Research suggests that older adults have enhanced emotional outcomes and use different emotion regulation strategies (e.g., more distraction and positive reappraisal) relative to young adults. The present study investigated the mood and memory-related effects of these strategies in young and older adults. Participants watched a sad film clip while being instructed to use specific emotion regulation strategies (i.e., avoiding negativity, focusing on positivity, focusing on negativity, or no instructions). Young adults who were instructed to avoid focusing on negativity showed better mood outcomes and more positive memory for the film compared to non-instructed young adults. Instructions to down-regulate emotions did not affect older adults, possibly because they used such strategies spontaneously. Older adults increased dispositional tendency to focus on positive stimuli in their everyday lives partially explained older adults greater mood improvement. The results have implications for the effectiveness of particular emotion regulation strategies and for the generalizability of the positivity effect.

Since the limitations for the presentation of information on the internet, shopping online makes consumers feel cognitive dissonance more easily compared with traditional shopping. While experiencing cognitive dissonance after shopping, consumers would search and browse the internet for word-of mouth in order to rationalize their purchase behavior. However, there seems little research for the impact on consumers¡¦ feelings by online word-of-mouth during post-purchase. Therefore, this study is going to be focused on the influence of searching online word-of-mouth on consumer post-purchase cognitive dissonance level, consumer attitudes and intention s to spread negative word-of-mouth. This study is adopted an experiment to understand the effect of reading wording-of-mouth on consumers. The degree of consumer cognitive dissonance is measured by the comparison between the difference of consumer expectation and their feelings in actual products. The word-of-mouth design is applied to content analysis to understand the actual word-of-mouth and thus this is resulted in an online word-of-mouth contented ¡§more negative messages and less positive ones¡¨. According to this research, there is no significant difference between cognitive dissonance and consumer attitude after reading the word-of-mouth in the high degree of cognitive dissonance case; nevertheless, the intention to spread negative word-of-mouth would be significantly decreased. On the other hand, in the low degree of cognitive dissonance case, after reading word-of-mouth, cognitive dissonance would be significantly increased, and consumer attitude could be significantly decreased and negative word-of-mouth intention will significantly increase.

Emotional expression has played an important role in our social life. This is especially true for leaders who have unequal power during the interaction with followers. According to the EASI model, we explored whether supervisor¡¦s negative emotional expression influenced follower¡¦s task performance by examining the moderating effects of follower's conscientiousness, agreeableness, power distance orientation, and perceived supervisor power on such relationship. In present study, we collected data from 34 companies of different kinds of industries, including 191 leader-follower dyads from 86 supervisors and 191 followers. The results of the hierarchical regression analysis showed that followers¡¦ conscientiousness and agreeableness positively moderated the relationship between supervisor¡¦s negative emotion expression and follower¡¦s task performance. Furthermore, under the condition of follower¡¦s low power distance orientation and low perceived supervisor power, the relationship between supervisor¡¦s negative emotion expression and follower¡¦s task performance became negative. Finally, theoretical and practical implications of our findings are also discussed.

Early detection of infection, identification of microorganism, and correct choice of antibiotics are critical in the management of sepsis. Quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) has the potential to improve the timeliness, sensitivity, and accuracy of detecting pathogens. In this study we utilize this method to detect the enteric bacterial counts in the blood from patients with systemic inflammatory response syndrome (SIRS) in the emergency department (ED). The universal primers utilized in RT-PCR are specific for 23S ribosomal DNA (rDNA) and wec F gene. The results show that in SIRS patients with positive culture results from specimen collected within 10 days after presenting to ED, and patients surviving for less than 28 days, the serum bacterial DNA load of enteric Gram negative bacilli is higher. In SIRS patients with shock, patients fulfilling both white blood cell counts and respiratory criteria of SIRS, and patients fulfilling both white blood cell counts and respiratory criteria of SIRS with Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II score more than 20, the serum bacterial DNA load of enteric Gram negative bacilli and 28-day mortality are both higher. These results suggest that bacterial translocation may happen in patients with SIRS and may be related to higher mortality in patients with SIRS.

Transistor aging through negative bias temperature instability (NBTI) has become a major lifetime constraint in VLSI circuits. We propose a technique that uses antifuses to widen PMOS transistors later in a circuit?s life cycle to combat aging. Using HSPICE and 70nm BPTM process numbers, we simulated the technique on four circuits (a ring oscillator, a fan-out four circuit, an ISCAS c432 and c2670). Over the lifetime of the circuit, our simulations predict a 8.89% and a 13% improvement in power in the c432 and c2670 circuits respectively when compared to similarly performing traditional circuits.

Developing sound or reliable statistical models for analyzing vehicle crashes is very important in highway safety studies. A difficulty arises when crash data exhibit overdispersion. Over-dispersion caused by unobserved heterogeneity is a serious problem and has been addressed in a variety ways within the negative binomial (NB) modeling framework. However, the true factors that affect heterogeneity are often unknown to researchers, and failure to accommodate such heterogeneity in the model can undermine the validity of the empirical results. Given the limitations of the NB regression model for addressing over-dispersion of crash data due to heterogeneity, this research examined an alternative model formulation that could be used for capturing heterogeneity through the use of finite mixture regression models. A Finite mixture of Poisson or NB regression models is especially useful when the count data were generated from a heterogeneous population. To evaluate these models, Poisson and NB mixture models were estimated using both simulated and empirical crash datasets, and the results were compared to those from a single NB regression model. For model parameter estimation, a Bayesian approach was adopted, since it provides much richer inference than the maximum likelihood approach. Using simulated datasets, it was shown that the single NB model is biased if the underlying cause of heterogeneity is due to the existence of multiple counting processes. The implications could be poor prediction performance and poor interpretation. Using two empirical datasets, the results demonstrated that a two-component finite mixture of NB regression models (FMNB-2) was quite enough to characterize the uncertainty about the crash occurrence, and it provided more opportunities for interpretation of the dataset which are not available from the standard NB model. Based on the models from the empirical dataset (i.e., FMNB-2 and NB models), their relative performances were also examined in terms of hotspot identification and accident modification factors. Finally, using a simulation study, bias properties of the posterior summary statistics for dispersion parameters in FMNB-2 model were characterized, and the guidelines on the choice of priors and the summary statistics to use were presented for different sample sizes and sample-mean values.

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The present study investigated self-presentational predictors of shyness among university students via a mediational causal model, in which socially-prescribed perfectionism, perceived social skills, and perceived parental attitudes were proposed to interact with fear of negative evaluation and self-esteem to predict shyness. The sample consisted of 497 undergraduate students (287 females, 210 males) selected from Middle East Technical University by stratified random sampling. Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale, Socially-Prescribed Perfectionism Scale, Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, Social Skills Inventory-Short, and Parental Attitude Scale were used in data collection. Pilot studies were conducted for assessing the reliability and validity of Brief Fear of Negative Evaluation Scale, Revised Cheek and Buss Shyness Scale, and Social Skills Inventory-Short. Path analysis was utilized to test the causal model. The results revealed that shyness was positively predicted from fear of negative evaluation and socially-prescribed perfectionism / and negatively from self-esteem and perceived social skills. Fear of negative evaluation was predicted positively from socially-prescribed perfectionism and perceived strictness/supervision from parents, and negatively from self-esteem / whereas self-esteem was predicted positively from perceived social skills, perceived parental psychological autonomy and acceptance/involvement, and negatively from socially-prescribed perfectionism. These findings suggested that fear of negative evaluation partially mediated the relationship between shyness and socially-prescribed perfectionism / between shyness and perceived parental strictness/supervision / and between shyness and self-esteem. In addition, self-esteem partially mediated the association of shyness with socially-prescribed perfectionism / with perceived social skills / with parental acceptance/involvement / and with parental psychological autonomy. Findings are discussed within the self-presentational framework of shyness.

The purpose of the present study was to examine the effects of positive and negative symptoms, and duration of illness on emotion processes / ability to understand emotion related cues, experience of emotion, and expression of emotion. A total of 46 schizophrenia patients from Ankara Oncology Hospital Psychiatry Clinic / 23 of them were diagnosed with schizophrenia for at least 10 years, and 23 of them were diagnosed for less than 10 years, participated in the study. Besides, a total of 23 non-clinical subjects / which were similar to the clinical group in terms of educational information, participated to the study. A video-clip which consists of scenes that elicited four types of emotions (fear, disgust, sadness, happiness) was presented to the participants. Understanding of emotion related cues and the experienced emotion were rated through self-report. Facial expressions of the participants were rated through their recorded faces by three psychologists, who were specifically trained for emotional facial expression rating. Symptomatology was assessed by Positive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS), and Calgary Depression Scale for schizophrenia patients. Presence of any psychopathology of healthy group was measured through Brief Symptom Inventory. Multivariate Analysis of Variance (MANOVA) revealed that chronic patients presented more understanding of context impairments than acute patients and non-clinical group. In addition to these findings, positive symptoms assessed by PANSS were found to be positively correlated with the understanding context impairment. Therefore, It was suggested that positive symptoms, such as hallucinations and delusions interfere with understanding context task. The results were discussed in the light of the literature and clinical and research implications of the study presented. Finally, necessity of using neurological, biological and cognitive assessment methods for further studies was suggested in order to understand deficits in emotional processes.

The present study investigated the role of gender, sense of coherence and total physical activity in positive and negative affect. The participants were 376 (169 female, 206 male, and 1 missing value) volunteered students from different faculties of Middle East Technical University. Three questionnaires, namely, Sense of Coherence Scale (SOC), Physical Activity Assessment Questionnaire (PAAQ), and Positive and Negative Affect Schedule (PANAS) were administered to the students together with the demographic information sheet. Two separate stepwise multiple linear regression analyses were conducted to examine the predictive power of gender (coded as dummy variable), sense of coherence and total physical activity on positive and negative affect scores. Results revealed that, sense of coherence and total physical activity predicted the positive affect whereas sense of coherence predicted the negative affect of university students. Findings are discussed in the light of sense of coherence, physical activity and positive and negative affect literature.