Development during adolescence of the neural processing of social emotion

In this fMRI study, we investigated the development between adolescence and adulthood of the neural processing of social emotions. Unlike basic emotions (such as disgust and fear), social emotions (such as guilt and embarrassment) require the representation of another's mental states. Nineteen adolescents (10–18 years) and 10 adults (22–32 years) were scanned while thinking about scenarios featuring either social or basic emotions. In both age groups, the anterior rostral medial prefrontal cortex (MPFC) was activated during social versus basic emotion. However, adolescents activated a lateral part of the MPFC for social versus basic emotions, whereas adults did not. Relative to adolescents, adults showed higher activity in the left temporal pole for social versus basic emotions. These results show that, although the MPFC is activated during social emotion in both adults and adolescents, adolescents recruit anterior (MPFC) regions more than do adults, and adults recruit posterior (temporal) regions more than do adolescents

Structural Relaxation and Mode Coupling in a Simple Liquid: Depolarized Light Scattering in Benzene

We have measured depolarized light scattering in liquid benzene over the whole accessible temperature range and over four decades in frequency. Between 40 and 180 GHz we find a susceptibility peak due to structural relaxation. This peak shows stretching and time-temperature scaling as known from $\alpha$ relaxation in glass-forming materials. A simple mode-coupling model provides consistent fits of the entire data set. We conclude that structural relaxation in simple liquids and $\alpha$ relaxation in glass-forming materials are physically the same. A deeper understanding of simple liquids is reached by applying concepts that were originally developed in the context of glass-transition research.Comment: submitted to New J. Phy

Regular and First Order List Functions

We define two classes of functions, called regular (respectively, first-order) list functions, which manipulate objects such as lists, lists of lists, pairs of lists, lists of pairs of lists, etc. The definition is in the style of regular expressions: the functions are constructed by starting with some basic functions (e.g. projections from pairs, or head and tail operations on lists) and putting them together using four combinators (most importantly, composition of functions). Our main results are that first-order list functions are exactly the same as first-order transductions, under a suitable encoding of the inputs; and the regular list functions are exactly the same as MSO-transductions

Questionnaires

The aims of this chapter are to present the potential uses of questionnaires and the principles involved in developing an effective and valid questionnaire. It will consider some of the issues involved with the effective development and use of questionnaires as a research tool, their administration and ethical considerations. The information provided in this chapter is not set out to be definitive, but rather, it is presented as an introduction in the development and use of questionnaires in health and physical activity research. Depending on the intended research methods, the reader may wish to read this chapter alongside those on surveys, focus groups and questionnaires, as much of the information presented in these chapters relates and informs the others to provide a more comprehensive coverage. These chapters have been presented in this way to provide an informative coverage of the topic without excessive duplication and repetition of material

Speech and language difficulties in children with and without a family history of dyslexia

Comorbidity between SLI and dyslexia is well documented. Researchers have variously argued that dyslexia is a separate disorder from SLI, or that children with dyslexia show a subset of the difficulties shown in SLI. This study examines these hypotheses by assessing whether family history of dyslexia and speech and language difficulties are separable risk factors for literacy difficulties. Forty-six children with a family risk of dyslexia (FRD) and 36 children receiving speech therapy (SLT) were compared to 128 typically developing children. A substantial number (41.3%) of the children with FRD had received SLT. The nature of their difficulties did not differ in severity or form from those shown by the other children in SLT. However, both SLT and FRD were independent risk factors in predicting reading difficulties both concurrently and 6 months later. It is argued that the results are best explained in terms of Pennington's (2006) multiple deficits model

Heat transport by laminar boundary layer flow with polymers

Motivated by recent experimental observations, we consider a steady-state Prandtl-Blasius boundary layer flow with polymers above a slightly heated horizontal plate and study how the heat transport might be affected by the polymers. We discuss how a set of equations can be derived for the problem and how these equations can be solved numerically by an iterative scheme. By carrying out such a scheme, we find that the effect of the polymers is equivalent to producing a space-dependent effective viscosity that first increases from the zero-shear value at the plate then decreases rapidly back to the zero-shear value far from the plate. We further show that such an effective viscosity leads to an enhancement in the drag, which in turn leads to a reduction in heat transport.Comment: 7 pages, 8 figures, 1 tabl