From endorsement of ambivalent sexism to psychological IPV victimization: The role of attitudes supportive of IPV, legitimating myths of IPV, and acceptance of psychological aggression.

Research on intimate partner violence (IPV) has recognized psychological abuse as a precursor of physical and sexual violence in intimate relationships. However, risk factors in predicting women’s psychological abuse victimization in such a context are still unclear. The goal of the present work was to investigate the role of ambivalent sexism on psychological IPV victimization, by taking into account in the same study the effect of three additional social-psychological factors: women’s i) attitudes supportive of IPV, ii) endorsement of legitimating myths of IPV, and iii) acceptance of psychological aggression in intimate relationships. A total of 408 Italian young women (Mage = 23.87; SD = 2.39) involved in non-marital heterosexual romantic relationships completed measures aimed at assessing i) hostile and benevolent sexism, ii) attitudes supportive of IPV, iii) legitimating myths of IPV, iv) prevalence of psychological abuse experienced within the last 12 months, and performed a task developed ad hoc to measure v) acceptance of psychological aggression in intimate relationships. Results showed that the effect of ambivalent sexism on participants’ prevalence of psychological abuse was mediated by the endorsement of attitudes supportive of IPV and legitimating myths of IPV, as well as by acceptance of psychological aggression. Findings are discussed based on literature about ambivalent sexism, and attitudes and beliefs about IP

Mode Confinement in Photonic Quasi-Crystal Point-Defect Cavities for Particle Accelerators

In this Letter, we present a study of the confinement properties of point-defect resonators in finite-size photonic-bandgap structures composed of aperiodic arrangements of dielectric rods, with special emphasis on their use for the design of cavities for particle accelerators. Specifically, for representative geometries, we study the properties of the fundamental mode (as a function of the filling fraction, structure size, and losses) via 2-D and 3-D full-wave numerical simulations, as well as microwave measurements at room temperature. Results indicate that, for reduced-size structures, aperiodic geometries exhibit superior confinement properties by comparison with periodic ones.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Applied Physics Letter

Charge density waves enhance the electronic noise of manganites

The transport and noise properties of Pr_{0.7}Ca_{0.3}MnO_{3} epitaxial thin films in the temperature range from room temperature to 160 K are reported. It is shown that both the broadband 1/f noise properties and the dependence of resistance on electric field are consistent with the idea of a collective electrical transport, as in the classical model of sliding charge density waves. On the other hand, the observations cannot be reconciled with standard models of charge ordering and charge melting. Methodologically, it is proposed to consider noise-spectra analysis as a unique tool for the identification of the transport mechanism in such highly correlated systems. On the basis of the results, the electrical transport is envisaged as one of the most effective ways to understand the nature of the insulating, charge-modulated ground states in manganites.Comment: 6 two-column pages, 5 figure

A priori convergence estimates for a rough Poisson-Dirichlet problem with natural vertical boundary conditions

Stents are medical devices designed to modify blood flow in aneurysm sacs, in order to prevent their rupture. Some of them can be considered as a locally periodic rough boundary. In order to approximate blood flow in arteries and vessels of the cardio-vascular system containing stents, we use multi-scale techniques to construct boundary layers and wall laws. Simplifying the flow we turn to consider a 2-dimensional Poisson problem that conserves essential features related to the rough boundary. Then, we investigate convergence of boundary layer approximations and the corresponding wall laws in the case of Neumann type boundary conditions at the inlet and outlet parts of the domain. The difficulty comes from the fact that correctors, for the boundary layers near the rough surface, may introduce error terms on the other portions of the boundary. In order to correct these spurious oscillations, we introduce a vertical boundary layer. Trough a careful study of its behavior, we prove rigorously decay estimates. We then construct complete boundary layers that respect the macroscopic boundary conditions. We also derive error estimates in terms of the roughness size epsilon either for the full boundary layer approximation and for the corresponding averaged wall law.Comment: Dedicated to Professor Giovanni Paolo Galdi 60' Birthda

Microwave apparatus for gravitational waves observation

In this report the theoretical and experimental activities for the development of superconducting microwave cavities for the detection of gravitational waves are presented.Comment: 42 pages, 28 figure

Global existence of solutions to 2-D Navier-Stokes flow with non-decaying initial data in half-plane

We investigate the Navier-Stokes initial boundary value problem in the half-plane $R^2_+$ with initial data $u_0 \in L^\infty(R^2_+)\cap J_0^2(R^2_+)$ or with non decaying initial data $u_0\in L^\infty(R^2_+) \cap J_0^p(R^2_+), p > 2$ . We introduce a technique that allows to solve the two-dimesional problem, further, but not least, it can be also employed to obtain weak solutions, as regards the non decaying initial data, to the three-dimensional Navier-Stokes IBVP. This last result is the first of its kind

Homogenization of oxygen transport in biological tissues

In this paper, we extend previous work on the mathematical modeling of oxygen transport in biological tissues (Matzavinos et al., 2009). Specifically, we include in the modeling process the arterial and venous microstructure within the tissue by means of homogenization techniques. We focus on the two-layer tissue architecture investigated in (Matzavinos et al., 2009) in the context of abdominal tissue flaps that are commonly used for reconstructive surgery. We apply two-scale convergence methods and unfolding operator techniques to homogenize the developed microscopic model, which involves different unit-cell geometries in the two distinct tissue layers (skin layer and fat tissue) to account for different arterial branching patterns

On the Clark-alpha model of turbulence: global regularity and long--time dynamics

In this paper we study a well-known three--dimensional turbulence model, the filtered Clark model, or Clark-alpha model. This is Large Eddy Simulation (LES) tensor-diffusivity model of turbulent flows with an additional spatial filter of width alpha ($\alpha$). We show the global well-posedness of this model with constant Navier-Stokes (eddy) viscosity. Moreover, we establish the existence of a finite dimensional global attractor for this dissipative evolution system, and we provide an anaytical estimate for its fractal and Hausdorff dimensions. Our estimate is proportional to $(L/l_d)^3$, where $L$ is the integral spatial scale and $l_d$ is the viscous dissipation length scale. This explicit bound is consistent with the physical estimate for the number of degrees of freedom based on heuristic arguments. Using semi-rigorous physical arguments we show that the inertial range of the energy spectrum for the Clark-$\aa$ model has the usual $k^{-5/3}$ Kolmogorov power law for wave numbers $k\aa \ll 1$ and $k^{-3}$ decay power law for $k\aa \gg 1.$ This is evidence that the Clark$-\alpha$ model parameterizes efficiently the large wave numbers within the inertial range, $k\aa \gg 1$, so that they contain much less translational kinetic energy than their counterparts in the Navier-Stokes equations.Comment: 11 pages, no figures, submitted to J of Turbulenc