188 research outputs found
What and how: doing good research with young people, digital intimacies, and relationships and sex education
© 2020, © 2020 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. As part of a project funded by the Wellcome Trust, we held a one-day symposium, bringing together researchers, practitioners, and policymakers, to discuss priorities for research on relationships and sex education (RSE) in a world where young people increasingly live, experience, and augment their relationships (whether sexual or not) within digital spaces. The introduction of statutory RSE in schools in England highlights the need to focus on improving understandings of young people and digital intimacies for its own sake, and to inform the development of learning resources. We call for more research that puts young people at its centre; foregrounds inclusivity; and allows a nuanced discussion of pleasures, harms, risks, and rewards, which can be used by those working with young people and those developing policy. Generating such research is likely to be facilitated by participation, collaboration, and communication with beneficiaries, between disciplines and across sectors. Taking such an approach, academic researchers, practitioners, and policymakers agree that we need a better understanding of RSE’s place in lifelong learning, which seeks to understand the needs of particular groups, is concerned with non-sexual relationships, and does not see digital intimacies as disconnected from offline everyday ‘reality’
Adjusting to the COVID-19 Outbreak in the United States: The impact of disruptions on habits and changes in health behaviors
The COVID-19 pandemic provides a naturalistic test of whether pandemic-related disruptions weaken habits and undermine behavior stability. We hypothesized that better capacity to effortfully guide behavior (self-regulation) would buffer this effect and be associated with behavior stability and development of new habits to accomplish daily behaviors. A cross-sectional study of 416 MTurk workers recruited in April 2020 (Mage = 34.60, SD = 11.51) indicated that pandemic-related disruptions generally exceeded people’s capacity to effortfully modify their behavior. Self-regulation related to the development of new habits and to lower likelihood that work productivity decreased. Self-regulation also protected against the effect of disruption on the likelihood that substance use increased. Besides these associations, self-regulation was largely unrelated to health-related behaviors and, in some instances, associated with poorer outcomes. These findings underscore the need to appreciate the impact of contextual disruptions in interpreting and promoting change in health-related behaviors
An interacting scalar field and the recent cosmic acceleration
In this paper it is shown that the Brans - Dicke scalar field itself can
serve the purpose of providing an early deceleration and a late time
acceleration of the universe without any need of quintessence field if one
considers an interaction, i.e, transfer of energy between the dark matter and
the Brans - Dicke scalar field.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figure
Maternal and child reflective functioning in the context of child sexual abuse: pathways to depression and externalising difficulties
BACKGROUND: Sexual abuse is a well-recognised risk factor for child psychopathology. Little is known regarding whether child and maternal mentalization can be considered a potential resource or protective factor in this context, respectively, mediating or moderating the relationship between sexual abuse and psychopathology. OBJECTIVE: The aims of this study were (1) to explore the relationships between child and maternal mentalizing, measured as reflective functioning (RF), and child depressive symptoms and externalising difficulties; and (2) to examine whether child mentalizing mediates the relationship between child sexual abuse (CSA) and psychopathology. METHOD: A total of 168 children aged 7-12 years and their mothers participated in the study. The sample included 74 dyads where children had experienced sexual abuse. The Child Attachment Interview was rated by using the Child Reflective Functioning Scale to assess children's mentalization, and the Child Depression Inventory was used to assess depressive symptoms. Mothers completed the Parent Development Interview to assess maternal RF and the Child Behavior Checklist to assess their child's externalising difficulties. A model involving direct and indirect paths from CSA, child and maternal RF to child psychopathology was examined using Mplus software. RESULTS: Child mentalization partially mediated the relationships between CSA and depressive symptoms, as well as the relationship between CSA and externalising difficulties. Maternal mentalization was an independent predictor of child externalising difficulties, with higher maternal RF associated with less externalising difficulties. DISCUSSION: The findings indicate that by ages 7-12, child mentalization is an important inner resource associated with lower depression and externalising. In addition, this study provides new evidence of the importance of the parent's mentalizing stance for the development of self-regulation and externalising difficulties in both abused and non-abused children. The clinical implications are discussed
Sensation seeking and its relationship with psychopathic traits, impulsivity and aggression: a validation of the Dutch Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS)
Sensation seeking is a personality trait that manifests as a preference for change, variety and novelty. Sensation seeking has been positively associated with different externalising behaviours. However, its associations with psychopathic traits, impulsivity and aggression are unclear. These associations were examined via the psychometric properties of the Dutch version of the Brief Sensation Seeking Scale (BSSS) using individuals from the general population and forensic patients. The results show that the BSSS has good psychometric properties, including test-retest reliability and a four-factor structure. Additionally, the results support associations between sensation seeking and psychopathic traits, impulsivity and total scores of aggression but revealed no specific associations with different types of aggression (e.g. proactive and reactive). The Dutch BSSS is a valuable tool for assessing sensation seeking in both the general population and forensic patients. Future research should further examine its utility and explore the role of sensation seeking in antisocial conduct
Flavordynamics with Conformal Matter and Gauge Theories on Compact Hyperbolic Manifolds in Extra Dimensions
We outline a toy model in which a unique mechanism may trigger a dynamical
chain resulting in key low-energy regularities. The starting points are a
negative cosmological term in the bulk and conformally invariant nongravity
sector. These elements ensure compactification of the extra dimensional space
on a compact hyperbolic manifold (with the negative and constant scalar
curvature). The overall geometry is then M_4 x B_n. The negative curvature on
B_n triggers the formation of the four-dimensional defect which provides in
turn a dynamical localization of ordinary particles. It also leads,
simultaneously, to a spontaneous breaking of gauge symmetry through a Higgs
mechanism. Masses of the fermions, gauge bosons and scalars all derive from the
curvature of the internal manifold such that the Higgs boson is generally
heavier than the gauge bosons. The factorizable geometry M_4 x B_n and flatness
of M_4 require fine-tuning.Comment: 16 pp, added references and a figure with improvements in text;
journal versio
Panspermia, Past and Present: Astrophysical and Biophysical Conditions for the Dissemination of Life in Space
Astronomically, there are viable mechanisms for distributing organic material
throughout the Milky Way. Biologically, the destructive effects of ultraviolet
light and cosmic rays means that the majority of organisms arrive broken and
dead on a new world. The likelihood of conventional forms of panspermia must
therefore be considered low. However, the information content of dam-aged
biological molecules might serve to seed new life (necropanspermia).Comment: Accepted for publication in Space Science Review
Cosmological bounds on large extra dimensions from non-thermal production of Kaluza-Klein modes
The existing cosmological constraints on theories with large extra dimensions
rely on the thermal production of the Kaluza-Klein modes of gravitons and
radions in the early Universe. Successful inflation and reheating, as well as
baryogenesis, typically requires the existence of a TeV-scale field in the
bulk, most notably the inflaton. The non-thermal production of KK modes with
masses of order 100 GeV accompanying the inflaton decay sets the lower bounds
on the fundamental scale M_*. For a 1 TeV inflaton, the late decay of these
modes distort the successful predictions of Big Bang Nucleosynthesis unless
M_*> 35, 13, 7, 5 and 3 TeV for 2, 3, 4, 5 and 6 extra dimensions,
respectively. This improves the existing bounds from cosmology on M_* for 4, 5
and 6 extra dimensions. Even more stringent bounds are derived for a heavier
inflaton.Comment: 17 pages, latex, 4 figure
Stellar structure and compact objects before 1940: Towards relativistic astrophysics
Since the mid-1920s, different strands of research used stars as "physics
laboratories" for investigating the nature of matter under extreme densities
and pressures, impossible to realize on Earth. To trace this process this paper
is following the evolution of the concept of a dense core in stars, which was
important both for an understanding of stellar evolution and as a testing
ground for the fast-evolving field of nuclear physics. In spite of the divide
between physicists and astrophysicists, some key actors working in the
cross-fertilized soil of overlapping but different scientific cultures
formulated models and tentative theories that gradually evolved into more
realistic and structured astrophysical objects. These investigations culminated
in the first contact with general relativity in 1939, when J. Robert
Oppenheimer and his students George Volkoff and Hartland Snyder systematically
applied the theory to the dense core of a collapsing neutron star. This
pioneering application of Einstein's theory to an astrophysical compact object
can be regarded as a milestone in the path eventually leading to the emergence
of relativistic astrophysics in the early 1960s.Comment: 83 pages, 4 figures, submitted to the European Physical Journal
Pryce-Hoyle Tensor in a Combined Einstein-Cartan-Brans-Dicke Model
In addition to introducing matter injection through a scalar field determined
by Pryce-Hoyle tensor, we also combine it with a BCDE
(Brans-Dicke-Einstein-Cartan) theory with lambdaterm developed earlier by
Berman(2008), for inflationary scenario. It involves a variable cosmological
constant, which decreases with time, jointly with energy density, cosmic
pressure, shear, vorticity, and Hubble's parameter, while the scale factor,
total spin and scalar field increase exponentially. The post-inflationary fluid
resembles a perfect one, though total spin grows, but not the angular speed
(Berman, 2007d). The Pryce-Hoyle tensor, which can measured by the number of
injected particles per unit proper volume and time, as well as shear and
vorticity, can be neglected in the aftermath of inflation ("no-hair").Comment: 16 pages including front cover. New version, accepted by
International Journal of Theoretical Physics. To be published soo
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