Measurement invariance of the moral vitalism scale across 28 cultural groups

Moral vitalism refers to a tendency to view good and evil as actual forces that can influence people and events. The Moral Vitalism Scale had been designed to assess moral vitalism in a brief survey form. Previous studies established the reliability and validity of the scale in US-American and Australian samples. In this study, the cross-cultural comparability of the scale was tested across 28 different cultural groups worldwide through measurement invariance tests. A series of exact invariance tests marginally supported partial metric invariance, however, an approximate invariance approach provided evidence of partial scalar invariance for a 5-item measure. The established level of measurement invariance allows for comparisons of latent means across cultures. We conclude that the brief measure of moral vitalism is invariant across 28 cultures and can be used to estimate levels of moral vitalism with the same precision across very different cultural settings.

Sensitivity of coherent dual-comb spectroscopy

Coherent dual comb spectroscopy can provide high-resolution, high-accuracy measurements of a sample response in both magnitude and phase. We discuss the achievable signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) due to both additive white noise and multiplicative noise, and the corresponding sensitivity limit for trace gas detection. We show that sequential acquisition of the overall spectrum through a tunable filter, or parallel acquisition of the overall spectrum through a detector array, can significantly improve the SNR under some circumstances. We identify a useful figure of merit as the quality factor, equal to the product of the SNR, normalized by the square root of the acquisition time, and the number of resolved frequency elements. For a single detector and fiber-laser based system, this quality factor is 10(6) - 10(7) Hz(1/2).

Absolute-frequency measurements with a stabilized near-infrared optical frequency comb from a Cr:forsterite laser

A frequency comb is generated with a chromium-doped forsterite femtosecond laser, spectrally broadened in a dispersion-shifted highly nonlinear fiber, and stabilized. The resultant evenly spaced comb of frequencies ranges from 1.1 to beyond 1.8 microm. The frequency comb was referenced simultaneously to the National Institute of Standards and Technology's optical frequency standard based on neutral calcium and to a hydrogen maser that is calibrated by a cesium atomic fountain clock. With this comb we measured two frequency references in the telecommunications band: one half of the frequency of the d/f crossover transition in 87Rb at 780 nm, and the methane v2 + 2v3 R(8) line at 1315 nm.