This special section comprises nine articles addressing the operation of motivation and efficacy in educational contexts. In this article, I will use motivation to refer to the process whereby goal-directed behavior is instigated and sustained, and efficacy to denote individuals' beliefs in their capabilities to exert control over aspects of

Xi'an Bell Tower (the Bell Tower) is a state-level ancient relic in China. The vibration caused by metro will exert adverse effect on the Bell Tower. This paper aims at presenting 3D-FEM models to predict the peak period velocity (PPV) of rammed earth base when the metro passing through the Bell Tower. The calculation results are compared with those of field test. Both results were found to be ...

The Paralympic Movement explicitly sets out to create a more equitable society and promote participation for all and fairness in disability sport. This is primarily achieved through the use of a range of interventions with less attention given to how economic factors may hinder access and achievement in Paralympic sport. We investigated how country-level economic variables influence the level o...

We study the effect of earnings manipulation on incentives within the corporate hierarchy. Division managers have to be compensated for not blowing the whistle when top managers manipulate earnings. We show that it is easier for division managers to prove top management’s manipulations when the performance of their own division is low. Earnings manipulation therefore undermines middle managers’...

The hypothesis of the selfish herd has been highly influential to our understanding of animal aggregation. Various movement strategies have been proposed by which individuals might aggregate to form a selfish herd as a defence against predation, but although the spatial benefits of these strategies have been extensively studied, little attention has been paid to the importance of predator attac...

Survival in a fast-changing environment requires animals not only to detect unexpected sensory events, but also to react. In humans, these salient sensory events generate large electrocortical responses, which have been traditionally interpreted within the sensory domain. Here we describe a basic physiological mechanism coupling saliency-related cortical responses with motor output. In four exp...

When individuals act alone, they can internally coordinate the actions at hand. Such coordination is not feasible when individuals act together in a group. The present research examines to what extent groups encounter specific challenges when acting jointly and whether these challenges impede extending planning into the future. Individuals and groups carried out a tracking task that required le...

Food webs usually display an intricate mix of trophic interactions where multiple prey are common. In this context omnivory has been the subject of intensive analysis regarding food web stability and structure. In a three species omnivory setting it is shown that the modeling of prey preference by the top predator may exert a strong influence on the short as well as on the long term dynamics of...

Ab&&-An exact solution is given for the tlow of a second grade fluid between two infinite parallel plates rotating about noncoincident axes normal to the plates. A comparison of the torque and force exerted by the fluid on the plates with the corresponding experimental vaiues would enable one to determine the normal stress moduli. Using energy method, the stability of the above flow is investig...