Influence of mental health literacy on help-seeking behaviour for mental health problems in the Swiss young adult community: a cohort and longitudinal case–control study

Poor knowledge about mental health disorders and their treatment likely contributes to the large treatment gap reported for mental health problems. Therefore, we studied the association between mental health literacy (MHL) and active help-seeking in a community sample. Participants were recruited from an add-on questionnaire study to the 'Bern Epidemiological At-Risk' (BEAR) study on 16-40-year-old community subjects of the Swiss canton Bern. At baseline, data of N = 1504, and at 3-year follow-up, data of N = 535 were available. Based on an unlabelled case vignette (on depression or schizophrenia), MHL was assessed by the questionnaire of Angermeyer and colleagues. Cross-sectional and longitudinal baseline predictors of help-seeking were analysed using path analyses. Additionally, sensitivity analyses of the prospective model were computed for sex, vignette, and baseline mental health problems/disorders. Cross-sectionally, help-seeking was associated with non-endorsement of biogenetic causal explanations, presence of mental health problems/disorders, help-seeking before baseline, poorer functioning, and lower health satisfaction. The prospective model was similar; yet, help-seeking at follow-up was associated with endorsements of the causal explanation 'biogenetics' and, additionally, 'childhood trauma' but not the presence of baseline mental health problems/disorders. Sensitivity analyses revealed a significant impact on sex, vignette, and mental health problems/disorders. For example, actual functional problems were predictive in males, while health satisfaction was predictive in females. Our findings indicate that future studies on drivers of help-seeking should assess very large community samples with case vignettes on different mental disorders to examine appropriate subgroups and their likely interaction to address group-specific factors in awareness campaigns

Fine structure of the chromospheric activity in Solar-type stars - The Halpha Line

A calibration of H-alpha as both a chromospheric diagnostic and an age indicator is presented, complementing the works previously done on this subject (Herbig 1985, Pasquini & Pallavicini 1991. The chromospheric diagnostic was built with a statistically significant sample, covering nine years of observations, and including 175 solar neighborhood stars. Regarding the age indicator, the presence of stars for which very accurate ages are determined, such as those belonging to clusters and kinematic groups, lends confidence to our analysis. We also investigate the possibility that stars of the same age might have gone through different tracks of chromospheric decay, identifying - within the same age range - effects of metallicity and mass. These parameters, however, as well as age, seem to be significant only for dwarf stars, losing their meaning when we analyze stars in the subgiant branch. This result suggests that, in these evolved stars, the emission mechanism cannot be magnetohydrodynamical in nature, in agreement with recent models (Fawzy et al. 2002c, and references therein). The Sun is found to be a typical star in its H-alpha chromospheric flux, for its age, mass and metallicity. As a byproduct of this work, we developed an automatic method to determine temperatures from the wings of H-alpha, which means the suppression of the error inherent to the visual procedure used in the literature.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Astronomy & Astrophysics. Nature of replacement: match astro-ph and ADS title (greek letter

Why Do Stars Form In Clusters? An Analytic Model for Stellar Correlation Functions

Recently, we have shown that if the ISM is governed by super-sonic turbulent flows, the excursion-set formalism can be used to calculate the statistics of self-gravitating objects over a wide range of scales. On the largest self-gravitating scales ('first crossing'), these correspond to GMCs, and on the smallest non-fragmenting self-gravitating scales ('last crossing'), to protostellar cores. Here, we extend this formalism to rigorously calculate the auto and cross-correlation functions of cores (and by extension, young stars) as a function of spatial separation and mass, in analogy to the cosmological calculation of halo clustering. We show that this generically predicts that star formation is very strongly clustered on small scales: stars form in clusters, themselves inside GMCs. Outside the binary-star regime, the projected correlation function declines as a weak power-law, until a characteristic scale which corresponds to the characteristic mass scale of GMCs. On much larger scales the clustering declines such that star formation is not strongly biased on galactic scales, relative to the actual dense gas distribution. The precise correlation function shape depends on properties of the turbulent spectrum, but its qualitative behavior is quite general. The predictions agree well with observations of young star and core autocorrelation functions over ~4 dex in radius. Clustered star formation is a generic consequence of supersonic turbulence if most of the power in the velocity field, hence the contribution to density fluctuations, comes from large scales. The distribution of self-gravitating masses near the sonic length is then imprinted by fluctuations on larger scales. We similarly show that the fraction of stars formed in 'isolated' modes should be small (\lesssim10%).Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures, accepted to MNRAS (minor revisions to match accepted version

Beliefs about the Minds of Others Influence How We Process Sensory Information

Attending where others gaze is one of the most fundamental mechanisms of social cognition. The present study is the first to examine the impact of the attribution of mind to others on gaze-guided attentional orienting and its ERP correlates. Using a paradigm in which attention was guided to a location by the gaze of a centrally presented face, we manipulated participants' beliefs about the gazer: gaze behavior was believed to result either from operations of a mind or from a machine. In Experiment 1, beliefs were manipulated by cue identity (human or robot), while in Experiment 2, cue identity (robot) remained identical across conditions and beliefs were manipulated solely via instruction, which was irrelevant to the task. ERP results and behavior showed that participants' attention was guided by gaze only when gaze was believed to be controlled by a human. Specifically, the P1 was more enhanced for validly, relative to invalidly, cued targets only when participants believed the gaze behavior was the result of a mind, rather than of a machine. This shows that sensory gain control can be influenced by higher-order (task-irrelevant) beliefs about the observed scene. We propose a new interdisciplinary model of social attention, which integrates ideas from cognitive and social neuroscience, as well as philosophy in order to provide a framework for understanding a crucial aspect of how humans' beliefs about the observed scene influence sensory processing

New Wolf-Rayet star and its circumstellar nebula in Aquila

We report the discovery of a new Wolf-Rayet star in Aquila via detection of its circumstellar nebula (reminiscent of ring nebulae associated with late WN stars) using the Spitzer Space Telescope archival data. Our spectroscopic follow-up of the central point source associated with the nebula showed that it is a WN7h star (we named it WR121b). We analyzed the spectrum of WR121b by using the Potsdam Wolf-Rayet (PoWR) model atmospheres, obtaining a stellar temperature of ~ 50 kK. The stellar wind composition is dominated by helium with ~ 20 per cent of hydrogen. The stellar spectrum is highly reddened (E_{B-V} = 2.85 mag). Adopting an absolute magnitude of M_v = -5.7, the star has a luminosity of log L/Lsun = 5.75 and a mass-loss rate of 10^{-4.7} Msun/yr, and resides in a distance of 6.3 kpc. We searched for a possible parent cluster of WR121b and found that this star is located at ~ 1 degree from the young star cluster embedded in the giant HII region W43 (containing a WN7+a/OB? star -- WR121a). We also discovered a bow shock around the O9.5III star ALS9956, located at ~ 0.5 degree from the cluster. We discuss the possibility that WR121b and ALS9956 are runaway stars ejected from the cluster in W43.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures, accepted to MNRA

Transdiagnostic commonalities and differences in resting state functional connectivity of the default mode network in schizophrenia and major depression

Schizophrenia and depression are prevalent psychiatric disorders, but their underlying neural bases remains poorly understood. Neuroimaging evidence has pointed towards the relevance of functional connectivity aberrations in defaultmode network (DMN) hubs, dorso-medial prefrontal cortex and precuneus, in both disorders, but commonalities and differences in resting state functional connectivity of those two regions across disorders has not been formally assessed. Here, we took a transdiagnostic approach to investigate resting state functional connectivity of those two regions in 75 patients with schizophrenia and 82 controls from 4 scanning sites and 102 patients with depression and 106 controls from 3 sites. Our results demonstrate common dysconnectivity patterns as indexed by a significant reduction of functional connectivity between precuneus and bilateral superior parietal lobe in schizophrenia and depression. Furthermore, our findings highlight diagnosis-specific connectivity reductions of the parietal operculum in schizophrenia relative to depression. In light of evidence that points towards the importance of the DMN for social cognitive abilities and well documented impairments of social interaction in both patient groups, it is conceivable that the observed transdiagnostic connectivity alterations may contribute to interpersonal difficulties, but this could not be assessed directly in our study as measures of social behavior were not available. Given the operculum's role in somatosensory integration, diagnosis-specific connectivity reductions may indicate a pathophysiological mechanism for basic self-disturbances that is characteristic of schizophrenia, but not depression. (C) 2015 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc

The Mass and Structure of the Pleiades Star Cluster from 2MASS

We present the results of a large scale search for new members of the Pleiades star cluster using 2MASS near-infrared photometry and proper motions derived from POSS plates digitized by the USNO PMM program. The search extends to a 10 degree radius around the cluster, well beyond the presumed tidal radius, to a limiting magnitude of R ~ 20, corresponding to ~ 0.07 M_sun at the distance and age of the Pleiades. Multi-object spectroscopy for 528 candidates verifies that the search was extremely effective at detecting cluster stars in the 1 - 0.1 M_sun mass range using the distribution of H_alpha emission strengths as an estimate of sample contamination by field stars. When combined with previously identified, higher mass stars, this search provides a sensitive measurement of the stellar mass function and dynamical structure of the Pleiades. The degree of tidal elongation of the halo agrees well with current N body simulation results. Tidal truncation affects masses below ~ 1 M_sun. The cluster contains a total mass ~ 800 M_sun. Evidence for a flatter mass function in the core than in the halo indicates the depletion of stars in the core with mass less than ~ 0.5 M_sun, relative to stars with mass \~1 - 0.5 M_sun, and implies a preference for very low mass objects to populate the halo or escape. The overall mass function is best fitted with a lognormal form that becomes flat at ~ 0.1 M_sun. Whether sufficient dynamical evaporation has occurred to detectably flatten the initial mass function, via preferential escape of very low mass stars and brown dwarfs, is undetermined, pending better membership information for stars at large radial distances.Comment: 19 pages, 14 figures, 2 tables, accepted by AJ, to appear April 200

A RAVE investigation on Galactic open clusters I. Radial velocities and metallicities

Context. Galactic open clusters (OCs) mainly belong to the young stellar population in the Milky Way disk, but are there groups and complexes of OCs that possibly define an additional level in hierarchical star formation? Current compilations are too incomplete to address this question, especially regarding radial velocities (RVs) and metallicities ([M/H]). Aims. Here we provide and discuss newly obtained RV and [M/H] data, which will enable us to reinvestigate potential groupings of open clusters and associations. Methods. We extracted additional RVs and [M/H] from the RAdial Velocity Experiment (RAVE) via a cross-match with the Catalogue of Stars in Open Cluster Areas (CSOCA). For the identified OCs in RAVE we derived (RV) over bar and ([M/H]) over bar from a cleaned working sample and compared the results with previous findings. Results. Although our RAVE sample does not show the same accuracy as the entire survey, we were able to derive reliable (RV) over bar for 110 Galactic open clusters. For 37 OCs we publish (RV) over bar for the first time. Moreover, we determined ([M/H]) over bar for 81 open clusters, extending the number of OCs with ([M/H]) over bar by 69

Epsilon Indi Ba, Bb: a detailed study of the nearest known brown dwarfs

The discovery of epsilon Indi Ba, Bb, a binary brown dwarf system very close to the Sun, makes possible a concerted campaign to characterise the physical parameters of two T dwarfs. Recent observations suggest substellar atmospheric and evolutionary models may be inconsistent with observations, but there have been few conclusive tests to date. We therefore aim to characterise these benchmark brown dwarfs to place constraints on such models. We have obtained high angular resolution optical, near-infrared, and thermal-infrared imaging and medium-resolution (up to R~5000) spectroscopy of epsilon Indi Ba, Bb with the ESO VLT and present VRIzJHKL'M' broad-band photometry and 0.63--5.1 micron spectroscopy of the individual components. Furthermore, we use deep AO-imaging to place upper limits on the (model-dependent) mass of any further system members. We derive luminosities of log L/L_sun = -4.699+/-0.017 and -5.232+/-0.020 for epsilon Indi Ba, Bb, respectively, and using the dynamical system mass and COND03 evolutionary models predict a system age of 3.7--4.3 Gyr, in excess of previous estimates and recent predictions from observations of these brown dwarfs. Moreover, the effective temperatures of 1352--1385 K and 976--1011 K predicted from the COND03 evolutionary models, for epsilon Indi Ba and Bb respectively, are in disagreement with those derived from the comparison of our data with the BT-Settl atmospheric models where we find effective temperatures of 1300--1340 K and 880--940 K, for epsilon Indi Ba and Bb respectively, with surface gravities of log g=5.25 and 5.50. Finally, we show that spectroscopically determined effective temperatures and surface gravities for ultra-cool dwarfs can lead to underestimated masses even where precise luminosity constraints are available.Comment: 27 pages, 30 figures, 9 tables, accepted for publication in Astronomy and Astrophysic

Examining ecological validity in social interaction: problems of visual fidelity, gaze, and social potential

Social interaction is an essential part of the human experience, and much work has been done to study it. However, several common approaches to examining social interactions in psychological research may inadvertently either unnaturally constrain the observed behaviour by causing it to deviate from naturalistic performance, or introduce unwanted sources of variance. In particular, these sources are the differences between naturalistic and experimental behaviour that occur from changes in visual fidelity (quality of the observed stimuli), gaze (whether it is controlled for in the stimuli), and social potential (potential for the stimuli to provide actual interaction). We expand on these possible sources of extraneous variance and why they may be important. We review the ways in which experimenters have developed novel designs to remove these sources of extraneous variance. New experimental designs using a ‘two-person’ approach are argued to be one of the most effective ways to develop more ecologically valid measures of social interaction, and we suggest that future work on social interaction should use these designs wherever possible