Metallurgy of armour exhibited at the Palace Armoury, Valletta, Malta

The metallurgy of ten armour pieces from the Palace Armoury Collection in Malta was examined. Results showed that out of ten artefacts examined, six were produced in low carbon steel, one from a high carbon steel and three were made from wrought iron. One of the wrought iron armour pieces was fabricated from a phosphoric iron, an unusual material for these artefacts. All the steel artefacts exhibited a ferrite-pearlite microstructure. In their manufacture, no attempts had been made at producing martensite by full or slack quenching. All metal fragments contained slag inclusions. The elongated nature of the latter suggested that these artefacts were forged into shape.peer-reviewe

The neural correlates of regulating another person's emotions: an exploratory fMRI study

Studies investigating the neurophysiological basis of intrapersonal emotion regulation (control of one's own emotional experience) report that the frontal cortex exerts a modulatory effect on limbic structures such as the amygdala and insula. However, no imaging study to date has examined the neurophysiological processes involved in interpersonal emotion regulation, where the goal is explicitly to regulate another person's emotion. Twenty healthy participants (10 males) underwent fMRI while regulating their own or another person's emotions. Intrapersonal and interpersonal emotion regulation tasks recruited an overlapping network of brain regions including bilateral lateral frontal cortex, pre-supplementary motor area, and left temporo-parietal junction. Activations unique to the interpersonal condition suggest that both affective (emotional simulation) and cognitive (mentalizing) aspects of empathy may be involved in the process of interpersonal emotion regulation. These findings provide an initial insight into the neural correlates of regulating another person's emotions and may be relevant to understanding mental health issues that involve problems with social interaction

Validation of the exercise self-efficacy scale (ESE-S) for increased adherence to physical activity

Background: Various self-efficacy instruments have been used to predict exercise behavior. Many of these scales have been shown tobe valid and reliable measures for the strength dimension of self-efficacy, but have overlooked the construct’s dimensions of magnitude and generality. This study established the Exercise Self-Efficacy Scale (ESE-S), a measure of the strength, generality, and magnitude dimensions of exercise self-efficacy, as a valid tool towards the promotion and adherence of routine physical activity.Methods: Using a non-experimental, cross-sectional design, the ESE-S was administered to individuals aged 18 and older (n=270) whowere conveniently recruited from a large city located in Ohio. Participants were employees of a large, national company and consentedto participate in an employee wellness campaign over a two-day period. Participants completed the 24-item ESE-S onetime and demographic data were not collected. Confirmatory factor analysis was used to examine the 4-factor hypothesized structure of the ESE-S.Results: The confirmatory analysis showed that the data did not conform to the factorial structure as originally hypothesized, but didretain a 4-four factor solution. Final factors identified from the confirmatory analysis were internal strength, external strength, generality, and magnitude.Conclusions: This study confirmed a 4-factor, 21-item factorial structure. Although the structure differed from that hypothesized, theresults showed that the tool was a valid and reliable instrument to measure the dimensions of exercise self-efficacy commonly overlooked within the literature. Public health professionals and researchers can use the instrument to measure exercise self-efficacy and develop self-efficacy based exercise promotion programs

Staff perceptions of the success of an alternative curriculum: Skill Force

This paper describes staff perceptions of the implementation of an alternative curriculum, skill force, for disaffected pupils in the UK. The perceptions of skill force and school staff were compared based on data from questionnaires completed by 62 skill force and 84 school staff, and interviews with representative samples of each. While the data indicated that the programme had been successful in re-engaging the students with education, the improvement was more marked in relation to the skill force programme than the wider school context.<br/

Chiral spin chain interfaces as event horizons

The interface between different quantum phases of matter can give rise to novel physics, such as exotic topological phases or non-unitary conformal field theories. Here we investigate the interface between two spin chains in different chiral phases. Surprisingly, the mean-field theory description of this interacting composite system is given in terms of Dirac fermions in a curved space-time geometry. In particular, the boundary between the two phases represents a black hole horizon. We demonstrate that this representation is faithful both analytically, by employing bosonisation to obtain a Luttinger liquid model, and numerically, by employing Matrix Product State methods. A striking prediction from the black hole equivalence emerges when a quench, at one side of the interface between two opposite chiralities, causes the other side to thermalise with the Hawking temperature for a wide range of parameters and initial conditions.Comment: 14 pages, 6 figure

Biological control of Pulvinaria urbicola (Cockerell) (Homoptera: Coccidae) in a Pisonia grandis forest on North East Herald Cay in the coral sea

During 1993-2000 the soft scale insect Pulvinaria urbicola (Cockerell) caused complete destruction of a 16 ha Pisonia grandis R.Br. forest on Coringa South West Islet in the Coringa-Herald National Nature Reserve 400 km off the north-east coast of Queensland, Australia. In March and August 2001, scale surveys on a nearby cay, North East Herald, showed a worrying increase in numbers. Releases of the natural enemies Cryptolaemus montrouzieri (Mulsant) and three parasitioids - Coccophagus ceroplastae (Howard), Euryischomyia flavithorax (Girault) and Metaphycus luteolus (Timberlake) were made in August 2001. C. montrouzieri quickly increased to very high numbers on the pulvinaria scale and the percentage of infested leaves dropped from 25% in August to 8% in December 2001 to 0.01% of leaves by August 2003. All three parasitoids established and parasitism was evident on 30% of infested leaves after nine months. By 2004, C. ceroplastae was the dominant parasitoid and is expected to play an important role in maintaining the scale population at its current low level

Focus Group. TRIADS experiences and developments. A panel discussion.

The Tripartite Interactive Assessment Delivery System (TRIADS) is an advanced computer-based assessment system designed to provide the widest possible flexibility in assessment design and delivery. Initially developed at the University of Derby it was evaluated in some forty-five departments at twenty-seven UK universities in twenty-four disciplines as part of the HEFCE-FDTL ‘Assessment of Learning Outcomes’ project (Liverpool, Derby and Open Universities 1996-2001). In the three papers that follow, the outcomes of this evaluation are summarized together with subsequent developments and examples of applications of TRIADS at Cardiff Dental School and Birkbeck College, University of London

The neural correlates of emotion regulation by implementation intentions

Several studies have investigated the neural basis of effortful emotion regulation (ER) but the neural basis of automatic ER has been less comprehensively explored. The present study investigated the neural basis of automatic ER supported by ‘implementation intentions’. 40 healthy participants underwent fMRI while viewing emotion-eliciting images and used either a previously-taught effortful ER strategy, in the form of a goal intention (e.g., try to take a detached perspective), or a more automatic ER strategy, in the form of an implementation intention (e.g., “If I see something disgusting, then I will think these are just pixels on the screen!”), to regulate their emotional response. Whereas goal intention ER strategies were associated with activation of brain areas previously reported to be involved in effortful ER (including dorsolateral prefrontal cortex), ER strategies based on an implementation intention strategy were associated with activation of right inferior frontal gyrus and ventro-parietal cortex, which may reflect the attentional control processes automatically captured by the cue for action contained within the implementation intention. Goal intentions were also associated with less effective modulation of left amygdala, supporting the increased efficacy of ER under implementation intention instructions, which showed coupling of orbitofrontal cortex and amygdala. The findings support previous behavioural studies in suggesting that forming an implementation intention enables people to enact goal-directed responses with less effort and more efficiency

Influence of aberrations on confocal-based remote refractive index measurements

Confocal scanning combined with low-coherence interferometry is used to provide remote refractive index and thickness measurements of transparent materials. The influence of lens aberrations in the confocal measurement is assessed through ray-trace modeling of the axial point-spread functions generated using optical configurations comprised of paired aspherics and paired achromats. Off-axis parabolic mirrors are suggested as an alternative to lenses and are shown to exhibit much more symmetric profiles provided the system numerical aperture is not too high. The modeled results compare favorably with experimental data generated using an optical instrument comprised of a broadband source and line-scan spectrometer. Refractive index and thickness measurements are made with each configuration with most mirror pairings offering better than twice the repeatability and accuracy of either lens pairing