Social and behavioral consequences of the COVID-19 pandemic: Validation of a Pandemic Disengagement Syndrome Scale (PDSS) in four national contexts

The aim of the present study was to develop and validate a self-report measure that investigates people's general disengagement after the acute phases of the pandemic. Across three studies, we examined the psychometric features of the Pandemic Disengagement Syndrome Scale (PDSS) in four national contexts. In Study 1, we developed the instrument and investigated the factorial structure, internal consistency, measurement invariance across gender and countries (the United States and Italy), and discriminant validity. A bifactor model with two specific factors (Social Avoidance and Alienation) provided a better fit than the competing models. In Study 2, we tested the stability of the PDSS as well as its predictive validity. In Study 3, we conducted a quasi-experimental comparison between Norway and Sweden, to investigate whether scores on the PDSS are related to a markedly distinct approach to the pandemic in terms of mandatory lockdown. Overall, results from the three studies demonstrated that the PDSS is a valid and reliable measure of a syndrome of disengagement from others following a pandemic. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved)

Happiness before and during the COVID-19 pandemic in Italy: A population-based longitudinal study

The aims of the present study were to investigate (1) whether the COVID-19 pandemic and the restrictive measures to control its spread were associated with changes in happiness before and after the pandemic and (2) whether household size, living with a partner/spouse, living with at least one son/daughter, financial support, income loss, and job loss following the pandemic were associated with happiness after controlling for previous levels of happiness. We use data from the Italian Survey on Household Income and Wealth (SHIW). Specifically, we used longitudinal data from 2283 respondents who participated in the SHIW 2016 and SHIW 2020. Results revealed a small but significant increase in happiness from 2016 to 2021. In addition, living with a partner/spouse predicted higher happiness with a medium effect size, and total income loss predicted lower happiness with a small to medium effect size. Household size, living with at least one son/daughter, financial support, partial income loss, and job loss following the pandemic were unrelated to happiness

Junior Recital: Anthony Mancini, jazz guitar

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degrees Bachelor of Music in Performance and Bachelor of Music in Music Education. Mr. Mancini studies jazz guitar with Trey Wright.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1434/thumbnail.jp

Light Assisted Collisional Loss in a 85/87^{85/87}Rb Ultracold Optical Trap

We have studied hetero- and homonuclear excited state/ground state collisions by loading both $^{85}$Rb and $^{87}$Rb into a far off resonant trap (FORT). Because of the relatively weak confinement of the FORT, we expect the hyperfine structure of the different isotopes to play a crucial role in the collision rates. This dependence on hyperfine structure allows us to measure collisions associated with long range interatomic potentials of different structure: such as long and short ranged; or such as purely attractive, purely repulsive, or mixed attractive and repulsive. We observe significantly different loss rates for different excited state potentials. Additionally, we observe that some collisional channels' loss rates are saturated at our operating intensities (~15 mW/cm$^{2}$). These losses are important limitations in loading dual isotope optical traps.Comment: about 8 pages, 5 figure

Junior Recital: Christopher Otts, saxophone

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Otts studies saxophone with Sam Skelton.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1471/thumbnail.jp

Junior Recital: Christopher Malloy, saxophone

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Malloy studies saxophone with Sam Skelton.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1459/thumbnail.jp

Senior Recital: Anthony Mancini, jazz guitar

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Mancini studies jazz guitar with Trey Wright.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1326/thumbnail.jp

Junior Recital: Connor Osburn, horn

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Osburn studies horn with Tom Witte.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1306/thumbnail.jp

Senior Recital: Christopher Malloy, saxophone

This recital is presented in partial fulfillment of requirements for the degree Bachelor of Music in Performance. Mr. Malloy studies saxophone with Sam Skelton.https://digitalcommons.kennesaw.edu/musicprograms/1523/thumbnail.jp

No Conclusive Evidence for Transits of Proxima b in MOST photometry

The analysis of Proxima Centauri's radial velocities recently led Anglada-Escud\'e et al. (2016) to claim the presence of a low mass planet orbiting the Sun's nearest star once every 11.2 days. Although the a-priori probability that Proxima b transits its parent star is just 1.5%, the potential impact of such a discovery would be considerable. Independent of recent radial velocity efforts, we observed Proxima Centauri for 12.5 days in 2014 and 31 days in 2015 with the MOST space telescope. We report here that we cannot make a compelling case that Proxima b transits in our precise photometric time series. Imposing an informative prior on the period and phase, we do detect a candidate signal with the expected depth. However, perturbing the phase prior across 100 evenly spaced intervals reveals one strong false-positive and one weaker instance. We estimate a false-positive rate of at least a few percent and a much higher false-negative rate of 20-40%, likely caused by the very high flare rate of Proxima Centauri. Comparing our candidate signal to HATSouth ground-based photometry reveals that the signal is somewhat, but not conclusively, disfavored (1-2 sigmas) leading us to argue that the signal is most likely spurious. We expect that infrared photometric follow-up could more conclusively test the existence of this candidate signal, owing to the suppression of flare activity and the impressive infrared brightness of the parent star.Comment: Accepted to ApJ. Posterior samples, MOST photometry and HATSouth photometry are all available at https://github.com/CoolWorlds/Proxim