Social Intelligence and Academic Achievement as Predictors of Adolescent Popularity

This study compared the effects of social intelligence and cognitive intelligence, as measured by academic achievement, on adolescent popularity in two school contexts. A distinction was made between sociometric popularity, a measure of acceptance, and perceived popularity, a measure of social dominance. Participants were 512, 14–15 year-old adolescents (56% girls, 44% boys) in vocational and college preparatory schools in Northwestern Europe. Perceived popularity was significantly related to social intelligence, but not to academic achievement, in both contexts. Sociometric popularity was predicted by an interaction between academic achievement and social intelligence, further qualified by school context. Whereas college bound students gained sociometric popularity by excelling both socially and academically, vocational students benefited from doing well either socially or academically, but not in combination. The implications of these findings were discussed

Cosmic rays and molecular clouds

This paper deals with the cosmic-ray penetration into molecular clouds and with the related gamma--ray emission. High energy cosmic rays interact with the dense gas and produce neutral pions which in turn decay into two gamma rays. This makes molecular clouds potential sources of gamma rays, especially if they are located in the vicinity of a powerful accelerator that injects cosmic rays in the interstellar medium. The amplitude and duration in time of the cosmic--ray overdensity around a given source depend on how quickly cosmic rays diffuse in the turbulent galactic magnetic field. For these reasons, gamma-ray observations of molecular clouds can be used both to locate the sources of cosmic rays and to constrain the properties of cosmic-ray diffusion in the Galaxy.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of the San Cugat Forum on Astrophysics 2012, 27 pages, 10 figure

The KiVa antibullying program in primary schools in Chile, with and without the digital game component: study protocol for a randomized controlled trial.

BACKGROUND: Bullying is a major problem worldwide and Chile is no exception. Bullying is defined as a systematic aggressive behavior against a victim who cannot defend him or herself. Victims suffer social isolation and psychological maladjustment, while bullies have a higher risk for conduct problems and substance use disorders. These problems appear to last over time. The KiVa antibullying program has been evaluated in Finland and other European countries, showing preventive effects on victimization and self-reported bullying. The aims of this study are (1) to develop a culturally appropriate version of the KiVa material and (2) to test the effectiveness of the KiVa program, with and without the online game, on reducing experiences of victimization and bullying behavior among vulnerable primary schools in Santiago (Chile), using a cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) design with three arms: (1) full KiVa program group, (2) partial KiVa (without online game) program group and (3) control group. METHODS AND DESIGN: This is a three-arm, single-blind, cluster randomized controlled trial (RCT) with a target enrolment of 1495 4th and 5th graders attending 13 vulnerable schools per arm. Students in the full and partial KiVa groups will receive universal actions: ten 2-h lessons delivered by trained teachers during 1 year; they will be exposed to posters encouraging them to support victims and behave constructively when witnessing bullying; and a person designated by the school authorities will be present in all school breaks and lunchtimes using a visible KiVa vest to remind everybody that they are in a KiVa school. KiVa schools also will have indicated actions, which consist of a set of discussion groups with the victims and with the bullies, with proper follow-up. Only full KiVa schools will also receive an online game which has the aim to raise awareness of the role of the group in bullying, increase empathy and promote strategies to support victimized peers. Self-reported victimization, bullying others and peer-reported bullying actions, psychological and academic functioning, and sense of school membership will be measured at baseline and 12 months after randomization. DISCUSSION: This is the first cluster RCT of the KiVa antibullying program in Latin America. TRIAL REGISTRATION: ClinicalTrials.gov, Identifier: NCT02898324 . Registered on 8 September 2016

Haemodynamics and flow modification stents for peripheral arterial disease:a review

Endovascular stents are widely used for the treatment of peripheral arterial disease (PAD). However, the development of in-stent restenosis and downstream PAD progression remain a challenge. Stent revascularisation of PAD causes arterial trauma and introduces abnormal haemodynamics, which initiate complicated biological processes detrimental to the arterial wall. The interaction between stent struts and arterial cells in contact, and the blood flow field created in a stented region, are highly affected by stent design. Spiral flow is known as a normal physiologic characteristic of arterial circulation and is believed to prevent the development of flow disturbances. This secondary flow motion is lost in atheromatous disease and its re-introduction after endovascular treatment of PAD has been suggested as a method to induce stabilised and coherent haemodynamics. Stent designs able to generate spiral flow may support endothelial function and therefore increase patency rates. This review is focused on secondary flow phenomena in arteries and the development of flow modification stent technologies for the treatment of PAD

Alterations in regional vascular geometry produced by theoretical stent implantation influence distributions of wall shear stress: analysis of a curved coronary artery using 3D computational fluid dynamics modeling

BACKGROUND: The success of stent implantation in the restoration of blood flow through areas of vascular narrowing is limited by restenosis. Several recent studies have suggested that the local geometric environment created by a deployed stent may influence regional blood flow characteristics and alter distributions of wall shear stress (WSS) after implantation, thereby rendering specific areas of the vessel wall more susceptible to neointimal hyperplasia and restenosis. Stents are most frequently implanted in curved vessels such as the coronary arteries, but most computational studies examining blood flow patterns through stented vessels conducted to date use linear, cylindrical geometric models. It appears highly probable that restenosis occurring after stent implantation in curved arteries also occurs as a consequence of changes in fluid dynamics that are established immediately after stent implantation. METHODS: In the current investigation, we tested the hypothesis that acute changes in stent-induced regional geometry influence distributions of WSS using 3D coronary artery CFD models implanted with stents that either conformed to or caused straightening of the primary curvature of the left anterior descending coronary artery. WSS obtained at several intervals during the cardiac cycle, time averaged WSS, and WSS gradients were calculated using conventional techniques. RESULTS: Implantation of a stent that causes straightening, rather than conforms to the natural curvature of the artery causes a reduction in the radius of curvature and subsequent increase in the Dean number within the stented region. This straightening leads to modest skewing of the velocity profile at the inlet and outlet of the stented region where alterations in indices of WSS are most pronounced. For example, time-averaged WSS in the proximal portion of the stent ranged from 8.91 to 11.7 dynes/cm(2 )along the pericardial luminal surface and 4.26 to 4.88 dynes/cm(2 )along the myocardial luminal surface of curved coronary arteries as compared to 8.31 dynes/cm(2 )observed throughout the stented region of a straight vessel implanted with an equivalent stent. CONCLUSION: The current results predicting large spatial and temporal variations in WSS at specific locations in curved arterial 3D CFD simulations are consistent with clinically observed sites of restenosis. If the findings of this idealized study translate to the clinical situation, the regional geometry established immediately after stent implantation may predispose portions of the stented vessel to a higher risk of neointimal hyperplasia and subsequent restenosis

Cross-National Measurement Invariance of the Teacher and Classmate Support Scale

The cross-national measurement invariance of the teacher and classmate support scale was assessed in a study of 23202 Grade 8 and 10 students from Austria, Canada, England, Lithuania, Norway, Poland, and Slovenia, participating in the Health Behaviour in School-aged Children (HBSC) 2001/2002 study. A multi-group means and covariance analysis supported configural and metric invariance across countries, but not full scalar equivalence. The composite reliability was adequate and highly consistent across countries. In all seven countries, teacher support showed stronger associations with school satisfaction than did classmate support, with the results being highly consistent across countries. The results indicate that the teacher and classmate support scale may be used in cross-cultural studies that focus on relationships between teacher and classmate support and other constructs. However, the lack of scalar equivalence indicates that direct comparison of the levels support across countries might not be warranted

The relationship between moral judgment and cooperation in children with high-functioning autism.

This study investigated moral judgment in children with high-functioning autism and their cooperation in prisoner's dilemma game with partners of different moralities. Thirty-eight 6- to 12-year-old high-functioning autistic (HFA) children and 31 typically developing (TD) children were recruited. Children were asked to judge story protagonists' morality. After making this moral judgment correctly, they were asked to play with the morally nice and the morally naughty child in a repeated prisoner's dilemma game. Results showed that both HFA and TD children made correct moral judgments, and that HFA children might even have more rigid criteria for what constitutes morally naughty acts. HFA children's cooperation did not differ depending on the morality of the interaction partner, while TD children showed higher cooperation when interacting with the morally nice than the morally naughty child did. Thus, partner's morality did influence TD children's but not HFA children's subsequent cooperation

The quest for the solar g modes

Solar gravity modes (or g modes) -- oscillations of the solar interior for which buoyancy acts as the restoring force -- have the potential to provide unprecedented inference on the structure and dynamics of the solar core, inference that is not possible with the well observed acoustic modes (or p modes). The high amplitude of the g-mode eigenfunctions in the core and the evanesence of the modes in the convection zone make the modes particularly sensitive to the physical and dynamical conditions in the core. Owing to the existence of the convection zone, the g modes have very low amplitudes at photospheric levels, which makes the modes extremely hard to detect. In this paper, we review the current state of play regarding attempts to detect g modes. We review the theory of g modes, including theoretical estimation of the g-mode frequencies, amplitudes and damping rates. Then we go on to discuss the techniques that have been used to try to detect g modes. We review results in the literature, and finish by looking to the future, and the potential advances that can be made -- from both data and data-analysis perspectives -- to give unambiguous detections of individual g modes. The review ends by concluding that, at the time of writing, there is indeed a consensus amongst the authors that there is currently no undisputed detection of solar g modes.Comment: 71 pages, 18 figures, accepted by Astronomy and Astrophysics Revie

Gravitational waves from single neutron stars: an advanced detector era survey

With the doors beginning to swing open on the new gravitational wave astronomy, this review provides an up-to-date survey of the most important physical mechanisms that could lead to emission of potentially detectable gravitational radiation from isolated and accreting neutron stars. In particular we discuss the gravitational wave-driven instability and asteroseismology formalism of the f- and r-modes, the different ways that a neutron star could form and sustain a non-axisymmetric quadrupolar "mountain" deformation, the excitation of oscillations during magnetar flares and the possible gravitational wave signature of pulsar glitches. We focus on progress made in the recent years in each topic, make a fresh assessment of the gravitational wave detectability of each mechanism and, finally, highlight key problems and desiderata for future work.Comment: 39 pages, 12 figures, 2 tables. Chapter of the book "Physics and Astrophysics of Neutron Stars", NewCompStar COST Action 1304. Minor corrections to match published versio

The dynamic architecture of the metabolic switch in Streptomyces coelicolor

[EN] Background: During the lifetime of a fermenter culture, the soil bacterium S. coelicolor undergoes a major metabolic switch from exponential growth to antibiotic production. We have studied gene expression patterns during this switch, using a specifically designed Affymetrix genechip and a high-resolution time-series of fermenter-grown samples.Results: Surprisingly, we find that the metabolic switch actually consists of multiple finely orchestrated switching events. Strongly coherent clusters of genes show drastic changes in gene expression already many hours before the classically defined transition phase where the switch from primary to secondary metabolism was expected. The main switch in gene expression takes only 2 hours, and changes in antibiotic biosynthesis genes are delayed relative to the metabolic rearrangements. Furthermore, global variation in morphogenesis genes indicates an involvement of cell differentiation pathways in the decision phase leading up to the commitment to antibiotic biosynthesis.Conclusions: Our study provides the first detailed insights into the complex sequence of early regulatory events during and preceding the major metabolic switch in S. coelicolor, which will form the starting point for future attempts at engineering antibiotic production in a biotechnological settingSIWe are very grateful to Mervyn Bibb for his generous support with the Affymetrix custom microarray design. We acknowledge the excellent technical help of K. Klein, S. Poths, M. Walter, A. Øverby and E. Hansen. This project was supported by grants of the ERA-NET SySMO Project [GEN2006-27745-E/SYS]: (P-UK-01-11-3i) and the Research Council of Norway [project no. 181840/I30