Assessment of the value of group-based counselling for career construction

This article reports on the change in the career adaptability of participants exposed to an intervention programme characterized by career and selfconstruction principles compared to the change in participants who participated in standard, traditional career counselling lessons. Convenience and purposive sampling were used to select two groups (experimental and comparison of Grade 11 learners). Intervention occurred in both experimental groups. A mixed methods, quasi-experimental, pre-test/posttest comparison group design was used to gather data. Pre- and post-test scores obtained on the Career Adapt-Abilities Scale (CAAS) were analysed. The quantitative results suggested that the intervention programme did not improve participants’ career adaptability compared to standard, traditional career counselling lessons as measured by the CAAS. Future research should include the use of measures of self-reflection and meaning-making to test the direct effects of experimental interventions.https://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rady20am2019Educational PsychologyStatistic

Mental health in medical and biomedical doctoral students during the 2020 COVID-19 pandemic and racial protests

Concerns about the mental health of students, trainees and staff at universities and medical schools have been growing for many years. Recently, these have been exacerbated by the COVID-19 pandemic and a period of heightened reckoning and protests about systemic racism in the United States in 2020. To better understand the mental health of medical students and biomedical doctoral students at the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill during this challenging period, we performed a cross-sectional study (n=957) using institutional annual survey data on measures of depression, anxiety, hazardous alcohol use, problems related to substance use, and suicidal ideation. These data were collected in 2019 and 2020, and were analyzed by type of training program, race/ethnicity, gender, sexual orientation, and survey year. Results indicated significant differences for rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation, with biomedical doctoral students showing greater incidence than medical students, and historically excluded students (e.g., people of color, women, LGBQ+ trainees) showing greater incidence compared to their peers. Of note, mental health remained poor for biomedical doctoral students in 2020 and declined for those belonging to historically excluded populations. The high rates of depression, anxiety, and suicidal ideation reported suggest that training environments need to be improved and support for mental health increased

Adult attachment style across individuals and role-relationships: Avoidance is relationship-specific, but anxiety shows greater generalizability

A generalisability study examined the hypotheses that avoidant attachment, reflecting the representation of others, should be more relationship-specific (vary across relationships more than across individuals), while attachment anxiety, reflecting self-representation, should be more generalisable across a person’s relationships. College students responded to 6-item questionnaire measures of these variables for 5 relationships (mother, father, best same-gender friend, romantic partner or best opposite-gender friend, other close person), on 3 (N = 120) or 2 (N = 77) occasions separated by a few weeks. Results supported the hypotheses, with the person variance component being larger than the relationship-specific component for anxiety, and the opposite happening for avoidance. Anxiety therefore seems not to be as relationship-specific as previous research suggested. Possible reasons for discrepancies between the current and previous studies are discussed

Connecting Numerical Relativity and Data Analysis of Gravitational Wave Detectors

Gravitational waves deliver information in exquisite detail about astrophysical phenomena, among them the collision of two black holes, a system completely invisible to the eyes of electromagnetic telescopes. Models that predict gravitational wave signals from likely sources are crucial for the success of this endeavor. Modeling binary black hole sources of gravitational radiation requires solving the Eintein equations of General Relativity using powerful computer hardware and sophisticated numerical algorithms. This proceeding presents where we are in understanding ground-based gravitational waves resulting from the merger of black holes and the implications of these sources for the advent of gravitational-wave astronomy.Comment: Appeared in the Proceedings of 2014 Sant Cugat Forum on Astrophysics. Astrophysics and Space Science Proceedings, ed. C.Sopuerta (Berlin: Springer-Verlag

Long-term perturbations due to a disturbing body in elliptic inclined orbit

In the current study, a double-averaged analytical model including the action of the perturbing body's inclination is developed to study third-body perturbations. The disturbing function is expanded in the form of Legendre polynomials truncated up to the second-order term, and then is averaged over the periods of the spacecraft and the perturbing body. The efficiency of the double-averaged algorithm is verified with the full elliptic restricted three-body model. Comparisons with the previous study for a lunar satellite perturbed by Earth are presented to measure the effect of the perturbing body's inclination, and illustrate that the lunar obliquity with the value 6.68\degree is important for the mean motion of a lunar satellite. The application to the Mars-Sun system is shown to prove the validity of the double-averaged model. It can be seen that the algorithm is effective to predict the long-term behavior of a high-altitude Martian spacecraft perturbed by Sun. The double-averaged model presented in this paper is also applicable to other celestial systems.Comment: 28 pages, 6 figure

Volcanism and the Greenland ice cores: A new tephrochronological framework for the last glacial-interglacial transition (LGIT) based on cryptotephra deposits in three ice cores

Chemical profiles from Greenland ice cores show that the frequency of volcanism was higher during the last glacial-interglacial transition (LGIT) and early Holocene, (17–9 ka b2k) than in any other period during the last 110 kyr. This increased frequency has partly been linked to climate-driven melting of the Icelandic ice sheet during the last deglaciation, with regional isostatic changes thought to alter mantle viscosity and lead to more eruptions. Our study is the first to construct a comprehensive tephrochronological framework from Greenland ice cores over the LGIT to aid in the reconstruction of volcanic activity over this period. The framework is based on extensive high-resolution sampling of three Greenland ice cores between 17.4 and 11.6 ka b2k and comprises a total of 64 cryptotephra deposits from the NGRIP, GRIP and NEEM ice cores. We show that many of these tephras are preserved within the core without an associated chemical signature in the ice, which implies that reconstructions of volcanism based solely on glacio-chemical indicators might underestimate the number of events. Single glass shards from each deposit were geochemically characterised to trace the volcanic source and many of these deposits could be correlated between cores. We show that the 64 deposits represent tephra deposits from 42 separate volcanic events, and of these, 39 are from Iceland, two from the north Pacific region (Japan and USA) and one has an unknown source. Six deposits can be correlated to terrestrial and/or marine tephra deposits in the Northern Hemisphere and the remaining 36 are unreported in other archives. We did not locate tephra from the compositionally distinctive Laacher See eruption (∼13 ka b2k) in our records. Combining our new discoveries with the previously published tephra framework, raises the number of individual tephra horizons found in Greenland ice over this interval to 50. This significantly improves the regional tephrochronological framework, our knowledge of the eruptive history of Iceland during the LGIT and provides new tephra constraints over key LGIT climate events. Consequentially, this framework can guide sampling strategies of future tephra studies in the terrestrial and marine realms aiming to link these records to the Greenland ice cores to assess regional climate synchroneity

Making nonlinear manifold learning models interpretable: The manifold grand tour

Dimensionality reduction is required to produce visualisations of high dimensional data. In this framework, one of the most straightforward approaches to visualising high dimensional data is based on reducing complexity and applying linear projections while tumbling the projection axes in a defined sequence which generates a Grand Tour of the data. We propose using smooth nonlinear topographic maps of the data distribution to guide the Grand Tour, increasing the effectiveness of this approach by prioritising the linear views of the data that are most consistent with global data structure in these maps. A further consequence of this approach is to enable direct visualisation of the topographic map onto projective spaces that discern structure in the data. The experimental results on standard databases reported in this paper, using self-organising maps and generative topographic mapping, illustrate the practical value of the proposed approach. The main novelty of our proposal is the definition of a systematic way to guide the search of data views in the grand tour, selecting and prioritizing some of them, based on nonlinear manifold models

Use of early lactation milk recording data to predict the calving to conception interval in dairy herds

Economic success in dairy herds is heavily reliant on obtaining pregnancies at an early stage of lactation. Our objective in this study was to attempt to predict the likelihood of conception occurring by d 100 and 150 of lactation (days in milk, DIM) by Markov chain Monte Carlo analysis using test day milk recording data and reproductive records gathered retrospectively from 8,750 cows from 33 dairy herds located in the United Kingdom. Overall, 65% of cows recalved with 30, 46, and 65% of cows conceiving by 100 DIM, 150 DIM, and beyond 150 DIM, respectively. Overall conception rate (total cows pregnant/total number of inseminations) was 27.47%. Median and mean calving to conception intervals were 123 and 105 d, respectively. The probability of conception by both 100 DIM and 150 DIM was positively associated with the average daily milk weight produced during the fourth week of lactation (W4MK) and protein percentage for test day samples collected between 0 to 30 and 31 to 60 DIM. Butterfat percentage at 0 to 30 DIM was negatively associated with the probability of conception by 100 DIM but not at 150 DIM. High somatic cell count (SCC) at both 0 to 30 and 31 to 60 DIM was negatively associated with the probability of conception by 100 DIM, whereas high SCC at 31 to 60 DIM was associated with a reduced probability of conception by 150 DIM. Increasing parity was associated with a reduced odds of pregnancy. Posterior predictions of the likelihood of conception for cows categorized as having “good” (W4MK >30 kg and protein percentage at 0 to 30 and 31 to 60 DIM >3.2%) or “poor” (W4MK <25 kg and protein percentage at 0 to 30 and 31 to 60 DIM <3.0%) early lactation attributes with actual observed values indicated model fit was good. The predicted likelihood of a “good” cow conceiving by 100 and 150 DIM was 0.39 and 0.57, respectively (actual observed values 0.40 and 0.59). The corresponding values for a “poor” cow were 0.28 and 0.42 (actual observed values 0.26 and 0.37). Predictions of the future reproductive success of cows may be possible using a limited number of early lactation attributes

Primordialists and Constructionists: a typology of theories of religion

This article adopts categories from nationalism theory to classify theories of religion. Primordialist explanations are grounded in evolutionary psychology and emphasize the innate human demand for religion. Primordialists predict that religion does not decline in the modern era but will endure in perpetuity. Constructionist theories argue that religious demand is a human construct. Modernity initially energizes religion, but subsequently undermines it. Unpacking these ideal types is necessary in order to describe actual theorists of religion. Three distinctions within primordialism and constructionism are relevant. Namely those distinguishing: a) materialist from symbolist forms of constructionism; b) theories of origins from those pertaining to the reproduction of religion; and c) within reproduction, between theories of religious persistence and secularization. This typology helps to make sense of theories of religion by classifying them on the basis of their causal mechanisms, chronology and effects. In so doing, it opens up new sightlines for theory and research

Effects of dietary vegetable oil on atlantic salmon hepatocyte fatty acid desaturation and liver fatty acid compositions

Fatty acyl desaturase activities, involved in the conversion of the C18 EFA, 18:2n-6 and 18:3n-3, to the highly unsaturated fatty acids (HUFA) 20:4n-6, 20:5n-3 and 22:6n-3, are known to be under nutritional regulation. Specifically, the activity of the desaturation/elongation pathway is depressed when animals, including fish, are fed fish oils rich in n-3HUFA compared to animals fed vegetable oils rich in C18 EFA. The primary aims of the present study were a) to establish the relative importance of product inhibition (n-3HUFA) versus increased substrate concentration (C18 EFA) and, b) to determine whether 18:2n-6 and 18:3n-3 differ in their effects, on the hepatic fatty acyl desaturation/elongation pathway in Atlantic salmon (Salmo salar). Smolts were fed ten experimental diets containing blends of two vegetable oils, linseed (LO) and rapeseed oil (RO), and fish oil (FO) in a triangular mixture design for 50 weeks. Fish were sampled after 32 and 50 weeks, lipid and fatty acid composition of liver determined, fatty acyl desaturation/elongation activity estimated in hepatocytes using [1-14C]18:3n-3 as substrate, and the data subjected to regression analyses. Dietary 18:2n-6 was positively correlated, and n-3HUFA negatively correlated, with lipid content of liver. Dietary 20:5n-3 and 22:6n-3 were positively correlated with liver fatty acids with a slope greater than unity suggesting relative retention and deposition of these HUFA. In contrast, dietary 18:2n-6 and 18:3n-3 were positively correlated with liver fatty acids with a slope of less than unity suggesting metabolism via β-oxidation and/or desaturation/elongation. Consistent with this, fatty acyl desaturation/elongation in hepatocytes was significantly increased by feeding diets containing vegetable oils. Dietary 20:5n-3 and 22:6n-3 levels were negatively correlated with hepatocyte fatty acyl desaturation. At 32 weeks, 18:2n-6 but not 18:3n-3, was positively correlated with hepatocyte fatty acyl desaturation activity whereas the reverse was true at 50 weeks. The data indicate that both feedback inhibition through increased n-3HUFA and decreased C18 fatty acyl substrate concentration are probably important in determining hepatocyte fatty acyl desaturation activities, and that 18:2n-6 and 18:3n-3 may differ in their effects on this pathway