Maternal depression and youth internalizing and externalizing symptomatology: severity and chronicity of past maternal depression and current maternal depressive symptoms

Maternal depression is a well-documented risk factor for youth depression, and taking into account its severity and chronicity may provide important insight into the degree of risk conferred. This study explored the degree to which the severity/chronicity of maternal depression history explained variance in youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms above and beyond current maternal depressive symptoms among 171 youth (58 % male) ages 8 to 12 over a span of 3 years. Severity and chronicity of past maternal depression and current maternal depressive symptoms were examined as predictors of parent-reported youth internalizing and externalizing symptomatology, as well as youth self-reported depressive symptoms. Severity and chronicity of past maternal depression did not account for additional variance in youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms at Time 1 beyond what was accounted for by maternal depressive symptoms at Time 1. Longitudinal growth curve modeling indicated that prior severity/chronicity of maternal depression predicted levels of youth internalizing and externalizing symptoms at each time point when controlling for current maternal depressive symptoms at each time point. Chronicity of maternal depression, apart from severity, also predicted rate of change in youth externalizing symptoms over time. These findings highlight the importance of screening and assessing for current maternal depressive symptoms, as well as the nature of past depressive episodes. Possible mechanisms underlying the association between severity/chronicity of maternal depression and youth outcomes, such as residual effects from depressive history on mother–child interactions, are discussed.The current work was supported by grants from the National Institutes of Health (MH066077, PI: Martha C. Tompson, PhD; MH082861, PI: Martha C. Tompson, PhD;). (MH066077 - National Institutes of Health; MH082861 - National Institutes of Health)Published versio

Presupernova Evolution of Rotating Massive Stars and the Rotation Rate of Pulsars

Rotation in massive stars has been studied on the main sequence and during helium burning for decades, but only recently have realistic numerical simulations followed the transport of angular momentum that occurs during more advanced stages of evolution. The results affect such interesting issues as whether rotation is important to the explosion mechanism, whether supernovae are strong sources of gravitational radiation, the star's nucleosynthesis, and the initial rotation rate of neutron stars and black holes. We find that when only hydrodynamic instabilities (shear, Eddington-Sweet, etc.) are included in the calculation, one obtains neutron stars spinning at close to critical rotation at their surface -- or even formally in excess of critical. When recent estimates of magnetic torques (Spruit 2002) are added, however, the evolved cores spin about an order of magnitude slower. This is still more angular momentum than observed in young pulsars, but too slow for the collapsar model for gamma-ray bursts.Comment: 10 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Proc. IAU 215 "Stellar Rotation

Shear flow of angular grains: acoustic effects and non-monotonic rate dependence of volume

Naturally-occurring granular materials often consist of angular particles whose shape and frictional characteristics may have important implications on macroscopic flow rheology. In this paper, we provide a theoretical account for the peculiar phenomenon of auto-acoustic compaction -- non-monotonic variation of shear band volume with shear rate in angular particles -- recently observed in experiments. Our approach is based on the notion that the volume of a granular material is determined by an effective-disorder temperature known as the compactivity. Noise sources in a driven granular material couple its various degrees of freedom and the environment, causing the flow of entropy between them. The grain-scale dynamics is described by the shear-transformation-zone (STZ) theory of granular flow, which accounts for irreversible plastic deformation in terms of localized flow defects whose density is governed by the state of configurational disorder. To model the effects of grain shape and frictional characteristics, we propose an Ising-like internal variable to account for nearest-neighbor grain interlocking and geometric frustration, and interpret the effect of friction as an acoustic noise strength. We show quantitative agreement between experimental measurements and theoretical predictions, and propose additional experiments that provide stringent tests on the new theoretical elements.Comment: 12 pages, 3 figure

Stick-slip instabilities in sheared granular flow: the role of friction and acoustic vibrations

We propose a theory of shear flow in dense granular materials. A key ingredient of the theory is an effective temperature that determines how the material responds to external driving forces such as shear stresses and vibrations. We show that, within our model, friction between grains produces stick-slip behavior at intermediate shear rates, even if the material is rate-strengthening at larger rates. In addition, externally generated acoustic vibrations alter the stick-slip amplitude, or suppress stick-slip altogether, depending on the pressure and shear rate. We construct a phase diagram that indicates the parameter regimes for which stick-slip occurs in the presence and absence of acoustic vibrations of a fixed amplitude and frequency. These results connect the microscopic physics to macroscopic dynamics, and thus produce useful information about a variety of granular phenomena including rupture and slip along earthquake faults, the remote triggering of instabilities, and the control of friction in material processing.Comment: 12 pages, 8 figure

Type Ib/c supernovae in binary systems I. Evolution and properties of the progenitor stars

We investigate the evolution of Type Ib/c supernova (SN Ib/c) progenitors in close binary systems, using new evolutionary models that include the effects of rotation, with initial masses of 12 - 25 Msun for the primary components, and of single helium stars with initial masses of 2.8 - 20 Msun. We find that, despite the impact of tidal interaction on the rotation of primary stars, the amount of angular momentum retained in the core at the presupernova stage in different binary model sequences converge to a value similar to those found in previous single star models. This amount is large enough to produce millisecond pulsars, but too small to produce magnetars or long gamma-ray bursts. We employ the most up-to-date estimate for the Wolf-Rayet mass loss rate, and its implications for SN Ib/c progenitors are discussed in detail. In terms of stellar structure, SN Ib/c progenitors in binary systems are predicted to have a wide range of final masses even up to 7 Msun, with helium envelopes of 0.16 - 1.5 Msun. Our results indicate that, if the lack of helium lines in the spectra of SNe Ic were due to small amounts of helium, the distribution of both initial and final masses of SN Ic progenitors should be bimodal. Furthermore, we find that a thin hydrogen layer (0.001 - 0.01 Msun) is expected to be present in many SN Ib progenitors at the presupernova stage. We show that the presence of hydrogen, together with a rather thick helium envelope, can lead to a significant expansion of some SN Ib/c progenitors by the time of supernova explosion. This may have important consequences for the shock break-out and supernova light curve. We also argue that some SN progenitors with thin hydrogen layers produced via Case AB/B transfer might be related to Type IIb supernova progenitors with relatively small radii of about 10 Rsun.Comment: 16 pages, 15 figures, 2 tables, ApJ, in pres

Steady-State Cracks in Viscoelastic Lattice Models II

We present the analytic solution of the Mode III steady-state crack in a square lattice with piecewise linear springs and Kelvin viscosity. We show how the results simplify in the limit of large width. We relate our results to a model where the continuum limit is taken only along the crack direction. We present results for small velocity, and for large viscosity, and discuss the structure of the critical bifurcation for small velocity. We compute the size of the process zone wherein standard continuum elasticity theory breaks down.Comment: 17 pages, 3 figure