The good and the bad: Are some attribute words better than others in the Implicit Association Test?

The Implicit Association Test (IAT) is one of the most popular measures in psychological research. A lack of standardization across IATs has resulted in significant variability among stimuli used by researchers, including the positive and negative words used in evaluative IATs. Does the variability in attribute words in evaluative IATs produce unwanted variability in measurement quality across studies? The present work investigated the effect of evaluative stimuli across three studies using 13 IATs and over 60,000 participants. The 64 positive and negative words that we tested provided similar measurement quality. Further, measurement was satisfactory even in IATs that used only category labels as stimuli. These results suggest that common sense is probably a sufficient method for selection of evaluative stimuli in the IAT. For a reasonable measurement quality, we recommend researchers who use evaluative IATs in English to randomly select words from the set we tested in the present research.

Assessment of Concentration of Mineral Oil in Synthetic Ester Based on the Density of the Mixture and the Capacitance of the Capacitor Immersed in It

This research was carried out during the realization of a project with the aim of developing a method of drying cellulose insulation in power transformers by using synthetic ester. Unfortunately, during the drying process, the ester is systematically contaminated with mineral oil, which reduces its water absorption. Information on the oil concentration in the mixture is needed in two cases: when deciding how to treat the mixture, and during the treatment. The article presents two methods: (1) based on the measurement of the mixture density, and (2) based on the measurement of a capacitor immersed in the mixture. The most important scientific achievement of the work is the proof, by way of experiment, of the existence of a relationship between the concentration of mineral oil and (1) the density of the mixture, and (2) the capacity of the capacitor immersed in it. These relations are presented in the form of equations for which the error calculus showed that the uncertainty of measurement for both methods did not exceed 3 p. %. Due to the similar measurement error of both methods, the authors recommend the capacitance method as easier to use, especially online.

Adjusting Bilingual Ratings by Retest Reliability Improves Estimation of Translation Quality

The quality of cross-language scale translations is often explored by having bilingual participants complete the scale in both languages and then correlating their scores. However, low cross-language correlations can be observed due to score unreliability rather than due to poor scale translation. McCrae, Yik, Trapnell, Bond, and Paulhus suggested that a better indicator of translation quality can be formed by dividing the raw cross-language correlation by the same-language retest correlations over a similar measurement interval. Here, we illustrate how this method can be extended to evaluate the translation quality of individual items. We translated the English version of the Inventory of Individual Differences in the Lexicon (IIDL) into Chinese, and within a single survey session participants either completed the instrument either in both languages ( N = 151 bilingual participants) or twice in Chinese ( N = 94) or in English ( N = 82). Finally, additional bilingual participants ( N = 46) rated the perceived translation quality of each item. Variation in the cross-language correlations across items predicted perceived translation quality, however, adjusting for same-language retest correlations resulted in significantly stronger indicators of perceived translation quality. The present study thus indicates the validity of McCrae et al.’s general method, and demonstrates that it can be extended to designs where all participants complete a single test session and can be applied to evaluate the quality of translations of single items.

Preliminary testing of innovative ventilation fittings

The article primarily presents a schematic idea of the operation of innovative ventilation shapes with adjustable performance. Then, it was pre-verified by measuring static pressure on the walls of ordinary fittings and innovative T-type fittings. The presented fittings have features that allow for very precise control of the performance of ventilation streams in various configurations. The most important diagrams in the article show that there are simple methods for distributing air streams, even in mutually perpendicular channels leading to minimized flow losses. The presented results of comparative tests carried out on ordinary and innovative T-shaped fittings show very favorable tendencies which are characterized by a several-dozen-percent drop in pressure in similar measurement ranges.

Experimental Characterization of the Twin-Eye Laser Mouse Sensor

This paper proposes the experimental characterization of a laser mouse sensor used in some optical mouse devices. The sensor characterized is called twin-eye laser mouse sensor and uses the Doppler effect to measure displacement as an alternative to optical flow-based mouse sensors. The experimental characterization showed similar measurement performances to optical flow sensors except in the sensitivity to height changes and when measuring nonlinear displacements, where the twin-eye sensor offered better performance. The measurement principle of this optical sensor can be applied to the development of alternative inexpensive applications that require planar displacement measurement and poor sensitivity toz-axis changes such as mobile robotics.

Enhanced Measurements of Displacements and Strains in Quasiperiodic Nanostructures

ABSTRACTDisplacements and strains can be calculated from the microscopic image of a quasiperiodic structure by the analysis of its spectral content, consisting of a discrete set of peaks (Bragg spots in the case of the crystal structure). Typically one would choose certain peak and evaluate the displacements by investigating its neighborhood. However, there is a large amount of redundancy in such an image, as similar measurement can be performed by choosing a different Bragg spot. We demonstrate an approach which in a systematic manner employs information from multiple Bragg spots for the displacement evaluation. This has a positive influence on the quality and robustness of the measurements.

WEB INFORMATION ACQUISITION BY PERSONAL SEARCH ENGINE BASED ON SVM

The quantity of web information is growing exponentially with time, and the challenge of acquiring information efficiently by personal search engine is increasingly complex. Personal preference is not easily described but can be observed from the examples given. Supervised Clustering with Support Vector Machines have been introduced to learn personal preference, however, it is not specialized and cannot be applied to the domain knowledge. In this paper, we introduce the ontology and semantic similarity into SVM as similar measurement. Experiments on agricultural information acquisition validate that it is highly effective.

In Vivo Uptake of [3H]Nimodipine into Brain during Cortical Spreading Depression

We report autoradiographic measurements of the in vivo uptake of [3H]nimodipine during the nonischemic depolarization of cortical spreading depression (CSD) in rat brain. [3H]Nimodipine uptake in brain was determined regionally in rats undergoing CSD (n = 8) and was significantly increased in cortex (14 ± 7%) and hippocampus (10 ± 6%) on the stimulated side relative to the contralateral hemisphere when compared with the same measurements in a control group (n = 8). A similar measurement using the physiologically inert radiotracer [14C]iodoantipyrine to control for potential effects of CSD on radioligand distribution showed a minimal increase (2.4 ± 0.7%) of radiotracer uptake in cortex after CSD. This increase was significantly less than that observed in the [3H]nimodipine uptake studies. We hypothesize that increased in vivo [3H]nimodipine uptake in CSD identifies regions of depolarization and thus infers activation of the L-type voltage sensitive calcium channels.