Changes in self-reported pre- to postinjury coping styles in the first 3 years after traumatic brain injury and the effects on psychosocial and emotional functioning and quality of life

OBJECTIVE:: To examine the influence of self-reported preinjury coping on postinjury coping, psychosocial functioning, emotional functioning, and quality of life at 1 year following traumatic brain injury (TBI). SETTING:: Inpatient hospital and community. PARTICIPANTS:: One hundred seventy-four participants with TBI. DESIGN:: Prospective, longitudinal design. Participants were assessed at 5 time points: after emerging from posttraumatic amnesia, and at 6, 12, 24, and 36 months postinjury. MAIN MEASURES:: Coping Scale for Adults-Short Version; Quality of Life Inventory; Sydney Psychosocial Reintegration Scale; Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale. RESULTS:: High preinjury use of nonproductive coping style predicted high use of nonproductive coping, more anxiety, and lower psychosocial functioning at 1 year postinjury. Increased use of nonproductive coping and decreased use of productive coping predicted poorer psychosocial outcome at 1 year post-TBI. Use of both productive and nonproductive coping decreased in the first 6 to 12 months post-TBI relative to preinjury. Unlike productive coping, nonproductive coping reached preinjury levels within 3 years postinjury. CONCLUSION:: The findings support identification of individuals at risk of relying on nonproductive coping and poorer psychosocial outcome following TBI. In addition, the results emphasize the need to implement timely interventions to facilitate productive coping and reduce the use of nonproductive coping in order to maximize favorable long-term psychosocial outcome

The impact of parent-created motivational climate on adolescent athletes' perceptions of physical self-concept

This is a preliminary version of this article. The official published version can be obtained from the link below.Grounded in expectancy-value model (Eccles, 1993) and achievement goal theory (Nicholls, 1989), this study examined the perceived parental climate and its impact on athletes' perceptions of competence and ability. Hierarchical regression analyses with a sample of 237 British adolescent athletes revealed that mothers and fathers' task- and ego-involving climate predicted their son's physical self-concept; the father in particular is the strongest influence in shaping a son's physical self-concept positively and negatively. It was also found that the self-concept of the young adolescent athlete is more strongly affected by the perceived parental-created motivational climate (both task and ego) than the older adolescent athlete's self-concept. These findings support the expectancy-value model assumptions related to the role of parents as important socializing agents, the existence of gender-stereotyping, and the heavy reliance younger children place on parents' feedback

The decay Z -> neutrino antineutrino photon in the Standard Model

A complete study of the one-loop induced decay Z -> neutrino antineutrino photon is presented within the framework of the Standard Model. The advantages of using a nonlinear gauge are stressed. We have found that the main contributions come from the electric dipole and the magnetic dipole transitions of the Z gauge boson and the neutrino, respectively. We obtain a branching ratio B=7.16E-10, which is about four orders of magnitude smaller than the bound recentely obtained by the L3 collaboration and thus it leaves open a window to search for new physics effects in single-photon decays of the Z boson.Comment: REVTEX,15 pp, 5 eps figures, Approved for publication in Physical Review

Probing Kaluza-Klein Dark Matter with Neutrino Telescopes

In models in which all of the Standard Model fields live in extra universal dimensions, the lightest Kaluza-Klein (KK) particle can be stable. Calculations of the one-loop radiative corrections to the masses of the KK modes suggest that the identity of the lightest KK particle (LKP) is mostly the first KK excitation of the hypercharge gauge boson. This LKP is a viable dark matter candidate with an ideal present-day relic abundance if its mass is moderately large, between 600 to 1200 GeV. Such weakly interacting dark matter particles are expected to become gravitationally trapped in large bodies, such as the Sun, and annihilate into neutrinos or other particles that decay into neutrinos. We calculate the annihilation rate, neutrino flux and the resulting event rate in present and future neutrino telescopes. The relatively large mass implies that the neutrino energy spectrum is expected to be well above the energy threshold of AMANDA and IceCube. We find that the event rate in IceCube is between a few to tens of events per year.Comment: 13 pages, 3 figures, LaTeX; typos fixed, version to appear in PR

Does Solar Physics Provide Constraints to Weakly Interacting Massive Particles?

We investigate whether present data on helioseismology and solar neutrino fluxes may constrain WIMP--matter interactions in the range of WIMP parameters under current exploration in WIMP searches. We find that, for a WIMP mass of 30 GeV, once the effect of the presence of WIMPs in the Sun's interior is maximized, the squared isothermal sound speed is modified, with respect to the standard solar model, by at most 0.4% at the Sun's center. The maximal effect on the Boron-8 solar neutrino flux is a reduction of 4.5%. Larger masses lead to smaller effects. These results imply that present sensitivities in the measurements of solar properties, though greatly improved in recent years, do not provide information or constraints on WIMP properties of relevance for dark matter. Furthermore, we show that, when current bounds from direct WIMP searches are taken into account, the effect induced by WIMPs with dominant coherent interactions are drastically reduced as compared to the values quoted above. The case of neutralinos in the minimal supersymmetric standard model is also discussed.Comment: 31 pages, 2 tables and 9 figures, typeset with ReVTeX4. The paper may also be found at http://www.to.infn.it/~fornengo/papers/helio.ps.gz or through http://www.to.infn.it/astropart/index.htm

What do young athletes implicitly understand about psychological skills?

One reason sport psychologists teach psychological skills is to enhance performance in sport; but the value of psychological skills for young athletes is questionable because of the qualitative and quantitative differences between children and adults in their understanding of abstract concepts such as mental skills. To teach these skills effectively to young athletes, sport psychologists need to appreciate what young athletes implicitly understand about such skills because maturational (e.g., cognitive, social) and environmental (e.g., coaches) factors can influence the progressive development of children and youth. In the present qualitative study, we explored young athletes’ (aged 10–15 years) understanding of four basic psychological skills: goal setting, mental imagery, self-talk, and relaxation. Young athletes (n = 118: 75 males and 43 females) completed an open-ended questionnaire to report their understanding of these four basic psychological skills. Compared with the older youth athletes, the younger youth athletes were less able to explain the meaning of each psychological skill. Goal setting and mental imagery were better understood than self-talk and relaxation. Based on these findings, sport psychologists should consider adapting interventions and psychoeducational programs to match young athletes’ age and developmental level

Atom gratings produced by large angle atom beam splitters

An asymptotic theory of atom scattering by large amplitude periodic potentials is developed in the Raman-Nath approximation. The atom grating profile arising after scattering is evaluated in the Fresnel zone for triangular, sinusoidal, magneto-optical, and bichromatic field potentials. It is shown that, owing to the scattering in these potentials, two \QTR{em}{groups} of momentum states are produced rather than two distinct momentum components. The corresponding spatial density profile is calculated and found to differ significantly from a pure sinusoid.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

A Review of Controlling Motivational Strategies from a Self-Determination Theory Perspective: Implications for Sports Coaches

The aim of this paper is to present a preliminary taxonomy of six controlling strategies, primarily based on the parental and educational literatures, which we believe are employed by coaches in sport contexts. Research in the sport and physical education literature has primarily focused on coaches’ autonomysupportive behaviours. Surprisingly, there has been very little research on the use of controlling strategies. A brief overview of the research which delineates each proposed strategy is presented, as are examples of the potential manifestation of the behaviours associated with each strategy in the context of sports coaching. In line with self-determination theory (Deci & Ryan, 1985; Ryan & Deci, 2002), we propose that coach behaviours employed to pressure or control athletes have the potential to thwart athletes’ feelings of autonomy, competence,and relatedness, which, in turn, undermine athletes’ self-determined motivation and contribute to the development of controlled motives. When athletes feel pressured to behave in a certain way, a variety of negative consequences are expected to ensue which are to the detriment of the athletes’ well-being. The purpose of this paper is to raise awareness and interest in the darker side of sport participation and to offer suggestions for future research in this area

Weak capture of protons by protons

The cross section for the proton weak capture reaction $^1H(p,e^+\nu_e)^2H$ is calculated with wave functions obtained from a number of modern, realistic high-precision interactions. To minimize the uncertainty in the axial two-body current operator, its matrix element has been adjusted to reproduce the measured Gamow-Teller matrix element of tritium $\beta$ decay in model calculations using trinucleon wave functions from these interactions. A thorough analysis of the ambiguities that this procedure introduces in evaluating the two-body current contribution to the pp capture is given. Its inherent model dependence is in fact found to be very weak. The overlap integral $\Lambda^2(E=0)$ for the pp capture is predicted to be in the range 7.05--7.06, including the axial two-body current contribution, for all interactions considered.Comment: 17 pages RevTeX (twocolumn), 5 postscript figure

Atomic diffraction from nanostructured optical potentials

We develop a versatile theoretical approach to the study of cold-atom diffractive scattering from light-field gratings by combining calculations of the optical near-field, generated by evanescent waves close to the surface of periodic nanostructured arrays, together with advanced atom wavepacket propagation on this optical potential.Comment: 8 figures, 10 pages, submitted to Phys. Rev.