Ironic effects of performance are worse for neurotics

Objectives To conduct the first examination of neuroticism as a predictor of (1) the incidence of what Wegner (1989, 2009) terms ironic processes of mental control and (2) the precision of ironic performance errors under high- and low-anxiety conditions. Design Across two studies we employed a repeated-measures design. Method In a football penalty-shooting task (Study 1) and a dart-throwing (Study 2) task, under high-anxiety and low-anxiety conditions, participants gained maximum points for hitting a target zone and fewer points for hitting a designated non-ironic error zone. Additionally, we instructed participants to be particularly careful not to hit a designated ironic error zone, because such hits would score minimum points. Results Across both studies within-subjects moderation analyses revealed a consistent moderating effect of neuroticism on the incidence of ironic errors in the high-anxiety condition. Specifically, when anxious, neurotics displayed a significant increase in ironic performance error and a significant decrease in target hits. Importantly, non-ironic error did not differ across anxiety conditions. Additionally, Study 2 results revealed that neuroticism moderated the precision of ironic errors when anxious. Specifically, when anxious, neurotics� ironic error zone hits were significantly farther from the target zone and significantly farther into the ironic error zone than their relatively emotionally stable counterparts� errors. Conclusion We provide the first evidence that neuroticism moderates both the incidence and precision of ironic performance errors. These results will enable practitioners in coaching environments to make evidence-based predictions and interventions regarding which individuals are most prone to ironic performance breakdown when anxious

Trapping in the random conductance model

We consider random walks on $\Z^d$ among nearest-neighbor random conductances which are i.i.d., positive, bounded uniformly from above but whose support extends all the way to zero. Our focus is on the detailed properties of the paths of the random walk conditioned to return back to the starting point at time $2n$. We show that in the situations when the heat kernel exhibits subdiffusive decay --- which is known to occur in dimensions $d\ge4$ --- the walk gets trapped for a time of order $n$ in a small spatial region. This shows that the strategy used earlier to infer subdiffusive lower bounds on the heat kernel in specific examples is in fact dominant. In addition, we settle a conjecture concerning the worst possible subdiffusive decay in four dimensions.Comment: 21 pages, version to appear in J. Statist. Phy

The importance of ceramide headgroup for lipid localisation in skin lipid models

The stratum corneum's lipid matrix is a critical for the skin's barrier function and is primarily composed of ceramides (CERs), cholesterol (CHOL) and free fatty acids (FFAs). The lipids form a long periodicity phase (LPP), a unique trilayer unit cell structure. An enzyme driven pathway is implemented to synthesize these key lipids. If these enzymes are down- or upregulated as in inflammatory diseases, the final lipid composition is affected often altering the barrier function. In this study, we mimicked down regulation of enzymes involved in the synthesis of the sphingosine and CER amide bond. In a LPP lipid model, we substituted CER N-(tetracosanoyl)-sphingosine (CER NS) with either i) FFA C24 and free sphingosine, to simulate the loss of the CER amide bond, or ii) with FFA C24 and C18 to simulate the loss of the sphingosine headgroup. Our study shows the lipids in the LPP would not phase separate until at least 25% of the CER NS is substituted keeping the lateral packing and conformational ordering unaltered. Neutron diffraction studies showed that free sphingosine chains localized at the outer layers of the unit cell, while the remaining CER NS head group was concentrated in the inner headgroup layers. However, when FFA C18 was inserted, CER NS was dispersed throughout the LPP, resulting in an even distribution between the inner and outer water layers. The presented results highlight the importance of the CER NS headgroup structure and its interaction in combination with the carbon chain invariability for optimal lipid arrangement.Drug Delivery Technolog

Sources and contributions of wood smoke during winter in London: Assessing local and regional influences

Determining the contribution of wood smoke to air pollution in large cities such as London is becoming increasingly important due to the changing nature of domestic heating in urban areas. During winter, biomass burning emissions have been identified as a major cause of exceedances of European air quality limits. The aim of this work was to quantify the contribution of biomass burning in London to concentrations of PM2:5 and determine whether local emissions or regional contributions were the main source of biomass smoke. To achieve this, a number of biomass burning chemical tracers were analysed at a site within central London and two sites in surrounding rural areas. Concentrations of levoglucosan, elemental carbon (EC), organic carbon (OC) and KC were generally well correlated across the three sites. At all the sites, biomass burning was found to be a source of OC and EC, with the largest contribution of EC from traffic emissions, while for OC the dominant fraction included contributions from secondary organic aerosols, primary biogenic and cooking sources. Source apportionment of the EC and OC was found to give reasonable estimation of the total carbon from non-fossil and fossil fuel sources based upon comparison with estimates derived from 14C analysis. Aethalometer-derived black carbon data were also apportioned into the contributions frombiomass burning and traffic and showed trends similar to those observed for EC. Mean wood smoke mass at the sites was estimated to range from 0.78 to 1.0 μgm-3 during the campaign in January–February 2012. Measurements on a 160m tower in London suggested a similar ratio of brown to black carbon (reflecting wood burning and traffic respectively) in regional and London air. Peaks in the levoglucosan and KC concentrations were observed to coincide with low ambient temperature, consistent with domestic heating as a major contributing local source in London. Overall, the source of biomass smoke in London was concluded to be a background regional source overlaid by contributions from local domestic burning emissions. This could have implications when considering future emission control strategies during winter and may be the focus of future work in order to better determine the contributing local sources

What Attracts Men Who Batter to Their Partners? An Exploratory Study

Men who batter, because of particular personality traits and sense of entitlement, may select partners whom they perceive will be dependent on them, meet their emotional needs, or be “objects” of physical attractiveness. During treatment intake, 181 offenders responded to the question, “What attracted you to her (your partner)?” We explored whether men who mentioned their own needs or her physical traits would engage in more frequent and severe violence and would have specific forms of personality disorder dimensions or personality traits. Six categories of attraction, including “her physical traits” and “his needs,” were derived from the men’s responses. The results showed that men who focused on their partners’ physical attractiveness were more likely to be violent after treatment. Men who cited their own needs for their attraction had higher scores on borderline personality, alcohol abuse, and psychotic thinking and lower scores on compulsive-conformingPeer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/89970/1/Saunders-Kurko-Barlow-Crane 2011 What Attracts Men Who Batter to Their Partners JIV.pd

Stable Coexistence of an Invasive Plant and Biocontrol Agent: A Parameterized Coupled Plant-Herbivore Model

1. Coupled plant-herbivore models, allowing feedback from plant to herbivore populations and vice versa, enable us to predict the impact of biocontrol agents on their target weed populations; however, they are rarely used in biocontrol studies. We describe the population biology of the invasive plant Echium plantagineum and the weevil Mogulones larvatus, a biocontrol agent, in Australia. In order to understand the dynamics of this plant-herbivore system, a series of coupled models of increasing complexity was developed. 2. A simple model was extended to include a seed bank, density-dependent plant fecundity, competition between weevil larvae and plant tolerance of herbivory, where below a threshold plants could compensate for larval feeding. Parameters and functional forms were estimated from experimental and field data. 3. The plant model, in the absence of the weevil, exhibited stable dynamics and provided a good quantitative description of field densities before the weevil was introduced. 4. In the coupled plant-herbivore model, density dependence in both plant fecundity and weevil larval competition stabilized the dynamics. Without larval competition the model was unstable, and plant tolerance of herbivory exacerbated this instability. This was a result of a time delay in plant response to herbivore densities. 5. Synthesis and applications. The coupled plant-herbivore model allowed us to predict whether stable coexistence of target plant and biocontrol agents was achievable at an acceptable level. We found this to be the case for the Echium-Mogulones system and believe that similar models would be of use when assessing new agents in this and other invasive plant biocontrol systems. Density dependence in new biocontrol agents should be assessed in order to determine whether it is likely to result in the aims of classical biocontrol: low, stable and sustainable populations of plant and herbivore. Further work should be done to characterize the strength of density dependence according to the niche occupied by the biocontrol agent, for example the strength and functional form of density dependence in stem borers may be quite different to that of defoliators

A clinical study of kuru patients with long incubation periods at the end of the epidemic in Papua New Guinea

Kuru is so far the principal human epidemic prion disease. While its incidence has steadily declined since the cessation of its route of transmission, endocannibalism, in Papua New Guinea in the 1950s, the arrival of variant Creutzfeldt–Jakob disease (vCJD), also thought to be transmitted by dietary prion exposure, has given kuru a new global relevance. We investigated all suspected cases of kuru from July 1996 to June 2004 and identified 11 kuru patients. There were four females and seven males, with an age range of 46–63 years at the onset of disease, in marked contrast to the age and sex distribution when kuru was first investigated 50 years ago. We obtained detailed histories of residence and exposure to mortuary feasts and performed serial neurological examination and genetic studies where possible. All patients were born a significant period before the mortuary practice of transumption ceased and their estimated incubation periods in some cases exceeded 50 years. The principal clinical features of kuru in the studied patients showed the same progressive cerebellar syndrome that had been previously described. Two patients showed marked cognitive impairment well before preterminal stages, in contrast to earlier clinical descriptions. In these patients, the mean clinical duration of 17 months was longer than the overall average in kuru but similar to that previously reported for the same age group, and this may relate to the effects of both patient age and PRNP codon 129 genotype. Importantly, no evidence for lymphoreticular colonization with prions, seen uniformly in vCJD, was observed in a patient with kuru at tonsil biopsy

Infrared Space Observatory and Ground-Based Infrared Observation of the Classical Nova V723 Cassiopeiae

We present observations of the classical nova V723 Cassiopeiae (Nova Cas 1995), obtained both with the Infrared Space Observatory (ISO) and from the ground. The infrared spectrum was dominated in the first year by H and He recombination lines, and at later times by coronal lines. The H recombination lines imply a reddening of E(B-V) = 0.78, an electron temperature of 7000 K, and an electron density of 2 × 108 cm-3 on day 250. We argue that the high-ionization species in the infrared are most likely the result of collisional ionization rather than photoionization and are therefore truly "coronal"; we estimate a temperature of 3.2 × 105 K in the coronal region and abundance ratios of S/Si 2.1, Ca/Si 1.6, and Al/Si 1.5. The ejected mass as determined from the Brα line was 2.6 × 10-5 M⊙ for a distance of 4 kpc; however, the mass deduced from the free-free emission, which we conclude arises primarily in the coronal zone, is 4.3 × 10-4 M⊙. V723 Cas did not display the [O IV] 25.89 μm fine-structure line, which was typically seen in the spectra of novae observed with ISO. There was no evidence of dust emission in V723 Cas

Genetic, abiotic and social influences on sex differentiation in cichlid fishes and the evolution of sequential hermaphroditism

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/73799/1/j.1467-2979.2005.00184.x.pd