Positive Affect as a Buffer Against Psychopathology in Diabetes Patients: A Randomised Controlled Trial

The aim of this study was to assess a brief ‘positive’ psychological intervention’s effectiveness in facilitating positive affect amongst people with diabetes

Testing the robustness of laws of polysemy and brevity versus frequency

The pioneering research of G.K. Zipf on the relationship between word frequency and other word features led to the formulation of various linguistic laws. Here we focus on a couple of them: the meaning-frequency law, i.e. the tendency of more frequent words to be more polysemous, and the law of abbreviation, i.e. the tendency of more frequent words to be shorter. Here we evaluate the robustness of these laws in contexts where they have not been explored yet to our knowledge. The recovery of the laws again in new conditions provides support for the hypothesis that they originate from abstract mechanisms.Peer ReviewedPostprint (author's final draft

Compact graphene mode-locked wavelength-tunable erbium-doped fiber lasers: from all anomalous dispersion towards all normal dispersion

Soliton operation and soliton wavelength tuning of erbium-doped fiber lasers mode locked with atomic layer graphene was experimentally investigated under various cavity dispersion conditions. It was shown that not only wide range soliton wavelength tuning but also soltion pulse width variation could be obtained in the fiber lasers. Our results show that the graphene mode locked erbium-doped fiber lasers provide a compact, user friendly and low cost wavelength tunable ultrahsort pulse source

A review of assessment methods for river hydromorphology

The work leading to this paper has received funding for the EU’s FP7 under Grant Agreement No. 282656 (REFORM

Developing and enhancing biodiversity monitoring programmes: a collaborative assessment of priorities

1.Biodiversity is changing at unprecedented rates, and it is increasingly important that these changes are quantified through monitoring programmes. Previous recommendations for developing or enhancing these programmes focus either on the end goals, that is the intended use of the data, or on how these goals are achieved, for example through volunteer involvement in citizen science, but not both. These recommendations are rarely prioritized. 2.We used a collaborative approach, involving 52 experts in biodiversity monitoring in the UK, to develop a list of attributes of relevance to any biodiversity monitoring programme and to order these attributes by their priority. We also ranked the attributes according to their importance in monitoring biodiversity in the UK. Experts involved included data users, funders, programme organizers and participants in data collection. They covered expertise in a wide range of taxa. 3.We developed a final list of 25 attributes of biodiversity monitoring schemes, ordered from the most elemental (those essential for monitoring schemes; e.g. articulate the objectives and gain sufficient participants) to the most aspirational (e.g. electronic data capture in the field, reporting change annually). This ordered list is a practical framework which can be used to support the development of monitoring programmes. 4.People's ranking of attributes revealed a difference between those who considered attributes with benefits to end users to be most important (e.g. people from governmental organizations) and those who considered attributes with greatest benefit to participants to be most important (e.g. people involved with volunteer biological recording schemes). This reveals a distinction between focussing on aims and the pragmatism in achieving those aims. 5.Synthesis and applications. The ordered list of attributes developed in this study will assist in prioritizing resources to develop biodiversity monitoring programmes (including citizen science). The potential conflict between end users of data and participants in data collection that we discovered should be addressed by involving the diversity of stakeholders at all stages of programme development. This will maximize the chance of successfully achieving the goals of biodiversity monitoring programmes

Prospects for K+→π+ννˉK^+ \to \pi^+ \nu \bar{ \nu } at CERN in NA62

The NA62 experiment will begin taking data in 2015. Its primary purpose is a 10% measurement of the branching ratio of the ultrarare kaon decay $K^+ \to \pi^+ \nu \bar{ \nu }$, using the decay in flight of kaons in an unseparated beam with momentum 75 GeV/c.The detector and analysis technique are described here.Comment: 8 pages for proceedings of 50 Years of CP

How to Educate Entrepreneurs?

Entrepreneurship education has two purposes: To improve students’ entrepreneurial skills and to provide impetus to those suited to entrepreneurship while discouraging the rest. While entrepreneurship education helps students to make a vocational decision its effects may conflict for those not suited to entrepreneurship. This study shows that vocational and the skill formation effects of entrepreneurship education can be identified empirically by drawing on the Theory of Planned Behavior. This is embedded in a structural equation model which we estimate and test using a robust 2SLS estimator. We find that the attitudinal factors posited by the Theory of Planned Behavior are positively correlated with students’ entrepreneurial intentions. While conflicting effects of vocational and skill directed course content are observed in some individuals, overall these types of content are complements. This finding contradicts previous results in the literature. We reconcile the conflicting findings and discuss implications for the design of entrepreneurship courses

Comfort radicalism and NEETs: a conservative praxis

Young people who are not in education, employment or training (NEET) are construed by policy makers as a pressing problem about which something should be done. Such young people's lack of employment is thought to pose difficulties for wider society in relation to social cohesion and inclusion and it is feared that they will become a 'lost generation'. This paper(1) draws upon English research, seeking to historicise the debate whilst acknowledging that these issues have a much wider purchase. The notion of NEETs rests alongside longstanding concerns of the English state and middle classes, addressing unruly male working class youth as well as the moral turpitude of working class girls. Waged labour and domesticity are seen as a means to integrate such groups into society thereby generating social cohesion. The paper places the debate within it socio-economic context and draws on theorisations of cognitive capitalism, Italian workerism, as well as emerging theories of antiwork to analyse these. It concludes by arguing that ‘radical’ approaches to NEETs that point towards inequities embedded in the social structure and call for social democratic solutions veer towards a form of comfort radicalism. Such approaches leave in place the dominance of capitalist relations as well as productivist orientations that celebrate waged labour

Artificial drainage of peatlands: hydrological and hydrochemical process and wetland restoration

Peatlands have been subject to artificial drainage for centuries. This drainage has been in response to agricultural demand, forestry, horticultural and energy properties of peat and alleviation of flood risk. However, the are several environmental problems associated with drainage of peatlands. This paper describes the nature of these problems and examines the evidence for changes in hydrological and hydrochemical processes associated with these changes. Traditional black-box water balance approaches demonstrate little about wetland dynamics and therefore the science of catchment response to peat drainage is poorly understood. It is crucial that a more process-based approach be adopted within peatland ecosystems. The environmental problems associated with peat drainage have led, in part, to a recent reversal in attitudes to peatlands and we have seen a move towards wetland restoration. However, a detailed understanding of hydrological, hydrochemical and ecological process-interactions will be fundamental if we are to adequately restore degraded peatlands, preserve those that are still intact and understand the impacts of such management actions at the catchment scale

Efficacy of the Best Possible Self protocol in diabetes self-management: A mixed-methods approach.

Recent research has demonstrated that positive affect may facilitate illness self-management. This study used a sequential exploratory mixed-methods typology to assess whether a brief writing task designed to boost positive affect (the Best Possible Self protocol) could improve aspects of diabetes self-management, specifically. A qualitative investigation explored people with diabetes' ( n = 20) views regarding Best Possible Self feasibility and acceptability, while a subsequent quantitative investigation assigned people with diabetes ( n = 50) to a Best Possible Self or non-Best Possible Self condition and assessed affect and self-management behaviours over a 4-week period. Findings indicated that individuals were receptive to the Best Possible Self and that it provided benefits for diabetes self-management