The Relationships of Personality and Cognitive Styles with Self-Reported Symptoms of Depression and Anxiety

Many studies have reported concurrent relationships between depressive symptoms and various personality, cognitive, and personality-cognitive vulnerabilities, but the degree of overlap among these vulnerabilities is unclear. Moreover, whereas most investigations of these vulnerabilities have focused on depression, their possible relationships with anxiety have not been adequately examined. The present study included 550 high school juniors and examined the cross-sectional relationships among neuroticism, negative inferential style, dysfunctional attitudes, sociotropy, and autonomy, with a wide range of anxiety and depressive symptoms, as well as the incremental validity of these different putative vulnerabilities when examined simultaneously. Correlational analyses revealed that all five vulnerabilities were significantly related to symptoms of both anxiety and depression. Whereas neuroticism accounted for significant unique variance in all symptom outcomes, individual cognitive and personality-cognitive vulnerabilities accounted for small and only sometimes statistically significant variance across outcomes. Importantly, however, for most outcomes the majority of symptom variance was accounted for by shared aspects of the vulnerabilities rather than unique aspects. Implications of these results for understanding cognitive and personality-cognitive vulnerabilities to depression and anxiety are discussed

Il passato è un terreno morto

Most cultures use the past for stability and risk seeing not the other there but itself. One has to be able to see and sense a situation rather than be drawn into the reality depicted by formal historiography and national narratives. Departing from acute memories of conflict, enlisted for barricading identity, we can develop the capacity to contain an event and simultaneously progress towards a new beginning. I aim to question mapped boundaries through a biographical lens; to this end I observe onsite/insightfully the remains of village and its neighbour in northern Israel. The art of mapping debris can introduce new practices into the architecture of conflict.La gran parte delle culture usa il passato per garantirsi una stabilità nel presente, rischiando tuttavia di non vedere l’altro, ma solo sé stesso. Occorre essere capaci di vedere e percepire una situazione piuttosto che esser calati entro una realtà disegnata dalla storiografia ufficiale e dalla narrativa nazionale. Partendo da acute memorie di conflitti, ingaggiati per difendere l’identità, si può sviluppare la capacità di contenere ogni eventualità e contemporaneamente procedere verso un nuovo inizio. Ambisco a interrogare i confini tracciati attraverso una lente biografica; in questo testo a questo scopo osservo sul posto/intimamente i resti del villaggio di Kufr Bir’im e del suo vicino Kibbutz Baram nel nord di Israele. L’arte di mappare i rottami può introdurre nuove strategie nell’architettura del conflitto

Lenti Autobiografiche: dalla prospettiva all’espressione

 A lens is an instrument one looks through to bring new perspectives into focus, enabling the transformation of experience from a magnified self-concentrated space to a wide horizon.In A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man, Joyce posits autopsia, or “seeing for oneself,” as the only mode of knowledge, rather than a blind acceptance of traditions, beliefs and social norms. Joyce’s myopic observer-protagonist is marked by a Cartesian self-reflexiveness and by a modernist self-conscious creation of self. The structure of the self, its house of being, is created in A Portrait mainly through the epiphanic gaze. Epiphanies may be regarded as the building blocks of self and narrative; they comprehend an architectural configuration of vision. It is in the visionary moment that the kaleidoscope of the self crystallizes. The fictional prospect of the novel is made up of multiple viewpoints; the protagonist, moving in the space of the text, is affected by the presence of these manifold perspectives: the space or magnetic field of A Portrait is charged by epiphanies. In the studio we taught autobiographical lenses were introduced as surgical tools of imagining and creating focal spaces. The paper will be divided into three sections, according to the genealogy of the studio. In the first one we will unfold the point of departure: self -photographed images and autobiographical texts as the source of architectural praxis. The second section will address the alchemical process whereby personal is transformed into public. In the last section we analyze the metaphorical intervention on-site along the periphery of the Old City walls. The loaded location demanded from each student to grapple with the challenge posed by a shared physical territory as the site of conflict. Finally, we cast a retrospective glance at our teaching experience. [In the menu on the right, ARTICLE TOOLS, in "Supplementary Files" link you can download the .pdf presentations of Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design students, related to the design studio on Autobiographical Lense, developed in Jerusalem in 2012].La lente è uno strumento attraverso cui è possibile mettere a fuoco nuove prospettive, permettendo di amplificare la propria personale esperienza verso un orizzonte percettivo più vasto.In “A Portrait of the Artist as A Young Man” Joyce considera l’autopsia, ovvero “il guardare dentro sè stessi”, come l’unico vero strumento di conoscenza, in contrapposizione ad una mera e cieca accettazione di tradizioni, credi e norme sociali. Il miope osservatore-protagonista di Joyce è caratterizzato da un’auto-riflessività cartesiana e da un approccio modernista alla conoscenza di sé, strutturato principalmente attraverso un epifanico scrutamento interiore, inteso come il momento visionario in cui il caleidoscopio del sé cristallizza. L’immaginario del romanzo è costruito attraverso molteplici punti di vista, in grado di influenzare il protagonista: lo spazio, come un campo magnetico, è carico di epifanie. Nel laboratorio progettuale abbiamo inserito lenti autobiografiche intese come strumenti chirurgici dell’immaginario, con l’intento di creare spazi di approfondimento interiore. Questo contributo è diviso in tre sezioni: la prima contiene ritratti e testi autobiografici, intesi come la fonte della prassi architettonica. La seconda si occupa del processo alchemico in cui la sfera privata personale si trasforma in espressione pubblica. Nell’ultima si applica l’esito del processo introspettivo sul luogo oggetto di intervento, collocato lungo il perimetro delle mura della Città Vecchia. A ciascuno studente è stato richiesto di cimentarsi nel progetto di un territorio fisico condiviso sede di conflitto. Infine, abbiamo sviluppato uno sguardo retrospettivo alla nostra esperienza di insegnamento. [Nel menù a destra, STRUMENTI PER L'ARTICOLO, nei "File supplementari" è possibile scaricare le presentazioni in .pdf degli studenti della Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design, relativi al Laboratorio progettuale Autobiographical Lenses, svoltosi a Gerusalemme nel 2012

The public space of education

The word \u201cpublic\u201d and the word \u201ceducation\u201d share a common sense. Usually an educate person knows how to behave in public. The title of this special issue of "IN\uad_BO. Ricerche e progetti per il territorio, la citt\ue0 e l'architettura" is pretentious but its contents are simply honest. They demonstrate different attempts made by very different scholars and students to fathom the territory of public space from different directions.This selection is not casual but it was not planned in advance. It is an encompassing meeting of complementary differences. We believe that the idea of persona, the duration of memory, the fragmentation of form, the experience of the senses, the notion of community, the plurality of identities and the image of the body, constitute a basic set of notions in the maieutic education of the public space. This special issue of IN\uad_BO. Ricerche e progetti per il territorio, la citt\ue0 e l'architettura explores possible, critical paths and approaches for understanding and designing public spaces, presenting and discussing projects developed in academic courses, in Italy (University of Florence), Israel (Bezalel Academy of Arts and Design), Canada (Azrieli School of Architecture and Urbanism), USA (University of California, Berkeley), Australia (Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane), China (The Chinese University of Hong Kong). These scholars joined, at the end of 2012, to the \u201cPast present and future of public space\u201d international project, developed at the University of Bologna, with the support of the \u201cCity Space Architecture\u201d cultural association. The project aims to discuss the complex issue of public space through time, trying to find a new innovative approach in city understanding, in a multidisciplinary field of action, from morphological design derived from the tradition to emerging trends of the contemporary dimension. First results of project activities will be presented, exhibited and discussed at the \u201cBiennale dello spazio pubblico\u201d national conference, promoted by the Italian National Institute of Urban Planners (INU), to be held in Rome, Italy, on May 18th at the Faculty of Architecture Roma TRE. The project will be developed throughout 2013. A call for papers will be launched at the Biennale session, through the web site of City Space Architecture (www.cityspacearchitecture.org) inviting scholars, architects, public administrators, artists and designers to contribute with their ideas and proposals in the pursuit of this challenging task. A final event is expected to take place on June/July 2014. With our work we hope to give a meaningful and valuable response

Joint effect of obesity and TNFA variability on asthma: two international cohort studies

Obesity is a risk factor for asthma. Adipose tissue expresses pro-inflammatory molecules including tumour necrosis factor (TNF), and levels of TNF are also related to polymorphisms in the TNF-a (TNFA) gene. The current authors examined the joint effect of obesity and TNFA variability on asthma in adults by combining two population-based studies. The European Community Respiratory Health Survey and the Swiss Cohort Study on Air Pollution and Lung and Heart Disease in Adults used comparable protocols, questionnaires and measures of lung function and atopy. DNA samples from 9,167 participants were genotyped for TNFA -308 and lymphotoxin-a (LTA) +252 gene variants. Obesity and TNFA were associated with asthma when mutually adjusting for their independent effects (odds ratio (OR) for obesity 2.4, 95% confidence interval (CI) 1.7–3.2; OR for TNFA -308 polymorphism 1.3, 95% CI 1.1–1.6). The association of obesity with asthma was stronger for subjects carrying the G/A and A/A TNFA -308 genotypes compared with the more common G/G genotype, particularly among nonatopics (OR for G/A and A/A genotypes 6.1, 95% CI 2.5–14.4; OR for G/G genotype 1.7, 95% CI 0.8–3.3). The present findings provide, for the first time, evidence for a complex pattern of interaction between obesity, a pro-inflammatory genetic factor and asthma