Borderline Personality Features and Integration of Positive and Negative Thoughts About Significant Others

Taking the bad with the good is a necessity of life, and people who readily integrate thoughts of their loved one’s flaws with thoughts of their more positive attributes maintain more stable, satisfying relationships. Borderline personality disorder, however, is often characterized by interpersonal perceptions that fluctuate between extremes of good and bad. We used a timed judgment task to examine information processing about significant others in individuals high in borderline personality features relative to healthy individuals and those high in avoidant personality features. In Study 1, when judging traits of a liked significant other, same-valence facilitation by negative primes (judging negative traits faster than positive traits after a negative prime) was significantly stronger in the borderline features group than the other two groups, and was inversely associated with self-reports of integrated thoughts about significant others. In contrast, same-valence facilitation by positive primes (judging positive traits faster than negative traits after a positive prime) was significantly stronger in the avoidant features group than the other two groups, and inversely associated with self-esteem. No between-group differences in same-valence facilitation were statistically significant when participants judged traits of disliked significant others, liked foods, and disliked foods. In Study 2, same-valence facilitation by negative primes when judging traits of a liked significant other was significantly associated with less integrated positive/negative thoughts about that person in a 12-day diary. These results identify an implicit information-processing pattern relevant to interpersonal difficulties in borderline personality disorder

The Mechanical Coupling of Fluid-Filled Granular Material Under Shear

The coupled mechanics of fluid-filled granular media controls the physics of many Earth systems, for example saturated soils, fault gouge, and landslide shear zones. It is well established that when the pore fluid pressure rises, the shear resistance of fluid-filled granular systems decreases, and, as a result, catastrophic events such as soil liquefaction, earthquakes, and accelerating landslides may be triggered. Alternatively, when the pore pressure drops, the shear resistance of these geosystems increases. Despite the great importance of the coupled mechanics of grain-fluid systems, the basic physics that controls this coupling is far from understood. Fundamental questions that must be addressed include: what are the processes that control pore fluid pressurization and depressurization in response to deformation of the granular skeleton? and how do variations of pore pressure affect the mechanical strength of the grains skeleton? To answer these questions, a formulation for the pore fluid pressure and flow has been developed from mass and momentum conservation, and is coupled with a granular dynamics algorithm that solves the grain dynamics, to form a fully coupled model. The pore fluid formulation reveals that the evolution of pore pressure obeys viscoelastic rheology in response to pore space variations. Under undrained conditions elastic-like behavior dominates and leads to a linear relationship between pore pressure and overall volumetric strain. Viscous-like behavior dominates under well-drained conditions and leads to a linear relationship between pore pressure and volumetric strain rate. Numerical simulations reveal the possibility of liquefaction under drained and initially over-compacted conditions, which were often believed to be resistant to liquefaction. Under such conditions liquefaction occurs during short compactive phases that punctuate the overall dilative trend. In addition, the previously recognized generation of elevated pore pressure under undrained compactive conditions is observed. Simulations also show that during liquefaction events stress chains are detached, the external load becomes completely supported by the pressurized pore fluid, and shear resistance vanishe

Invasive biota in the deep-sea Mediterranean: an emerging issue in marine conservation and management

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Impeded Growth of Magnetic Flux Bubbles in the Intermediate State Pattern of Type I Superconductors

Normal state bubble patterns in Type I superconducting Indium and Lead slabs are studied by the high resolution magneto-optical imaging technique. The size of bubbles is found to be almost independent of the long-range interaction between the normal state domains. Under bubble diameter and slab thickness proper scaling, the results gather onto a single master curve. On this basis, in the framework of the "current-loop" model [R.E. Goldstein, D.P. Jackson and A.T. Dorsey, Phys. Rev. Lett. 76, 3818 (1996)], we calculate the equilibrium diameter of an isolated bubble resulting from the competition between the Biot-and-Savart interaction of the Meissner current encircling the bubble and the superconductor-normal interface energy. A good quantitative agreement with the master curve is found over two decades of the magnetic Bond number. The isolation of each bubble in the superconducting matrix and the existence of a positive interface energy are shown to preclude any continuous size variation of the bubbles after their formation, contrary to the prediction of mean-field models.Comment: \'{e}quipe Nanostructures Quantique

A General Criterion for Liquefaction in Granular Layers with Heterogeneous Pore Pressure

International audienceFluid-saturated granular and porous layers can undergo liquefaction and lose their shear resistance when subjected to shear forcing. In geosystems, such a process can lead to severe natural hazards of soil liquefaction, accelerating slope failure, and large earthquakes. Terzaghi's principle of effective stress predicts that liquefaction occurs when the pore pressure within the layer becomes equal to the applied normal stress on the layer. However, under dynamic loading and when the internal permeability is relatively small the pore pressure is spatially heterogeneous and it is not clear what measurement of pore pressure should be used in Terzaghi's principle. Here, we show theoretically and demonstrate using numerical simulations a general criterion for liquefaction that applies also for the cases in which the pore pressure is spatially heterogeneous. The general criterion demands that the average pore pressure along a continuous surface within the fluid-saturated granular or porous layer is equal to the applied normal stress

Raman and micromorphological characterization of carbonates in plaster-like materials from the Natufian site of Eynan (Ain Mallaha), Israel

The archaeological site of Eynan, located by the spring of Ain Mallaha and on the shores of Lake Hula in the Upper Jordan Valley, Israel, existed for several millennia at the end of the Pleistocene. During the Natufian culture of the Levantine Epipalaeolithic, the site was one of the largest known occupations in the Levant for some millennia (ca. 14,300 - 11,900 cal BP). Remains of Natufian architecture were found, together with evidence of early experimenting with pyrotechnology for the creation of lime plaster. Several features were identified during the excavations as assumed lime plaster installations. Samples investigated by micromorphology methods under the polarizing microscope revealed that while all were composed of calcium carbonate, and some indeed represent anthropogenic burnt lime products, others reflected the results of post-depositional or contemporaneous natural processes rather than technological products. The study of the samples at a molecular level through Raman spectroscopy enables a new methodology for the quick distinction between the features observed by micromorphology

Hopf's last hope: spatiotemporal chaos in terms of unstable recurrent patterns

Spatiotemporally chaotic dynamics of a Kuramoto-Sivashinsky system is described by means of an infinite hierarchy of its unstable spatiotemporally periodic solutions. An intrinsic parametrization of the corresponding invariant set serves as accurate guide to the high-dimensional dynamics, and the periodic orbit theory yields several global averages characterizing the chaotic dynamics.Comment: Latex, ioplppt.sty and iopl10.sty, 18 pages, 11 PS-figures, compressed and encoded with uufiles, 170 k

Facial Attractiveness

Facial attractiveness has important social consequences. Despite a widespread belief that beauty cannot be defined, in fact, there is considerable agreement across individuals and cultures on what is found attractive. By considering that attraction and mate choice are critical components of evolutionary selection, we can better understand the importance of beauty. There are many traits that are linked to facial attractiveness in humans and each may in some way impart benefits to individuals who act on their preferences. If a trait is reliably associated with some benefit to the perceiver, then we would expect individuals in a population to find that trait attractive. Such an approach has highlighted face traits such as age, health, symmetry, and averageness, which are proposed to be associated with benefits and so associated with facial attractiveness. This view may postulate that some traits will be universally attractive; however, this does not preclude variation. Indeed, it would be surprising if there existed a template of a perfect face that was not affected by experience, environment, context, or the specific needs of an individual. Research on facial attractiveness has documented how various face traits are associated with attractiveness and various factors that impact on an individual's judgments of facial attractiveness. Overall, facial attractiveness is complex, both in the number of traits that determine attraction and in the large number of factors that can alter attraction to particular faces. A fuller understanding of facial beauty will come with an understanding of how these various factors interact with each other