This chapter focuses on three primary models for understanding motivation during transitions and addresses: (1) Expectancy × Value theory, (2) cognitive models for motivation and in particular attribution theory, locus of control, and taxonomy of perceived causes; and (3) intrinsic/extrinsic motivation theory and the self-determination model. We focus specifically on the ways in which intrinsic and extrinsic motivation influence human behavior. Individuals who are repeatedly successful in making a transition will more often demonstrate motivation intrinsically in decisions to make a transition. We examine the role of achievement motivation, need for autonomy, need for competency, search for satisfaction, and need for affiliation and relatedness as motivators for career change. They are discussed in light of the retrospective interviews with twenty-four elite performers in three domains (business, sports, and music) who successfully and repeatedly transitioned to higher positions within their field.

Here, we dive deeper into the realm of reversible Markov chains, via the perspective of network theory. The notions of conductance and resistance are defined, as well as voltage and current, and the corresponding mathematical theory.The Laplacian and Green function are defined and their relation to harmonic functions explained. The chapter culminates with a proof (using network theory) that recurrence and transience are essentially group properties: these properties remain invariant when changing between different reasonable random walks on the same group (specifically, symmetric and adapted with finite second moment).

In societies that rely on the economic framework of consumer capitalism, materialistic values, whereby individuals place high importance on acquiring money and material goods to improve well-being and status, tend to be rife. Materialistic values, however, negatively impact human health and well-being. One way in which they do this is by facilitating environmental degradation. Psychological research demonstrates that strong materialistic values can directly lead to lower levels of physical and mental health. In contrast to the problems presented by materialistic values and lifestyles, flow experiences, whereby people are completely immersed in an activity, may offer a means of limiting environmental violence and enhancing human well-being. The benefits of flow for well-being are well documented within the field of positive psychology. Further, research is beginning to show that flow may be able to support sustainable outcomes by occurring in activities with low environmental costs and encouraging stronger self-transcendent values. This chapter reviews the evidence to show that materialistic values support environmental violence before considering how flow experiences can offer an antidote that would allow us to reduce environmental violence and to live better and more sustainably. In doing so, practical recommendations are made for how to encourage flow experiences across society.

Research on the topic of being solitary in nature – as opposed to the well-documented effects of simply being in nature – is still very new. But we can speculate about what may be going on when those two states are combined. In our Solitude Lab, we’ve heard from adventurers of all calibers that the combination of solitude and nature can foster a kind of supercharged state that seems to enhance the benefits of both nature and solitude while conferring entirely new benefits of it own. Here we discuss nature’s effects on people, soft fascination, and attention restoration theory.

This chapter develops a theory of Homeric creativity that is informed by both contemporary cognitive studies and by ancient ideas about poetic craft and divine inspiration, as seen through the lenses of archaic poetry and Plato’s Ion. Sections 1-2 survey the conceptions of the poet as a craftsman vs. divinely inspired in Homer, Hesiod, Archilochus, Pindar, Democritus, and Plato. Section 3 introduces the modern study of creativity in the field of cognitive psychology, the study of jazz improvisation, and the concept of flow. Section 4 introduces the neuroscience of improvisation, including recent fMRI studies on jazz and lyric improvisation. The results of these studies (pointing to a state of hypofrontality when carrying out complex improvisational tasks) are compatible with some ancient ideas on creativity and inspiration (such as the idea that an external source - like the Muses- might be involved in these creative acts).

What makes us want to create? I provide an overview of intrinsic and extrinsic motivation and their relationship with creativity before switching to needs, work orientation, and purpose. Creativity can help inspire us and drive us forward. It can be a source of passion or a vehicle to express it. We can enter the magical feeling of flow when we create. And across longer periods of time we can experience growth and have a sense of meaningful progress through creative work.

This chapter explores the broader topic of creativity and positive outcomes, of which positive emotions are one. The other positive outcomes we focus on include socialization, personal growth, meaning/legacy, and flow. We first describe the various models of well-being that feature these outcomes, such as subjective well-being (SWB; Diener, 1984), psychological well-being (Ryff, 1995), flourishing (Seligman, 2011), and self-determination theory (Ryan & Deci, 2017). In the bulk of this chapter, we discuss the existing research in the creativity field related to each of these five outcomes. Major progress on this topic has been made in recent years, offering much to discuss.

Chapter 10 begins with an overview of previous, mostly telic treatments of play, contrasted with a “for its own sake,” paratelic approach.It discusses juvenile play, then adult play, including the play of animals in the wild.Much of the chapter focuses on language play, and on the function of play in conversation.The discussion throughout emphasizes the intrinsic motivation for play while acknowledging its contributions to individual and group homeostasis.

Chapter 10: Motivation for Reading. This chapter explains the critical role of learner motivation for reading development. Research shows that positive motivation improves comprehension both directly and indirectly through greater amounts of extended reading, more effective uses of reading strategies, and greater engagement with reading comprehension processes. Motivation has an important role to play in reading development, and teachers and classroom contexts can have a major impact on student motivation. The chapter reviews the major theories of reading motivation and then focuses more specifically on the research of Guthrie and colleagues, and Schiefele and colleagues. Over the course of decades these researchers have developed key ways to measure motivation and relate motivation specifically to reading development. One consistent major finding is that intrinsic motivation supports amount of reading done by learners, and amount of reading is a major support for reading development. The chapter closes with implications for instruction.

In those moments, or seconds, or hours, when focus on our creative work overrides input from the outside world, we are in the altered state of a creative trance. Shaped by individual experiences, social circumstances, and cultural traditions, the creative trance is multifaceted and psychologically significant. Taking numerous forms throughout the sciences, arts, sports, and self-transformation, it can change the world. At age sixteen, Albert Einstein’s visualization of riding on a light beam became a basis for his theory of special relativity. It can also be the inner deliberations of both Mozart and Shostakovich, who composed finished music in their minds. Cross-culturally, meditation and sleep are central to a creative trance. The Native North American Chippewa weave dream images into their beadwork and banners. In addition to the trance of creation, there is an audience creative trance of reception that ranges from pleasant enjoyment to the overwhelming response of the Stendhal syndrome.

Fractures are often implicitly represented in models used to simulate flow in fractured porous media. This simplification results in smaller models that are computationally tractable. As computational power continues to increase, there has been growing interest in simulation methods that explicitly represent fractures. The embedded discrete fracture model (EDFM) is one such method. In EDFM, fracture and matrix grids are constructed independently. The grids are then coupled to each other via source/sink relations. This modeling approach makes EDFM versatile and easy to use. EDFM has been shown to be able to handle complex fracture networks. The grid construction process is also straightforward and requires minimal fine-tuning. Within academia and industry, EDFM has been used to study geothermal energy production, unconventional gas production, multiphase flow in fractured reservoirs, and enhanced oil recovery processes. In this chapter, the mathematical formulation of EDFM is introduced. We then demonstrate the usage of EDFM via three examples. The first example involves a simple fracture network containing only three fractures. The second involves upscaling a stochastically generated fracture network. Finally, a well test will be simulated in a publicly available data set sourced from the Jandaira carbonate formation in Brazil.

The history of waste records a relationship that has altered over time, resulting in various literal and symbolic manifestations. Waste Studies crosses conventional disciplines to offer ethical frameworks which pay attention to, understand, and act on bodily, cultural, and societal waste. With examples from novelists Toni Morrison and Wolfgang Hilbig, this chapter illustrates a number of aspects of waste in literature: waste as material agent; waste as metaphor; and narratives structured as waste, with little hope for clarity. The strategy of slow practice through narrative construction can prove a means to inculcate an ecological sensitivity and awareness we carry with us beyond the act of reading. While waste categories often are used to dismiss, deny, and reject certain humans, other-than-human agents, and material items, waste has also been used as a means to provoke compassion and ethical engagement by which we can develop a compassionate commonality with wasted beings to act for them, for us, and for the world. Waste Studies argues that the humanities can vibrantly and dynamically work to improve all of our lives in a concrete and material way.

A self-proclaimed “minor female Wordsworth,” Bishop is honest yet modest about nature’s centrality that endures through her writing. Her eye for natural detail is exhibited early in signature poems such as “The Fish,” then her nature writing develops sublime power in A Cold Spring with “At the Fishhouses” and “Cape Breton.” These Canadian maritime poems blend humanity with nature and machinery in unusual synthetic harmony mid-century. Bishop’s memoir “In the Village” demonstrates how, after family tragedy, nature works as a recuperative catalyst in her evolving artistry. This short story is the centerpiece of her oeuvre, and it displays her modus operandi with its unusual blend of genres used to begin the mostly poetic volume Questions of Travel; this title poem demonstrates the natural fluidity of waterfalls in rhythmically flowing language. Nature here, and in later prosaic breakthroughs such as “The Moose,” is integral to Bishop’s innovative use of genres and poetic forms.

Whether hoping to lose 10 pounds, pay off debts, or write the next great novel, the process of goal pursuit forces us to embrace the factors that move us, confront the biases that shape our thinking, overcome the obstacles that impede our actions, and adapt our lifestyles to productive routines. Yet the journey does not end as we transition from goal attainment to goal maintenance. This chapter details the way we construe maintenance to prepare ourselves for long-term success as we face new challenges and embrace new opportunities.

In this autoethnographic essay, the author – a drummer – describes how he derives meaning from playing the drum kit. He presents accounts of playing drums both alone and in the context of an original rock band. Drawing from existing scholarship on aesthetic experience and meaning in music making, the author argues that while he plays drums often in a state of flow, it may be unhelpful to construe this – as others have done – as music making for its own sake. Rather than positioning his drumming as autotelic or intrinsically worthwhile, the author explains how he plays for the fulfilment derived therefrom, as part of a life lived in search of eudaimonia – flourishing both individually and as part of a community. Drumming in these contexts is, the author argues, a locus of spirituality, understood through the lenses of embodiment, authenticity, and personal agency as a form of success. Playing drums – for this drummer – provides a connection to, and a window into, his soul.

Blood is a concentrated suspension of deformable, aggregating, red blood cells within a medium of other cells and proteins. It is a complex colloidal system with a non-Newtonian rheology that is characterized by viscoplasticity, thixotropy, and viscoelasticity. After reviewing some of the key biological characteristics of human blood, and after presenting a short historical review of the subject, we present some recent accomplishments. These range from the development of a parameterized Casson model, based on the hematocrit and fibrinogen levels, to the discussion of several recent structural models that are able to capture several of the time-dependent rheological effects of blood. A comparison is also offered between model predictions and the results of recent transient measurements, some involving a newly proposed variant of LAOS: the Unidirectional LAOS. The latter experiment is especially appropriate for the study of blood rheology as it follows roughly the flow experienced by blood in the arterial circulation. It consists of a superposition of steady and large amplitude oscillatory flow in such a way that flow reversal is avoided. Some additional models are discussed along with the challenges and opportunities for future research.

We explore different modes of experience in performance, including various experiences of flow, heedful performance, and habit. In contrast to conceptions that take habit to be automatic or a more-or-less rote repetition of behavior, Dewey and Merleau-Ponty consider habit to be a general bodily responsiveness to the world. Dewey's conception of intelligent habit involves a thoughtful attitude of care and attunement to the parameters of the task. Merleau-Ponty likewise describes habit as being both motor and perceptual. Habit is an open and adaptive way in which the body learns to cope with familiar situations in ways that involve some degree of heedful performance. The deployment of a motor habit, for example, adapts to the specific contour of the situation – different situations make different demands on how the habitual task, here and now, ought to be achieved. This conception of habit meshes well with ecological affordance-based accounts of action and perception.