644 research outputs found
Global warming and discourses of uncertainty: buying time, buying business and engendering risk
Pro-anorexia websites portray an extreme form of thin-ideal. This between-subjects experiment examined the effects of viewing such a website on body satisfaction, affect, and appearance self-efficacy compared to viewing control websites (fashion, home decoration, automutilation). The sample consisted of 124 normal weight, young adult, Dutch women (mean age 21.2, mean body mass index 21.4). Participants did not differ on affect and appearance self-efficacy. One body satisfaction measure showed that pro-anorexia viewers were more satisfied with their bodies than home decoration viewers. Our findings suggest that viewing a pro-anorexia website might not have detrimental effects on body satisfaction and affect among normal weight young women
On estimation and identifiability issues of sex-linked inheritance with a case study of pigmentation in Swiss barn owl (Tyto alba)
Genetic evaluation using animal models or pedigree-based models generally assume only autosomal inheritance. Bayesian animal models provide a flexible framework for genetic evaluation, and we show how the model readily can accommodate situations where the trait of interest is influenced by both autosomal and sex-linked inheritance. This allows for simultaneous calculation of autosomal and sex-chromosomal additive genetic effects. Inferences were performed using integrated nested Laplace approximations (INLA), a nonsampling-based Bayesian inference methodology. We provide a detailed description of how to calculate the inverse of the X- or Z-chromosomal additive genetic relationship matrix, needed for inference. The case study of eumelanic spot diameter in a Swiss barn owl (Tyto alba) population shows that this trait is substantially influenced by variation in genes on the Z-chromosome (sigma(2)(z) = 0.2719 and sigma(2)(a) = 0.4405). Further, a simulation study for this study system shows that the animal model accounting for both autosomal and sex-chromosome-linked inheritance is identifiable, that is, the two effects can be distinguished, and provides accurate inference on the variance components
Climate change impacts on trends and extremes in future heating and cooling demands over Europe
Acknowledgements The work was supported by the REEEM project (grant agreement no. 691739) funded by the Horizon 2020 (LCE) EU research programme.Peer reviewedPublisher PD
Open Cosmic Strings in Black Hole Space-Times
We construct open cosmic string solutions in Schwarzschild black hole and
non-dilatonic black p-brane backgrounds. These strings can be thought to
stretch between two D-branes or between a D-brane and the horizon in curved
space-time. We study small fluctuations around these solutions and discuss
their basic properties.Comment: 11 pages, REVTex, 5 figures, a reference adde
A new twist on dS/CFT
We stress that the dS/CFT correspondence should be formulated using unitary
principal series representations of the de Sitter isometry group/conformal
group, rather than highest-weight representations as originally proposed. These
representations, however, are infinite-dimensional, and so do not account for
the finite gravitational entropy of de Sitter space in a natural way. We then
propose to replace the classical isometry group by a q-deformed version. This
is carried out in detail for two-dimensional de Sitter and we find that the
unitary principal series representations deform to finite-dimensional unitary
representations of the quantum group. We believe this provides a promising
microscopic framework to account for the Bekenstein-Hawking entropy of de
Sitter space.Comment: 21 pages, revtex, v2 references adde
Particle Production in Matrix Cosmology
We consider cosmological particle production in 1+1 dimensional string
theory. The process is described most efficiently in terms of anomalies, but we
also discuss the explicit mode expansions. In matrix cosmology the usual vacuum
ambiguity of quantum fields in time-dependent backgrounds is resolved by the
underlying matrix model. This leads to a finite energy density for the "in"
state which cancels the effect of anomalous particle production.Comment: 24 pages, 1 figure; v2: references added, minor change
- …