying clinical principles and, according to Samuels (2001), have similar political outlooks. With reference to anthroposophic psychotherapy which, as well as being a form of psychotherapy, is also part of a ‘whole systems’ approach to CAM, we will examine those characteristics of psychotherapy and CAM that can inform the thinking of healthcare systems as a whole.