Exploring accuracy and impact of concurrent and retrospective self-talk among golfers

The current study aimed to provide insight into the types and frequency of self-talk of skilled golfers (n = 6) by considering and comparing concurrent verbalization and retrospective reports. Each participant wore a microphone to record his thoughts while verbalizing them for the duration of nine holes of golf on three separate occasions. The researchers transcribed and coded this verbalized self-talk. Participants also completed a retrospective self-talk questionnaire at the conclusion of each round. Results suggest that participants’ concurrent verbalization and retrospective reports were inconsistent, specifically with regard to function (i.e., motivational versus instructional) and valence (i.e., positive, negative, and neutral), and that participants felt their concurrent verbalization more accurately reflected their experiences. The results support previous research that indicates that retrospective reports of self-talk may not provide accurate insight into what athletes actually say to themselves as they perform in their sports, while asserting that concurrent verbalization may be a more accurate representation of their self-talk experiences

STATUS OF COYOTES AND COYOTE DEPREDATIONS IN PENNSYLVANIA

The coyote (Canis latrans) population in Pennsylvania has grown in the last several decades to about4,000. It continues to grow, despite a known annual harvest of more than 850 animals. There is a growing concern about the effects of coyotes on game and livestock populations. We discuss known and potential coyote-human conflicts in Pennsylvania and propose a program of depredation prevention and control. To be successful, the program requires cooperation, funding, research, educational materials, and training workshops

Color Detection Using Chromophore-Nanotube Hybrid Devices

We present a nanoscale color detector based on a single-walled carbon nanotube functionalized with azobenzene chromophores, where the chromophores serve as photoabsorbers and the nanotube as the electronic read-out. By synthesizing chromophores with specific absorption windows in the visible spectrum and anchoring them to the nanotube surface, we demonstrate the controlled detection of visible light of low intensity in narrow ranges of wavelengths. Our measurements suggest that upon photoabsorption, the chromophores isomerize from the ground state trans configuration to the excited state cis configuration, accompanied by a large change in dipole moment, changing the electrostatic environment of the nanotube. All-electron ab initio calculations are used to study the chromophore-nanotube hybrids, and show that the chromophores bind strongly to the nanotubes without disturbing the electronic structure of either species. Calculated values of the dipole moments support the notion of dipole changes as the optical detection mechanism.Comment: Accepted by Nano Letter

Climate Stories: South Carolina, Volume 1

In this volume, you will hear from South Carolina residents about how they have been sensing climate change throughout their lifetimes. All stories have been anonymized with the use of pseudonyms, except where participants asked for their story to be associated with their name

Prospectus, January 10, 1969

VOTE VOTE VOTE!; Spring Concert in March; Tuition Up; 3 New Clubs on Campus; PP Presents First Dynamic Duo; Ask Charlie Brown; Danville Dumps PC, 91-67; IM to Begin Soon; Palma Hits 21 in Loss; Springfield Next Foe; Parkland Falls 89-82https://spark.parkland.edu/prospectus_1969/1014/thumbnail.jp

Angry responses to infant challenges: parent, marital, and child genetic factors associated with harsh parenting

This study examined genetic and environmental influences on harsh parenting of 9-month-olds. We examined whether positive child-, parent-, and family-level characteristics were associated with harsh parenting in addition to negative characteristics. We were particularly interested in examining evocative gene-environment correlation (rGE) by testing the effect of birth parent temperament on adoptive parents’ harsh parenting. Additionally, we examined associations among adoptive parents’ own temperaments, their marital relationship quality, and harsh parenting. Adoptive fathers’ (but not adoptive mothers’) harsh parenting was inversely related to an index of birth mother positive temperament (reward dependence), indicating evocative rGE. Higher marital quality was associated with less harsh parenting, but only for adoptive fathers. Adoptive parents’ negative temperamental characteristics (harm avoidance) were related to hostile parenting. Findings suggest the importance of enhancing positive family characteristics in addition to mitigating negative characteristics, as well as engaging multiple levels of the family system to prevent harsh parenting. Children have the potential to evoke strong positive and negative affective responses from parents, which then influence and organize caregiving behavior (Dix, 1991). All young children demonstrate challenging behaviors, such as prolonged crying that may be difficult to soothe, uncooperativeness with bathing or dressing, or difficulty with eating or sleeping. The degree to which parental negative emotion is evoked by these challenges and expressed in interactions with children is often characterized as harsh or overreactive parenting. Harsh parenting is a function of a complex interplay of risk and protective factors that operate at multiple levels of the family system (i.e., characteristics of the parent, child, and family environment; Belsky, 1984; Boivin et al., 2005; DiLalla & Bishop, 1996; Neiderhiser et al., 2004, 2007; Towers, Spotts, & Neiderhiser, 2002). The long-term maladaptive developmental outcomes associated with harsh, negative parenting during infancy (Bayer, Ukoumunne, Mathers, Wake, Abdi, & Hiscock, 2012; Bradley & Corwyn, 2008; Lorber & Egeland, 2009) underscore the need for improved understanding of risk and protective factors associated with early harsh parenting. The current study aims to extend on the research on harsh parenting in infancy in two ways. First, although risk factors for early harsh parenting are well documented, we know little about factors that buffer parents from harsh parenting during infancy; this study examines independent and differential effects of positive and negative characteristics on harsh parenting. Second, although interest in child effects on parenting, including harsh parenting, has been present in the field for decades (Bell, 1979; Bell & Chapman, 1986; Rutter et al., 1997) we know very little about the degree to which the effects found in the literature truly reflect evocative effects of infants’ genetically influenced characteristics. The current study used an adoption design to test the hypothesis that genetically influenced temperamental characteristics of 9-month-olds would influence adoptive parents’ harsh parenting. Previous research has identified many correlates of harsh parenting, including negative characteristics of the parent (e.g., maternal depression; Lovejoy, Graczyk, O’Hare, & Neuman, 2000), family (e.g., marital hostility, Rhoades et al., 2011), and child (e.g., difficult temperament, Plomin, Loehlin & DeFries, 1985; poor regulation, Bridgett et al., 2009). Previous research has identified risk factors for harsh parenting, but very little is known about how positive parent, child, and family characteristics might mitigate it. For example, a positive marital relationship could buffer the impact of high levels of depressive symptoms on parenting, and thus have implications for prevention and intervention efforts. The current study examined positive and negative parent, child, and family factors in association with harsh parenting. A second emphasis centered on understanding the role of infants’ genetically influenced characteristics on harsh parenting. Much of the previous work on child effects on parenting has examined child temperament. In general, child positivity is related to positive parenting, while child negativity is related to negative parenting (Putnam, Sanson, & Rothbart, 2002; Wilson & Durbin, 2012). However, the general lack of genetically sensitive designs in this research makes it impossible to determine whether these associations exist because (1) harsh parenting leads to negative child characteristics, (2) specific child characteristics evoke harsh parenting (evocative gene-environment correlation, rGE; Plomin, Loehlin & DeFries, 1977; Scarr & McCartney, 1983) or (3) children and parents share genes that contribute to both parenting and temperament (passive gene-environment correlation). Therefore, genetically-sensitive research designs are needed to disentangle these influences to understand specific mechanisms underlying relations between child characteristics and parent behavior

Ultra-fast Au(III)-mediated Arylation of Cysteine

Through mechanistic work and rational design, we have developed the fastest organometallic abiotic Cys bioconjugation. As a result, the developed organometallic Au(III) bioconjugation reagents enable selective labeling of Cys moieties down to pM concentrations and allow for the rapid construction of complex heterostructures from peptides, proteins, and oligonucleo-tides. This work showcases how organometallic chemistry can be interfaced with biomolecules and lead to the range of reac-tivities that are largely unmatched by classical organic chemistry tools

Vaccines and Antiviral Drugs in Pandemic Preparedness

Controlling a pandemic with vaccine and antiviral drugs will require a coordinated international approach to determine how the least amount of virus can immunize the largest segment of a population

The serotonin transporter linked polymorphic region and brain-derived neurotrophic factor valine to methionine at position 66 polymorphisms and maternal history of depression: Associations with cognitive vulnerability to depression in childhood

Preliminary work indicates that cognitive vulnerability to depression may be associated with variants of the serotonin transporter promoter polymorphism (5-HTTLPR) and the valine to methionine at position 66 (val66met) polymorphism of the brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF) gene; however, existing reports come from small samples. The present study sought to replicate and extend this research in a sample of 375 community-dwelling children and their parents. Following a negative mood induction, children completed a self-referent encoding task tapping memory for positive and negative self-descriptive traits. Consistent with previous work, we found that children with at least one short variant of the 5-HTTLPR had enhanced memory for negative self-descriptive traits. The BDNF val66met polymorphism had no main effect but was moderated by maternal depression, such that children with a BDNF methionine allele had a heightened memory for negative self-descriptive traits when mothers had experienced depression during children\u27s lifetimes; in contrast, children with a methionine allele had low recall of negative traits when mothers had no depression history. The findings provide further support for the notion that the 5-HTTLPR is associated with cognitive markers of depression vulnerability and that the BDNF methionine allele moderates children\u27s sensitivity to contextual factors. Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2013

Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: Ultracold Quantum Gases, Quantum Chromodynamic Plasmas, and Holographic Duality

Strongly correlated quantum fluids are phases of matter that are intrinsically quantum mechanical, and that do not have a simple description in terms of weakly interacting quasi-particles. Two systems that have recently attracted a great deal of interest are the quark-gluon plasma, a plasma of strongly interacting quarks and gluons produced in relativistic heavy ion collisions, and ultracold atomic Fermi gases, very dilute clouds of atomic gases confined in optical or magnetic traps. These systems differ by more than 20 orders of magnitude in temperature, but they were shown to exhibit very similar hydrodynamic flow. In particular, both fluids exhibit a robustly low shear viscosity to entropy density ratio which is characteristic of quantum fluids described by holographic duality, a mapping from strongly correlated quantum field theories to weakly curved higher dimensional classical gravity. This review explores the connection between these fields, and it also serves as an introduction to the Focus Issue of New Journal of Physics on Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: from Ultracold Quantum Gases to QCD Plasmas. The presentation is made accessible to the general physics reader and includes discussions of the latest research developments in all three areas.Comment: 138 pages, 25 figures, review associated with New Journal of Physics special issue "Focus on Strongly Correlated Quantum Fluids: from Ultracold Quantum Gases to QCD Plasmas" (http://iopscience.iop.org/1367-2630/focus/Focus%20on%20Strongly%20Correlated%20Quantum%20Fluids%20-%20from%20Ultracold%20Quantum%20Gases%20to%20QCD%20Plasmas