Status Signals Research Articles

Multiple status signals in multinational teams: Implications of lingua franca proficiency and task expertise for informal leadership

Lingua franca proficiency and task expertise coexist in multinational teams as prominent status signals that are often relied upon to infer a member’s competence. These personal attributes, however, do not always suggest consistent information since those with lower lingua franca proficiency might be more expert at the task and vice versa. In examining their joint implications, we draw on status characteristics and expectation states theories to identify the signaling nature of each attribute. Unlike the categorically specific quality of task expertise, lingua franca proficiency possesses characteristics commensurate with both specific and diffuse signals: it represents a social group and, at the same time, carries valid information about performance for certain tasks. Using archival (Study 1) and experimental (Study 2) data, we explore how the hybrid nature of lingua franca proficiency shapes its interaction with task expertise and implications for subsequent leadership outcomes. We provide further evidence for the generalizability of our findings through a supplemental study that includes 18 interviews with current members of multinational teams across various organizations.

Kisspeptin in functional hypothalamic amenorrhea: Pathophysiology and therapeutic potential.

Functional hypothalamic amenorrhea (FHA) is one of the most common causes of secondary amenorrhea, resulting in anovulation and infertility, and is a low estrogen state that increases the risk of cardiovascular disease and impairs bone health. FHA is characterized by acquired suppression of physiological pulsatile gonadotropin-releasing hormone (GnRH) release by the hypothalamus in the absence of an identifiable structural cause, resulting in a functional hypogonadotropic hypogonadism. FHA results from either decreased energy intake and/or excessive exercise, leading to low energy availability and weight loss-often in combination with psychological stress on top of a background of genetic susceptibility. The hypothalamic neuropeptide kisspeptin is a key component of the GnRH pulse generator, tightly regulating pulsatile GnRH secretion and the downstream reproductive axis. Here, we review the physiological regulation of pulsatile GnRH secretion by hypothalamic kisspeptin neurons and how their activity is modulated by signals of energy status to affect reproductive function. We explore endocrine factors contributing to the suppression of GnRH pulsatility in the pathophysiology of FHA and how hypothalamic kisspeptin neurons likely represent a final common pathway through which these factors affect GnRH pulse generation. Finally, we discuss the therapeutic potential of kisspeptin as a novel treatment for women with FHA.

Generosity as a status signal: Higher-testosterone men exhibit greater altruism in the dictator game

Altruistic behavior can be modulated by many factors including hormonal levels, but their reported effects remain mixed. Understanding the proximate mechanisms of altruism such as these can help test predictions of ultimate, evolutionary explanations. We investigated the relationship of the endogenous salivary levels of testosterone and cortisol with Dictator Game (DG) offers as a proxy of altruism on a sample of general-population participants (N = 158, 84 F, 74 M). Bayesian data analysis and model comparison showed both testosterone and cortisol were negatively correlated with DG offers in women, while higher testosterone levels were associated with greater generosity in men. These results suggest that high testosterone may promote altruistic behavior in the service of status-seeking among men.

Adaptive spectrum amplitude modulation method for rolling bearing fault frequency determination

Abstract Signal preprocessing and feature extraction are decisive factors in determining the frequency of bearing faults. The presence of noise interference in the status signal of rolling bearings often hampers accurate fault detection. Although there are various methods for preprocessing vibration signals in rolling bearings, they need further improvement in terms of enhancing fault feature expression and localizing fault frequency bands. This limitation significantly hinders the accuracy of fault frequency determination. In order to enhance the representation of fault information on the frequency spectrum, this study proposes a combined approach that incorporates sparse stacked autoencoder (SSAE), wavelet packet decomposition (WPD), and adaptive spectrum amplitude modulation (ASAM). The resulting method is referred to as SSAE-WPD-ASAM. Firstly, the bearing vibration signal is decomposed by wavelet packet according to the scale and frequency band of the signal. On this basis, the signal reconstruction is realized based on the wavelet packet coefficient and energy distribution in different frequency bands. Secondly, for the whole life cycle signal, the reconstructed signal is self-encoded by sparse stacked autoencoder to achieve dimensionality reduction of the reconstructed signal. Then, the spare reconstructed signal is subjected to ASAM. Finally, through envelope demodulation, peak detection of fault frequency and empirical fault frequency comparison, the specific fault types of rolling bearings are determined. The proposed method is verified by theoretical simulation and three groups of practical experiments. The results show that the proposed method has a significant improvement in diagnostic efficiency and accuracy compared with traditional diagnostic methods.

Evaluation of preoperative magnetic resonance imaging features and diagnostic effectiveness of grades II and III intracranial solitary fibroma

ObjectivesTo explore the value of preoperative magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) characterization of intracranial solitary fibrous tumors (ISFT) and to evaluate the effectiveness of preoperative MRI features in predicting pathological grading.Materials and methodsThis retrospective analysis comprised the clinical and preoperative MRI characterization of 55 patients with ISFT in our hospital, including 27 grade II cases and 28 grade III cases confirmed by postoperative pathology. Variables included age, sex, tumor location, cross-midline status, signal characteristics of T1-weighted imaging (T1WI), T2-weighted imaging (T2WI), T2-fluid-attenuated inversion recovery (T2-FLAIR), and diffusion‑weighted imaging (DWI), peritumoral edema, intralesional hemorrhage, focal necrosis/cystic degeneration, tumor empty vessel, maximum tumor diameter, maximum, minimum, and average values of apparent diffusion coefficient (ADCmax, ADCmin, and ADCmean), tumors enhancement mode, meningeal tail sign, skull invasion, cerebral parenchymal invasion, and venous sinus involvement. The independent samples t test or Mann–Whitney U test was performed to compare continuous data between the two groups, and the Pearson chi-squared test or Fisher’s exact test was used to compare categorical data. In addition, bivariate logistic regression was performed to construct a comprehensive model, and receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curves were generated to calculate the areas under the curve (AUCs), thereby determining the value of each parameter in the differential diagnosis of grades II and III ISFT.ResultsThe mean age at onset was similar between patients with grades II and III ISFT (46.77 ± 14.66 years and 45.82 ± 12.07 years, respectively). The proportions of men among patients with grades II and III ISFT were slightly higher than those of female patients (male/female: 1.25 [15/12] and 1.33 [16/12], respectively). There were significant differences between grades II and III ISFT in the T2-FLAIR and DWI signal characteristics, maximum, minimum, and average values of the apparent diffusion coefficient (ADCmax, ADCmin, and ADCmean), tumor location, and skull invasion (P = 0.001, P = 0.018, P = 0.000, P = 0.000, P = 0.000, P = 0.010, and P = 0.032, respectively). However, no significant differences were noted between grades II and III ISFT in age, sex, cross-midline status, T1WI and T2WI signal characteristics, peritumoral edema, intralesional hemorrhage, focal necrosis/cystic degeneration, tumor empty vessel shadow, enhancement mode, meningeal tail sign, maximum tumor diameter, brain parenchyma invasion, or venous sinus involvement (all P > 0.05). Moreover, binary logistic regression analysis showed that the model accuracy was 89.1% when ADCmin was included in the regression equation. Moreover, ROC curve analysis showed that the AUC of ADCmin was 0.805 (0.688, 0.922), sensitivity was 74.1%, specificity was 75.0%, and the cutoff value was 672 mm2/s.ConclusionsGrade III ISFT patients displayed more mixed T2-FLAIR signal characteristics and DWI signal characteristics than grade II patients, as shown by higher skull invasion and tumor mass collapse midline distribution and lower ADCmax, ADCmean, and ADCmin values. The ADCmin value was significant in the preoperative assignment of grades II and III ISFT, thereby contributing to enhanced accuracy in the imaging grading diagnosis of the disease.

Distributed consensus control based on double event-triggered mechanism for multi-agent systems with irregular switching topologies under malicious attacks

This paper studies the consensus control of leader-following multi-agent systems (MASs) with irregular switching communication topology and time-varying delay under malicious attacks. The Markov stochastic process is used to describe the irregular switching of the communication topology caused by random factors, and it is verified that the communication protocol is still feasible when the communication channel is partially broken. At the same time, in order to filter out more efficient status signals and reduce the burden of network communication resources under malicious attacks, the double event-triggered mechanism (DETM) are adopted to make the number of state signals reaching the actuator much less and the state signals more efficient. Then, using the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional (LKF) and integral inequality methods, the LKF contains the information of the lower bound of delay. Lastly, the stability criterion of MASs stochastic asymptotic consensus with time-varying delay is given, the gain of the consistent controller and the event triggered matrix parameters are solved by using the linear matrix inequality toolbox. Finally, four numerical simulations are given to verify that the MASs with irregular switching topology under malicious attacks can still achieve leader-following consensus.

Control of Online-Appointment Systems When the Booking Status Signals Quality of Service

We revisit a service provider’s problem to match supply and demand via an online appointment system such as a doctor in the health care sector. We identify in a survey that an extensive set of available appointments leads to significantly less demand because customers infer a lower quality of the service, as part of an observational learning process. We capture the quality inference effect in a multinomial logit framework and present a Markov decision process for solving the problem of releasing available slots of the appointment system to optimality aiming at maximizing the expected profits. We further evaluate several simple decision rules and provide management insights on which rule to apply under different generic scenarios. Different from current literature, offering all available appointments may lead to suboptimal results when accounting for the quality inference effect. The profit-maximizing strategy then is to offer a subset of the available appointments.

A Review of Methods for Data-Driven Irrigation in Modern Agricultural Systems

More than half of global water use can be attributed to crop irrigation, and as the human population grows, so will the water requirements of agriculture. Improved irrigation will be critical to mitigating the impact of increased requirements. An ideal irrigation system is informed by measurements of water demand—a combination of water use and water status signals—and delivers water to plants based on this demand. In this review, examples of methods for monitoring water status are reviewed, along with details on stem and trunk water potential measurements. Then, methods for monitoring evapotranspiration (ET), or water use, are described. These methods are broken into coarse- and fine-scale categories, with a 10 m spatial resolution threshold between them. Fourteen crop ET technologies are presented, including examples of a successful estimation of ET in research and field settings, as well as limitations. The focus then shifts to water distribution technologies, with an emphasis on the challenges associated with the development of systems that achieve dynamic single plant resolution. Some attention is given to the process of choosing ET and water status sensing methods as well as water delivery system design given site characteristics and agronomic goals. This review concludes with a short discussion on the future directions of ET research and the importance of translating findings into useful tools for growers.

Intelligent-of-things multiagent system for smart home energy monitoring

The proliferation of IoT devices has ushered in a new era of smart homes, where efficient energy management is a paramount concern. Multiagent artificial intelligence-of-things (MAIoT) has emerged as a promising approach to address the complex challenges of smart home energy management. This research study examines MAIoT's components, functioning, benefits, and drawbacks. MAIoT systems improve energy efficiency and user comfort by combining multiagent systems and IoT devices. However, privacy, security, interoperability, scalability, and user acceptability must be addressed. As technology advances, MAIoT in smart home energy management will offer more sophisticated and adaptable solutions to cut energy consumption and promote sustainability. This article describes how energy status and internal pricing signals affect group intelligent decision making and the interaction dynamics between consumers or decision makers. In a multiagent configuration based on the new concept of artificial intelligence-of-things, this intelligent home energy management challenge is simulated and illustrated using software and hardware. Based on sufficient experimental simulations, this paper suggested that residential clients can significantly improve their economic benefit and decision-making efficiency.

Male proboscis monkey cranionasal size and shape is associated with visual and acoustic signalling

The large nose adorned by adult male proboscis monkeys is hypothesised to serve as an audiovisual signal of sexual selection. It serves as a visual signal of male quality and social status, and as an acoustic signal, through the expression of loud, low-formant nasalised calls in dense rainforests, where visibility is poor. However, it is unclear how the male proboscis monkey nasal complex, including the internal structure of the nose, plays a role in visual or acoustic signalling. Here, we use cranionasal data to assess whether large noses found in male proboscis monkeys serve visual and/or acoustic signalling functions. Our findings support a visual signalling function for male nasal enlargement through a relatively high degree of nasal aperture sexual size dimorphism, the craniofacial region to which nasal soft tissue attaches. We additionally find nasal aperture size increases beyond dental maturity among male proboscis monkeys, consistent with the visual signalling hypothesis. We show that the cranionasal region has an acoustic signalling role through pronounced nasal cavity sexual shape dimorphism, wherein male nasal cavity shape allows the expression of loud, low-formant nasalised calls. Our findings provide robust support for the male proboscis monkey nasal complex serving both visual and acoustic functions.

A Metabolomics Analysis of a Novel Phenotype of Older Adults at Higher Risk of Dementia.

Older adults presenting with dual-decline in cognition and walking speed face a 6-fold higher risk for dementia compared with those showing no decline. We hypothesized that the metabolomics profile of dual-decliners would be unique even before they show signs of decline in cognition and gait speed. The objective of this study was to determine if plasma metabolomics signatures can discriminate dual-decliners from no decliners, purely cognitive decliners, and purely motor decliners prior to decline. A retrospective cross-sectional study using baseline plasma for untargeted metabolomics analyses to investigate early signals of later dual-decline status in study participants (n = 76) with convenient sampling. Dual-decline was operationalized as decline in gait speed (>10 cm/s) and cognition (>2 points decline in Montreal Cognitive Assessment score) on at least two consecutive 6-monthly assessments. The participants' decliner status was evaluated 3 years after the blood sample was collected. Pair-wise comparison of detected compounds was completed using principal components and hierarchical clustering analyses. Analyses did not detect any cluster separation in untargeted metabolomes across baseline groups. However, follow-up analyses of specific molecules detected 4 compounds (17-Hydroxy-12-(hydroxymethyl)-10-oxo-8 oxapentacyclomethyl hexopyranoside, Fleroxacin, Oleic acid, and 5xi-11,12-Dihydroxyabieta-8(14),9(11),12-trien-20-oic acid) were at significantly higher concentration among the dual-decliners compared to non-decliners. The pure cognitive decliner group had significantly lower concentration of six compounds (1,3-nonanediol acetate, 4-(2-carboxyethyl)-2-methoxyphenyl beta-D-glucopyranosiduronic acid, oleic acid, 2E-3-[4-(sulfo-oxy)phenyl] acrylic acid, palmitelaidic acid, and myristoleic acid) compared to the non-decliner group. The unique metabolomics profile of dual-decliners warrants follow-up metabolomics analysis. Results may point to modifiable pathways.

Pride cometh before a fall: The incongruence of status and resource commitment signals in the video game industry

This study extends the burgeoning literature on social evaluations by investigating the incongruence between two quality signals in the video game industry: resource commitment and organizational status. It is hypothesized that while having one of the signals leads to higher product recognition and, hence, allows firms to capture more value from a product and its demonstrated quality, having both signals can be problematic due to the incongruence of these signals. This is because, in creative industry settings, the occurrence of both signals might send an incongruent message to external audiences (i.e., consumers and industry experts), leading to lower than expected results. My empirical analysis using historical data from the video game industry showed that organizations which featured either a status or a resource commitment signal were able to capture more value from their product quality than organizations that feature both of these signals. In an additional survey study, I found tentative evidence for my theoretical explanations of these findings.

Recognizing interspecific dominance signals? Blue tits adjust nest defence based on great tit's black bib size

AbstractAnimals use colours, morphological structures and behaviour to advertise their dominance status and ability to obtain resources (Resource Holding Potential, RHP) in agonistic contexts with conspecifics. Dominance relationships are also known between species, although the interactions and the information used to assess the other species' RHP remain obscure and empirical evidence of interspecific recognition of status is hard to obtain. Using behavioural inference is particularly important when a species needs to assess the potential loss of fitness in terms of reproduction or survival (e.g., risk of damage or predation) that could be inflicted by another species acting as a predator, parasite or competitor. Our study shows for the first time the existence of interspecific recognition of status signals: Blue tits Cyanistes caeruleus (subordinate species) perceive Great tits Parus major (dominant species) as threats as hole‐nesting competitors, and respond differently based on the size of the great tit's black tie stripe. Blue tits seemed to recognize the meaning of great tits' black ties because they were bolder when defending their nests against small‐tie (less dominant) great tits than when repelling attacks by large‐tie (more dominant) great tit males. Our results stress that behavioural inference can potentially be used to assess the meaning of status signals that presumably evolved in an intraspecific signalling context.

Speech patterns during memory recall relates to early tau burden across adulthood.

Early cognitive decline may manifest in subtle differences in speech. We examined 238 cognitively unimpaired adults from the Framingham Heart Study (32-75 years) who completed amyloid and tau PET imaging. Speech patterns during delayed recall of a story memory task were quantified via five speech markers, and their associations with global amyloid status and regional tau signal were examined. Total utterance time, number of between-utterance pauses, speech rate, and percentage of unique words significantly correlated with delayed recall score although the shared variance was low (2%-15%). Delayed recall score was not significantly different between β-amyoid-positive (Aβ+) and -negative (Aβ-) groups and was not associated with regional tau signal. However, longer and more between-utterance pauses, and slower speech rate were associated with increased tau signal across medial temporal and early neocortical regions. Subtle speech changes during memory recall may reflect cognitive impairment associated with early Alzheimer's disease pathology. Speech during delayed memory recall relates to tau PET signal across adulthood. Delayed memory recall score was not associated with tau PET signal. Speech shows greater sensitivity to detecting subtle cognitive changes associated with early tau accumulation. Our cohort spans adulthood, while most PET imaging studies focus on older adults.

Experimental study on multiple characteristics of multi-source AE signals during cavitation process of waterjet propulsion pump

In order to investigate the cavitation-induce acoustic emission (AE) characteristics of a waterjet propulsion pump, a synchronous experimental system consisting of a test pump, a high-speed camera, and acoustic emission sensors has been established. The characteristic parameters of AE signals are extracted to established the quantitative relationships between cavitation status and AE signals. These characteristic parameters mainly consist of the ringing count rate Rc , energy release rate Er , and Hurst index Hi . The cavitation status of the test pump is reflected in the characteristic parameters of the AE signals obtained by the sensors installed at different locations. The incipient blade suction side (SS) cavitation as well as the blade tip gap cavitation can be detected through the change of characteristic parameters of AE signals at impeller inlet. The start of head drop can be reflected by the variety of characteristic parameters of AE signals at impeller middle. Large-scale cavitation will lead to the breakdown of pump performance and dramatically characteristic parameters’ change of AE signals can be measured by the sensors located at impeller outlet.

A universal hydraulic-mechanical diagnostic framework based on feature extraction of abnormal on-field measurements: Application in micro pumped storage system

How to extract the running feature information and realize multi-type faults diagnosis is the key to carry out intelligent operation and maintenance of energy conversion machinery. The pumped storage unit (PSU) has various operating conditions, both energy storage and power generation. It may lead to diversified types of failures under the joint influence of hydraulic and mechanical factors. The existing data-driven models often show excellent diagnostic performance with laboratory-specific fault types or single subsystem but are not satisfactory when applying real operating scenarios or migrating to other devices. Therefore, a universal hydraulic-mechanical diagnostic framework integrating signal acquisition, feature extraction and fault recognition is proposed in this paper. In Stage 1, eight types of datasets caused by the hydraulic-mechanical coupling characteristics via abnormal on-field measurements form an on-site benchmark; for Stages 2 and 3, a novel refined composite multiscale cosine similarity Lempel-Ziv complexity method is proposed to quantify the various fault features based on multiscale signal processing and the nonlinear dynamics methodology, and random forests model is introduced to realize the efficient recognition of different status signals. Its core advantage is versatility, which is not limited to specific components but can be applied to different subsystems of pumped storage, such as hydraulic system (identification of vortex conditions, detection of hydraulic imbalances) and mechanical system (wear of shaft, bearing and runner). This framework is applied in the micro PSUs, the comprehensive experiments show that all evaluation indexes are above 92%. Various comparative analysis indicates that the framework is not only applicable to the detection and analysis of hydraulic anomalies but also has a competitive advantage in the diagnosis of hydraulic-mechanical faults. It is suitable for fault detection of different subsystems in real power stations, and also could be flexibly extended to other rotating energy storage systems, as a helpful tool to improve energy conversion efficiency and reduce maintenance cost.

Radiomics Nomogram Based on Dual-Sequence MRI for Assessing Ki-67 Expression in Breast Cancer.

Radiomics has been extensively applied in predicting Ki-67 in breast cancer (BC). However, this is often confined to the exploration of a single sequence, without considering the varying sensitivity and specificity among different sequences. To develop a nomogram based on dual-sequence MRI derived radiomic features combined with clinical characteristics for assessing Ki-67 expression in BC. Retrospective. 227 females (average age, 51 years) with 233 lesions and pathologically confirmed BC, which were divided into the training set (n = 163) and test set (n = 70). 3.0-T, T1-weighted dynamic contrast-enhanced MRI (DCE-MRI) and apparent diffusion coefficient (ADC) maps from diffusion-weighted MRI (EPI sequence). The regions of interest were manually delineated on ADC and DCE-MRI sequences. Three radiomics models of ADC, DCE-MRI, and dsMRI (combined ADC and DCE-MRI sequences) were constructed by logistic regression and the radiomics score (Radscore) of the best model was calculated. The correlation between Ki-67 expression and clinical characteristics such as receptor status, axillary lymph node (ALN) metastasis status, ADC value, and time signal intensity curve was analyzed, and the clinical model was established. The Radscore was combined with clinical predictors to construct a nomogram. The independent sample t-test, Mann-Whitney U test, Chi-squared test, Interclass correlation coefficients (ICCs), single factor analysis, least absolute shrinkage and selection operator (LASSO), logistic regression, receiver operating characteristics, Delong test, Hosmer_Lemeshow test, calibration curve, decision curve. A P-value <0.05 was considered statistically significant. In the test set, the prediction efficiency of the dsMRI model (AUC = 0.862) was higher than ADC model (AUC = 0.797) and DCE-MRI model (AUC = 0.755). With the inclusion of estrogen receptor (ER) and ALN metastasis, the nomogram displayed quality improvement (AUC = 0.876), which was superior to the clinical model (AUC = 0.787) and radiomics model. The nomogram based on dsMRI radiomic features and clinical characteristics may be able to assess Ki-67 expression in BC. 3 TECHNICAL EFFICACY: Stage 3.

Diurnal switches in diazotrophic lifestyle increase nitrogen contribution to cereals

Uncoupling of biological nitrogen fixation from ammonia assimilation is a prerequisite step for engineering ammonia excretion and improvement of plant-associative nitrogen fixation. In this study, we have identified an amino acid substitution in glutamine synthetase, which provides temperature sensitive biosynthesis of glutamine, the intracellular metabolic signal of the nitrogen status. As a consequence, negative feedback regulation of genes and enzymes subject to nitrogen regulation, including nitrogenase is thermally controlled, enabling ammonia excretion in engineered Escherichia coli and the plant-associated diazotroph Klebsiella oxytoca at 23 °C, but not at 30 °C. We demonstrate that this temperature profile can be exploited to provide diurnal oscillation of ammonia excretion when variant bacteria are used to inoculate cereal crops. We provide evidence that diurnal temperature variation improves nitrogen donation to the plant because the inoculant bacteria have the ability to recover and proliferate at higher temperatures during the daytime.

Retraction of: Super Size Me: Product Size as a Signal of Status

Retraction of: Super Size Me: Product Size as a Signal of Status

A study on relationship between youth’s perception and preference towards fast food restaurants in Bangalore

The study's goal is to learn how young people in Bangalore feel about and choose fast food establishments. Managers in today's complex business environment must constantly search for new ways to attract and keep consumers across all product categories. In light of the rising expense of acquiring new clients, many businesses are implementing loyalty programmes in an effort to keep their current clientele and strengthen their bonds with them. One industry that has thrived despite the recession is quick service restaurants (QSRs). A glance back at recent years is all it takes to get a sense of the fast food industry's meteoric rise. Fast food has become a staple of modern culture, and not only among the younger demographic. The fast food industry has become so ingrained in modern culture that its patrons' very act of ordering or patronising its outlets has come to represent a status signal for their social group. The Indian market for quick service restaurants has fierce competition amongst several major companies. Most consumers are prepared to pay extra for higher-quality cuisine and menu upgrades. Employee happiness is a top priority, thus restaurants are working to make their dining areas more spacious and welcoming.