What Drives Belief in COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories? Examining the Role of Uncertainty, Negative Emotions, and Perceived Relevance and Threat.

As conspiracy theories around COVID-19 pose a big global challenge to public health and well-being, this study seeks to identify how and when people are likely to activate conspiratorial thinking and believe in conspiracy theories about the coronavirus. Based on a U.S. national two-wave survey (W1: N = 1,119; W2: N = 543), this study found partial support for direct effects of uncertainty on conspiratorial thinking and support for indirect effects through threat perception. We also found some evidence of direct effects of uncertainty on conspiracy beliefs and indirect effects through threat perception and serially mediated through threat perception and negative emotions. Findings suggest that effects - either direct or indirect - of uncertainty on conspiratorial thinking/conspiracy beliefs are moderated by perceived relevance to COVID-19, personal experience of the disease, and social media use. Theoretical and practical implications of these findings are discussed.

Effect of oil on an electrowetting lenticular lens and related optical characteristics.

While there are many ways to realize autostereoscopic 2D/3D switchable displays, the electrowetting lenticular lens is superior due to the high optical efficiency and short response time. In this paper, we propose a more stable electrowetting lenticular lens by controlling the quantity of oil. With a large amount of oil, the oil layer was broken and the lenticular lens was damaged at relatively low voltage. Therefore, controlling the amount of oil is crucial to obtain the required dioptric power with stability. We proposed a new structure to evenly adjust the volume of oil and the dioptric power was measured by varying the volume of oil. Furthermore, the optical characteristics were finally analyzed in the electrowetting lenticular lens array with a proper amount of oil.