Growth Potential in Relationships: A Promotion-Focus Perspective

Relationship research has long emphasized the importance of felt security for interpersonal wellbeing, but has focused less on how opportunities for growth influence relationship well-being. The present research investigates whether people’s motivational states may influence the extent to which people value growth in their romantic relationships. Drawing on regulatory focus theory, which distinguishes between promotion (concerned with advancement) and prevention (concerned with security) self-regulatory orientations, it was hypothesized that promotion-focused individuals would be more satisfied with relationships that offered greater opportunity for growth than with those that offered greater opportunity for security. In three experimental studies, participants evaluated others’ (Study 1; N = 110) and their own (Study 2; N =141 and 3: N = 103) relationships after we manipulated beliefs about whether those relationships had high or low potential for future growth. Results revealed that promotion-focused participants rated theirs and another person’s relationship more positively when the relationship portrayed high growth potential rather than when it portrayed low growth potential. These results have meaningful implications for marriage courses and in clinical settings for defense against reinforcement erosion

Using wearable sensor systems for objective assessment of parkinson's disease

This paper presents a novel wearable sensor system based on the integration of miniaturised IMUs for fine hand movement analysis. The system, named SensHand V1, is composed of full 9-axis inertial sensors, placed on the fingers and wrist, which are managed by a cortex-M3 microcontroller. The acquired data are sent to a data logger through the use of Bluetooth communication. In this paper, the system is used for the objective diagnosis of Parkinson's disease, which is commonly assessed by neurologists through visual examination of motor tasks and semi-quantitative rating scales. Here, these motor tasks are also assessed using the SensHand V1, and then compared with the subjective metrics. Results demonstrate that the system is adequate to support neurologists in diagnostic procedures and allows for an objective evaluation of the disease

Yet Another Model of Gamma-Ray Bursts

Sari and Piran have demonstrated that the time structure of gamma-ray bursts must reflect the time structure of their energy release. A model which satisfies this condition uses the electrodynamic emission of energy by the magnetized rotating ring of dense matter left by neutron star coalescence; GRB are essentially fast, high field, differentially rotating pulsars. The energy densities are large enough that the power appears as an outflowing equilibrium pair plasma, which produces the burst by baryon entrainment and subsequent internal shocks. I estimate the magnetic field and characteristic time scale for its rearrangement, which determines the observed time structure of the burst. There may be quasi-periodic oscillations at the rotational frequencies, which are predicted to range up to 5770 Hz (in a local frame). This model is one of a general class of electrodynamic accretion models which includes the Blandford and Lovelace model of AGN, and which can also be applied to black hole X-ray sources of stellar mass. The apparent efficiency of nonthermal particle acceleration is predicted to be 10--50%, but higher values are possible if the underlying accretion flow is super-Eddington. Applications to high energy gamma-ray observations of AGN are briefly discussed.Comment: 21pp, latex, uses aaspp4.st

Centaurus A as a source of extragalactic cosmic rays with arrival energies well beyond the GZK cutoff

The ultra--high energy cosmic rays recently detected by several air shower experiments could have an extragalactic origin. In this case, the nearest active galaxy Centaurus A might be the source of the most energetic particles ever detected on Earth. We have used recent radio observations in order to estimate the arrival energy of the protons accelerated by strong shock fronts in the outer parts of this southern radio source. We expect detections corresponding to particles with energies up to $\sim 2.2 \times 10^{21}$ eV and an arrival direction of ($l \approx 310^{\circ}$, $b \approx 20^{\circ}$) in galactic coordinates. The future Southern Hemisphere Pierre Auger Observatory might provide a decisive test for extragalactic models of the origin of the ultra--high energy cosmic rays.Comment: Some remarks by the referee added, to appear in Astroparticle Physic

High energy protons from PKS 1333-33

In this letter we give an account of the possible acceleration of protons in the outer radio lobes of the active galaxy PKS 1333-33. We also make estimates of the arrival energy spectrum.Comment: 3 pages revtex, two figures, to appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Relativistic Jets from Collapsars

We have studied the relativistic beamed outflow proposed to occur in the collapsar model of gamma-ray bursts. A jet forms as a consequence of an assumed energy deposition of $\sim 10^{50}- 10^{51}$ erg/s within a $30^{\circ}$ cone around the rotation axis of the progenitor star. The generated jet flow is strongly beamed (\la few degrees) and reaches the surface of the stellar progenitor (r $\approx 3 10^{10}$cm) intact. At break-out the maximum Lorentz factor of the jet flow is about 33. Simulations have been performed with the GENESIS multi-dimensional relativistic hydrodynamic code.Comment: 6 pages, 2 figures, to appear in the proceedings of the conference "Godunov methods: theory and applications", Oxford, October 199

High Energy gamma-rays From FR I Jets

Thanks to Hubble and Chandra telescopes, some of the large scale jets in extragalactic radio sources are now being observed at optical and X-ray frequencies. For the FR I objects the synchrotron nature of this emission is surely established, although a lot of uncertainties - connected for example with the particle acceleration processes involved - remain. In this paper we study production of high energy gamma-rays in FR I kiloparsec-scale jets by inverse-Compton emission of the synchrotron-emitting electrons. We consider different origin of seed photons contributing to the inverse-Compton scattering, including nuclear jet radiation as well as ambient, stellar and circumstellar emission of the host galaxies. We discuss how future detections or non-detections of the evaluated gamma-ray fluxes can provide constraints on the unknown large scale jet parameters, i.e. the magnetic field intensity and the jet Doppler factor. For the nearby sources Centaurus A and M 87, we find measurable fluxes of TeV photons resulting from synchrotron self-Compton process and from comptonisation of the galactic photon fields, respectively. In the case of Centaurus A, we also find a relatively strong emission component due to comptonisation of the nuclear blazar photons, which could be easily observed by GLAST at energy ~10 GeV, providing important test for the unification of FR I sources with BL Lac objects.Comment: 39 pages, 6 figures included. Modified version, accepted for publication in Astrophysical Journa

Empowering patients in self-management of parkinson's disease through cooperative ICT systems

The objective of this chapter is to demonstrate the technical feasibility and medical effectiveness of personalised services and care programmes for Parkinson's disease, based on the combination of mHealth applications, cooperative ICTs, cloud technologies and wearable integrated devices, which empower patients to manage their health and disease in cooperation with their formal and informal caregivers, and with professional medical staff across different care settings, such as hospital and home. The presented service revolves around the use of two wearable inertial sensors, i.e. SensFoot and SensHand, for measuring foot and hand performance in the MDS-UPDRS III motor exercises. The devices were tested in medical settings with eight patients, eight hyposmic subjects and eight healthy controls, and the results demonstrated that this approach allows quantitative metrics for objective evaluation to be measured, in order to identify pre-motor/pre-clinical diagnosis and to provide a complete service of tele-health with remote control provided by cloud technologies. © 2016, IGI Global. All rights reserved

TRIS III: the diffuse galactic radio emission at δ=+42∘\delta=+42^{\circ}

We present values of temperature and spectral index of the galactic diffuse radiation measured at 600 and 820 MHz along a 24 hours right ascension circle at declination $\delta = +42^{\circ}$. They have been obtained from a subset of absolute measurements of the sky temperature made with TRIS, an experiment devoted to the measurement of the Cosmic Microwave Background temperature at decimetric-wavelengths with an angular resolution of about $20^{\circ}$. Our analysis confirms the preexisting picture of the galactic diffuse emission at decimetric wavelength and improves the accuracy of the measurable quantities. In particular, the signal coming from the halo has a spectral index in the range $2.9-3.1$ above 600 MHz, depending on the sky position. In the disk, at TRIS angular resolution, the free-free emission accounts for the 11% of the overall signal at 600 MHz and 21% at 1420 MHz. The polarized component of the galactic emission, evaluated from the survey by Brouw and Spoelstra, affects the observations at TRIS angular resolution by less than 3% at 820 MHz and less than 2% at 600 MHz. Within the uncertainties, our determination of the galactic spectral index is practically unaffected by the correction for polarization. Since the overall error budget of the sky temperatures measured by TRIS at 600 MHz, that is 66 mK(systematic)$+$18 mK (statistical), is definitely smaller than those reported in previous measurements at the same frequency, our data have been used to discuss the zero levels of the sky maps at 150, 408, 820 and 1420 MHz in literature. Concerning the 408 MHz survey, limiting our attention to the patch of sky corresponding to the region observed by TRIS, we suggest a correction of the base-level of $(+3.9\pm 0.6)$K.Comment: Accepted for publication in the Astrophysical Journa