Teen Dating Violence in French-speaking Switzerland: Attitudes and Experiences

Research on dating violence has tended to focus on North American college students. This study innovates with data collected in Switzerland from a sample of 132 school pupils and vocational education students aged 14 to 22 using a self-administered questionnaire. The study investigates relationships between attitudes and experiences about dating violence and the effect of gender. Biases against women were common in the sample. Females reported less endorsement of patriarchal attitudes about women’s roles, but both genders reported similar levels of disparagement of women. Participants reported high rates of physical violence perpetration (41.9 percent) and victimization (48.8 percent). Pro-violence attitudes were related to psychological and physical perpetration as well as physical victimization. For female respondents, essentialist beliefs about women’s innate abilities appear more persistent than beliefs about appropriate roles. Male participants endorsed both types of gender stereotypes at high rates. Male-perpetrated violence was perceived less favorably than female-perpetrated violence. Our data suggest that general attitudes toward violence are the most consistent predictor of physical and psychological aggression within dating relationships. More attention needs to be paid to subtypes among attitudes on women and violence, which past research assumed were monolithic. This study shows the need for prevention programs to address pro-violence attitudes

Primordial magnetic field and spectral distortion of cosmic background radiation

The role played by a primordial magnetic field during the pre-recombination epoch is analysed through the cyclotron radiation (due to the free electrons) it might produce in the primordial plasma. We discuss the constraint implied by the measurement or lack thereof COBE on this primordial field.Comment: to appear in International Journal of Mod. Phy

Compressed sensing imaging techniques for radio interferometry

Radio interferometry probes astrophysical signals through incomplete and noisy Fourier measurements. The theory of compressed sensing demonstrates that such measurements may actually suffice for accurate reconstruction of sparse or compressible signals. We propose new generic imaging techniques based on convex optimization for global minimization problems defined in this context. The versatility of the framework notably allows introduction of specific prior information on the signals, which offers the possibility of significant improvements of reconstruction relative to the standard local matching pursuit algorithm CLEAN used in radio astronomy. We illustrate the potential of the approach by studying reconstruction performances on simulations of two different kinds of signals observed with very generic interferometric configurations. The first kind is an intensity field of compact astrophysical objects. The second kind is the imprint of cosmic strings in the temperature field of the cosmic microwave background radiation, of particular interest for cosmolog

Low-Mass Star Formation, Triggered by Supernova in Primordial Clouds

The evolution of a gas shell, swept by the supernova remnant of a massive first generation star, is studied with H_2 and HD chemistry taken into account. When a first-generation star explodes as a supernova, H_2 and HD molecules are formed in the swept gas shell and effectively cool the gas shell to temperatures of 32 K - 154 K. If the supernova remnant can sweep to gather the ambient gas, the gas shell comes to be dominated by its self-gravity, and hence, is expected to fragment. Our result shows that for a reasonable range of temperatures (200 K - 1000 K) of interstellar gas, the formation of second-generation stars can be triggered by a single supernova or hypernova.Comment: 38pages, 10 figures, The Astrophysical Journal, accepted 8 Dec. 200