Bringing scientific rigor to community-developed programs in Hong Kong

published_or_final_versio

Parental emotional management benefits family relationships: A randomized controlled trial in Hong Kong, China

There is a shortage of culturally appropriate, brief, preventive interventions designed to be sustainable and acceptable for community participants in nonwestern cultures. Parents’ ability to regulate their emotions is an important factor for psychological well-being of the family. In Chinese societies, emotional regulation may be more important in light of the cultural desirability of maintaining harmonious family relationships. The objectives of our randomized controlled trial were to test the effectiveness of our Effective Parenting Programme (EPP) to increase the use of emotional management strategies (primary outcome) and enhance the parent-child relationship (secondary outcome). We utilized design characteristics that promoted recruitment, retention, and intervention sustainability. We randomized a community sample of 412 Hong Kong middle- and low-income mothers of children aged 6–8 years to the EPP or attention control group. At 3, 6 and 12- month follow up, the Effective Parent Program group reported greater increases in the use of emotion management strategies during parent-child interactions, with small to medium effect size, and lower negative affect and greater positive affect, subjective happiness, satisfaction with the parent–child relationship, and family harmony, compared to the control group, with small to medium effect size. Our results provided evidence of effectiveness for a sustainable, preventive, culturally appropriate, cognitive behaviorally-based emotion management program, in a non-clinical setting for Chinese mothers.postprin

Comparison of the Spherical Averaged Pseudopotential Model with the Stabilized Jellium Model

We compare Kohn-Sham results (density, cohesive energy, size and effect of charging) of the Spherical Averaged Pseudopotential Model with the Stabilized Jellium Model for clusters of sodium and aluminum with less than 20 atoms. We find that the Stabilized Jellium Model, although conceptually and practically more simple, gives better results for the cohesive energy and the elastic stiffness. We use the Local Density Approximation as well as the Generalized Gradient Approximation to the exchange and correlation energies.Comment: 13 pages, latex, 8 figures, compressed postscript version available at http://www.fis.uc.pt/~vieir

Energy and Momentum Distributions of the Magnetic Solution to (2+1) Einstein-Maxwell Gravity

We use Moeller's energy-momentum complex in order to explicitly evaluate the energy and momentum density distributions associated with the three-dimensional magnetic solution to the Einstein-Maxwell equations. The magnetic spacetime under consideration is a one-parametric solution describing the distribution of a radial magnetic field in a three-dimensional AdS background, and representing the superposition of the magnetic field with a 2+1 Einstein static gravitational field.Comment: LaTex, 13 pages; v2 clarifying comments and references added, Conclusions improved, to appear in Mod. Phys. Lett.

Ionic structure and photoabsorption in medium sized sodium clusters

We present ground-state configurations and photoabsorption spectra of Na-7+, Na-27+ and Na-41+. Both the ionic structure and the photoabsorption spectra of medium-size sodium clusters beyond Na-20 have been calculated self-consistently with a nonspherical treatment of the valence electrons in density functional theory. We use a local pseudopotential that has been adjusted to experimental bulk properties and the atomic 3s level of sodium. Our studies have shown that both the ionic structure of the ground state and the positions of the plasmon resonances depend sensitively on the pseudopotential used in the calculation, which stresses the importance of its consistent use in both steps.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures. Accepted for publication in PRB, tentatively July 15th, 1998 some typos corrected, brought to nicer forma

Semiclassical theory of surface plasmons in spheroidal clusters

A microscopic theory of linear response based on the Vlasov equation is extended to systems having spheroidal equilibrium shape. The solution of the linearized Vlasov equation, which gives a semiclassical version of the random phase approximation, is studied for electrons moving in a deformed equilibrium mean field. The deformed field has been approximated by a cavity of spheroidal shape, both prolate and oblate. Contrary to spherical systems, there is now a coupling among excitations of different multipolarity induced by the interaction among constituents. Explicit calculations are performed for the dipole response of deformed clusters of different size. In all cases studied here the photoabsorption strength for prolate clusters always displays a typical double-peaked structure. For oblate clusters we find that the high--frequency component of the plasmon doublet can get fragmented in the medium size region ($N \sim 250$). This fragmentation is related to the presence of two kinds of three-dimensional electron orbits in oblate cavities. The possible scaling of our semiclassical equations with the valence electron number and density is investigated.Comment: 23 pages, 8 figures, revised version, includes discussion of scalin

Gravitational collapse without a remnant

We investigate the gravitational collapse of a spherically symmetric, inhomogeneous star, which is described by a perfect fluid with heat flow and satisfies the equation of state $p=\rho/3$ or p=C\rho^\ga at its center. Different from the ordinary process of gravitational collapsing, the energy of the whole star is emitted into space. And the remaining spacetime is a Minkowski one at the end of the process.Comment: 9 pages, 9 figures, to appear in Int. J. Theor. Phy

Pichia pastoris regulates its gene-specific response to different carbon sources at the transcriptional, rather than the translational, level

Background: The methylotrophic, Crabtree-negative yeast Pichia pastoris is widely used as a heterologous protein production host. Strong inducible promoters derived from methanol utilization genes or constitutive glycolytic promoters are typically used to drive gene expression. Notably, genes involved in methanol utilization are not only repressed by the presence of glucose, but also by glycerol. This unusual regulatory behavior prompted us to study the regulation of carbon substrate utilization in different bioprocess conditions on a genome wide scale. Results: We performed microarray analysis on the total mRNA population as well as mRNA that had been fractionated according to ribosome occupancy. Translationally quiescent mRNAs were defined as being associated with single ribosomes (monosomes) and highly-translated mRNAs with multiple ribosomes (polysomes). We found that despite their lower growth rates, global translation was most active in methanol-grown P. pastoris cells, followed by excess glycerol- or glucose-grown cells. Transcript-specific translational responses were found to be minimal, while extensive transcriptional regulation was observed for cells grown on different carbon sources. Due to their respiratory metabolism, cells grown in excess glucose or glycerol had very similar expression profiles. Genes subject to glucose repression were mainly involved in the metabolism of alternative carbon sources including the control of glycerol uptake and metabolism. Peroxisomal and methanol utilization genes were confirmed to be subject to carbon substrate repression in excess glucose or glycerol, but were found to be strongly de-repressed in limiting glucose-conditions (as are often applied in fed batch cultivations) in addition to induction by methanol. Conclusions: P. pastoris cells grown in excess glycerol or glucose have similar transcript profiles in contrast to S. cerevisiae cells, in which the transcriptional response to these carbon sources is very different. The main response to different growth conditions in P. pastoris is transcriptional; translational regulation was not transcript-specific. The high proportion of mRNAs associated with polysomes in methanol-grown cells is a major finding of this study; it reveals that high productivity during methanol induction is directly linked to the growth condition and not only to promoter strength