Attenuating the link between threatened egotism and aggression

Research has found that narcissists behave aggressively when they receive a blow to their ego. The current studies examined whether narcissistic aggression could be reduced by inducing a unit relation between the target of aggression and the aggressor. Experimental participants were told that they shared either a birthday (Study 1) or a fingerprint type (Study 2) with a partner. Control participants were not given any information indicating similarity to their partner. Before aggression was measured, the partners criticized essays written by the participants. Aggression was measured by allowing participants to give their partner loud blasts of noise through a pair of headphones. In the control groups, narcissists were especially aggressive toward their partner. However, narcissistic aggression was completely attenuated, even under ego threat, when participants believed they shared a key similarity with their partner. Copyright © 2006 Association for Psychological Science

Fluctuations and Intrinsic Pinning in Layered Superconductors

A flux liquid can condense into a smectic crystal in a pure layered superconductors with the magnetic field oriented nearly parallel to the layers. If the smectic order is commensurate with the layering, this crystal is {\sl stable} to point disorder. By tilting and adjusting the magnitude of the applied field, both incommensurate and tilted smectic and crystalline phases are found. We discuss transport near the second order smectic freezing transition, and show that permeation modes lead to a small non--zero resistivity and large but finite tilt modulus in the smectic crystal.Comment: 4 pages + 1 style file + 1 figure (as uufile) appended, REVTEX 3.

On observability of Renyi's entropy

Despite recent claims we argue that Renyi's entropy is an observable quantity. It is shown that, contrary to popular belief, the reported domain of instability for Renyi entropies has zero measure (Bhattacharyya measure). In addition, we show the instabilities can be easily emended by introducing a coarse graining into an actual measurement. We also clear up doubts regarding the observability of Renyi's entropy in (multi--)fractal systems and in systems with absolutely continuous PDF's.Comment: 18 pages, 1 EPS figure, REVTeX, minor changes, accepted to Phys. Rev.

Sudden switch of generalized Lieb-Robinson velocity in a transverse field Ising spin chain

The Lieb-Robinson theorem states that the speed at which the correlations between two distant nodes in a spin network can be built through local interactions has an upper bound, which is called the Lieb-Robinson velocity. Our central aim is to demonstrate how to observe the Lieb-Robinson velocity in an Ising spin chain with a strong transverse field. We adopt and compare four correlation measures for characterizing different types of correlations, which include correlation function, mutual information, quantum discord, and entanglement of formation. We prove that one of correlation functions shows a special behavior depending on the parity of the spin number. All the information-theoretical correlation measures demonstrate the existence of the Lieb-Robinson velocity. In particular, we find that there is a sudden switch of the Lieb-Robinson speed with the increasing of the number of spin

Narcissism normalisation: tourism influences and sustainability implications

The concept of narcissism normalisation suggests that individuals and societies are becoming more narcissistic due to various cultural influences. Tourism is reviewed here as one such possible influence. Exploitative, entitled and exhibitionistic tendencies associated with narcissism are wellestablished in tourism. Yet tourism is also an intimate, communal and satisfying activity which may counteract narcissism. Increases in narcissism have significant implications from a sustainable tourism perspective. Narcissism is associated with exploitative and entitled behaviours that over time cause significant harm to those people and landscapes that come into contact with. Narcissism appears to be incompatible with principles of sustainability and the challenges this poses for the industry are reviewed, while the opportunities are also explored. There are signs that narcissism, particularly those aspects relating to exhibitionism, can be co-opted to benefit sustainable development

Atmospheric deposition and precipitation are important predictors of inorganic nitrogen export to streams from forest and grassland watersheds: a large-scale data synthesis

Previous studies have evaluated how changes in atmospheric nitrogen (N) inputs and climate affect stream N concentrations and fluxes, but none have synthesized data from sites around the globe. We identified variables controlling stream inorganic N concentrations and fluxes, and how they have changed, by synthesizing 20 time series ranging from 5 to 51 years of data collected from forest and grassland dominated watersheds across Europe, North America, and East Asia and across four climate types (tropical, temperate, Mediterranean, and boreal) using the International Long-Term Ecological Research Network. We hypothesized that sites with greater atmospheric N deposition have greater stream N export rates, but that climate has taken a stronger role as atmospheric deposition declines in many regions of the globe. We found declining trends in bulk ammonium and nitrate deposition, especially in the longest time-series, with ammonium contributing relatively more to atmospheric N deposition over time. Among sites, there were statistically significant positive relationships between (1) annual rates of precipitation and stream ammonium and nitrate fluxes and (2) annual rates of atmospheric N inputs and stream nitrate concentrations and fluxes. There were no significant relationships between air temperature and stream N export. Our long-term data shows that although N deposition is declining over time, atmospheric N inputs and precipitation remain important predictors for inorganic N exported from forested and grassland watersheds. Overall, we also demonstrate that long-term monitoring provides understanding of ecosystems and biogeochemical cycling that would not be possible with short-term studies alone.publishedVersio

An Integrated TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource to Drive High-Quality Survival Outcome Analytics

For a decade, The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA) program collected clinicopathologic annotation data along with multi-platform molecular profiles of more than 11,000 human tumors across 33 different cancer types. TCGA clinical data contain key features representing the democratized nature of the data collection process. To ensure proper use of this large clinical dataset associated with genomic features, we developed a standardized dataset named the TCGA Pan-Cancer Clinical Data Resource (TCGA-CDR), which includes four major clinical outcome endpoints. In addition to detailing major challenges and statistical limitations encountered during the effort of integrating the acquired clinical data, we present a summary that includes endpoint usage recommendations for each cancer type. These TCGA-CDR findings appear to be consistent with cancer genomics studies independent of the TCGA effort and provide opportunities for investigating cancer biology using clinical correlates at an unprecedented scale. Analysis of clinicopathologic annotations for over 11,000 cancer patients in the TCGA program leads to the generation of TCGA Clinical Data Resource, which provides recommendations of clinical outcome endpoint usage for 33 cancer types

Shrinking a large dataset to identify variables associated with increased risk of Plasmodium falciparum infection in Western Kenya

Large datasets are often not amenable to analysis using traditional single-step approaches. Here, our general objective was to apply imputation techniques, principal component analysis (PCA), elastic net and generalized linear models to a large dataset in a systematic approach to extract the most meaningful predictors for a health outcome. We extracted predictors for Plasmodium falciparum infection, from a large covariate dataset while facing limited numbers of observations, using data from the People, Animals, and their Zoonoses (PAZ) project to demonstrate these techniques: data collected from 415 homesteads in western Kenya, contained over 1500 variables that describe the health, environment, and social factors of the humans, livestock, and the homesteads in which they reside. The wide, sparse dataset was simplified to 42 predictors of P. falciparum malaria infection and wealth rankings were produced for all homesteads. The 42 predictors make biological sense and are supported by previous studies. This systematic data-mining approach we used would make many large datasets more manageable and informative for decision-making processes and health policy prioritization

Global Search for New Physics with 2.0/fb at CDF

Data collected in Run II of the Fermilab Tevatron are searched for indications of new electroweak-scale physics. Rather than focusing on particular new physics scenarios, CDF data are analyzed for discrepancies with the standard model prediction. A model-independent approach (Vista) considers gross features of the data, and is sensitive to new large cross-section physics. Further sensitivity to new physics is provided by two additional algorithms: a Bump Hunter searches invariant mass distributions for "bumps" that could indicate resonant production of new particles; and the Sleuth procedure scans for data excesses at large summed transverse momentum. This combined global search for new physics in 2.0/fb of ppbar collisions at sqrt(s)=1.96 TeV reveals no indication of physics beyond the standard model.Comment: 8 pages, 7 figures. Final version which appeared in Physical Review D Rapid Communication