A Network Approach to Understanding Narcissistic Grandiosity via the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire and the Narcissistic Personality Inventory

The narcissistic admiration and rivalry concept (NARC) model of grandiose narcissism posits that striving for uniqueness, grandiose fantasies, and charmingness define narcissistic admiration, whereas striving for supremacy, devaluation, and aggressiveness define narcissistic rivalry. Given these complex interrelationships, we explored the structure of grandiose narcissism using the Narcissistic Admiration and Rivalry Questionnaire (NARQ) and Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI) via network analysis in four separate samples which allowed us to assess the extent to which these networks replicated across these samples (total N = 3,868). Overall, grandiose cognitions from the NARQ emerged as a highly central node in each network, providing compound evidence for its replicability and generalizability as an important feature of grandiose narcissism within the NARC model. Charmingness from the NARQ emerged as a central node throughout Samples 1, 2, and 3, with strong connections to features of narcissistic admiration and narcissistic rivalry (e.g., grandiose fantasies and aggressiveness), but was less central in Sample 4. To our knowledge, this is the first research to examine the replicability of the network structure of grandiose narcissism across various samples. These findings add to an increasingly important dialogue regarding replicability in psychological network science

Some investigations into non passive listening

Our knowledge of the function of the auditory nervous system is based upon a wealth of data obtained, for the most part, in anaesthetised animals. More recently, it has been generally acknowledged that factors such as attention profoundly modulate the activity of sensory systems and this can take place at many levels of processing. Imaging studies, in particular, have revealed the greater activation of auditory areas and areas outside of sensory processing areas when attending to a stimulus. We present here a brief review of the consequences of such non-passive listening and go on to describe some of the experiments we are conducting to investigate them. In imaging studies, using fMRI, we can demonstrate the activation of attention networks that are non-specific to the sensory modality as well as greater and different activation of the areas of the supra-temporal plane that includes primary and secondary auditory areas. The profuse descending connections of the auditory system seem likely to be part of the mechanisms subserving attention to sound. These are generally thought to be largely inactivated by anaesthesia. However, we have been able to demonstrate that even in an anaesthetised preparation, removing the descending control from the cortex leads to quite profound changes in the temporal patterns of activation by sounds in thalamus and inferior colliculus. Some of these effects seem to be specific to the ear of stimulation and affect interaural processing. To bridge these observations we are developing an awake behaving preparation involving freely moving animals in which it will be possible to investigate the effects of consciousness (by contrasting awake and anaesthetized), passive and active listening

Investigations of lubricant rheology as applied to elastohydrodynamic lubrication

Traction prediction in sliding elastohydrodynamic (EHD) contacts was examined along with an elastohydrodynamic lubrication simulation of the effects of load and speed on temperatures in the EHD contact. An existing shear stress theory and lubricant rheological model were studied and evaluated by applying them to traction prediction. Results obtained using measured film thickness and surface temperature data, were compared with measured traction values. The infrared technique for measuring temperatures in an EHD contact was further developed and ball surface and fluid temperatures are reported for sliding speeds of 0.35 to 5.08 m/s at 0.52 to 2.03 GN/sq m maximum pressure and surface roughnesses of .011 to .381 micrometers c.1.a. The relationship between asperity interaction, as measured by relocation surface profilimetry and high frequency temperature measurements, and the ratio of film thickness to surface roughness was also studied

A Dark Web of Personality: Network Analyses of Dark Personality Features and Pathological Personality Traits

Network analysis offers an opportunity to gain a more nuanced view of the connections between the darker aspects of personality by examining the interrelationships between the components that make up these constructs. We examined the associations that five dark personality dispositions (i.e., narcissism, Machiavellianism, psychopathy, sadism, and spitefulness) had with pathological personality traits (i.e., antagonism, disinhibition, detachment, negative affectivity, and psychoticism) via network analysis. These dark personality networks were examined in four studies (N = 1,800), wherein the second study attempted to replicate the network from the first study, while the last two studies incorporated more specific and independent measures of dark personality features (e.g., grandiose and vulnerable narcissism). Although there were differences across network structures in these studies, the pathological personality trait of antagonism consistently evinced high expected influence centrality (i.e., it was the most strongly connected and possibly influential trait in each network). Our discussion focuses on the implications of these results for the understanding of the connections between the darker aspects of personality

Determination of Transgene Copy Number by Real-Time Quantitative PCR

Efficient methods to characterize transgenic plants are important to quickly understand the state of the transformant. Determining transgene copy number is an important step in transformant characterization and can differentiate between complex and simple transformation events. This knowledge can be extremely useful when determining what future experiments and uses the transgenic lines can be utilized for. The method described here uses real-time quantitative PCR to determine the transgene copy number present in the genome of the transformant. Specifically, this method measures the relative transgene copy number by comparing it with an endogenous gene with a known copy number. This method is a quick alternative to the Southern blot, a method that is commonly used to determine gene copy number, and is effective when screening large numbers of transformants

Cathodoluminescence of uranium oxides

The cathodoluminescence of uranium oxide surfaces prepared in-situ from clean uranium exposed to dry oxygen was studied. The broad asymmetric peak observed at 470 nm is attributed to F-center excitation

Global Standards in Action: Insights from Anti-Money Laundering Regulation

As organizations have come under the increasing influence of global rules of all sorts, organization scholars have started studying the dynamics of global regulation. The purpose of this article is to identify and evaluate the contribution to this interdisciplinary field by the ‘Stockholm Centre for Organisational Research’. The latter’s key proposition is that while global regulation often consists of voluntary best practice rules it can nevertheless become highly influential under certain conditions. We assess how innovative this approach is using as a benchmark the state of the art in another field of relevance to the study of global regulation, i.e. ‘International Relations’. Our discussion is primarily theoretical but we draw on the case of global anti-money laundering regulation to illustrate our arguments and for inspirations of how to further elaborate the approach

Second-line agents in myositis: 1-year factorial trial of additional immunosuppression in patients who have partially responded to steroids.

Ciclosporin and MTX are used in idiopathic inflammatory myopathies (DM and PM) when patients incompletely respond to glucocorticoids. Their effectiveness is unproved in randomized controlled trials (RCTs). We evaluated their benefits in a placebo-controlled factorial RCT