Inflated responsibility and perfectionism in child and adolescent anorexia

Objective: The aim of the pilot study was to investigate the cognitive biases of inflated responsibility (IR) and perfectionism in children and adolescents with a diagnosis of Anorexia Nervosa (AN). An additional aim was to provide a preliminary investigation into whether there is an interaction effect with AN severity, measured by body mass index (BMI). Method: A cross-sectional multi-site pilot study using standardised questionnaires was conducted and 30 young people diagnosed with AN participated. Results: Children and adolescents with AN reported significantly higher levels of IR and perfectionism, compared to published normative non-clinical data. Self-orientated perfectionism (SOP) was associated with frequency of IR thoughts. There was also a significant interaction effect: young people who had a higher frequency of IR thoughts and SOP had lower BMIs. Discussion: Further independent replication of these results is needed. IR and perfectionism should be considered in the assessment and treatment of child and adolescent AN, both in individual and systemic interventions. This research also adds to the growing body of literature examining cognitive biases of obsessive– compulsive disorder in an AN population, which may offer some insight into the overlap between the two disorders

Global attractors and extinction dynamics of cyclically competing species

Transitions to absorbing states are of fundamental importance in nonequilibrium physics as well as ecology. In ecology, absorbing states correspond to the extinction of species. We here study the spatial population dynamics of three cyclically interacting species. The interaction scheme comprises both direct competition between species as in the cyclic Lotka-Volterra model, and separated selection and reproduction processes as in the May-Leonard model. We show that the dynamic processes leading to the transient maintenance of biodiversity are closely linked to attractors of the nonlinear dynamics for the overall species' concentrations. The characteristics of these global attractors change qualitatively at certain threshold values of the mobility and depend on the relative strength of the different types of competition between species. They give information about the scaling of extinction times with the system size and thereby the stability of biodiversity. We define an effective free energy as the negative logarithm of the probability to find the system in a specific global state before reaching one of the absorbing states. The global attractors then correspond to minima of this effective energy landscape and determine the most probable values for the species' global concentrations. As in equilibrium thermodynamics, qualitative changes in the effective free energy landscape indicate and characterize the underlying nonequilibrium phase transitions. We provide the complete phase diagrams for the population dynamics and give a comprehensive analysis of the spatio-temporal dynamics and routes to extinction in the respective phases

Pion-Nucleus Scattering at Medium Energies with Densities from Chiral Effective Field Theories

Recently developed chiral effective field theory models provide excellent descriptions of the bulk characteristics of finite nuclei, but have not been tested with other observables. In this work, densities from both relativistic point-coupling models and mean-field meson models are used in the analysis of meson-nucleus scattering at medium energies. Elastic scattering observables for 790 MeV/$c$ $\pi^{\pm}$ on $^{208}$Pb are calculated in a relativistic impulse approximation, using the Kemmer-Duffin-Petiau formalism to calculate the $\pi^{\pm}$ nucleus optical potential.Comment: 9 page

Time-Varying Gravitomagnetism

Time-varying gravitomagnetic fields are considered within the linear post-Newtonian approach to general relativity. A simple model is developed in which the gravitomagnetic field of a localized mass-energy current varies linearly with time. The implications of this temporal variation of the source for the precession of test gyroscopes and the motion of null rays are briefly discussed.Comment: 10 pages; v2: slightly expanded version accepted for publication in Class. Quantum Gra

Methadone, counselling and literacy: A health literacy partnership for Aboriginal clients

This paper describes a literacy program delivered at the Kirketon Road Centre (KRC), a primary health centre located at Kings Cross, Sydney. KRC was established to meet the health needs of 'at risk' young people, sex workers, and people who inject drugs. The literacy program was initiated from within an Aboriginal health group at KRC, following a request from clients in the group. A teacher from Tranby Aboriginal College delivered the literacy program once afternoon every fortnight over a period over approximately one year. This paper is based on recorded and transcribed 'reflection' discussion undertaken over several months between the literacy teacher, a KRC counsellor and the researcher immediately following the literacy sessions

Standard Clocks, Orbital Precession and the Cosmological Constant

We discuss the influence of the cosmological constant on the gravitomagnetic clock effect and the gravitational time delay of electromagnetic rays. Moreover, we consider the relative motion of a binary system to linear order in the cosmological constant $\Lambda$. The general expression for the effect of $\Lambda$ on pericenter precession is given for arbitrary orbital eccentricity

Metric theory of Weyl sums

We prove that there exist positive constants $C$ and $c$ such that for any integer $d \ge 2$ the set of ${\mathbf x}\in [0,1)^d$ satisfying $$cN^{1/2}\le \left|\sum^N_{n=1}\exp\left (2 \pi i \left (x_1n+\ldots+x_d n^d\right)\right) \right|\le C N^{1/2}$$ for infinitely many natural numbers $N$ is of full Lebesque measure. This substantially improves the previous results where similar sets have been measured in terms of the Hausdorff dimension. We also obtain similar bounds for exponential sums with monomials $xn^d$ when $d\neq 4$. Finally, we obtain lower bounds for the Hausdorff dimension of large values of general exponential polynomials

Kerr-Schild Symmetries

We study continuous groups of generalized Kerr-Schild transformations and the vector fields that generate them in any n-dimensional manifold with a Lorentzian metric. We prove that all these vector fields can be intrinsically characterized and that they constitute a Lie algebra if the null deformation direction is fixed. The properties of these Lie algebras are briefly analyzed and we show that they are generically finite-dimensional but that they may have infinite dimension in some relevant situations. The most general vector fields of the above type are explicitly constructed for the following cases: any two-dimensional metric, the general spherically symmetric metric and deformation direction, and the flat metric with parallel or cylindrical deformation directions.Comment: 15 pages, no figures, LaTe