God-Watchfulness, Self-Control, and Patience in Adolescence

Recent research in the psychology of religion has begun to examine the function of religion in promoting pro-social behavior (Graham & Haidt, 2010). One specific religious concept that has been linked to self-control is beliefs about God’s watchfulness of human behavior (Lauren, Kay & Fitzsimmons, 2012). Amongst adolescent populations, beliefs about God’s watchfulness have been shown to increase self-control by increasing adolescent self-awareness (Carter, McCullough, & Carver, 2012). Thus, I hypothesized that God-watchfulness and religion are related to self-control, as well as examine potential moderators such as self-efficacy, age, and general belief about God’s existence within an adolescent population. Additionally, the construct of patience, which is related to self-control (Schnitker, 2012), may also be related to God-watchfulness beliefs and religiousness. I hypothesized that the relationship between God-watchfulness beliefs and patience be partially mediated by an adolescent’s use of reappraisal emotional strategies. In order to avoid possible negative affect that increased self-awareness may bring (Silvia & Duval, 2001), I hypothesized that a positive spirituality may be required for an adolescent to avoid these possibly negative effects. These hypotheses were analyzed using correlational analyses, hierarchical regressions to test moderations, and non-parametric bootstrapping analyses to test for possible mediations. The results of the analyses did not support the hypotheses in nearly all cases. Possible reasons for the lack of findings are discussed, including measurement issues and methodological issues. Broadly, it may not be possible to detect the effects of God-watchfulness beliefs outside of controlled laboratory settings

Polynomial Equivalence Problems: Algorithmic and Theoretical Aspects

Abstract. The Isomorphism of Polynomials (IP) [28], which is the main concern of this paper, originally corresponds to the problem of recovering the secret key of a C ∗ scheme [26]. Besides, the security of various other schemes (signature, authentication [28], traitor tracing [5],...) also depends on the practical hardness of IP. Due to its numerous applications, the Isomorphism of Polynomials is thus one of the most fundamental problems in multivariate cryptography. In this paper, we address two complementary aspects of IP, namely its theoretical and practical difficulty. We present an upper bound on the theoretical complexity of “IP-like ” problems, i.e. a problem consisting in recovering a particular transformation between two sets of multivariate polynomials. We prove that these problems are not NP-Hard (provided that the polynomial hierarchy does not collapse). Concerning the practical aspect, we present a new algorithm for solving IP. In a nutshell, the idea is to generate a suitable algebraic system of equations whose zeroes correspond to a solution of IP. From a practical point of view, we employed a fast Gröbner basis algorithm, namely F5 [17], for solving this system. This approach is efficient in practice and obliges to modify the current security criteria for IP. We have indeed broken several challenges proposed in literature [28, 29,5]. For instance, we solved a challenge proposed by O. Billet and H. Gilbert at Asiacrypt’03 [5] in less than one second

A mathematical model of exposure of non-target Lepidoptera to Bt-maize pollen expressing Cry1Ab within Europe

Genetically modified (GM) maize MON810 expresses a Cry1Ab insecticidal protein, derived from Bacillus thuringiensis (Bt), toxic to lepidopteran target pests such as Ostrinia nubilalis. An environmental risk to non-target Lepidoptera from this GM crop is exposure to harmful amounts of Bt-containing pollen deposited on host plants in or near MON810 fields. An 11-parameter mathematical model analysed exposure of larvae of three non-target species: the butterflies Inachis io (L.), Vanessa atalanta (L.) and moth Plutella xylostella (L.), in 11 representative maize cultivation regions in four European countries. A mortality–dose relationship was integrated with a dose–distance relationship to estimate mortality both within the maize MON810 crop and within the field margin at varying distances from the crop edge. Mortality estimates were adjusted to allow for physical effects; the lack of temporal coincidence between the susceptible larval stage concerned and the period over which maize MON810 pollen is shed; and seven further parameters concerned with maize agronomy and host-plant ecology. Sublethal effects were estimated and allowance made for aggregated pollen deposition. Estimated environmental impact was low: in all regions, the calculated mortality rate for worst-case scenarios was less than one individual in every 1572 for the butterflies and one in 392 for the moth