Interactive technologies provide today’s youth a low stakes sandbox to collect experiences (Gee, 2004) and try tasks and identities (Gee, 1991) that push the boundaries of “known” and open up the world of possibility. Pairing affordances of video games with the possible selves framework (Markus & Nurius, 1986), research involved using The Sims 2 life-simulation properties to encourage a friends...

Virtual creatures operating in a physically realistic 3D environment, as originally introduced by Karl Sims, provide a challenging domain for artificial evolution. However, few coevolutionary experiments have been reported. Here we describe the results of our experiments on the evolution of physical combat among virtual creatures: essentially, we evolve creatures that trade blows with each othe...

With the fiscal theory of the price level (FTPL), Leeper-Sims-Woodford (LSW) argued that the government budget constraint plays a key role in determining the price level. Indeed, there could even be a dispute vis-à-vis the role of monetary policy in the formation of the price level. Apart from several theoretical criticisms, also addressed in the discussion given in this paper, the attempts to ...

Excerpt] Much of the research on union democracy and almost all of the press coverage focuses on abuses of power at the top of the organization. I look at a case at the opposite end of the democracy spectrum. After an insurgent challenge to an established executive director toppled him from power, the chaos of democracy was unleashed in this small union of professional workers. The turmoil expe...

Recently, several studies have shown the positive effect of sulfidization flotation on malachite surfaces and its enhancing methods. Therefore, this paper was focused ammonium sulfide sodium malachite, respectively; investigated using different devices such as micro-flotation tests, Zeta potential measurements, ToF–SIMS, XPS analysis, FTIR. Thus, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy results ...

Fatty liver or steatosis is a frequent histopathological change. It is a precursor for steatohepatitis that may progress to cirrhosis and in some cases to hepatocellular carcinoma. In this study we addressed the in situ composition and distribution of biochemical compounds on tissue sections of steatotic liver using both synchrotron FTIR (Fourier transform infrared) and ToF-SIMS (time of flight...

With multiple heterogeneous information sources accessible in modern networked environments, users and applications cannot be expected to keep up with all their speciic languages, organizations, contents and network locations. Yet the need for the data available from these sources remains. Users and applications would beneet greatly from the ability to formulate queries in a language that is fr...

Objectives: The purpose of this study was to evaluate, within a cross-cultural context, the psychometric properties of scores derived from the Perceived Locus of Causality Questionnaire (PLOCQ) and the Situational Motivation Scale (SIMS). Both questionnaires are grounded in self-determination theory and are commonly employed in physical education research. Method: Secondary school students from...

In the present work, the emission characteristics of lipids as a function of the primary ion cluster size and energy were studied using time-of-flight secondary ion mass spectrometry (TOF-SIMS). Characteristic fragmentation patterns for common lipids are described, and changes in secondary ion (SI) yields using various primary ion beams are reported. In particular, emission characteristics were...

MOTIVATION Post-translational modification by the Small Ubiquitin-like Modifier (SUMO) proteins, a process termed SUMOylation, is involved in many fundamental cellular processes. SUMO proteins are conjugated to a protein substrate, creating an interface for the recruitment of cofactors harboring SUMO-interacting motifs (SIMs). Mapping both SUMO-conjugation sites and SIMs is required to study th...