The reasons for exercising that are featured in health communications brand exercise and socialize individuals about why they should be physically active. Discovering which reasons for exercising are associated with high-quality motivation and behavioral regulation is essential to promoting physical activity and weight control that can be sustained over time. This study investigates whether fra...

A (t, n) threshold group signature scheme is a generalization of group signature, in which only t or more members from a given group with n members can represent the group to generate signatures anonymously and the identities of signers of a signature can be revealed in case of dispute later In this paper, we first present a definition of threshold group signatures, and propose several requirem...

We introduce the notion of covert security with public verifiability, building on the covert security model introduced by Aumann and Lindell (TCC 2007). Protocols that satisfy covert security guarantee that the honest parties involved in the protocol will notice any cheating attempt with some constant probability . The idea behind the model is that the fear of being caught cheating will be enou...

In this paper we propose a novel method for human action recognition based on boosted key-frame selection and correlated pyramidal motion feature representations. Instead of using an unsupervised method to detect interest points, a Pyramidal Motion Feature (PMF), which combines optical flow with a biologically inspired feature, is extracted from each frame of a video sequence. The AdaBoost lear...

The ability to exercise patience is important for human functioning. Although it is known that patience can be promoted by using top-down control, or willpower, to override impatient impulses, patience is also malleable-in particular, susceptible to framing effects-in ways that are difficult to explain using willpower alone. So far, the mechanisms underlying framing effects on patience have bee...

Levin, Schneider, and Gaeth (LSG, 1998) have distinguished among three types of framing-risky choice, attribute, and goal framing-to reconcile conflicting findings in the literature. In the research reported here, we focus on attribute and goal framing. LSG propose that positive frames should be more effective than negative frames in the context of attribute framing, and negative frames should ...

We draw upon past research on gender and prosocial emotions in hypothesizing that empathy can help explain the gender gap in charitable giving. In a nationally representative survey, we found that men reported less willingness to give money or volunteer time to a poverty relief organization, gaps that were mediated by men's lower reported feelings of empathy toward others. We also experimentall...

Across Europe, most people will nowadays accept that human activity is causing climate change and that we need to do something about it. However, this is clearly not the case in the US, and the way in which the perception of climate change evolved there reveals a serious problem in science communication. As communications researcher Matthew Nisbet from the American University at Washington, DC ...

Smartphone users visit application marketplaces (or app stores) to search and install applications. However, these app stores are not free from privacy-invasive apps, which collect personal information without sufficient disclosure or people’s consent. To nudge people away from privacy-invasive apps, we created a visual representation of the mobile app’s privacy rating. Inspired by “Framing Eff...

Questions of participant understanding of the nature of an activity have been addressed in anthropology and sociolinguistics with the concepts of frames and framing. For example, a student may frame a learning activity as an opportunity for sensemaking or as an assignment to fill out a worksheet. The student’s understanding of the nature of the activity affects what she notices, what knowledge ...