Familiar Process Research Articles

Dark Matter from Exponential Growth.

We propose a novel mechanism for the production of dark matter (DM) from a thermal bath based on the idea that DM particles χ can transform heat bath particles ψ: χψ→χχ. For a small initial abundance of χ, this leads to an exponential growth of the DM number density in close analogy to other familiar exponential growth processes in nature. We demonstrate that this mechanism complements freeze-in and freeze-out production in a generic way, opening new parameter space to explain the observed DM abundance, and we discuss observational prospects for such scenarios.

The effects of the transposed morpheme on semantic unitization in recognition memory

Unitization is described as the process whereby two or more previously separate items or stimulus components are integrated into a single unit, either through perceiving or conceiving of a structure (e.g., semantic meaning) that would connect the disparate units. It is generally believed that semantic association within unitized representations is stable once established. However, the opposing view has suggested that semantic association within unitized representations depends on the features of the to-be-remembered stimulus pairs, which is greatly affected by artificial factors. Thus, semantic association within the unitized representations could be broken up under certain circumstances. Nevertheless, very little experimental evidence exists to support either of the two views. More recently, it has been suggested that familiarity can be used as an indicator for whether the stimuli components are integrated into a unitized representation. It is thought that compound words are “unitized” stimuli with particular morpheme positional information. Therefore, the present study aimed to explore whether semantic unitization within compound words is stable during recognition by employing experimental manipulations involving the transposed morpheme position. Participants were instructed to remember compound words, transposed compound words, and non-compound word pairs. The familiarity-based frontal old/new effect (FN400) was obtained for compound words and transposed compound words during the 400–600 ms period, but not for non-compound word pairs. Additionally, the frontal old/new effects for compound words and transposed compound words did not significantly differ, which could underpin the facilitation of the familiarity process during associative memory of the transposed compound words. Overall, these findings suggest that semantic unitization within compound words was preserved even if the morpheme position was transposed, thus providing support for the view that semantic unitization within compound words is stable.

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History

The Conquest of the Desert: Argentina's Indigenous Peoples and the Battle for History

The imaginary of a modern city: Post-politics and Myanmar’s urban development

Theories of ‘post-politics’ provide a lens through which to analyse contemporary urban development. Yet empirical studies examining this ‘age of post-politics’ are few, especially outside of Europe and North America. This article examines the promise and limits of notions of post-politics through the case of planning for New Yangon City, a multi-billion dollar urban development in Myanmar (Burma). While the 2021 military coup has now made the future of the project uncertain, our research conducted in 2019 revealed similar dynamics at play to those described more broadly in the literature on post-politics. We highlight familiar processes of delegation of decision-making, a proliferation of governance actors and an individualisation of policy issues. What is distinctive in Myanmar is the way a coalition of elite decision-makers have diluted and defused policy disagreements through the construction of a utopian vision of a modern international city. We see this imaginary of the modern city as a tactic to support the broader efforts of depoliticisation. This diverges from arguments that the imagination of social change is curtailed through the pragmatic post-political notion that ‘there is no alternative’. Instead, in the context of New Yangon City, utopian vision is integral to depoliticisation and limiting dissent. We conclude that attention to processes of depoliticisation is crucial in relation to mega project planning in Asia, and that a productive way forward for studies of urban development is not wholesale acceptance or dismissal of the notion of post-politics, but robust engagement with its critiques and promise.

Improving Quality in Primary Care: A Model for Change

Health care spending accounts for 17.7% of the gross domestic product in the United States, and it is expected to continue rising at an annual rate of 5.3%. Despite high costs, health care quality lags behind other high-income countries; yet, over 70% of change initiatives fail. The purpose of this multiple case study was to explore strategies primary care leaders use for implementing quality improvement initiatives to improve patient outcomes and reduce waste in primary care facilities. The target population consisted of 3 health care leaders of 3 primary care facilities in southern California who successfully implemented quality improvement initiatives. The conceptual framework for this study was Kotter’s 8-step of change management. Data were collected through face-to-face semi-structured interviews with senior health care leaders, document review, and quality reports. Patterns were identified through a rigorous process of data familiarization, data coding, and theme development and revision. Interpretations from the data were subjected to member-checking to ensure trustworthiness of the findings. Four themes emerged from this study: communication, leadership support, inclusive decision-making, and employee recognition.

Conceptual knowledge modulates memory recognition of common items: The selective role of item-typicality.

This work examines the influence of stored conceptual knowledge (i.e., schema and item-typicality) on conscious memory processes. Specifically, we tested whether item-typicality selectively modulates recollection and familiarity-based memories as a function of the availability of a categorical schema during encoding. Experiment 1 manipulated both encoding type (categorical vs. perceptual) and item-typicality (typical vs. atypical) in a single Remember-Know paradigm. Experiment 2 replicated and extended the previous study with a complementary source-memory task. In both experiments, we observed that typical items led to more Guess responses, while atypical items led to more Remember responses. These findings support the idea that the activation of a congruent categorical schema selectively enhances familiarity-based memories, likely due to the bypassing of the activated mechanisms for novel information. In contrast, atypical items improved recollective-based memories only, suggesting that their lesser fit with the stored prototype might have triggered those novelty processing mechanisms. Moreover, atypical items enhanced memory in the categorical condition for both item recognition and recollection memories only, suggesting an episodic gain due to inconsistency/novelty. The source memory results gave further credence to the argument that "Remember" judgments were based on truly recollective experiences and presented the same interaction between encoding type and item-typicality observed in recollective-based memories. Overall, the results suggest that the supposedly opposite conceptual knowledge effects actually coexist and interact, albeit selectively, in the modulation of recollection and familiarity processes.

A new and alternative look at nonlinear Alfvénic states

The formulation for studying nonlinear Alfvénic states, sustainable in Hall Magnetohydrodynamics (HMHD), becomes considerably simpler and more tractable when circularly polarized Beltrami vectors (the eigenstates of linear HMHD) are used as the basis functions. Nonlinear HMHD is, then, reduced to a rather simple looking set of scalar equations from which a model problem of three interacting Beltrami modes is formulated and analytically solved. The triplet interactions span a variety of familiar nonlinear processes leading to a redistribution as well as periodic exchange of energy. The energy exchange processes (whose strength is measured by an energy exchange/depletion time) will, perhaps, play a dominant role in determining the spectral content of an eventual Alfvénic state. All nonlinearities (sensitive functions of the interacting wave vectors) operate at par, and none is dominant over any substantial region of k-space; their intricate interplay prevents a “universal” picture from emerging; few generalizations on the processes that may, for instance, lead to a turbulent state, are possible. However, the theory can definitely claim: (1) the energy tends to flow from lower to higher k and (2) the higher kz (in the direction of the ambient magnetic field) components of a mode with a given k are depleted/oscillate faster—in some cases much faster. It is noteworthy that the mode coupling is the strongest (with the shortest depletion time) when the participating wave vectors are nearly perpendicular; perhaps, an expected consequence of the curl (cross product) nonlinearities. Numerical simulations will be necessary to help create a fully reliable picture.

Electronic Media and Social Networks in Politics: European Experience

The article outlines the relationship between the political process and the development of "new" mass media which mainly means social networks. Electronic media, including social networks, pose a challenge to the current state of international relations. In this regard, a number of states (Belorussia, Russia, Great Britain) and supranational structures (European Commission, UN) are developing a digital legislation envisaging control over the online space. In addition to the negative aspects, the development of "new" media helps political forces in their activities. Many European politicians and political parties actively use Internet resources and micro-targeting to attract voters. The challenge for governments and researchers in this field is to understand the pros and cons of the new digital era and to develop a plan for integrating new technologies into the familiar political process. It is concluded that the European Union and other states are at the stage of development and entry into force of uniform rules regulating the Internet. The trend towards the formation of a single legal field is combined with legislative regulation at the national level, since this area affects issues of security and sovereignty.

Sleeping through a pandemic: impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia.

To assess the impact of coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)-related restrictions on narcolepsy type 1 (NT2), narcolepsy type 2 (NT2), and idiopathic hypersomnia (IH). Participants with NT1, NT2, and IH followed in a university hospital completed an online 78-question survey assessing demographic, clinical, and occupational features of the population during the first COVID-19-related lockdown. A total of 219 of 851 (25.7%) respondents of the survey reported a mean increase of 1.2 ± 1.9 hours (P < .001) in night sleep time and a mean decrease of 1.0 ± 3.4 points (P < .001) on the Epworth Sleepiness Scale during lockdown. Bedtime was delayed by 46.1% of participants and wakeup time was delayed by 59.6%, driven primarily by participants with IH. Teleworkers (but not in-person workers) reported a mean increase of 0.9 ± 1.2 hours in night sleep (P < .001) and a mean decrease in sleepiness score of 1.6 ± 3.1 (P < .001). Cataplexy improved in 54.1% of participants with NT1. Sleepiness correlated with psychological wellness (r = .3, P < .001). As many as 42.5% enjoyed the lockdown, thanks to reallocation of time usually spent commuting toward longer sleep time, hobbies, and family time, and appreciated a freer napping schedule. Conversely, 13.2% disliked the lockdown, feeling isolation and psychological distress. Extended sleep time, circadian delay (in patients with IH), and teleworking resulted in decreased symptoms of central hypersomnias. These findings suggest that people with IH, NT1, and NT2 may benefit from a decrease in social and professional constraints on sleep-wake habits, and support advocacy efforts aimed at facilitating workplace and schedule accommodations for this population. Nigam M, Hippolyte A, Dodet P, etal. Sleeping through a pandemic: impact of COVID-19-related restrictions on narcolepsy and idiopathic hypersomnia. J Clin Sleep Med. 2022;18(1):255-263.

Familiarity in Mild Cognitive Impairment as a Function of Patients' Clinical Outcome 4 Years Later.

The current study addresses the nature of memory difficulties in amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). Whereas recollection is consistently found to be impaired in aMCI, the results on familiarity are divergent. One potential factor that could explain this divergence in findings relates to the heterogeneity of aMCI patients, so that only those aMCI patients who develop Alzheimer disease (AD) may present with impaired familiarity. The present study aimed at testing this hypothesis. A group of 45 aMCI patients and a group of 26 healthy older adults performed a verbal recognition memory test with the Remember/Know paradigm to assess recollection and familiarity processes. All participants were followed for 4 years with clinical and neuropsychological testing. At the end of follow-up, 22 aMCI patients progressed to AD and 23 aMCI patients remained stable. Initial memory performance was compared between the 3 groups. Whereas recollection was severely diminished in all aMCI patients, familiarity accuracy (and consequently global recognition accuracy) was found to be impaired only in aMCI patients who subsequently developed AD. These findings suggest that the enrichment of the aMCI population with predementia stage patients may modulate the likelihood to observe familiarity deficits, and impaired global recognition accuracy may accompany incipient AD.

Brand narratives: Content and consequences among heritage brands

AbstractThis study bridges the gap between the managerial view and the consumer view integrating research on storytelling with consumer perceptions of brand heritage. It identifies key elements of the stories told by managers of heritage product brands and consumer responses to these elements. Adopting a mixed‐methods approach, four empirical studies (in‐depth interviews with managers, content analysis of brand websites, a survey, and an experiment) provide evidence for relevant story elements, their use by heritage brand managers and their effects on consumers' responses. With several variables included as controls (consumer age, anxiety state, biological sex, brand familiarity, category involvement, category knowledge and verbal processing style), the findings indicate that brand managers' assumptions about the effectiveness of specific narrative elements do not entirely reflect consumer' responses to these elements. Managers (Studies 1 and 2) commonly employ the story elements of the date of foundation, people, technology, omni‐temporality, struggle, and the place of foundation. While consumers (Studies 3 and 4) infer heritage from the brand's date of foundation, omni‐temporality, and technology, the results are less unanimous for the story elements of people, struggle, and place of foundation.

„Майнкрафт“ като образователен инструмент за реализиране на ин- тегрирания подход

Teaching the basics of coding at Alexander Georgiev-Kodzhakafaliyata Primary School develops students’ digital literacy, algorithmic thinking and skills to design familiar objects, processes and phenomena thanks to popular game Minecraft. This approach serves not to replace the regular lesson but as a parallel which extends and builds upon the learning process in order to develop synthetic competences. Thus emerges a natural necessity to look integrally at specific topics which fail to fit entirely into one scientific area. Students research historical records and then make a 3D Minecraft model of a historic site – the Greek Acropolis, which is part of the learning material in History in grade 5. They not only learn more about the site but also apply the skills of cooperation, effective communication, creativity and critical thinking.

The Inhibitory Effect of Emotional Conflict Control on Memory Retrieval

Evidence is mounting that emotional conflict is mainly resolved by the rostral anterior cingulate inhibiting the processing of emotional distractors. However, this theory has not been verified from the perspective of memory retrieval. This experiment aimed to explore the offline effect of emotional conflict processing on memory retrieval. We adopted a modified encoding-retrieval paradigm to explore this issue. Participants’ electroencephalography (EEG) signal were also collected. A face-word Stroop task was used to create the congruency factor. In addition, an old/new judgment task was used to evaluate the recognition performance. During the retrieval phase, the response time of the incongruent condition was longer and the recognition accuracy was lower compared with congruent and neutral conditions in the behavioral data. For event-related potentials (ERP), we detected two well-established old/new effects related to memory retrieval under both neutral and emotional conditions: the frontal negativity (FN400) related to familiarity-driven recognition and the late posterior negativity (LPN) related to reconstructive processing or evaluation of retrieval outcomes. More importantly, the old/new effects were missing for incongruent condition during the early stage of FN400 (300–400 ms). Besides, for LPN (700–900 ms), the old/new effects of the incongruent condition are greater than the congruent condition. The results prove that the encoding phase's emotional congruency factor has a regulatory effect on the retrieval phase's early familiarity processing and evaluation of retrieval outcomes. Our data confirm the inhibitory effect of emotional conflict control on memory retrieval and support the emotional conflict control mechanism found in previous studies.

Modulation of visually guided action by the image and familiar sizes of real-world objects.

In daily life, two aspects of real-world object size perception—the image size of an object and its familiar size in the real world—are highly correlated. Thus, whether these two aspects of object size differently affect goal-directed action (e.g., manual pointing) and how have scarcely been examined. Here, participants reached to touch one of two simultaneously presented objects based on either their image or familiar size, which could be congruent or incongruent (e.g., a rubber duck presented as smaller and larger than a boat, respectively). We observed that when pointing to target objects in the incongruent conditions, participants’ movements were slower and were more curved toward the incorrect object compared with the movements in the congruent conditions. By comparing performance in the congruent and incongruent conditions, we concluded that both image size and familiar size influenced action even when task irrelevant, indicating that both are processed automatically (Konkle & Oliva, 2012a). Image size, however, showed influence earlier in the course of movements and more robustly overall than familiar size. We additionally found that greater relative familiar size differences mitigated the impact of image size processing and increased the impact of familiar size processing on pointing movements. Overall, our data suggest that image size and familiar size perception interact both with each other and with visually guided action, but that the relative contributions of each are unequal and vary based on task demands.

Nursing students' conceptions of competence and the learning processes that support the development of competence: a phenomenographic study.

The development of competence among student nurses is important to nurse educators, nursing regulatory bodies, employers and patients. Several teaching and learning strategies support the development of competence among student nurses, but the level of competence at the point of graduation remains below expected standards. Therefore, more research is needed to find strategies that can enhance the development of competence among students. The study explored students' conceptions of competence and the learning processes that support the development of competence in nursing practice. Gaining an understanding of learning and competence from the student's perspective can improve our current understanding of the development of competence. Utilising a phenomenographic approach, in-depth interviews and focus group discussions were conducted among purposively sampled groups of nursing students. The analysis of data was managed through ATLAS. ti 8.1 and followed the process of familiarisation, condensation, comparison, grouping, articulating labelling and contrasting of excerpts to generate the students' conceptions of learning. Five categories of description emerged and showed that the development of competence involves students increasing their understanding of what competence is, hence changing their learning strategies to meet the level of competence, as they understood it. In order of hierarchy from the lowest, the categories of description were: competence is understood as task completion; competence is understood as passing assessments /satisfying facilitators; competence is understood as applying theory to practice; competence is understood as performance of nursing according to clinical standards/guidelines; and competence is understood as performance that yields positive health outcomes.

It was a Pleasure Meeting You

Social signals are commonly used to facilitate the usability of humanoid robots. While providing the robot with an extended expressibility, these signals are often applied only in structured interactions where parts of the familiarization or farewell processes are disregarded in the evaluation. In order to establish the consideration of a more comprehensive view, this article presents a holistic model of human encounters with a social robot. We propose and discuss particular robot signals, which aim to express the robot’s social awareness, for each of the model’s phases. We present an interaction study with humans that are inexperienced in interacting with robots to investigate the effects of these signals. Results verify that the implementation of proposed signals is beneficial for the participants’ user experience. The study further reveals a strong interdependency of a robot’s social signals and the importance of addressing entire encounters in human–robot interaction studies.

Dog-human social relationship: representation of human face familiarity and emotions in the dog brain.

This study investigated the behavioral and neural indices of detecting facial familiarity and facial emotions in human faces by dogs. Awake canine fMRI was used to evaluate dogs' neural response to pictures and videos of familiar and unfamiliar human faces, which contained positive, neutral, and negative emotional expressions. The dog-human relationship was behaviorally characterized out-of-scanner using an unsolvable task. The caudate, hippocampus, and amygdala, mainly implicated in reward, familiarity and emotion processing, respectively, were activated in dogs when viewing familiar and emotionally salient human faces. Further, the magnitude of activation in these regions correlated with the duration for which dogs showed human-oriented behavior towards a familiar (as opposed to unfamiliar) person in the unsolvable task. These findings provide a bio-behavioral basis for the underlying markers and functions of human-dog interaction as they relate to familiarity and emotion in human faces.

Designing a smart integrated workspace to improve building energy efficiency: an Indonesian case study

The increased energy consumption in office building led to stakeholders’ renewed interests in optimizing office buildings’ energy performances, such as indoor comfort, energy efficiency, and life cycle costs. One of the most effective solutions to hedging against building operation optimization is incorporating energy efficiency measures and architectural programming early. This paper proposes a Smart Integrated Workspace Design (SIWD) framework that integrates architectural programming system using Internet of Things (IoT) technology into the Value Engineering (VE) process to assess design alternatives targeted explicitly at future smart office buildings. The use of the SIWD led to an improved development cycle linking architectural plans and engineering design. An empirical test using a large building owner, their designers, and contractors in Jakarta, Indonesia, resulted in an 18% improvement in building energy performance and quality when the design team used the SIWD framework. It is also indicated that leveraging advanced technology and incorporating familiar concepts and processes increased user willingness to adopt the SIWD in future projects. So, incorporated the IoT in architectural design and evaluated by VE made the readiness and friendly technology to all occupants to get the building efficiency and comfort unsteady.

УПРАВЛЕНИЕ КОММУНИКАЦИЯМИ КУЛЬТУРНЫХ И ОБРАЗОВАТЕЛЬНЫХ УЧРЕЖДЕНИЙ В ПЕРИОД КРИЗИСА

The purpose of the article is to analyze specifics of the communication construction and adaptation of cultural institutions products during the crisis. The pandemic associated with the spread of the COVID-19 coronavirus had a serious impact on all spheres of life and required a revision of many familiar processes. In particular, the system of communication with consumers in the spheres of culture and education had to be substantially restructured. Also in those areas the development and implementation of new products and projects, adapted to the restrictions conditions, became urgent. On that basis, the article deals with the specifics of creating and promoting educational products in a period of quarantine restrictions as well as of the most crisis-prone areas of work. The key outcome can be defined as the conclusion that an important factor in the effectiveness of communications is the study of the consumer needs, and in a continuous mode. The spheres of education and culture, in that case, are no exception. The prospects of the study are associated with the fact that new products related to the crisis and restrictive measures do not disappear with the return to “ordinary” life, but remain in the product line of many organizations. However the ratio of traditional and new products in the assortment portfolio of different organizations will be different, which depends on many factors. Studying the factors and thus effectively managing the product portfolio are tasks for future periods. It is thereupon (along with the study of needs) that it is necessary to develop a communication strategy for the organizations of the spheres of culture and education.

Disturbed temporal dynamics of episodic retrieval activity with preserved spatial activity pattern in amnestic mild cognitive impairment: A simultaneous EEG-fMRI study

Episodic memory (EM) deficit is the core cognitive dysfunction of amnestic mild cognitive impairment (aMCI). However, the episodic retrieval pattern detected by functional MRI (fMRI) appears preserved in aMCI subjects. To address this discrepancy, simultaneous electroencephalography (EEG)-fMRI recording was employed to determine whether temporal dynamics of brain episodic retrieval activity were disturbed in patients with aMCI. Twenty-six aMCI and 29 healthy control (HC) subjects completed a word-list memory retrieval task during simultaneous EEG-fMRI. The retrieval success activation pattern was detected with fMRI analysis, and the familiarity- and recollection-related components of episodic retrieval activity were identified using event-related potential (ERP) analysis. The fMRI-constrained ERP analysis explored the temporal dynamics of brain activity in the retrieval success pattern, and the ERP-informed fMRI analysis detected fMRI correlates of the ERP components related to familiarity and recollection processes. The two groups exhibited similar retrieval success patterns in the bilateral posteromedial parietal cortex, the left inferior parietal lobule (IPL), and the left lateral prefrontal cortex (LPFC). The fMRI-constrained ERP analysis showed that the aMCI group did not exhibit old/new effects in the IPL and LPFC that were observed in the HC group. In addition, the aMCI group showed disturbed fMRI correlate of ERP recollection component that was associated with inferior EM performance. Therefore, in this study, we identified disturbed temporal dynamics in episodic retrieval activity with a preserved spatial activity pattern in aMCI. Taken together, the simultaneous EEG-fMRI technique demonstrated the potential to identify individuals with a high risk of cognitive deterioration.