PURPOSE Asian immigrant and Asian American women are less likely to use oral contraceptives (OCs) and tend to rely on low-efficacy methods of contraception. This contraceptive pattern remains poorly understood, in part, because no theory-driven measurement exists to assess psychosocial determinants essential in explaining behaviors related to OC use in this population. The current study aimed t...

OBJECTIVE Visual-motor integration skills are considered an essential domain of clinical and psycho-educational assessment. The goal of the present investigation is to provide the Turkish norms for the Beery-Buktenica Developmental Visual-Motor Integration Test (VMI-4th) for children and adolescents between the ages of 6-15 years as part of a comprehensive neuropsychological test battery. MET...

Abstract. The construction of frames for a Hilbert space H can be equated to the decomposition of the frame operator as a sum of positive operators having rank one. This realization provides a different approach to questions regarding frames with particular properties and motivates our results. We find a necessary and sufficient condition under which any positive finite-rank operator B can be e...

Although various norms for reciprocity-based cooperation have been suggested that are evolutionarily stable against invasion from free riders, the process of alternation of norms and the role of diversified norms remain unclear in the evolution of cooperation. We clarify the co-evolutionary dynamics of norms and cooperation in indirect reciprocity and also identify the indispensable norms for t...

Humans can be characterized by a disposition to act, to believe and to feel in ways that are guided by norms and correspondingly by a disposition to experience certain feelings when norms are violated. Norms are fundamental to social life and the capacity to accept norms is a universal human biological and social adaptation. Norms serve the function of coordinating actions, beliefs, and feeling...

In open multi-agent systems norms describe the behavior that can be performed, that must be performed, and that cannot be performed. One of the main challenges on developing normative systems is that norms may conflict with each other. Norms are in conflict when the fulfillment of one norm violates the other and vice-versa. Although there are many approaches to check for conflicts among norms, ...

In open normative multi-agent systems, norms are created dynamically. Some of these norms emerge and persist due to their benefits and strength. While other norms emerge for a short period of time, then vanish due to several reasons that lead to loss in their benefit or strength. Each norm of the created ones might have positive, negative, or neutral consequences on the system. Norms decay refe...

In multi-agent systems, software agents are modelled to possess characteristics and behaviour borrowed from human societies. Norms are expectations of behaviours of the agents in a society. Norms can be established in a society in different ways. In human societies, there are several types of norms such as moral norms, social norms and legal norms (laws). In artificial agent societies, the desi...