Watch Out for the Beast: Fear Information and Attentional Bias in Children

Although valenced information about novel animals changes the implicit and explicit fear beliefs of children (Field & Lawson, 2003), how it might lead to anxiety is unknown. One possibility, based on cognitive models of anxiety, is that fear information creates attentional biases similar to those seen in anxiety disorders. Children between 7 and 9 years old were given positive information about 1 novel animal, negative information about another, and no information about the 3rd. A pictorial dot-probe task was used, immediately or with a 24-hr delay, to test for attentional biases to the different animals. The results replicated the finding that fear information changes children's fear beliefs. Regardless of whether there was a delay, children acquired an attentional bias in the left visual field toward the animal about which they held negative beliefs compared to the control animal. These results imply a possible way in which fear information might contribute to acquired fear

Pre-Big Bang Scenario on Self-T-Dual Bouncing Branes

We consider a new class of 5-dimensional dilatonic actions which are invariant under T-duality transformations along three compact coordinates, provided that an appropriate potential is chosen. We show that the invariance remains when we add a boundary term corresponding to a moving 3-brane, and we study the effects of the T-duality symmetry on the brane cosmological equations. We find that T-duality transformations in the bulk induce scale factor duality on the brane, together with a change of sign of the pressure of the brane cosmological matter. However, in a remarkable analogy with the Pre-Big Bang scenario, the cosmological equations are unchanged. Finally, we propose a model where the dual phases are connected through a scattering of the brane induced by an effective potential. We show how this model can realise a smooth, non-singular transition between a pre-Big Bang superinflationary Universe and a post-Big Bang accelerating Universe.Comment: 18 pages, minor typos corrected, Sec. 2 expanded with more details on the self-T-dual background, Sec.4 and 5 revised accordingly. Version to appear on JCA

Finite size effects in perturbed boundary conformal field theories

We discuss the finite-size properties of a simple integrable quantum field theory in 1+1 dimensions with non-trivial boundary conditions. Novel off-critical identities between cylinder partition functions of models with differing boundary conditions are derived.Comment: 7 pages, 11 figures, JHEP proceedings style. Uses epsfig, amssymb. Talk given at the conference `Nonperturbative Quantum Effects 2000', Pari

ELECTROMYOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF DOUBLE POLE ERGOMETRY: STANDING VS. SITTING.

This study assessed the difference in stand-up athlete’s muscle activity of the rectus femoris in standing and sitting using a double pole ergometer. Five subjects participated in two technique specific peak VO2 tests, and a percentage of the maximum scores were used to determine stages for analysis of the electromyography data that was collected. An ANOVA revealed a significant difference in electromyographical activity between ski position and stage using a pre-determined alpha level of

ELECTROMYOGRAPHICAL ANALYSIS OF DOUBLE POLE ERGOMETRY: STANDING VS. SITTING

This study assessed the difference in stand-up athlete’s muscle activity of the rectus femoris in standing and sitting using a double pole ergometer. Five subjects participated in two technique specific peak VO2 tests, and a percentage of the maximum scores were used to determine stages for analysis of the electromyography data that was collected. An ANOVA revealed a significant difference in electromyographical activity between ski position and stage using a pre-determined alpha level of

Synchronization in disordered Josephson junction arrays: Small-world connections and the Kuramoto model

We study synchronization in disordered arrays of Josephson junctions. In the first half of the paper, we consider the relation between the coupled resistively- and capacitively shunted junction (RCSJ) equations for such arrays and effective phase models of the Winfree type. We describe a multiple-time scale analysis of the RCSJ equations for a ladder array of junctions \textit{with non-negligible capacitance} in which we arrive at a second order phase model that captures well the synchronization physics of the RCSJ equations for that geometry. In the second half of the paper, motivated by recent work on small world networks, we study the effect on synchronization of random, long-range connections between pairs of junctions. We consider the effects of such shortcuts on ladder arrays, finding that the shortcuts make it easier for the array of junctions in the nonzero voltage state to synchronize. In 2D arrays we find that the additional shortcut junctions are only marginally effective at inducing synchronization of the active junctions. The differences in the effects of shortcut junctions in 1D and 2D can be partly understood in terms of an effective phase model.Comment: 31 pages, 21 figure

Phase behavior of weakly polydisperse sticky hard spheres: Perturbation theory for the Percus-Yevick solution

We study the effects of size polydispersity on the gas-liquid phase behaviour of mixtures of sticky hard spheres. To achieve this, the system of coupled quadratic equations for the contact values of the partial cavity functions of the Percus-Yevick solution is solved within a perturbation expansion in the polydispersity, i.e. the normalized width of the size distribution. This allows us to make predictions for various thermodynamic quantities which can be tested against numerical simulations and experiments. In particular, we determine the leading-order effects of size polydispersity on the cloud curve delimiting the region of two-phase coexistence and on the associated shadow curve; we also study the extent of size fractionation between the coexisting phases. Different choices for the size-dependence of the adhesion strengths are examined carefully; the Asakura-Oosawa model of a mixture of polydisperse colloids and small polymers is studied as a specific example.Comment: 43 pages, 12 figures, and 1 tabl

A model for cascading failures in complex networks

Large but rare cascades triggered by small initial shocks are present in most of the infrastructure networks. Here we present a simple model for cascading failures based on the dynamical redistribution of the flow on the network. We show that the breakdown of a single node is sufficient to collapse the efficiency of the entire system if the node is among the ones with largest load. This is particularly important for real-world networks with an highly hetereogeneous distribution of loads as the Internet and electrical power grids.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure