The Effect of Social Media Addiction on Romantic Relationship Outcomes: Factors Associated with Social Media Addiction

Does exposure to glamorous profiles on social media evoke romantic dissatisfaction? Or is social media a refuge for unsatisfied partners? Social networking sites (SNSs) have simplified virtual interactions with strangers cum instant ‘friends’, whose embellished profiles evoke jealousy, envy, dissatisfaction, and unhappiness. SNSs also provide easy access to alternative romantic partners, which adversely affects commitment to the primary relationship. Commitment is choosing to forsake other choices. Theoretically, commitment to a romantic partner diminishes if alternative partners are readily available. Researchers argue that preoccupation with SNSs activities and monitoring romantic alternatives affect commitment by lowering satisfaction, offering alternatives, and displacing time and emotional investments. Authors of existing studies have mostly used college student populations to examine the effect of SNSs use on romantic relationships. Findings from such studies cannot be generalised to other populations because college students are less likely to be committed, cohabiting, or married. To increase the generalisability of research, I designed three independent studies to explore factors that are linked with SNSs compulsive use (addiction) in both college and non-college populations. The results showed that romantic disengagement was positively linked with Facebook addiction, and that relationship commitment alone was not enough to protect committed partners against Facebook addiction. Younger partners, irrespective of their relationship status (committed or dating), were predisposed to SNSs addiction and SNSs-related infidelity behaviours. They also experienced low commitment and were more likely to subscribe to a significantly greater number of SNS accounts than older partners. Dating partners, as opposed to committed partners, reported better quality of available romantic alternatives (especially sexual alternatives) despite reporting no difference in their SNSs-related infidelity behaviours or relationship satisfaction. There was also a significant positive relationship between SNSs addiction and SNSs-related infidelity behaviours, and this relationship was moderated by age. Additionally, neuroticism was connected with negative affect and Facebook addiction partially mediated this relationship. Finally, mental health status was also linked with SNSs addiction and this relationship was partially mediated by SNSs-related infidelity behaviours. Overall, SNSs addiction appeared to be linked with adverse personal (neuroticism, mental illness) and romantic outcomes (romantic disengagement, low commitment, SNSs-related infidelity). Relationship status (dating vs committed/married) and age also appeared to influence the connection between SNSs addiction and adverse behaviours. Future studies can build on these findings and explore other SNSs behaviours that are linked with adverse relationship outcomes. SNSs are likely to remain the main platform for virtual communications for the foreseeable future. Therefore, users should be wary of SNSs interactions that can potentially jeopardise their romantic relationships

Importance of Hydrography in Resource Exploration

Ever since man first ventured into the sea environment, hydrography has played a vital role in promoting marine scientific activities. This paper specifically deals with the importance of hydrography in resource exploration, highlighting the responsibilities of coastal States bordering the Indian Ocean to ensure availability of reliable and up-to-date nautical charts in order to derive maximum benefits from the regime created by the new United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea. A brief summary is given of the approximate extent of the areas over which some of the States of the Indian Ocean will gain sovereign rights as soon as the new Convention, which is awaiting ratification, comes into force. A comparison of the EEZs with the land masses of a few countries reveals that they have gained control over areas much larger than the land. The status of hydrography and nautical charting of the countries concerned shows the enormous tasks that lie ahead for most of them to chart their waters as a matter of priority. The necessity for regional co-operation in hydrography and, finally, a brief on the IHO is included for the benefit of those who are not well aware of the activities of this unique and important intergovernmental organization serving the cause of hydrography since 1921

Correlating Fermi gamma-ray sources with ultra-high energy cosmic rays

The origin of ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECRs) is one of the enduring mysteries of high-energy astrophysics. To investigate this, we cross-correlate the recently released Fermi Large Area Telescope First Source Catalog (1FGL) with the public sample of UHECRs made available by the Pierre Auger collaboration. Of the 27 UHECRs in the sample, we find 12 events that arrived within 3.1 degrees of Fermi sources. However, we find similar or larger number of matches in 63 out of 100 artificial UHECR samples constructed using positions randomly drawn from the BATSE 4B catalog of gamma-ray bursts (GRBs) collected from 1991 until 1996. Based on our analysis, we find no evidence that UHECRs are associated with Fermi sources. We conclude with some remarks about the astrophysical origin of cosmic rays.Comment: Revised version that considers a smaller deflection angle for UHECRs (3.1 degrees) and a declination range for the artificial samples that extends to decl.= +24.8 in response to the referee comments. 4 pages, 2 figures, submitted to MNRA

valuation of rapeseed genotypes for yield and oil quality under rainfed conditions of district Mansehra

Five rapeseed genotypes were evaluated for agronomic parameters, yield, oil quantity and quality. Significant differences were observed for all the parameters except oil and protein percentage. The genotype Siren outperformed the rest of genotypes in yield potential (1104 kg/ha), followed by MRS-1 (866.67 kg/ha). For yield contributing characters like length of inflorescence and pods per plant, genotype Siren again showed good results that are, 51.3 cm and 136.5 pods/plant, respectively. The genotype Siren also showed low glucosinolate (44.82 ìmol/g), erucic acid (23.67 ìmol/g) and higher amounts of oleic acid (59.01%). Due to its high yield and oil quality, the genotype Siren is recommended for general cultivation in the area and further use in breeding programmes for Brassica napus

Axisymmetric stagnation-point flow of a third-grade fluid over a lubricated surface

In this article, axisymmetric stagnation-point flow of a third-grade fluid over a disk lubricated with a power law fluid is considered. Due to thin lubrication layer of variable thickness, third-grade fluid experiences a partial slip on the surface. The flow problem is governed through a system of nonlinear partial differential equations with nonlinear boundary conditions. A nonsimilar solution is presented in this article by implementing hybrid homotopy analysis method. This method combines the features of homotopy analysis and shooting methods. The results varying from no-slip to full-slip case are discussed under the influence of pertinent parameters

The primary structure of three hemoglobin chains from the indigo snake (Drymarchon corais erebennus, Serpentes): First evidence for αD chains and two β chain types in snakes

The hemoglobin of the indigo snake (Drymarchon corais erebennus, Colubrinae) consists of two components, HbA and HbD, in the ratio of 1:1. They differ in both their alpha and beta chains. The amino acid sequences of both alpha chains (alpha(A) and alpha(D)) and one beta chain (betaI) were determined. The presence of an alpha(D)chain in a snake hemoglobin is described for the first time. A comparison of all snake beta chain sequences revealed the existence of two paralogous beta chain types in snakes as well, which are designated as betaI and betaII type. For the discussion of the physiological properties of Drymarchon hemoglobin, the sequences were compared with those of the human alpha and beta chains and those of the closely related water snake Liophis miliaris where functional data are available. Among the heme contacts, the substitution alpha(D)58(E7)His-->Gln is unusual but most likely without any effect. The residues responsible for the main part of the Bohr effect are the same as in mammalian hemoglobins. In each of the three globin chains only two residues at positions involved in the alpha1/beta2 interface contacts, most important for the stability and the properties of the hemoglobin molecule, are substituted with regard to human hemoglobin. On the contrary, nine, eleven, and six alpha1/beta1 contact residues are replaced in the alpha(A), alpha(D), betaI chains, respectively

Enhanced Heartbeat Graph for emerging event detection on Twitter using time series networks

© 2019 Elsevier Ltd With increasing popularity of social media, Twitter has become one of the leading platforms to report events in real-time. Detecting events from Twitter stream requires complex techniques. Event-related trending topics consist of a group of words which successfully detect and identify events. Event detection techniques must be scalable and robust, so that they can deal with the huge volume and noise associated with social media. Existing event detection methods mostly rely on burstiness, mainly the frequency of words and their co-occurrences. However, burstiness sometimes dominates other relevant details in the data which could be equally significant. Besides, the topological and temporal relationships in the data are often ignored. In this work, we propose a novel graph-based approach, called the Enhanced Heartbeat Graph (EHG), which detects events efficiently. EHG suppresses dominating topics in the subsequent data stream, after their first detection. Experimental results on three real-world datasets (i.e., Football Association Challenge Cup Final, Super Tuesday, and the US Election 2012) show superior performance of the proposed approach in comparison to the state-of-the-art techniques

The MIDAS experiment: A prototype for the microwave emission of Ultra-High Energy Cosmic Rays

Recent measurements suggest that extensive air showers initiated by ultra-high energy cosmic rays (UHECR) emit signals in the microwave band of the electromagnetic spectrum caused by the collisions of the free-electrons with the atmospheric neutral molecules in the plasma produced by the passage of the shower. Such emission is isotropic and could allow the detection of air showers with 100% duty cycle and a calorimetric-like energy measurement, a significant improvement over current detection techniques. We have built MIDAS (MIcrowave Detection of Air Showers), a prototype of microwave detector, which consists of a 4.5 m diameter antenna with a cluster of 53 feed-horns in the 4 GHz range. The details of the prototype and first results will be presented.Comment: To appear in the proceedings of 12th Topical Seminar on Innovative Particle and Radiation Detectors (IPRD10), Siena, Italy, 7 - 10 June 201

Muon content of ultra-high-energy air showers: Yakutsk data versus simulations

We analyse a sample of 33 extensive air showers (EAS) with estimated primary energies above 2\cdot 10^{19} eV and high-quality muon data recorded by the Yakutsk EAS array. We compare, event-by-event, the observed muon density to that expected from CORSIKA simulations for primary protons and iron, using SIBYLL and EPOS hadronic interaction models. The study suggests the presence of two distinct hadronic components, ``light'' and ``heavy''. Simulations with EPOS are in a good agreement with the expected composition in which the light component corresponds to protons and the heavy component to iron-like nuclei. With SYBILL, simulated muon densities for iron primaries are a factor of \sim 1.5 less than those observed for the heavy component, for the same electromagnetic signal. Assuming two-component proton-iron composition and the EPOS model, the fraction of protons with energies E>10^{19} eV is 0.52^{+0.19}_{-0.20} at 95% confidence level.Comment: 8 pages, 3 figures; v2: replaced with journal versio