Like grandparents, like parents: Empirical evidence and psychoanalytic thinking on the transmission of parenting styles

The authors discuss the issue of intergenerational transmission of parenting from an empirical and psychoanalytic perspective. After presenting a framework to explain their conception of parenting, they describe intergenerational transmission of parenting as a key to interpreting and eventually changing parenting behaviors. Then they present (1) the empirical approach aimed at determining if there is actually a stability across generations that contributes to harsh parenting and eventually maltreatment and (2) the psyphoanalytic thinking that seeks to explain the continuity in terms of representations and clinical phenomena. The authors also discuss the relationship between the attachment and the caregiving systems and hypothesize a common base for the two systems in childhood experience. Finally, they propose the psychoanalytic perspective as a fruitful theoretical framework to integrate the evidence for the neurophysiological mediators and moderators of intergenerational transmission. Psychoanalytically informed research can provide clinically relevant insights and hypotheses to be tested

Shaping the auditory peripersonal space with motor planning in immersive virtual reality

Immersive audio technologies require personalized binaural synthesis through headphones to provide perceptually plausible virtual and augmented reality (VR/AR) simulations. We introduce and apply for the first time in VR contexts the quantitative measure called premotor reaction time (pmRT) for characterizing sonic interactions between humans and the technology through motor planning. In the proposed basic virtual acoustic scenario, listeners are asked to react to a virtual sound approaching from different directions and stopping at different distances within their peripersonal space (PPS). PPS is highly sensitive to embodied and environmentally situated interactions, anticipating the motor system activation for a prompt preparation for action. Since immersive VR applications benefit from spatial interactions, modeling the PPS around the listeners is crucial to reveal individual behaviors and performances. Our methodology centered around the pmRT is able to provide a compact description and approximation of the spatiotemporal PPS processing and boundaries around the head by replicating several well-known neurophysiological phenomena related to PPS, such as auditory asymmetry, front/back calibration and confusion, and ellipsoidal action fields

Experimental data and simulations of performance and thermal comfort in a patient room equipped with radiant ceiling panels

Hospitals require the highest energy demands in non-residential buildings. They provide healthcare 24/7/365 and, at the same time, they ensure indoor air quality, thermal comfort and sterility. However, several studies reveal that high indoor temperatures and low relative humidity (RH) are often perceived in patient rooms during the heating season, suggesting an important energy saving potential. Against this background, radiant ceiling panel (RCP) systems result to be one of the most appropriate solutions as they allow to achieve significant energy savings while providing the highest level of thermal and acoustic comfort, as well as of infection control. In the present study the microclimatic survey of a patient room at Maggiore Hospital in Bologna, Italy, equipped with an air conditioning system integrated with RCP, has reported occupant thermal discomfort. Experimental data were used to calibrate a building model and dynamic building energy simulations were carried out to analyse indoor air temperature, relative humidity, predicted mean vote (PMV) and predicted percentage of dissatisfied (PPD) indexes under different inlet air temperatures, to identify the best design conditions for energy efficiency and thermal comfort improvement. It was found that the highest advantages can be obtained when neutral air is supplied

Beyond variability: Subjective timing and the neurophysiology of motor cognition.

Movement simulation helps increasing the chances to reach goals. A cognitive task used to study the neuro-behavioral aspects of movement simulation is mental rotation: people mentally re-orient rotated pictures of hands. However, the involvement of the primary motor cortex (M1) in mental rotation is largely controversial. Such inconsistency could arise from potential methodological flaws in experimental procedures and data analysis. In particular, until now, the timing of M1 activity has been computed in absolute terms: from the onset of mental rotation (onset-locked), neglecting intra- and inter-subject variability. A novel phase-locked approach is introduced to synchronize the same phases of cognitive processing among different subjects and sessions. This approach was validated in the particular case of corticospinal excitability of the motor cortex during mental rotation. We identified the relative time-windows during which the excitability of M1 is effector-specifically modulated by different features of mental rotation. These time windows correspond to the 55%-85% of the subjective timing. In sum, (i) we introduce a new method to study the neurophysiology of motor cognition, and (ii) validating this method, we shed new light on the involvement of M1 in movement simulation

Geometric and analytic views in existence theorems for optimal control. III. Weak solutions

Existence theorems are proved for weak optimal solutions of problems of optimization with distributed and boundary control. Many examples are given. Application is made of recent remarks on closure properties of linear and nonlinear operators. Recent geometric, topological, and analytical views are brought to bear on the underlying seminormality conditions.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/45209/1/10957_2004_Article_BF00934060.pd

The waiting period of initial public offerings

The length of time it takes an IPO firm to go public (called ‘waiting period’) reflects multiple layers of scrutiny from underwriters, auditors, venture capitalists, institutional investors, and regulators. Accordingly, we show that the waiting period is a good barometer of ex ante uncertainty about future cash flows and that it has predictive power after the firm goes public. We find that firms marked by short waiting periods experience lower underpricing and less uncertainty and superior stock/operating performance in the aftermarket. We also report that smaller firms are taking longer to go public after SOX Act, thus providing justification for the 2012 JOBS Act

Effect of storage on biochemical and microbiological parametersof edible truffle species

The effects of different storage treatments on the most common edible truffle species, such as Tuber magnatum and Tuber borchii (white truffles), Tuber melanosporum and Tuber aestivum (black truffles), were analysed. Biochemical and microbiological profiles were monitored, in order to evaluate possible alterations during truffle preservation. After harvesting, some fresh samples were kept at 4 C for 30 days, other samples were frozen at 20 C for one month, thawed and preserved at 4 C; the remainder were autoclaved. The biochemical parameters studied were sugar and protein content, the activity of some enzymes involved in the central metabolism of the fungi and the electrophoretic pattern of soluble proteins. Total mesophilic bacteria were also counted. The results obtained showed that the storage at 4 C is the treatment that best preserves the biochemical and microbiological characteristics of fresh truffles. Black truffles were more resistant to biochemical spoilage than the white ones, while T. magnatum was the most resistant to microbial spoilage

To hear or not to hear: Sound Availability Modulates Sensory-Motor Integration

When we walk in place with our eyes closed after a few minutes of walking on a treadmill, we experience an unintentional forward body displacement (drift), called the sensory-motor aftereffect. Initially, this effect was thought to be due to the mismatch experienced during treadmill walking between the visual (absence of optic flow signaling body steadiness) and proprioceptive (muscle spindles firing signaling body displacement) information. Recently, the persistence of this effect has been shown even in the absence of vision, suggesting that other information, such as the sound of steps, could play a role. To test this hypothesis, six cochlear-implanted individuals were recruited and their forward drift was measured before (Control phase) and after (Post Exercise phase) walking on a treadmill while having their cochlear system turned on and turned off. The relevance in testing cochlear-implanted individuals was that when their system is turned off, they perceive total silence, even eliminating the sounds normally obtained from bone conduction. Results showed the absence of the aftereffect when the system was turned off, underlining the fundamental role played by sounds in the control of action and breaking new ground in the use of interactive sound feedback in motor learning and motor development

Support vector machines categorize the scaling of human grip configurations

In previous work (Cesari & Newell, 2002), we used a graphical dimensional analysis to show that grip transitions obey the body-scaled relation K = InLo + InMo/(a + bM(h) + cL(h)), where L-o and M-o are the object's length and mass, and L-h and M-h the length and mass of the grasper's hand. However, the generality of the equation was limited by the ad hoc graphical method that defined the lines for grip separation and by the assumption that these lines be negatively sloped and parallel to one another. This article reports an independent test of this relation by the geometrical and statistical categorization of body-scaled invariants for the transition of human grip configurations through support vector machines (SVMs). The SVM analysis confirmed the fit of linear, negatively sloped, and approximately parallel transition boundaries in the scaling of human grip configuration within a single hand. The SVM analysis has provided a theoretical refinement to the scaling model of human grip configurations