Structural and Stratigraphic Evolution of the Mid North Sea High Region of the UK Continental Shelf

This research was undertaken as part of a 2-year Post-Doctoral Research Associate (PDRA) project undertaken at the Applied Geoscience Unit in the Centre of Exploration Geoscience at Heriot Watt University. The project was funded by the UK Oil and Gas Authority (OGA) as part of their Frontier Basins Research program. We extend our gratitude Jo Bagguley, Malcolm Gall and Nick Richardson for their support of the work and technical discussions. All research outputs are available for download on the Oil and Gas Authority’s National Data Repository (NDR) website, and we thank the OGA’s data management and Arc GIS team for their work to make this publicly available. The work has benefitted from technical discussion with Matthew Booth, Ross Grant and Richard McKeen, who have undertaken complementary studies in neighbouring parts of the basin.Peer reviewedPostprin

Adjusting to Work Life: Individual Factors that Impact Young Adults’ Success in the Workplace the First Year after Graduation

Young adults experience multiple transitions in their first year after college graduation including newcomer adjustment, the process of becoming integrated into a new job and organization during the first year of employment. In this paper we describe our empirical study of relationships among psychological capital (PsyCap), proactive behaviors, and newcomer adjustment outcomes

Academic Engagement Moderates the Influence of Narcissism on Student Grades and Retention

Using two different samples, this study provides evidence that narcissists who are engaged with their environments experience several positive academic outcomes, including fewer course withdrawals and higher GPAs. The multidimensional nature of narcissistic motivation as well as implications for motivating narcissists in academic contexts are discussed

Modeling the red sequence: Hierarchical growth yet slow luminosity evolution

We explore the effects of mergers on the evolution of massive early-type galaxies by modeling the evolution of their stellar populations in a hierarchical context. We investigate how a realistic red sequence population set up by z~1 evolves under different assumptions for the merger and star formation histories, comparing changes in color, luminosity and mass. The purely passive fading of existing red sequence galaxies, with no further mergers or star formation, results in dramatic changes at the bright end of the luminosity function and color-magnitude relation. Without mergers there is too much evolution in luminosity at a fixed space density compared to observations. The change in color and magnitude at a fixed mass resemble that of a passively evolving population that formed relatively recently, at z~2. Mergers amongst the red sequence population ("dry mergers") occurring after z=1 build up mass, counteracting the fading of the existing stellar populations to give smaller changes in both color and luminosity for massive galaxies. By allowing some galaxies to migrate from the blue cloud onto the red sequence after z=1 through gas-rich mergers, younger stellar populations are added to the red sequence. This manifestation of the progenitor bias increases the scatter in age and results in even smaller changes in color and luminosity between z=1 and z=0 at a fixed mass. The resultant evolution appears much slower, resembling the passive evolution of a population that formed at high redshift (z~3-5) and is in closer agreement with observations. Measurements of the luminosity and color evolution alone are not sufficient to distinguish between the purely passive evolution of an old population and cosmologically motivated hierarchical growth, although these scenarios have very different implications for the mass growth of early-type galaxies over the last half of cosmic history.Comment: 14 pages, 4 figures. Final version accepted for publication in ApJ (2012, ApJ 753, 44

You, Me, and No One Else: Degree of Social Distancing and Personality Predict Psychological Wellness and Relationship Quality During the COVID-19 Pandemic (Pre-Print)

While incredibly disruptive to everyday life, the COVID-19 pandemic provides a unique opportunity to study the influence of social distancing and quarantine behaviors on mental health and relationship quality. In this study, we used a snowball sample of 519 Americans to examine whether there were relationships between personality, degree of adherence to social distancing and quarantining norms and regulations, and psychological wellness and relationship quality. We discovered several interesting patterns, some more intuitive than others. Specifically, we present evidence of several interactive effects between personality and degree of social distancing predicting psychological wellness and relationship quality with cohabitants, indicating that some people may fare better in quarantine than others. Results are discussed in terms of practical applications and may provide helpful insights to policymakers and personality psychologists alike

Parenteral Transmission of the Novel Human Parvovirus PARV4

Transmission routes of PARV4, a newly discovered human parvovirus, were investigated by determining frequencies of persistent infections using autopsy samples from different risk groups. Predominantly parenteral routes of transmission were demonstrated by infection restricted to injection drug users and persons with hemophilia and absence of infection in homosexual men with AIDS and low-risk controls