Abstract

The present study examined the relationship between personality and individual differences in multi-tasking ability. Participants enrolled at the University of Utah completed measures of multi-tasking activity, perceived multi-tasking ability, impulsivity, and sensation seeking. In addition, they performed the Operation Span in order to assess their executive control and actual multi-tasking ability. The findings indicate that the persons who are most capable of multi-tasking effectively are not the persons who are most likely to engage in multiple tasks simultaneously. To the contrary, ...

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• http://www.gehirn-und-geist.de/artikel/1182017&_z=798884

Abstract

Peroxyacetyl nitrate (CH₃CO·O₂NO₂, abbreviated as PAN) is a trace molecular species present in the troposphere and lower stratosphere due primarily to pollution from fuel combustion and the pyrogenic outflows from biomass burning. In the lower troposphere, PAN has a relatively short life-time and is principally destroyed within a few hours through thermolysis, but it can act as a reservoir and carrier of NO_x in the colder temperatures of the upper troposphere where UV photolysis becomes the dominant loss mechanism. Pyroconvective updrafts ...

Abstract

Forests fires are a significant source of chemicals to the atmosphere including numerous non-methane organic compounds (NMOCs). We report airborne measurement of hydrocarbons, acetone and methanol from >500 whole air samples collected over Eastern Canada, including interceptions of several different boreal biomass burning plumes. From these and concurrent measurements of carbon monoxide (CO) we derive fire emission ratios for 29 different organic species relative to the emission of CO. These range from 8.9 ± 3.2 ppt ppb⁻¹ CO for methanol to ...

Abstract

As an expert reviewer, it is sometimes necessary to ensure a paper is rejected. This can sometimes be achieved by highlighting improper statistical practice. This technical note provides guidance on how to critique the statistical analysis of neuroimaging studies to maximise the chance that the paper will be declined. We will review a series of critiques that can be applied universally to any neuroimaging paper and consider responses to potential rebuttals that reviewers might encounter from authors or editors. ...

Abstract

Camouflage is conferred by background matching and disruption, which are both affected by microhabitat [1]. However, microhabitat selection that enhances camouflage has only been demonstrated in species with discrete phenotypic morphs [2 and 3]. For most animals, phenotypic variation is continuous [4 and 5]; here we explore whether such individuals can select microhabitats to best exploit camouflage. We use substrate selection in a ground-nesting bird (Japanese quail, Coturnix japonica). For such species, threat from visual predators is high [6] and egg appearance shows strong between-female ...

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• http://www.wissenschaft-aktuell.de/artikel/Wachtelmuetter_suchen_die_perfekte_Tarnung_fuers_Ei1771015588899.html

Abstract

Long-term thinning of arctic sea ice over the last few decades has resulted in significant declines in the coverage of thick multi-year ice accompanied by a proportional increase in thinner first-year ice. This change is often attributed to changes in the arctic atmosphere, both in composition and large-scale circulation, and greater inflow of warmer Pacific water through the Bering Strait. The Atlantic Water (AW) entering the Arctic through Fram Strait has often been considered less important because of strong stratification in ...

Abstract

We present an analysis of ozone photochemistry observed by aircraft measurements of boreal biomass burning plumes over Eastern Canada in the summer of 2011. Measurements of ozone and a number of key chemical species associated with ozone photochemistry, including non-methane hydrocarbons (NMHCs), nitrogen oxides (NO_x) and total nitrogen containing species (NO_y), were made from the UK FAAM BAe-146 research aircraft as part of the quantifying the impact of BOReal forest fires on tropospheric oxidants over the Atlantic using Aircraft and Satellites ...

Abstract

Undergraduates read one of the four vignettes depicting a student essay on social stratification, comments by the instructor, and a grade. In a 2 × 2 factorial design we manipulate independent variables of quality of the essay and color of the grading pen. We test hypotheses that a higher quality essay and an aqua grading pen results in higher teaching evaluations. MANOVA show no statistically significant differences on two instrumental evaluation items: instructor is knowledgeable and organized. Statistically significant differences are observed for ...

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• http://www.wissenschaft.de/wissenschaft/news/316650.html

Abstract

We review studies claiming that fish feel pain and find deficiencies in the methods used for pain identification, particularly for distinguishing unconscious detection of injurious stimuli (nociception) from conscious pain. Results were also frequently misinterpreted and not replicable, so claims that fish feel pain remain unsubstantiated. Comparable problems exist in studies of invertebrates. In contrast, an extensive literature involving surgeries with fishes shows normal feeding and activity immediately or soon after surgery. C fiber nociceptors, the most prevalent type in mammals ...

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• http://saypeople.com/2013/01/13/fishes-dont-feel-pain-they-only-fight-for-life

Abstract

We examine long tide gauge records in every ocean basin to examine whether a quasi 60-year oscillation observed in global mean sea level (GMSL) reconstructions reflects a true global oscillation, or an artifact associated with a small number of gauges. We find that there is a significant oscillation with a period around 60-years in the majority of the tide gauges examined during the 20th Century, and that it appears in every ocean basin. Averaging of tide gauges over regions shows that ...

Abstract

What do we know about what goes on in the laboratories and wider institutional networks that produce the scientific facts about the state of the Earth's climate? This question was brought to the fore by the recent event, known as “climategate”, which was generally taken to reveal that climate scientists manipulated their data sets to make them speak to contemporary political agendas. I shall ague that this interpretation of climategate hinges on a conception of science as “modern”, i.e. as a ...

Abstract

Ancient cultural changes have often been linked to abrupt climatic events, but the potential that climate can exert a persistent influence on human populations has been debated. Here, independent population, temperature, and moisture history reconstructions from the Bighorn Basin in Wyoming (United States) show a clear quantitative relationship spanning 13 ka, which explains five major periods of population growth/decline and ∼45% of the population variance. A persistent ∼300-y lag in the human demographic response conforms with either slow (∼0.3%) intrinsic annual ...

Abstract

An extensive program of experiments focused on biomass burning emissions began with a laboratory phase in which vegetative fuels commonly consumed in prescribed fires were collected in the southeastern and southwestern US and burned in a series of 71 fires at the US Forest Service Fire Sciences Laboratory in Missoula, Montana. The particulate matter (PM_2.5) emissions were measured by gravimetric filter sampling with subsequent analysis for elemental carbon (EC), organic carbon (OC), and 38 elements. The trace gas emissions were measured ...

Abstract

We measured the personalities, values, and preferences of more than 19,000 people who ranged in age from 18 to 68 and asked them to report how much they had changed in the past decade and/or to predict how much they would change in the next decade. Young people, middle-aged people, and older people all believed they had changed a lot in the past but would change relatively little in the future. People, it seems, regard the present as a watershed moment ...

Abstract

Neumann et al. argue that terrestrial evidence does not support our interpretation of large-scale human land use in Central Africa about 2500 years ago and that climate was the main driver of the rainforest crisis at that time, and Maley et al. raise a number of concerns about our interpretation of data from chemical weathering proxies. Taking into account existing palaeoclimatic data and clarifying some misconceptions, we reassert that humans must also have contributed fundamentally to this large vegetation change. ...

Abstract

Bayon et al. (Reports, 9 March 2012, p. 1219) claim that the “rainforest crisis” in Central Africa centered around 2500 years before the present “was not triggered by natural climatic factors” and that it was caused by widespread deforestation resulting from the arrival of the Bantu colonists. However, there is a consensus among palaeoecologists that this landscape change and the related physical erosion it caused was due mainly to a shift to more seasonal rainfall regime. ...

Abstract

Psi phenomena, such as mental telepathy, precognition, and clairvoyance, have garnered much recent attention. We reassess the evidence for psi effects from Storm, Tressoldi, and Di Risio's (2010) meta-analysis. Our analysis differs from Storm et al.'s in that we rely on Bayes factors, a Bayesian approach for stating the evidence from data for competing theoretical positions. In contrast to more conventional analyses, inference by Bayes factors allows the analyst to state evidence for the no-psi-effect null as well as for a ...

Abstract

The current studies explored the social consequences of exposure to conspiracy theories. In Study 1, participants were exposed to a range of conspiracy theories concerning government involvement in significant events such as the death of Diana, Princess of Wales. Results revealed that exposure to information supporting conspiracy theories reduced participants' intentions to engage in politics, relative to participants who were given information refuting conspiracy theories. This effect was mediated by feelings of political powerlessness. In Study 2, participants were exposed to ...

Abstract

The purpose of this work is to propose new indices for the spatial validation of hazardous plumes forecast, and apply and test them with data of a case study. One, the Plume-Overlap-Area Hit index, is a modification of a widely used index that considers the overlap area between observed and forecast plumes. The other one, the Plume-Mean-Orientation Hit index, introduces a new concept in plume forecast validation, i.e., the mean direction of plume propagation. These two indices are combined in a ...

Abstract

This paper examines the relationship between complex and tectonically active landscapes and patterns of human evolution. We show how active tectonics can produce dynamic landscapes with geomorphological and topographic features that may be critical to long-term patterns of hominin land use, but which are not typically addressed in landscape reconstructions based on existing geological and paleoenvironmental principles. We describe methods of representing topography at a range of scales using measures of roughness based on digital elevation data, and combine the resulting ...

Abstract

This chapter discusses the history of the development of time perspectivism and the nature of palimpsests.Particular attention is directed to the definition of these terms, the historical context in which the ideas arose, their wider meaning and significance, the difficulties that have inhibited their acceptance and their practical implementation, and the consequences that must follow from fully embracing a time perspective view of the world. ...

Abstract

General accounts of global trends in world prehistory are dominated by narratives of conquest on land: scavenging and hunting of land mammals, migration over land bridges and colonisation of new continents, gathering of plants, domestication, cultivation, and ultimately sustained population growth founded on agricultural surplus. Marine and aquatic resources fit uneasily into this sequence of social and economic development, and societies strongly dependent on them have often been regarded as relatively late in the sequence, geographically marginal or anomalous. We consider the biases and preconceptions of ...

Abstract

Studies of the impact of physical environment on human evolution usually focus on climate as the main external forcing agent of evolutionary and cultural change. In this paper we focus on changes in the physical character of the landscape driven by geophysical processes as an equally potent factor. Most of the landscapes where finds of early human fossils and artefacts are concentrated are ones that have been subjected to high levels of geological instability, either because of especially active tectonic processes ...

Abstract

Abstract This paper examines Neanderthal survival skills in Britain. Its starting point is that there are major tensions between the three main sources of relevant information ? archaeological, palaeoanthropological and palaeoenvironmental data and their subsequent interpretation ? that make our understanding of Neanderthal survival much more precarious than is generally supposed. The paper is speculative, and proffers questions not answers. It challenges us to look past the often mute material record, and to equip Neanderthals with a number of logically prerequisite but generally archaeologically invisible ...

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• http://johnhawks.net/weblog/reviews/archaeology/middle/neandertal-reindeer-doggerland-white-2012.html

Abstract

Referential models based on extant African apes have dominated reconstructions of early human evolution since Darwin’s time. These models visualize fundamental human behaviors as intensifications of behaviors observed in living chimpanzees and/or gorillas (for instance, upright feeding, male dominance displays, tool use, culture, hunting, and warfare). Ardipithecus essentially falsifies such models, because extant apes are highly derived relative to our last common ancestors. Moreover, uniquely derived hominid characters, especially those of locomotion and canine reduction, appear to have emerged shortly after ...

Abstract

A perceived recent increase in global jellyfish abundance has been portrayed as a symptom of degraded oceans. This perception is based primarily on a few case studies and anecdotal evidence, but a formal analysis of global temporal trends in jellyfish populations has been missing. Here, we analyze all available long-term datasets on changes in jellyfish abundance across multiple coastal stations, using linear and logistic mixed models and effect-size analysis to show that there is no robust evidence for a global increase ...

Note (first note only)

• http://www.spiegel.de/wissenschaft/natur/plage-im-meer-quallenvermehrung-teil-eines-20-jahres-trends-a-875436.html

Abstract

Historians have drawn a line between scientific racism, exemplified in the typological approach of German race scientists, and population-based approaches toward races or human genetic diversity. The postwar time is often understood as a watershed in this respect. My argument is that typological and population-based race concepts cannot be so easily segregated either before or after World War II. In spite of noteworthy differences between the two, on closer inspection, one finds population-based concepts in German race science before World War ...

Abstract

Anthropologists used to consider Norway a homeland for the so-called Nordic—or Germanic—race, which many Europeans and Americans held to be a superior race. This paper deals with the rise and decline of the idea of a Nordic master race in Norwegian physical anthropology. In the 1890s this idea held a key position in anthropological research on the racial identity and origin of the Norwegian population. In the early 1930s, however, leading Norwegian anthropological authorities condemned it as pseudoscientific ideology. I show ...

Abstract

Between ca. A.D. 800–1000, Scandinavian chiefly societies with a mixed maritime and agricultural economy expanded into the North Atlantic, colonizing Shetland, Orkney, Caithness, Hebrides, Faeroes, Iceland, Greenland, and Vinland. The settlers brought continental European economics and expectations to a widely varied set of island ecosystems. In many regions, rapid degradation of flora and soils took place associated with social and climate change. Recent research coordinated by the North Atlantic Bicultural Organization (NABO) highlights the extent of pre-modern impacts. ...

Abstract

Undergraduate students in dyads ( N  = 72) were randomly and equally assigned to four groups, namely three teaching groups (General, Infusion, and Immersion) and the control group. Students were initially administered the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). After instruction, each dyad's critical-thinking performance on an ill-defined problem was tested. A one-way ANCOVA, with the mean CCTST score of each dyad as covariate, indicated that the covariate and the teaching method were significant. Post hoc comparisons showed that the Infusion and ...

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• http://www.globalcognition.org/head-smart/critical-thinking-skills

Abstract

Abstract This paper debates claims that plant domestication occurred rapidly in a single restricted sub-section of the Near Eastern Fertile Crescent. Instead we argue for numerous parallel processes of domestication across the region in the Early Holocene. While a previous generation of genetic results seemed to support a single ?core area?, the accumulation of genetic evidence and refinements in methods undermine this, pointing increasingly towards multiple geographical origins. We stress that it is important to recognize that modern germplasm collections are ...

Abstract

Based on the assumption that dishonesty poses a threat to one's self view, recent research has put forward the notion that people avoid major lies. However, existing empirical work has not tested this notion conclusively, given that studies have associated larger degrees of dishonesty with larger payoffs. It thus remains unclear whether people actually do avoid major lies or rather shy away from large (unjustified) payoffs, e.g. since the latter are generally more likely to trigger suspicion. Thus, we critically tested ...

Abstract

Social psychologists have mainly studied implicit attitudes toward faces presented one at a time, whereas, in real life, we often encounter people in the presence of others. These surrounding individuals may alter attitudes toward the focal target of attention. We employed a flanker-IAT task and found that, when black and white targets were presented in racially diverse contexts, bias was decreased. This decrease in bias occurred even when targets previously seen in diverse contexts were presented on their own, suggesting context-free ...

Abstract

INTRODUCTION AND AIMS: As in many cultures, spirit possession is a common idiom of distress in Uganda. The DSM-IV contains experimental research criteria for dissociative and possession trance disorder (DTD and PTD), which are under review for the DSM-5. In the current proposed categories of the DSM-5, PTD is subsumed under dissociative identity disorder (DID) and DTD under dissociative disorders not elsewhere classified. Evaluation of ...

Abstract

Kirsch et al. (2008, Initial severity and antidepressant benefits: a meta-analysis of data submitted to the Food and Drug Administration. PLoS Med 5: e45), conducted a meta-analysis of data from 35 placebo controlled trials of four newer antidepressants. They concluded that while these drugs are statistically significantly superior to placebo in acute depression, the benefits are unlikely to be clinically significant. This paper has attracted much attention and debate in both academic journals and the popular media. In this critique, we ...

Note (first note only)

• http://www.zeit.de/2012/50/Zeitwahrnehmung-Psychologie

Abstract

First paragraph (this article has no abstract) Looked at in the large, the history of life on Earth is one of continuous change, driven by the interplay between evolutionary processes and the altered environments that can result. Some of these environmental events have had external causes (for example, the asteroidal impact that caused the most recent of the so-called Big Five mass extinctions, which eliminated the dinosaurs), while others have arisen from changing interactions among species (for example, the early appearance ...

Abstract

Fire activity in the Alaskan boreal forest, though episodic at annual and intra-annual time scales, has experienced an increase over the last several decades. Increases in burned area and fire severity are not only releasing more carbon to the atmosphere, but likely shifting vegetation composition in the region towards greater deciduous dominance and a reduction in coniferous stands. While some recent studies have addressed qualitative differences between large and small fire years in the Alaskan boreal forest, the ecological effects of ...

Abstract

Remote sensing data from MODIS, ASTER and LANDSAT 7 sensors were used to assess land cover–temperature interactions in the Abu Dhabi metropolitan area over a 10-year period between 2000 and 2010 with a multi-sensor approach. Low resolution data from MODIS sensor with high revisiting time have been used to analyze the daily variation of Land Surface Temperature (LST), the derived Surface Urban Heat Island (SUHI), and the Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) at city level. Medium resolution data from ASTER and ...

Abstract

It is known that olfaction and vision can work in tandem to represent object identities. What is yet unclear is the stage of the sensory processing hierarchy at which the two types of inputs converge. Here we study this issue through a well established visual phenomenon termed binocular rivalry. We show that smelling an odor from one nostril significantly enhances the dominance time of the congruent visual image in the contralateral visual field, relative to that in the ipsilateral visual field. ...

Note (first note only)

• http://neurodojo.blogspot.co.uk/2012/12/that-looks-like-it-smells-tale-of.html

Abstract

The current paper proposes the Dysexecutive Luck hypothesis; that beliefs in being unlucky are associated with deficits in executive functioning. Four studies suggest initial support for the Dysexecutive Luck hypothesis via four aspects of executive functioning. Study 1 established that self-reports of dysexecutive symptoms predicted unique variance in beliefs in being unlucky after controlling for a number of other variables previously reported to be related to beliefs around luck. Studies 2 to 4 demonstrated support for the Dysexecutive Luck hypothesis via ...

Abstract

The Michelson Interferometer for Passive Atmospheric Sounding onboard ENVISAT (MIPAS–E) offers the opportunity to detect and spectrally resolve many atmospheric minor constituents affecting atmospheric chemistry. In this paper, we retrieve global, seasonal PAN volume mixing ratio (vmr) data from MIPAS-E measurements made in January, March, August and October 2003 and present results from this scheme between approximately 300 and 150 hPa. The total error on a single PAN retrieval is better than 20% outside the tropics and better than 50% in ...

Abstract

This work reports the first remote sensing measurements of atmospheric HFC-23 (CHF3) using solar occultation measurements made by the Atmospheric Chemistry Experiment Fourier transform spectrometer (ACE-FTS) and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mark IV (MkIV) balloon interferometer. A total of 8809 ACE occultations measured between ...