Validation and measurement invariance of the Compound PsyCap Scale (CPC-12): a short universal measure of psychological capital

The Compound PsyCap Scale (CPC-12) was developed by Lorenz et al. (2016) to broaden the application of psychological capital, since usually tied to workplace settings; however, no further verification of its suitability across different samples was performed. The present work investigated the psychometric properties of an Italian adaptation of the CPC-12 with the aim of verifying its applicability in samples where the item wording of the existing measures of PsyCap might not be suitable (e.g., students and unemployed people). Study 1 (n = 450) examined the factor structure of the scale. Study 2 (n = 255) advanced the previous CPC-12 validation by testing its measurement equivalence across gender through MCFA. Results confirmed a one higher-order factor structure with four first-order factors, the scale was found to be invariant across gender. The findings advanced the general claim of CPC-12 to be suitable for application in multiple contexts, including sport, education, vocational guidance, as well as typical and atypical work settings. Lorenz y sus colegas desarrollaron la Escala Compound PsyCap (CPC-12) para ampliar este enfoque de dominio específico; sin embargo, no se realizó ninguna verificación adicional de su idoneidad en diferentes muestras / entornos. El presente trabajo investigó las propiedades psicométricas de una adaptación italiana del CPC-12 con el objetivo de verificar su aplicabilidad en muestras donde la redacción de los ítems de las medidas existentes de PsyCap podría no ser adecuada (por ejemplo, estudiantes y desempleados). El estudio 1 (n = 450) examinó la estructura factorial de la escala. El estudio 2 (n = 255) avanzó en la validación anterior de la CPC-12 al probar su equivalencia de medición entre sexos a través de MCFA. Los resultados confirmaron una estructura factorial de un orden superior con cuatro factores de primer orden; se encontró que la escala era invariante en todos los sexos. Los hallazgos avanzaron la afirmación general de la CPC-12 de ser adecuada para su aplicación en múltiples contextos, incluidos el deporte, la educación, la orientación profesional, así como los entornos laborales típicos y atípicos.

Recruiting Perovskites to Degrade Toxic Trinitrotoluene

Everybody knows TNT, the most widely used explosive material and a universal measure of the destructiveness of explosions. A long history of use and extensive manufacture of toxic TNT leads to the accumulation of these materials in soil and groundwater, which is a significant concern for environmental safety and sustainability. Reliable and cost-efficient technologies for removing or detoxifying TNT from the environment are lacking. Despite the extreme urgency, this remains an outstanding challenge that often goes unnoticed. We report here that highly controlled energy release from explosive molecules can be accomplished rather easily by preparing TNT–perovskite mixtures with a tailored perovskite surface morphology at ambient conditions. These results offer new insight into understanding the sensitivity of high explosives to detonation initiation and enable many novel applications, such as new concepts in harvesting and converting chemical energy, the design of new, improved energetics with tunable characteristics, the development of powerful fuels and miniaturized detonators, and new ways for eliminating toxins from land and water.

Complementary Approaches Towards a Universal Model of Glacier Surges

Although many convincing, diverse, and sometimes competing models of glacier surging have been proposed, the observed behavior of surging glaciers does not fit into distinct categories, and suggests the presence of a universal mechanism driving all surges. On the one hand, recent simulations of oscillatory flow behavior through the description of transient basal drag hint at a fundamental underlying process. On the other hand, the proposition of a unified model of oscillatory flow through the concept of enthalpy adopts a systems based view, in an attempt to rather unify different mechanisms through a single universal measure. While these two general approaches differ in perspective, they are not mutually exclusive, and seem likely to complement each other. A framework incorporating both approaches would see the mechanics of basal drag describing ice flow velocity and surge propagation as a function of forcing by conditions at the glacier bed, in turn modulated through the unified measure of enthalpy.

Quantifying the preventive effect of wearing face masks

An important task in combating the current Covid-19 pandemic lies in estimating the effect of different preventive measures. Here, we focus on the preventive effect of enforcing the use of face masks. Several publications study this effect, however, often using different measures such as: the relative attack rate in case-control studies, the effect on incidence growth/decline in a specific time frame and the effect on the number of infected in a given time frame. These measures all depend on community-specific features and are hence not easily transferred to other community settings. We argue that a more universal measure is the relative reduction in the reproduction number, which we call the face mask effect , E FM . It is shown how to convert the other measures to E FM . We also apply the methodology to four empirical studies using different effect-measures. When converted to estimates of E FM , all estimates lie between 15 and 40%, suggesting that mandatory face masks reduce the reproduction number by an amount in this range, when compared with no individuals wearing face masks.

Critical Brownian multiplicative chaos

Brownian multiplicative chaos measures, introduced in Jego (Ann Probab 48:1597–1643, 2020), Aïdékon et al. (Ann Probab 48(4):1785–1825, 2020) and Bass et al. (Ann Probab 22:566–625, 1994), are random Borel measures that can be formally defined by exponentiating $$\gamma $$ γ times the square root of the local times of planar Brownian motion. So far, only the subcritical measures where the parameter $$\gamma $$ γ is less than 2 were studied. This article considers the critical case where $$\gamma =2$$ γ = 2 , using three different approximation procedures which all lead to the same universal measure. On the one hand, we exponentiate the square root of the local times of small circles and show convergence in the Seneta–Heyde normalisation as well as in the derivative martingale normalisation. On the other hand, we construct the critical measure as a limit of subcritical measures. This is the first example of a non-Gaussian critical multiplicative chaos. We are inspired by methods coming from critical Gaussian multiplicative chaos, but there are essential differences, the main one being the lack of Gaussianity which prevents the use of Kahane’s inequality and hence a priori controls. Instead, a continuity lemma is proved which makes it possible to use tools from stochastic calculus as an effective substitute.

A brain-based universal measure of attention: predicting task-general and task-specific attention performance and their underlying neural mechanisms from task and resting state fMRI

Attention is central for many aspects of cognitive performance, but there is no singular measure of a person’s overall attentional functioning across tasks. To develop a universal measure that integrates multiple components of attention, we collected data from more than 90 participants performing three different attention-demanding tasks during fMRI. We constructed a suite of whole-brain models that can predict a profile of multiple attentional components – sustained attention, divided attention and tracking, and working memory capacity – from a single fMRI scan type within novel individuals. Multiple brain regions across the frontoparietal, salience, and subcortical networks drive accurate predictions, supporting a universal (general) attention factor across tasks, which can be distinguished from task-specific attention factors and their neural mechanisms. Furthermore, connectome-to-connectome transformation modeling enhanced predictions of an individual’s attention-task connectomes and behavioral performance from their rest connectomes. These models were integrated to produce a new universal attention measure that generalizes best across multiple, independent datasets, and which should have broad utility for both research and clinical applications.

Quantifying the preventive effect of wearing face masks

An important task in combating the ongoing covid-19 effect lies in estimating the effect of different preventive measures. Here we focus on the preventive effect of enforcing the use of face masks. Several publications study this effect, however often using different measures such as: the relative attack rate in case-control studies, the effect on incidence growth/decline in a specific time-frame, the effect on the number of infected in a given time-frame. These measures all depend on community-specific features and are hence not easily transferred to other community settings. We argue that a more universal measure is the relative reduction in the reproduction number, which we call the face mask effect, EFM. It is shown how to convert the other measures to EFM. We also apply the methodology on three publications using different other measures (two of them resulting in two different estimates each, and all five estimates of EFM lie between 20-40%, suggesting that mandatory face masks reduce the reproduction number by 20-40% as compared to no individuals wearing face masks.

On the statistical indicators of the effectiveness of teaching methodologies

The article is devoted to the problem of carrying out a proper educational experiment. A critical analysis of the conventional approaches to an educational experiment is given. The author argues that the majority of methods, assessing the results of educational experiments, were borrowed from sociology and psychology which, in turn, led to the misinterpretation of the results of these experiments. The criticism of the author is primarily aimed at the incorrect use of central tendency measures and the selection of tests for checking the probability of significance of samples. The qualitative approach, based on the percentile values, was proposed as one of the most relevant results of an experiment. The lack of universal measure with could allow comparing results of multiple educational experiments and meta-analyses was argued. The term «effective learning hours» was coined. The methodology of defining «effective learning hours» and corresponding them to the levels of the acquisition was proposed.

Ludovic McLellan Mann's place in the history of prehistoric metrology

Megalithic metrology, the notion that Neolithic monument builders employed a standard unit of measurement when setting out stone circles, has a long history. William Stukeley was the first to suggest that this standard unit was the druid cubit. He may have drawn on Isaac Newton's 1728 description of the temple of Abydos, which noted that the layout utilised cubits in the design, though the druid cubit was Stukeley's invention. This idea of a standard universal measure seemingly lay dormant for over a century until Edward Duke, Charles Piazzi Smyth and Sir William Flinders Petrie proposed other metrological systems. The subject was taken up again in 1930 when Ludovic McLellan Mann wrote a pamphlet entitled Craftsmen's Measures in Prehistoric Times in which he detailed new measures; the ‘alpha unit’ (0.619 inches) and the ‘beta unit’ (0.55 inches). A special committee formed from members of the Glasgow Archaeological Society and the Glasgow University Geological Society resoundingly disagreed, but Mann found approval from outside the archaeological community when his ideas were taken up by Major F C Tyler, who used them to elaborate on his own version of the lengths of Alfred Watkins’ old straight tracks. More famously, Alexander Thom made megalithic metrology, (the megalithic rod, yard, foot, and inch) an essential part of his thesis, ideas which received an esoteric twist in the New Age writings of John Michell. Was this an original discovery or was Thom influenced by Mann and others before him?

Towards a Universal Measure of Complexity

Recently, it has been argued that entropy can be a direct measure of complexity, where the smaller value of entropy indicates lower system complexity, while its larger value indicates higher system complexity. We dispute this view and propose a universal measure of complexity that is based on Gell-Mann’s view of complexity. Our universal measure of complexity is based on a non-linear transformation of time-dependent entropy, where the system state with the highest complexity is the most distant from all the states of the system of lesser or no complexity. We have shown that the most complex is the optimally mixed state consisting of pure states, i.e., of the most regular and most disordered which the space of states of a given system allows. A parsimonious paradigmatic example of the simplest system with a small and a large number of degrees of freedom is shown to support this methodology. Several important features of this universal measure are pointed out, especially its flexibility (i.e., its openness to extensions), suitability to the analysis of system critical behaviour, and suitability to study the dynamic complexity.