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Predicting Future Happiness: An Attempt To Determine Factors Underlying The Impact Bias, Olga Bachmann Jul 2010

Predicting Future Happiness: An Attempt To Determine Factors Underlying The Impact Bias, Olga Bachmann

The Plymouth Student Scientist

People tend to overestimate their affective reactions to emotional events, exhibiting the so-called impact bias. One factor underlying this bias is a cognitive mechanism known as focalism, the tendency to focus too narrowly on the event in question. The current study investigates two exercises designed to reduce focalism: A prospective diary, and a similar-past experiences exercise. Neither of these exercises led to the expected results. Furthermore, the data suggest that the impact bias may be affected by the temporal distance of focal events. These results are discussed in the context of other relevant research.

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The Application Of Canting Keel Concept In Racing Windsurfing Fins: Does It Lead To Superior Performance?, Leszek Rutkowski Jul 2010

The Application Of Canting Keel Concept In Racing Windsurfing Fins: Does It Lead To Superior Performance?, Leszek Rutkowski

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Windsurfing is a young, dynamically evolving sport. As the numbers of windsurfers increase around the world, equipment producers race against each other, using the latest materials and technologies in the never ending pursuit of better performance. The aim of this research is to investigate the latest development idea – the canting fin. The project is based on Formula Windsurfing, a racing discipline, where fins reach 70cm of length and have crucial influence on a competitor’s final result. Primary data was collected in two stages, in both qualitative and quantitative forms. The former involved 4 male, international-level windsurfing competitors who tested …

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The Plymouth Student Scientist: Two Years On, Karen A. Gresty Jul 2010

The Plymouth Student Scientist: Two Years On, Karen A. Gresty

The Plymouth Student Scientist

Editorial from: Dr Karen Gresty, Associate Dean (Teaching & Learning), Faculty of Science and Engineering

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Mollusk Species At A Pliocene Shelf Whale Fall (Orciano Pisano, Tuscany), S Danise, S Dominici, U Betocchi Jul 2010

Mollusk Species At A Pliocene Shelf Whale Fall (Orciano Pisano, Tuscany), S Danise, S Dominici, U Betocchi

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

The recovery of an intact, 10 m long fossil baleen whale from the Pliocene of Tuscany (Italy) offers the first opportunity to study the paleoecology of a fully developed, natural whale-fall community at outer shelf depth. Quantitative data on mollusk species from the whale fall have been compared with data from the sediments below and around the bones, representing the fauna living in the muddy bottom before and during the sinking of the carcass, but at a distance from it. Although the bulk of the fauna associated with the fossil bones is dominated by the same heterotrophs as found in …

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Effects Of Trace Metals On Cellular Immune Responses, Tissue Injury And Gene Expression In The Mussell, Mytilus Edulis: Implications For Biological Monitoring Of Marine Pollution., Sherin Khalifa Hadda Sheir Jul 2010

Effects Of Trace Metals On Cellular Immune Responses, Tissue Injury And Gene Expression In The Mussell, Mytilus Edulis: Implications For Biological Monitoring Of Marine Pollution., Sherin Khalifa Hadda Sheir

School of Biological and Marine Sciences Theses

The immunotoxic effects of trace metal exposure in bivalves are poorly understood and whether or not stimulation of the immune system exacerbates metal toxicity is still unclear. The mussel, Mytilus edulis, was exposed to 50 or 500 µg 1̵¹ total Hg or 20 0r 50 µg 1̵¹ total Cd for up to 11 days compared to no added Hg or Cd controls.

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Determinants Of Agricultural Land Rental Market Transactions In Bangladesh, S Rahman Jul 2010

Determinants Of Agricultural Land Rental Market Transactions In Bangladesh, S Rahman

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

Land rental market transactions have been the norm in land scarce rural Bangladesh mainly due to the inadequacies of the governmental land distribution system to meet the growing demand for land and to correct imbalances in factor proportions at the farm-level. The present study jointly determines the socio-economic factors underlying decision to rent-in land and/or rent-out land by the Bangladeshi farmers in the land rental market using a bivariate Tobit model. The model diagnostic reveals that the decisions to rent-in and/or rent-out land is significantly correlated, implying that univariate analysis of such decisions are biased, thereby, justifying the use of …

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Rapid Microsatellite Isolation From A Butterfly By De Novo Transcriptome Sequencing: Performance And A Comparison With Aflp-Derived Distances, As Mikheyev, T Vo, B Wee, Mc Singer, C Parmesan Jun 2010

Rapid Microsatellite Isolation From A Butterfly By De Novo Transcriptome Sequencing: Performance And A Comparison With Aflp-Derived Distances, As Mikheyev, T Vo, B Wee, Mc Singer, C Parmesan

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

BACKGROUND: The isolation of microsatellite markers remains laborious and expensive. For some taxa, such as Lepidoptera, development of microsatellite markers has been particularly difficult, as many markers appear to be located in repetitive DNA and have nearly identical flanking regions. We attempted to circumvent this problem by bioinformatic mining of microsatellite sequences from a de novo-sequenced transcriptome of a butterfly (Euphydryas editha). PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: By searching the assembled sequence data for perfect microsatellite repeats we found 10 polymorphic loci. Although, like many expressed sequence tag-derived microsatellites, our markers show strong deviations from Hardy-Weinberg equilibrium in many populations, and, in some …

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Modelling Visual Neglect: Computational Insights Into Conscious Perception, Lj Lanyon, Sl Denham Jun 2010

Modelling Visual Neglect: Computational Insights Into Conscious Perception, Lj Lanyon, Sl Denham

School of Psychology

BACKGROUND: Visual neglect is an attentional deficit typically resulting from parietal cortex lesion and sometimes frontal lesion. Patients fail to attend to objects and events in the visual hemifield contralateral to their lesion during visual search. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDING: The aim of this work was to examine the effects of parietal and frontal lesion in an existing computational model of visual attention and search and simulate visual search behaviour under lesion conditions. We find that unilateral parietal lesion in this model leads to symptoms of visual neglect in simulated search scan paths, including an inhibition of return (IOR) deficit, while frontal …

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Background Document For Maerl, Jm Hall-Spencer, J Kelly, Ca Maggs Jun 2010

Background Document For Maerl, Jm Hall-Spencer, J Kelly, Ca Maggs

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

No abstract provided.

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Temporal Distance And Person Memory: Thinking About The Future Changes Memory For The Past, Na Wyer, Tj Perfect, S Pahl Jun 2010

Temporal Distance And Person Memory: Thinking About The Future Changes Memory For The Past, Na Wyer, Tj Perfect, S Pahl

School of Psychology

Psychological distance has been shown to influence how people construe an event such that greater distance produces high-level construal (characterized by global or holistic processing) and lesser distance produces low-level construal (characterized by detailed or feature-based processing). The present research tested the hypothesis that construal level has carryover effects on how information about an event is retrieved from memory. Two experiments manipulated temporal distance and found that greater distance (high-level construal) improves face recognition and increases retrieval of the abstract features of an event, whereas lesser distance (low-level construal) impairs face recognition and increases retrieval of the concrete details of …

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Women’S Labour Contribution To Productivity And Efficiency In Agriculture: Empirical Evidence From Bangladesh, S Rahman Jun 2010

Women’S Labour Contribution To Productivity And Efficiency In Agriculture: Empirical Evidence From Bangladesh, S Rahman

School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences

This article examines the contribution of women’s labour input to productivity and efficiency in crop farming using a large survey dataset of 1,839 households from 16 villages in two agro-ecological regions of Bangladesh. Results reveal that female labour accounts for a substantial 28% of total labour use (mainly supplied from the family) and contributes significantly to productivity as well as technical efficiency. Contrary to expectation, the cost share of female labour input is significantly higher than the male share, and has a substitution relationship with all other inputs, including male labour. The estimated mean level of technical efficiency is 0.90, …

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Grounding Language In Action And Perception: From Cognitive Agents To Humanoid Robots, A Cangelosi Jun 2010

Grounding Language In Action And Perception: From Cognitive Agents To Humanoid Robots, A Cangelosi

School of Engineering, Computing and Mathematics

In this review we concentrate on a grounded approach to the modeling of cognition through the methodologies of cognitive agents and developmental robotics. This work will focus on the modeling of the evolutionary and developmental acquisition of linguistic capabilities based on the principles of symbol grounding. We review cognitive agent and developmental robotics models of the grounding of language to demonstrate their consistency with the empirical and theoretical evidence on language grounding and embodiment, and to reveal the benefits of such an approach in the design of linguistic capabilities in cognitive robotic agents. In particular, three different models will be …

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The Mediterranean Sea Regime Shift At The End Of The 1980s, And Intriguing Parallelisms With Other European Basins, A Conversi, S Fonda Umani, T Peluso, Et Al May 2010

The Mediterranean Sea Regime Shift At The End Of The 1980s, And Intriguing Parallelisms With Other European Basins, A Conversi, S Fonda Umani, T Peluso, Et Al

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

BACKGROUND: Regime shifts are abrupt changes encompassing a multitude of physical properties and ecosystem variables, which lead to new regime conditions. Recent investigations focus on the changes in ecosystem diversity and functioning associated to such shifts. Of particular interest, because of the implication on climate drivers, are shifts that occur synchronously in separated basins. PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: In this work we analyze and review long-term records of Mediterranean ecological and hydro-climate variables and find that all point to a synchronous change in the late 1980s. A quantitative synthesis of the literature (including observed oceanic data, models and satellite analyses) shows that …

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Cbd & D9-Thc - The Two Faces Of Cannabis, Zeissler, Cb Carroll, J Zajicek May 2010

Cbd & D9-Thc - The Two Faces Of Cannabis, Zeissler, Cb Carroll, J Zajicek

Peninsula Medical School

Cannabidiol (CBD) and D9-tetrahydrocannabinol (D9-THC) are phytocannabinoids produced by the plant Cannabis sativa which have both shown promising therapeutic value as anti-inflammatory and neuroprotective agents in a variety of neurological disorders. However, the molecular mechanisms involved in their protective function are thought to be distinctly different probably due to their divergent receptor pharmacology. D9-THC is a potent agonist at the cannabinoid receptors 1 and 2 through which it is thought to modulate synaptic plasticity and inflammatory responses respectively. CBD on the other hand exhibits negligible affinity for both receptors prompting research into cannabinoid receptor independent mechanisms of action such as …

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Creating Sustainable Identities: The Significance Of The Financially Affluent Self, V Hurth May 2010

Creating Sustainable Identities: The Significance Of The Financially Affluent Self, V Hurth

Plymouth Business School

This paper uses identity theory and postmodern identity perspectives to analyse why high-income groups often have values, attitudes and intentions to consume sustainably, yet tend to have the highest energy consumption of any group. Two key arguments are presented. The first is that the affluent identity is opposed to the environmentalist identity and is more salient, desirable and likely to result in more social support and self-esteem rewards. Therefore, where both identities are held the affluent identity is likely to be more dominant and invoked in more circumstances. Second, the invocation of the affluent identity is liable to result in …

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Recruit-Recruit Interactions, Density-Dependent Processes And Population Persistence In The Eastern Oyster, Crassostrea Virginica, Am Knights, K Walters Apr 2010

Recruit-Recruit Interactions, Density-Dependent Processes And Population Persistence In The Eastern Oyster, Crassostrea Virginica, Am Knights, K Walters

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

The supply and successful settlement of larvae is vital for the development and persistence of populations of many marine species. Strongly influenced by hydrodynamic processes, the rate of supply affects the interaction between recruits. Population structure is determined by densityindependent mortality when recruitment is limited, and by density-dependent mortality when saturated; however, the extent to which these processes determine population structure remains unclear. The relationship between recruitment and density-dependent processes in population persistence was examined in South Carolina for the eastern oyster Crassostrea virginica. Over a range of recruit densities, the resultant change in population structure was compared at locations …

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Evaluation Of The Clinimetric Properties Of The Upper Limb Subscales Of The Motor Assessment Scale Using A Rasch Analysis Model., Kj Miller, A Slade, J Pallant, M Galea Apr 2010

Evaluation Of The Clinimetric Properties Of The Upper Limb Subscales Of The Motor Assessment Scale Using A Rasch Analysis Model., Kj Miller, A Slade, J Pallant, M Galea

School of Health Professions

OBJECTIVES: To apply Rasch analysis to evaluate the psychometric properties of the composite score of the 3 upper limb subscales of the Motor Assessment Scale (UL-MAS) when administered in the acute/subacute phase post-stroke. DESIGN: Prospective data collection of UL-MAS scores. PARTICIPANTS: Eighty Eighty individuals a mean of 64.8 days (standard deviation 53.3; range 4-193 days) following the onset of unilateral stroke. METHODS: All UL-MAS test items were administered in 30 participants assessed longitudinally over 3 occasions, and in 50 participants assessed on a single occasion. These 140 observations were pooled to be evaluated using Rasch analysis. RESULTS: With the elimination …

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Genome-Wide Association Study Of Cnvs In 16,000 Cases Of Eight Common Diseases And 3,000 Shared Controls, The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium Apr 2010

Genome-Wide Association Study Of Cnvs In 16,000 Cases Of Eight Common Diseases And 3,000 Shared Controls, The Wellcome Trust Case Control Consortium

School of Biomedical Sciences

Copy number variants (CNVs) account for a major proportion of human genetic polymorphism and have been predicted to have an important role in genetic susceptibility to common disease. To address this we undertook a large, direct genome-wide study of association between CNVs and eight common human diseases. Using a purpose-designed array we typed approximately 19,000 individuals into distinct copy-number classes at 3,432 polymorphic CNVs, including an estimated approximately 50% of all common CNVs larger than 500 base pairs. We identified several biological artefacts that lead to false-positive associations, including systematic CNV differences between DNAs derived from blood and cell lines. …

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On The Role Of Object Information In Action Observation: An Fmri Study., P Bach, Mv Peelen, Sp Tipper Mar 2010

On The Role Of Object Information In Action Observation: An Fmri Study., P Bach, Mv Peelen, Sp Tipper

School of Psychology

Observing other people's actions activates a network of brain regions that is also activated during the execution of these actions. Here, we used functional magnetic resonance imaging to test whether these "mirror" regions in frontal and parietal cortices primarily encode the spatiomotor aspects or the functional goal-related aspects of observed tool actions. Participants viewed static depictions of actions consisting of a tool object (e.g., key) and a target object (e.g., keyhole). They judged the actions either with regard to whether the objects were oriented correctly for the action to succeed (spatiomotor task) or whether an action goal could be achieved …

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Harmonising Middle-Class Aspirations For Low-Carbon Housing: Contextual Study Of Mysore, India, S Basavapatna Kumaraswamy, J Brennan Mar 2010

Harmonising Middle-Class Aspirations For Low-Carbon Housing: Contextual Study Of Mysore, India, S Basavapatna Kumaraswamy, J Brennan

School of Art, Design and Architecture

Economic Globalization is enabling India to reinvent itself as a crucible for development, and provides previously unrealized opportunities for economic transformation catering to a fast growing middle-class. The relationship between affluence and consumption makes it implicit that the Indian middle-classes have a crucial role to play in the process of sustainable development. It is proposed that the Brundtland definition of sustainable development, conflicts with a self-cantered consumerism that often characterizes rapid economic development. The consumption patterns and aspirations of some middleclass sectors are contradictory to many principles of low carbon housing design. This paper explores the challenges and opportunities in …

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The Advice Needs Of Gypsies And Travellers In Plymouth: Final Report, Zoe James, Lesley Simmonds Mar 2010

The Advice Needs Of Gypsies And Travellers In Plymouth: Final Report, Zoe James, Lesley Simmonds

SOLON Law, Crime and History (previously SOLON Crimes and Misdemeanours: Deviance and the Law in Historical Perspective)

No abstract provided.

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Business As Usual? Britains First Womens Convict Prison, Brixton 1853-1869, Neil Davie Mar 2010

Business As Usual? Britains First Womens Convict Prison, Brixton 1853-1869, Neil Davie

SOLON Law, Crime and History (previously SOLON Crimes and Misdemeanours: Deviance and the Law in Historical Perspective)

This article concerns the 16 year penal experiment at Brixton, Britain's first convict prison for women (1853-1869). From the start, the regime at Brixton was seen by Home Office officials and prison staff alike as a second-best solution, since contemporary views on 'appropriate' women's work ruled out the hard physical labour of the men's public works prisons, felt to bring salutary effects to both body and mind. The emphasis was placed instead on inculcating those domestic, 'womanly' values felt to be under threat from the social forces unleashed by the Industrial Revolution. However, a combination of the enforced sedentary lifestyle, …

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Biomimetics Learning From Nature, H Le, Ca Wang, Y Huang Mar 2010

Biomimetics Learning From Nature, H Le, Ca Wang, Y Huang

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

No abstract provided.

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Historiographical Contextualisation Of Current Issue, Judith Rowbotham, Kim Stevenson, Samantha Pegg Mar 2010

Historiographical Contextualisation Of Current Issue, Judith Rowbotham, Kim Stevenson, Samantha Pegg

SOLON Law, Crime and History (previously SOLON Crimes and Misdemeanours: Deviance and the Law in Historical Perspective)

No abstract provided.

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Mony Utheris Divars Odious Crymes': Women, Petty Crime And Power In Later Sixteenth Century Aberdeen, J. R. D. Falconer Mar 2010

Mony Utheris Divars Odious Crymes': Women, Petty Crime And Power In Later Sixteenth Century Aberdeen, J. R. D. Falconer

SOLON Law, Crime and History (previously SOLON Crimes and Misdemeanours: Deviance and the Law in Historical Perspective)

This article examines the nature of petty crimes committed by sixteenth century Aberdonian women and the impact they had on burgh society. The evidence presented here challenges the notion that the burgh court charged women with a much more narrow range of criminal activities than men. Over a period of roughly 50 years (1541-1591), the Aberdeen Council Register and Baillie Court Books record nearly 2,000 individual convictions for a variety of criminal acts that included statute breaking, property crimes, and acts of verbal and physical assault. This article looks at a specific section of this evidence to argue that women …

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Salient Egalitarian Norms Moderate Activation Of Out-Group Approach And Avoidance, Na Wyer Mar 2010

Salient Egalitarian Norms Moderate Activation Of Out-Group Approach And Avoidance, Na Wyer

School of Psychology

Recent research suggests that interaction-appropriate behavior may be automatically triggered by exposure to an out-group cue. Two experiments investigated the role of prejudice and salient egalitarian norms in determining the activation of two fundamental behavioral responses: approach and avoidance. The activation of approach and avoidance was investigated as a function of negative attitudes towards homosexuals (Experiment 1) and African-Caribbeans (Experiment 2). Results indicated that avoidance was automatically activated in response to out-group labels among participants with prejudiced attitudes (Experiments 1 and 2) whereas approach was less activated among prejudiced participants (Experiment 2). The former effect, however, was significantly diminished when …

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A Five‐Gene Signature As A Potential Predictor Of Metastasis And Survival In Colorectal Cancer, J Hao, J Chen, H Sui, X Si‐Ma, Et Al Mar 2010

A Five‐Gene Signature As A Potential Predictor Of Metastasis And Survival In Colorectal Cancer, J Hao, J Chen, H Sui, X Si‐Ma, Et Al

School of Biomedical Sciences

To understand the molecular mechanisms of metastasis and prognosis of colorectal cancer (CRC), we isolated single cell-derived progenies (SCPs) from SW480 cells in vitro and compared their metastatic potential in an orthotopic CRC tumour model in vivo. Two groups of SCPs with the capability of high and low metastasis, respectively, were obtained. By analysing the gene expression profiles of high (SCP51), low (SCP58) metastatic SCPs, and their parental cell line (SW480/EGFP), we demonstrated that 143 genes were differentially expressed either between SCP51 and SCP58 or between SCP58 and SW480/EGFP. Gene-annotation enrichment analysis of DAVID revealed 80 genes in the top …

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Universal Features Of Post-Transcriptional Gene Regulation Are Critical For Plasmodium Zygote Development, Gr Mair, E Lasonder, Ls Garver, Bmd Franke-Fayard, Et Al Feb 2010

Universal Features Of Post-Transcriptional Gene Regulation Are Critical For Plasmodium Zygote Development, Gr Mair, E Lasonder, Ls Garver, Bmd Franke-Fayard, Et Al

School of Biomedical Sciences

A universal feature of metazoan sexual development is the generation of oocyte P granules that withhold certain mRNA species from translation to provide coding potential for proteins during early post-fertilization development. Stabilisation of translationally quiescent mRNA pools in female Plasmodium gametocytes depends on the RNA helicase DOZI, but the molecular machinery involved in the silencing of transcripts in these protozoans is unknown. Using affinity purification coupled with mass-spectrometric analysis we identify a messenger ribonucleoprotein (mRNP) from Plasmodium berghei gametocytes defined by DOZI and the Sm-like factor CITH (homolog of worm CAR-I and fly Trailer Hitch). This mRNP includes 16 major …

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You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First (Implicit) Impression: The Role Of Elaboration In The Formation And Revision Of Implicit Impressions, Na Wyer Feb 2010

You Never Get A Second Chance To Make A First (Implicit) Impression: The Role Of Elaboration In The Formation And Revision Of Implicit Impressions, Na Wyer

School of Psychology

Conditions under which implicit and explicit impressions of an individual may change in response to new information were investigated in two experiments. Participants formed an impression of a target person based on his membership in a social group and, in some conditions, detailed behavioral evidence. Later, half of the participants were given reason to believe that the initial information they had been given was wrong, and that the target actually belonged to a different social group. Implicit and explicit measures of participants' impressions of the target were then collected. Results indicated that, while explicit impressions were effectively corrected in light …

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Comparison Of Two Storage Methods For The Analysis Of Cholinesterase Activities In Food Animals, Ka Askar, Ac Kudi, Aj Moody Jan 2010

Comparison Of Two Storage Methods For The Analysis Of Cholinesterase Activities In Food Animals, Ka Askar, Ac Kudi, Aj Moody

School of Biological and Marine Sciences

Cholinesterases (ChE) are specialized carboxylic ester hydrolases that catalyse the hydrolysis of choline esters. They are classified into either acetylcholinesterase (AChE) or butyrylcholinesterase (BChE). Determination of ChE in the tissues is the appropriate tool for the diagnosis of organophosphorus and carbamate exposures. In general, a significant inhibition was seen in both AChE and BChE activities after 6 months of freezing at -80°C and after 3 months of freezing at -20°C. Linear regression of mean AChE and BChE was observed in all individual samples during the months of the two freezing methods. Bland and Altman plot of the ratios of the …

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