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Understanding and optimising gratitude interventions: the right methods for the right people at the right time
Full text linkObjective: Gratitude has consistently been associated with various beneficial health-related outcomes, including subjective wellbeing, positive mental health, and positive physical health. In light of such effects, positive psychology researchers and practitioners have often implemented gratitude interventions in an attempt to build individuals’ orientations toward appreciation and thankfulness. Recent meta-analyses and reviews have revealed, however, that these interventions often have mixed effects on gratitude or other health outcomes. With this issue in mind, we aimed to identify (a) contextual considerations that may impact the effectiveness of these approaches, and (b) recommendations for the optimisation of gratitude interventions.
Methods and Measures: Seventeen mental health professionals or experienced health psychology researchers engaged in semi-structured interviews to address the research questions.
Results: Thematic analysis of the data resulted in three contextual themes—cultural considerations, personal characteristics, and life experience—that were discussed as factors likely to influence intervention effectiveness. With respect to recommendations, participants highlighted the importance of encouraging deep engagement in gratitude tasks, consistent repetition of those tasks, and the value of interpersonal expressions of gratitude.
Conclusion: Discussion is centred on suggestions for future research on gratitude and on implications for the implementation of gratitude interventions
Effects of Mortality Salience and Religion on Aggression
Full text linkThe current study aimed to examine the effects of mortality salience (MS) and religion on aggression. Participants were 120 students (58.3% females; 73.3% with religion) from a private university in Singapore. They were randomly assigned to either the MS condition or the control condition, asked to remember a time when they were deeply hurt or offended by a person, and provided an opportunity for revenge by sticking pins into a voodoo doll that represented the person. The results showed that participants in the MS condition inserted a significantly higher number of pins into the voodoo doll than participants in the control condition. However, this effect was not moderated by religion and extent of belief in God. Limitations include the consideration of participants with religion as one group for data analysis. Future research directions include recruiting a larger and more diverse group of participants
Agency amongst the entrepôts: Negotiating exchange associations between Motu hiri and Mailu seafaring exchange networks at Hood Bay on Papua New Guinea’s south coast
Full text linkThe exchange of specialized items and the social connections those exchanges engender play a fundamental role in the trajectories of societal relations. Processual archaeologists developed a core–periphery model to understand how these exchange relations work. The model evoked complex societal “cores” and “peripheries” at societal edges where exchanges with other cultures take place. The rigidity of core–periphery modeling led to the emergence of more nuanced network analyses to explain the qualitative as well as quantitative dimensions of cultural exchange. Yet contemporary models still focus on the agency of societal cores as central places. The agency and experiences of communities negotiating connections between exchange networks have gained little attention. In this study, we address this knowledge gap by exploring how the people of Hood Bay on Papua New Guinea’s south coast negotiated their position between the famed Motu hiri and Mailu seafaring exchange networks. Drawing on archaeological, ethnographic, and historical data, we examine how Hood Bay communities maintained and altered dynamic regional exchange associations through time. By highlighting the agency of communities living between exchange networks, this study contributes to understandings of the complex negotiation and organizing of exchange relations between cultures
Photo-id as an alternative to monitor marine turtles in the Gulf of Venezuela
Full text linkConservation management programs have used diverse methods to monitor populations of threatened species that vary in effectiveness, duration, and costs; making its implementation a challenge. The present study was carried out to test the use of photo-identification as an economical and efficient alternative for marine turtle monitoring in the Gulf of Venezuela. The implementation of this protocol is possible due to the unique and unrepeatable facial scales pattern of individuals in the marine turtles. We created a database of photo-identifiable profiles available from records of turtles captured, tagged, and released in the Gulf of Venezuela from 2000 to 2017 (n = 118). Likewise, we used two photo-matching software (I3S Pattern and Nature Pattern Match) to optimize the process of compatibility of individuals and we evaluated their efficiency in comparison with the non-assisted manual method (“by human eye” or "by naked eye"). We found that I3S Pattern was more effective during the matching process than NPM (90% and 65% accuracy respectively), while the manual method was much more accurate than the software. However, the former method is impractical when working with large databases. Our results indicate that I3S Pattern represents the most efficient software of image matching by reducing the time needed and simplifying the manual “by human eye” analysis. We recommend incorporating more photos in the database in order to verify the effectiveness of both studied software, and regularly to corroborate the results generated by the software assessed on this research using the “human eye” manual method
Navigating Challenges and Charting Solutions of Water Issues in Southeast Asia
No full text[Extract] Water-related challenges are intensifying worldwide. Issues such as water scarcity, pollution, and flooding are becoming more severe, often driven by unsustainable development, population growth, and extreme weather events. South-
east Asia faces such challenges of burgeoning population and rapidly changing environmental conditions, with additional regional complexities due to its unique confluence of environmental, social, and economic factors. Water has long shaped the
cultural uniqueness of this region, from the ancient water temples in Indonesia and Cambodia as agricultural centers of water to state-of-the-art water reclamation plants today serving water-stressed Singapore. Correspondingly, solutions to the
region’s current water challenges must be interdisciplinary and tailored to the region’s specific contexts
Humour and children’s learning: Opportunities for tourism
Full text linkEducating children as future agents appears crucial to achieving sustainability goals, and tourism settings are considered high-potential places for learning and education. This research note explores the importance of humour in children's learning by reviewing the educational literature and identifying a research gap in tourism. Findings highlight humour as a pedagogical tool, categorising different learning contexts and their features to determine how humour can be successfully utilised in various tourism environments for young tourists. The research note showcases instances of humour application within the tourism industry to engage and educate children. Having identified the gap, the authors propose fresh directions for future tourism research and potential strategies for industry practitioners
Exploring the Vulnerability of ECG-Based Authentication Systems Through A Dictionary Attack Approach
No full textElectrocardiogram (ECG)-based authentication has gained popularity recently, but its security measures have not been thoroughly explored. In this paper, we explore dictionary attacks against ECG authentication systems. We attempt to spoof the victim’s ECG model without prior knowledge of the victim’s ECG information. We investigated the feasibility of identifying a “master” collection of ECG signals that may coincide with ECG verification templates saved by authenticated users. Our experiments in four different ECG verification schemes show that these master ECG signals can effectively impersonate the ECG verification profiles of a wide range of users. These findings highlight significant vulnerabilities in current ECG-based authentication systems and can be used to strengthen ECG-based authentication systems
Terror Management: The Effects of Mortality Salience on Desire for Money Among Singaporeans
Full text linkTerror management theory has been used to explain our penchant for materialism. While materialism includes both the desire for products and the desire for money, research has generally examined the former. Consequently, this article aimed to examine the effects of mortality salience on desire for money in Singapore. Study 1 found that mortality salience did not increase self-reported desire for money but increased the size of a drawn coin. Study 2 found that mortality salience did not increase the preferred selling price of a used laptop. Finally, Study 3 found that mortality salience did not increase the willingness to listen to unpleasant sounds in exchange for money. Furthermore, attitudes toward money did not moderate the effects of mortality salience on desire for money. The nonsignificant results could be due to data collection during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic and the use of a Singaporean sample. Future research directions include examining the effects of the pandemic on terror management theory research and examining both the desire for products and the desire for money concurrently as dependent variables
New archaeological discoveries in north-central Timor-Leste indicate sociocultural adaptations to landscape change during the Holocene
Full text linkDuring the Holocene, Wallacea saw dramatic sociocultural changes during the Pre-ceramic, Neolithic, Metal-age, and Colonial periods, as well as climatic and associated environmental changes that affected the landscapes and ecologies of islands. These environmental and cultural processes appear to have influenced human socioeconomic adaptations throughout the archipelago. Here, we present new anthropological and archaeological data demonstrating the effects of these processes. Excavations at the cave site of Hatu Saur on the north coast of Timor-Leste have revealed a deep archaeological sequence that dates from ca. 10,500 years until the present. The site contains extensive assemblages of faunal remains, as well as stone artifacts, revealing settlement patterns that were influenced by sea level change and estuarine infilling after 7 ka. The sequence encompasses the beginning of the Neolithic in Timor-Leste, some 3500 years ago, and the period from ca. 700 years ago when outside influences, including Chinese and Makassar traders and Dutch and Portuguese colonization, greatly affected the indigenous culture and economy on the island of Timor, reflected in the material culture remains from Hatu Saur. The archaeological findings complement related anthropological research in the region that highlights unique local mythologies of settlement origins and their contested histories
Mapping geochemical anomalies using angle-based outlier detection approach
Full text linkThis study evaluates the effectiveness of the angle-based outlier detection (ABOD) method in identifying geochemical anomalies in the Ahar-Arasbaran Zone (AAZ) within the Alborz-Azerbaijan Magmatic Belt (AAMB), known for its diverse mineralization such as Cu-Mo porphyry deposits, epithermal base and precious metal veins, and Fe-Cu skarn deposits. ABOD and its fast approximation (FastABOD) were applied to datasets with 9 (Selective) and 32 (All) features. Results showed that with fewer variables, the performance difference between ABOD and FastABOD decreased, highlighting the impact of dimensionality on anomaly detection. Geochemical anomaly maps (ABOD_All, ABOD_Selective, FastABOD_All, FastABOD_Selective) were assessed for detecting known mineralization. ABOD_Selective demonstrated superior performance, effectively placing 76 % of skarn and 70 % of porphyry mineral occurrences into the highest anomaly class, despite its overall performance being approximately 61 %.
Additionally, ABOD was compared with independent component analysis (ICA), focusing on IC2 and IC5. ICA effectively highlighted unique geochemical patterns, with IC2 excelling in identifying Cu-enriched zones and ABOD effectively delineating both Au- and Cu-bearing zones. ABOD was also compared with local outlier detection methods LOF, kNN, and iNNE. LOF showed distinct anomaly distributions due to its local density approach, while kNN, iNNE, and FastABOD produced similar maps based on distance, isolation, and angle-distance. ROC analysis revealed no significant performance difference, though FastABOD showed slight superiority, particularly with mineralized samples as validation points. Moreover, applying principal component analysis (PCA) as feature selection method enhanced the performance of the FastABOD method in delineating geochemical anomalies related to hydrothermal mineralization. Finally, random forest regression identified key elements such as Sb, Au, As, and Cu as significant in distinguishing geochemical signals from various mineralization types