Depressive Symptoms among College Students: An Exploration of Fundamental Cause Theory

Fundamental Cause Theory suggests that socioeconomic and demographic factors are causal to various illnesses, including depression. However, no known previously existing research has used Fundamental Cause Theory to create a model of depression among college students. To do this, the present study conducted a stepwise binomial logistic regression to examine how socioeconomic status and the sociodemographic variables of Gender, Race, and Sexual Orientation, and others predict depressive symptoms in a large sample of undergraduates when controlling for stressful life events and social support (N = 2,915). Results support the hypothesis that socioeconomic disparities in depressive symptoms are the result of stress. In the final model, low Social Support was the most predictive variable of high depressive symptoms (OR = 2.882), followed by being bisexual (OR = 2.061). Being black was significantly protective against high depressive symptoms (OR = 0.613). Implications for future research and university services are discussed

Sleepy Hollow, Village of and Municipal Employee Unit, United Federation of Police Officers

In the matter of the fact-finding between the Village of Sleepy Hollow, employer, and the United Federation of Police Officers, Municipal Employee Unit, union. PERB case no. M2009-266. Before: Peter A. Korn, fact finder

Exact solution for the Green's function describing time-dependent thermal Comptonization

We obtain an exact, closed-form expression for the time-dependent Green's function solution to the Kompaneets equation. The result, which is expressed as the integral of a product of two Whittaker functions, describes the evolution in energy space of a photon distribution that is initially monoenergetic. Effects of spatial transport within a homogeneous scattering cloud are also included within the formalism. The Kompaneets equation that we solve includes both the recoil and energy diffusion terms, and therefore our solution for the Green's function approaches the Wien spectrum at large times. We show that the Green's function can be used to generate all of the previously known steady-state and time-dependent solutions to the Kompaneets equation. The new solution allows the direct determination of the spectrum, without the need to numerically solve the partial differential equation. Based upon the Green's function, we obtain a new time-dependent solution for the photon distribution resulting from the reprocessing of an optically thin bremsstrahlung initial spectrum with a low-energy cutoff. The new bremsstrahlung solution possesses a finite photon number density, and therefore it displays proper equilibration to a Wien spectrum at large times. The relevance of our results for the interpretation of emission from variable X-ray sources is discussed, with particular attention to the production of hard X-ray time lags, and the Compton broadening of narrow features such as iron lines.Comment: text plus 9 figures, MNRAS 2003, in pres