4,284 research outputs found
Positive associations between consumerism and tobacco and alcohol use in early adolescence: cross-sectional study
<p>Background: There is concern about the negative impact of modern consumer culture on young people's mental health, but very few studies have investigated associations with substance use. In those which have, positive associations have been attributed to attempts to satisfy the unmet needs of more materialistic individuals.</p>
<p>Objectives: This study examines associations between different dimensions of consumerism and tobacco and alcohol use among Scottish early adolescents.</p>
<p>Design: Cross-sectional study.</p>
<p>Setting and participants: 2937 (92% of those eligible) secondary school pupils (ages 12–14) completed questionnaires in examination conditions. Analyses were restricted to those with complete data on all relevant variables (N=2736 smoking; N=2737 drinking).</p>
<p>Measures: Dependent variables comprised ever smoking and current drinking. Measures of consumerism comprised number of ‘premium’ (range 0–7) and ‘standard’ (range 0–5) material possessions and three Consumer Involvement subscales, ‘dissatisfaction’, ‘consumer orientation’ and ‘brand awareness’ (each range 3–12). Analyses also included school-year group and family affluence.</p>
<p>Results: Ever smoking and current drinking were both more prevalent among adolescents with more ‘premium’ and ‘standard’ material possessions, greater consumer ‘dissatisfaction’ and ‘brand awareness’ (mutually adjusted analyses including school-year group and family affluence). The strongest relationships occurred for ‘brand awareness’: for each unit increase in ‘brand awareness’ the ORs (95% CI) of ever smoking were 1.17 (1.08 to 1.26) and 1.23 (1.14 to 1.33) in males and females, respectively; and those for drinking were 1.15 (1.08 to 1.23) and 1.21 (1.13 to 1.30). ‘Brand awareness’ had an equal or stronger relationship with both smoking and drinking than did family affluence.</p>
<p>Conclusions: These results suggest aassociations between consumerism and both smoking and drinking might arise because adolescent identities incorporate both consumerism and substance use, or be the result of promotion (indirectly in the case of tobacco) linking consumerist or aspirational lifestyles with these behaviours.</p>
Consumerism and well-being in early adolescence
It has been suggested that consumerism is negatively related to well-being in children and adolescents, as well as adults. Few studies have explored whether certain aspects of consumerism have stronger associations with well-being than others, or between-group differences in associations. This article uses data from a sample of early adolescents to examine: levels of consumerism; relationships between different aspects of consumerism and well-being; and differences according to gender, school year group and family affluence. Data were obtained in 2010 via secondary school pupil surveys (N=2934). Consumerism measures comprised number of ‘standard’ and ‘premium’ possessions and four dimensions of consumer involvement; well-being measures comprised self-esteem, psychological distress and anger. There was evidence of high penetration of consumerist values. There were positive associations between number of possessions and anger, and between ‘dissatisfaction’ and poorer well-being, regardless of how measured. ‘Brand awareness’ was associated with positive male well-being, but negative female well-being. Many relationships between consumerism and well-being were stronger than those between family affluence and well-being. These results suggest only certain aspects of consumerism are associated with poorer adolescent well-being. Although, for some sub-groups, other aspects might be associated with better well-being, there was no evidence that modern consumer goods promote happiness
Route Swarm: Wireless Network Optimization through Mobility
In this paper, we demonstrate a novel hybrid architecture for coordinating
networked robots in sensing and information routing applications. The proposed
INformation and Sensing driven PhysIcally REconfigurable robotic network
(INSPIRE), consists of a Physical Control Plane (PCP) which commands agent
position, and an Information Control Plane (ICP) which regulates information
flow towards communication/sensing objectives. We describe an instantiation
where a mobile robotic network is dynamically reconfigured to ensure high
quality routes between static wireless nodes, which act as source/destination
pairs for information flow. The ICP commands the robots towards evenly
distributed inter-flow allocations, with intra-flow configurations that
maximize route quality. The PCP then guides the robots via potential-based
control to reconfigure according to ICP commands. This formulation, deemed
Route Swarm, decouples information flow and physical control, generating a
feedback between routing and sensing needs and robotic configuration. We
demonstrate our propositions through simulation under a realistic wireless
network regime.Comment: 9 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the IEEE International Conference on
Intelligent Robots and Systems (IROS) 201
A Theory of Anomaly With Right-Handed Currents
We present an ultraviolet complete theory for the and anomaly
in terms of a low mass gauge boson of a class of left-right symmetric
models. These models, which are based on the gauge symmetry , utilize vector-like fermions to
generate quark and lepton masses via a universal seesaw mechanism. A parity
symmetric version as well as an asymmetric version are studied. A light sterile
neutrino emerges naturally in this setup, which allows for new decay modes of
-meson via right-handed currents. We show that these models can explain
and anomaly while being consistent with LHC and LEP data as
well as low energy flavor constraints arising from , mixing, etc., but only for a limited range
of the mass: for
parity asymmetric (symmetric) Yukawa sectors. The light sterile neutrinos
predicted by the model may be relevant for explaining the MiniBoone and LSND
neutrino oscillation results. The parity symmetric version of the model
provides a simple solution to the strong CP problem without relying on the
axion. It also predicts an isospin singlet top partner with a mass TeV.Comment: 43 pages, 7 figures, references added, model slightly modifie
Low-frequency phase diagram of irradiated graphene and periodically driven spin-1/2 chain
We study the Floquet phase diagram of two-dimensional Dirac materials such as
graphene and the one-dimensional (1D) spin-1/2 model in a transverse field
in the presence of periodic time-varying terms in their Hamiltonians in the low
drive frequency () regime where standard perturbative
expansions fail. For graphene, such periodic time dependent terms are generated
via the application of external radiation of amplitude and time period , while for the 1D model, they result from a two-rate drive
protocol with time-dependent magnetic field and nearest-neighbor couplings
between the spins. Using the adiabatic-impulse method, we provide several
semi-analytic criteria for the occurrence of changes in the topology of the
phase bands of such systems. For irradiated graphene, we point out the role of
the symmetries of and behind such topology changes. Our analysis
reveals that at low frequencies, phase band topology changes may also happen at
(apart from ). We chart out the phase diagrams at as a function of and using exact numerics,
and compare them with the prediction of the adiabatic-impulse method. We show
that several characteristics of these phase diagrams can be analytically
understood from results obtained using the adiabatic-impulse method and point
out the crucial contribution of the high-symmetry points in the graphene
Brillouin zone to these diagrams. Finally we study the 1D model with a
two-rate driving protocol using the adiabatic-impulse method and exact numerics
revealing a phase band crossing at and . We also study the
anomalous end modes generated by such a drive. We suggest experiments to test
our theory.Comment: v1; 26 pages, 19 Fig
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