Automata with restart operation (henceforth RA) constitute an interesting class of acceptors and reduction systems at the same time, and simultaneously display a remarkable ’explicative power’ wrt. the analysis of formal and natural languages. This paper focuses on RA as a formal-theoretical tool for modelling the analysis by reduction of natural languages and on the role of analysis by reducti...

In a time of increasing urbanization, the fundamental value of conserving urban biodiversity remains controversial. How much of a fixed budget should be spent on conservation in urban versus nonurban landscapes? The answer should depend on the goals that drive our conservation actions, yet proponents of urban conservation often fail to specify the motivation for protecting urban biodiversity. T...

BACKGROUND Motivating adolescents to maintain levels of physical activity (PA) is important because regular PA in adolescence contributes to physical, psychological, and social well-being and PA during adolescence has been associated with activity levels in adulthood. PURPOSE The overall aim of this study is to validate a measure of external reward, health values, and personal interest motiva...

This paper studies how a firm can manage an agent’s psychological motivations in a contest through the design of incentive structures and disclosure schemeshow the contest outcomes are publicly announced. We run a set of laboratory experiments involving contests among salespeople and use the data to examine the levels of psychological motivations. We develop two new methods to separate the eff...

Mammals, and humans in particular, are endowed with an exceptional capacity for cumulative learning. This capacity crucially depends on the presence of intrinsic motivations, that is, motivations that are directly related not to an organism’s survival and reproduction but rather to its ability to learn. Recently, there have been a number of attempts to model and reproduce intrinsic motivations ...

OBJECTIVES This study aims to investigate (1) motives, motivations and expectations regarding the choice for a specific rehabilitation setting after herniated disc surgery and (2) how rehabilitation-related motivations and expectations are associated with rehabilitation outcome (ability to work, health-related quality of life and satisfaction with rehabilitation) three months after disc surgery...

BACKGROUND To influence dietary behaviors, more insight in food choice motivations is necessary. This study identified what motivations older adults have to eat healthily and investigated to what extent these motivations are particular to specific subgroups according to socio-economic position and other demographic, lifestyle and health characteristics. METHODS We used data from 1,050 older D...

The aim of this study was to describe and find out motivational English language learning strategies through computers among Iranian EFL learners and find out how learners’ motivations change towards English language learning through computers.The mixed method approach (quantitative and qualitative) was employed in this study. A total of 84 (out of 130) female freshman university learners from ...