The CogBIAS longitudinal study protocol: cognitive and genetic factors influencing psychological functioning in adolescence.

BACKGROUND: Optimal psychological development is dependent upon a complex interplay between individual and situational factors. Investigating the development of these factors in adolescence will help to improve understanding of emotional vulnerability and resilience. The CogBIAS longitudinal study (CogBIAS-L-S) aims to combine cognitive and genetic approaches to investigate risk and protective factors associated with the development of mood and impulsivity-related outcomes in an adolescent sample. METHODS: CogBIAS-L-S is a three-wave longitudinal study of typically developing adolescents conducted over 4 years, with data collection at age 12, 14 and 16. At each wave participants will undergo multiple assessments including a range of selective cognitive processing tasks (e.g. attention bias, interpretation bias, memory bias) and psychological self-report measures (e.g. anxiety, depression, resilience). Saliva samples will also be collected at the baseline assessment for genetic analyses. Multilevel statistical analyses will be performed to investigate the developmental trajectory of cognitive biases on psychological functioning, as well as the influence of genetic moderation on these relationships. DISCUSSION: CogBIAS-L-S represents the first longitudinal study to assess multiple cognitive biases across adolescent development and the largest study of its kind to collect genetic data. It therefore provides a unique opportunity to understand how genes and the environment influence the development and maintenance of cognitive biases and provide insight into risk and protective factors that may be key targets for intervention.This work was supported by the European Research Council (ERC) under the European Union’s Seventh Framework Programme (FP7/2007–2013)/ERC grant agreement no: [324176]

Periodic and quasiperiodic ELF/VLF emissions observed by an array of Antarctic stations

This paper describes amplitude modulations in the frequency range 0–500 mHz of ELF/VLF (0.5–4.0 kHz) radio wave power recorded throughout 1993 and 1995 at Halley and South Pole stations, Antarctica, which lie in approximately the same magnetic meridian and at geomagnetic latitudes (Λ) of 61° and 74°, respectively. Data from the intermediate automatic geophysical observatories P2 and P3 (Λ = 70° and 72°, respectively) were also analyzed where available. In agreement with earlier work, spectrograms have revealed the frequent day-time (typically 0700-1700 MLT) occurrence of modulations lying almost entirely within the two period ranges: 10–60 s and 4–6 s. The first range corresponds to quasiperiodic (QP) emissions, while the latter is typical of the two-hop whistler mode echo period in the plasmatrough, and the events are termed periodic emissions (PEs). QP occurrence rates higher than some earlier studies (335 station-days out of 667 examined) may be attributable to the sensitive spectral analysis technique. The type I QPs (i.e., those correlated with geomagnetic pulsations observed at South Pole and/or P2/P3) were consistent with an upstream wave driver, controlled by the IMF cone angle. Type II QPs (uncorrelated with magnetic pulsations) were always accompanied by PEs, suggesting a link between the two, reinforced by a frequently observed steady increase in period in both phenomena, especially during the morning, possibly associated with increasing densities due to upward flow of photoionized plasma from the ionosphere after dawn. Here we propose that type II QPs are driven by field line resonant ULF waves which in turn are generated by field-aligned currents arising from PE induced electron precipitation