Values Affirmation in The Treatment of Moral Injury: A Pilot Study

Mainly studied in the context of military veterans, “moral injury” refers to extreme guilt and shame experienced as a result of perpetrating, bearing witness to, or failing to prevent events that transgress deeply held moral beliefs and expectations. The current pilot study aimed to examine the potential use of a brief values affirmation intervention in the treatment of moral injury associated with everyday moral transgressions. This study included 90 participants recruited from Amazon’s MTurk. Participants completed a survey in which they were assigned to complete either a values affirmation or control task, recall a moral transgression, and reflect on the recalled event. It was hypothesized that participants in the values affirmation condition would experience less shame and guilt associated with the recall of a moral transgression than the control condition, and this effect was expected to be mediated by participant’s perceptions of the event as morally injurious. Results indicate that the values affirmation had a significant effect on shame, but not moral injury or guilt. Observed patterns suggest that the values affirmation tended to increase, rather than decrease moral injury. Implications of the findings, limitations of the methodology, and potential directions for future research are discussed

Electron-hole asymmetry is the key to superconductivity

In a solid, transport of electricity can occur via negative electrons or via positive holes. In the normal state of superconducting materials experiments show that transport is usually dominated by $dressed$ $positive$ $hole$ $carriers$. Instead, in the superconducting state experiments show that the supercurrent is always carried by $undressed$ $negative$ $electron$ $carriers$. These experimental facts indicate that electron-hole asymmetry plays a fundamental role in superconductivity, as proposed by the theory of hole superconductivity.Comment: Presented at the New3SC-4 meeting, San Diego, Jan. 16-21 2003; to be published in Int. J. Mod. Phys.

Hole Superconductivity in MgB2Mg B_2: a high TcT_c cuprate without Cu

The theory of hole superconductivity explains high temperature superconductivity in cuprates as driven by pairing of hole carriers in oxygen $p\pi$ orbitals in the highly negatively charged $Cu-O$ planes. The pairing mechanism is hole undressing and is Coulomb-interaction driven. We propose that the planes of $B$ atoms in $Mg B_2$ are akin to the $Cu-O$ planes without $Cu$, and that the recently observed high temperature superconductivity in $Mg B_2$ arises similarly from undressing of hole carriers in the planar boron $p_{x,y}$ orbitals in the negatively charged $B^-$ planes. Doping $Mg B_2$ with electrons and with holes should mirror the behavior of underdoped and overdoped high $T_c$ cuprates respectively. We discuss possible ways to achieve higher transition temperatures in boron compounds based on this theory.Comment: A section on isotope effect has been added, as well as other minor change

Why non-superconducting metallic elements become superconducting under high pressure

We predict that simple metals and early transition metals that become superconducting under high pressures will show a change in sign of their Hall coefficient from negative to positive under pressure. If verified, this will strongly suggest that hole carriers play a fundamental role in `conventional' superconductivity, as predicted by the theory of hole superconductivity.Comment: Submitted to M2S-IX Tokyo 200

Why holes are not like electrons. II. The role of the electron-ion interaction

In recent work, we discussed the difference between electrons and holes in energy band in solids from a many-particle point of view, originating in the electron-electron interaction, and argued that it has fundamental consequences for superconductivity. Here we discuss the fact that there is also a fundamental difference between electrons and holes already at the single particle level, arising from the electron-ion interaction. The difference between electrons and holes due to this effect parallels the difference due to electron-electron interactions: {\it holes are more dressed than electrons}. We propose that superconductivity originates in 'undressing' of carriers from $both$ electron-electron and electron-ion interactions, and that both aspects of undressing have observable consequences.Comment: Continuation of Phys.Rev.B65, 184502 (2002) = cond-mat/0109385 (2001

MicroRNA regulation of the paired-box transcription factor Pax3 confers robustness to developmental timing of myogenesis

Commitment of progenitors in the dermomyotome to myoblast fate is the first step in establishing the body musculature. Pax3 is a crucial transcription factor, important for skeletal muscle development and expressed in myogenic progenitors in the dermomyotome of developing somites and in migratory muscle progenitors that populate the limb buds. Down-regulation of Pax3 is essential to ignite the myogenic program, including up-regulation of myogenic regulators, Myf-5 and MyoD. MicroRNAs (miRNAs) confer robustness to developmental timing by posttranscriptional repression of genetic programs that are related to previous developmental stages or to alternative cell fates. Here we demonstrate that the muscle-specific miRNAs miR-1 and miR-206 directly target Pax3. Antagomir-mediated inhibition of miR-1/miR-206 led to delayed myogenic differentiation in developing somites, as shown by transient loss of myogenin expression. This correlated with increased Pax3 and was phenocopied using Pax3-specific target protectors. Loss of myogenin after antagomir injection was rescued by Pax3 knockdown using a splice morpholino, suggesting that miR-1/miR-206 control somite myogenesis primarily through interactions with Pax3. Our studies reveal an important role for miR-1/miR-206 in providing precision to the timing of somite myogenesis. We propose that posttranscriptional control of Pax3 downstream of miR-1/miR-206 is required to stabilize myoblast commitment and subsequent differentiation. Given that mutually exclusive expression of miRNAs and their targets is a prevailing theme in development, our findings suggest that miRNA may provide a general mechanism for the unequivocal commitment underlying stem cell differentiation

Diagnosing atmospheric motion vector observation errors for an operational high resolution data assimilation system

Atmospheric motion vectors (AMVs) are wind observations derived by tracking cloud or water vapour features in consecutive satellite images. These observations are incorporated into Numerical Weather Prediction (NWP) through data assimilation. In the assimilation algorithm, the weighting given to an observation is determined by the uncertainty associated with its measurement and representation. Previous studies assessing AMV uncertainty have used direct comparisons between AMVs with co-located radiosonde data and AMVs derived from Observing System Simulation Experiments (OSSEs). These have shown that AMV error is horizontally correlated with characteristic length scale up to 200 km. In this work, we take an alternative approach and estimate AMV error variance and horizontal error correlation using background and analysis residuals obtained from the Met Office limited area, 3 km horizontal grid length data assimilation system. The results show that the observation error variance profile ranges from 5.2 to 14.1 s m2s− 2, with the highest values occurring at high and medium heights. This is indicative that the maximum error variance occurs where wind speed and shear, in combination, are largest. With the exception of AMVs derived from the High Resolution Visible channel, the results show horizontal observation error correlations at all heights in the atmosphere, with correlation lengthscales ranging between 140 and 200 km. These horizontal lengthscales are significantly larger than current AMV observation thinning distances used in the Met Office high resolution assimilation

Towards an understanding of hole superconductivity

From the very beginning K. Alex M\"uller emphasized that the materials he and George Bednorz discovered in 1986 were $hole$ superconductors. Here I would like to share with him and others what I believe to be $the$ key reason for why high $T_c$ cuprates as well as all other superconductors are hole superconductors, which I only came to understand a few months ago. This paper is dedicated to Alex M\"uller on the occasion of his 90th birthday.Comment: Dedicated to Alex M\"uller on the Occasion of his 90th Birthday. arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1703.0977

Superconductivity from Undressing

Photoemission experiments in high $T_c$ cuprates indicate that quasiparticles are heavily 'dressed' in the normal state, particularly in the low doping regime. Furthermore these experiments show that a gradual undressing occurs both in the normal state as the system is doped and the carrier concentration increases, as well as at fixed carrier concentration as the temperature is lowered and the system becomes superconducting. A similar picture can be inferred from optical experiments. It is argued that these experiments can be simply understood with the single assumption that the quasiparticle dressing is a function of the local carrier concentration. Microscopic Hamiltonians describing this physics are discussed. The undressing process manifests itself in both the one-particle and two-particle Green's functions, hence leads to observable consequences in photoemission and optical experiments respectively. An essential consequence of this phenomenology is that the microscopic Hamiltonians describing it break electron-hole symmetry: these Hamiltonians predict that superconductivity will only occur for carriers with hole-like character, as proposed in the theory of hole superconductivity