Moody Blues:Affect interpretation of infant facial expressions and negative affect in mothers of preterm and term infants

Preterm birth places infants at increased risk for adverse developmental outcomes, with selfand affect regulation problems among the most important impairments. However, few studies have empirically examined maternal interpretation of infant affect in mothers of pre- and term infants. The current study examines how negative affect of mothers of preterm and term infants is associated with their interpretation of infant facial expressions. One hundred and sixty-eight mothers with their infants (64 term and 104 preterm) participated. Seven days after birth, mothers completed the UWIST Mood Adjective Checklist (UMACL; Matthews, Jones, & Chamberlain, 1990) to assess maternal negative affect. During a home visit, six months after birth, mothers additionally completed a task developed to measure infant affect interpretation (Interpreting Facial Expressions of Emotions through Looking at Pictures task, IFEEL pictures task; Emde, Osofsky, & Butterfield, 1993). Mothers of preterm infants reported more negative affect than mothers of term infants. However, the relationship between infant birth status (i.e., term vs. preterm) and maternal interpretation of infant facial expressions was moderated by the mother's own negative affectivity. Surprisingly, particularly mothers of term infants who also reported high levels of negative affect were found to interpret infant affect significantly more negatively. Prematurity itself does not seem to be a dominant factor in determining maternal infant affect interpretation, though maternal psychological negative mood does. Both theoretical and practical implications of the results are discussed

Limitations of the heavy-baryon expansion as revealed by a pion-mass dispersion relation

The chiral expansion of nucleon properties such as mass, magnetic moment, and magnetic polarizability are investigated in the framework of chiral perturbation theory, with and without the heavy-baryon expansion. The analysis makes use of a pion-mass dispersion relation, which is shown to hold in both frameworks. The dispersion relation allows an ultraviolet cutoff to be implemented without compromising the symmetries. After renormalization, the leading-order heavy-baryon loops demonstrate a stronger dependence on the cutoff scale, which results in weakened convergence of the expansion. This conclusion is tested against the recent results of lattice quantum chromodynamics simulations for nucleon mass and isovector magnetic moment. In the case of the polarizability, the situation is even more dramatic as the heavy-baryon expansion is unable to reproduce large soft contributions to this quantity. Clearly, the heavy-baryon expansion is not suitable for every quantity.Comment: Accepted for publication in EPJ C. Made changes based on referee comments: clarifying sentences to conclusion 1. of Section IV, beginning of Section V, and new footnote in Section VI, page 8. Added more detailed explanation in paragraph 4 of Section III. Added citations of Phys.Rev. D60, 034014, and Phys.Lett. B716, 33

Beam Test Results of the BTeV Silicon Pixel Detector

The results of the BTeV silicon pixel detector beam test carried out at Fermilab in 1999-2000 are reported. The pixel detector spatial resolution has been studied as a function of track inclination, sensor bias, and readout threshold.Comment: 8 pages of text, 8 figures, Proceedings paper of Pixel 2000: International Workshop on Semiconductor Pixel Detectors for Particles and X-Rays, Genova, June 5-8, 200

Performance of prototype BTeV silicon pixel detectors in a high energy pion beam

The silicon pixel vertex detector is a key element of the BTeV spectrometer. Sensors bump-bonded to prototype front-end devices were tested in a high energy pion beam at Fermilab. The spatial resolution and occupancies as a function of the pion incident angle were measured for various sensor-readout combinations. The data are compared with predictions from our Monte Carlo simulation and very good agreement is found.Comment: 24 pages, 20 figure

Beam Test of BTeV Pixel Detectors

The silicon pixel vertex detector is one of the key elements of the BTeV spectrometer. Detector prototypes were tested in a beam at Fermilab. We report here on the measured spatial resolution as a function of the incident angles for different sensor-readout electronics combinations. We compare the results with predictions from our Monte Carlo simulation.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figures, Invited talk given by J.C. Wang at "Vertex 2000, 9th International Workshop on Vertex Detectors", Michigan, Sept 10-15, 2000. To be published in NIM

Contributions from SUSY-FCNC couplings to the interpretation of the HyperCP events for the decay \Sigma^+ \to p \mu^+ \mu^-

The observation of three events for the decay $\Sigma^+ \to p \mu^+ \mu^-$ with a dimuon invariant mass of $214.3\pm0.5$MeV by the HyperCP collaboration imply that a new particle X may be needed to explain the observed dimuon invariant mass distribution. We show that there are regions in the SUSY-FCNC parameter space where the $A^0_1$ in the NMSSM can be used to explain the HyperCP events without contradicting all the existing constraints from the measurements of the kaon decays, and the constraints from the $K^0-\bar{K}^0$ mixing are automatically satisfied once the constraints from kaon decays are satisfied.Comment: 18 pages, 7 figure

The discontinuous nature of chromospheric activity evolution

Chromospheric activity has been thought to decay smoothly with time and, hence, to be a viable age indicator. Measurements in solar type stars in open clusters seem to point to a different conclusion: chromospheric activity undergoes a fast transition from Hyades level to that of the Sun after about 1 Gyr of main--sequence lifetime and any decaying trend before or after this transition must be much less significant than the short term variations.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figure, to be published in Astrophysics and Space Scienc

Estimating the parameters of the Sgr A* black hole

The measurement of relativistic effects around the galactic center may allow in the near future to strongly constrain the parameters of the supermassive black hole likely present at the galactic center (Sgr A*). As a by-product of these measurements it would be possible to severely constrain, in addition, also the parameters of the mass-density distributions of both the innermost star cluster and the dark matter clump around the galactic center.Comment: Accepted for publication on General Relativity and Gravitation, 2010. 11 Pages, 1 Figur

Jockeying for position: the construction of masculine identities

In this paper we examine the construction of masculine identities within a real-life social situation. Using data from an extensive series of interviews with small groups of sixth-form (17-18-year-old) students attending a UK-based, single-sex independent school, the analysis looks at the action orientation of different constructions of identity. More specifically, it focuses upon how the identity talk of one particular group of students were oriented towards managing their subordinate status within the school. In a number of instances the identity of the `new man' was adopted as a strategy of resistance. However, it was found that the more common strategy involved buying back into values embodied within a more traditional definition of masculinity