More than just child’s play?: An experimental investigation of the impact of an appearance-focused internet game on body image and career aspirations of young girls

© 2017, The Author(s). In recent years, elements of the modern environment (such as television, Internet, toys and clothes) have been criticized for having an increasingly sexualized or appearance focus, which has been suggested to be detrimental to girls’ development. The current study examined the impact of an appearance-focused Internet game on young girls’ body image and career cognitions and aspirations. Eighty British girls aged 8–9 years were randomly assigned to play an appearance-focused or a non-appearance focused game for 10 minutes. Girls in the appearance-focused game condition displayed greater body dissatisfaction compared to the control condition. Type of game did not impact girls’ perceived capacity to do various jobs. However, girls who played the appearance-focused game reported a greater preference for feminine careers compared to the control group. This provides preliminary evidence that appearance-focused Internet games may be detrimental to young girls’ body image and aspirations. Internet games should be included in our consideration of influential messages for young girls

A Randomized Controlled Study of Writing Interventions on College Women’s Positive Body Image

College women are at risk for body dissatisfaction, but enhancing the positive aspects of body image can serve as a protective factor. Self-compassion has been associated with body appreciation and may protect against negative body image. This study tested the effect of a self-compassion writing intervention on positive body image and affect and explored self-compassion as a mediator between writing group and positive body image. We used a randomized controlled design to compare self-compassion writing (n = 51), traditional expressive writing (n = 50), and control writing (n = 51) interventions in college women. Participants were mostly European-American (82%) with a mean age of 19. Participants wrote online for 20 min once a week for three consecutive weeks. Results indicated that negative and positive affect decreased for all three groups. There were no differences between groups on positive body image or affect; however, the self-compassion writing group reported greater increases in self-compassion (F = 3.48, p \u3c 0.05, ηp2 = 0.05). Moreover, mediator models revealed that the effect of group (self-compassion vs. traditional/control writing) on body appreciation and body image quality of life was mediated by self-compassion. Overall, the findings indicate that self-compassion writing increased self-compassion, and greater increases in self-compassion were associated with greater increases in positive body image and positive affect

Characterisation of microbial communities colonising the hyphal surfaces of arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi.

Arbuscular mycorrhizal fungi (AMF) are symbiotic soil fungi that are intimately associated with the roots of the majority of land plants. They colonise the interior of the roots and the hyphae extend into the soil. It is well known that bacterial colonisation of the rhizosphere can be crucial for many pathogenic as well as symbiotic plant-microbe interactions. However, although bacteria colonising the extraradical AMF hyphae (the hyphosphere) might be equally important for AMF symbiosis, little is known regarding which bacterial species would colonise AMF hyphae. In this study, we investigated which bacterial communities might be associated with AMF hyphae. As bacterial-hyphal attachment is extremely difficult to study in situ, we designed a system to grow AMF hyphae of Glomus intraradices and Glomus proliferum and studied which bacteria separated from an agricultural soil specifically attach to the hyphae. Characterisation of attached and non-attached bacterial communities was performed using terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism and clone library sequencing of 16S ribosomal RNA (rRNA) gene fragments. For all experiments, the composition of hyphal attached bacterial communities was different from the non-attached communities, and was also different from bacterial communities that had attached to glass wool (a non-living substratum). Analysis of amplified 16S rRNA genes indicated that in particular bacteria from the family of Oxalobacteraceae were highly abundant on AMF hyphae, suggesting that they may have developed specific interactions with the fungi