What Am I Thinking Right Now?: Social Anxiety Symptomology and Its Impact on Theory of Mind Ability

Theory of Mind (ToM) is the ability to accurately read other peoples’ minds, which includes their intentions, thoughts, and emotions (Buhlmann, Wacker, & Dziobek, 2015). Individuals with low ToM often experience anxiety in family and social life (Coupland, 2001; Ribeiro & Fearon, 2010), which is a common feature of social anxiety disorder (SAD). Because of this connection, the present study looks at the relationship between social anxiety and ToM. I hypothesized that individuals with greater SAD symptoms would exhibit decreased ToM ability, which was measured using the Hinting Task, the Story Comprehension Task, and the Reading the Mind with the Eyes Task. Furthermore, previous research has shown that individuals with SAD show an attentional bias towards negative facial expressions (Ribeiro & Fearon, 2010). Therefore, I hypothesized that individuals with greater SAD symptoms would exhibit attentional biases toward the negatively valenced expressions on the eyes task, resulting in decreased ToM ability. Results suggest that individuals with more avoidance of performance situations have difficulty understanding metaphorical expressions. This suggests that individuals with more social anxiety symptomology tend to exhibit decreased theory of mind ability in some aspects, partially confirming my hypothesis. Conversely, increased social anxiety symptoms were directly related to correctly identifying negatively valenced expressions on the Eyes task, suggesting that as SAD symptoms increased, so did the ability to identify negative emotions. This result, however, was only a trend. Together, the results suggest some support for the relationship between ToM and SAD and merit additional research

The Alt-Right Movement and National Security

Identifying the January 6 insurrection at the US Capitol as an inflection point, this article analyzes the historical relationship between White supremacy and the US military from Reconstruction after the Civil War to the present. The article posits causes for the disproportionate number of current and former members of the military associated with White power groups and proposes steps the Department of Defense can take to combat the problems posed by the association of the US military with these groups

Advanced Thermal Simulator Testing: Thermal Analysis and Test Results

Work at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center seeks to develop high fidelity, electrically heated thermal simulators that represent fuel elements in a nuclear reactor design to support non-nuclear testing applicable to the development of a space nuclear power or propulsion system. Comparison between the fuel pins and thermal simulators is made at the outer fuel clad surface, which corresponds to the outer sheath surface in the thermal simulator. The thermal simulators that are currently being tested correspond to a SNAP derivative reactor design that could be applied for Lunar surface power. These simulators are designed to meet the geometric and power requirements of a proposed surface power reactor design, accommodate testing of various axial power profiles, and incorporate imbedded instrumentation. This paper reports the results of thermal simulator analysis and testing in a bare element configuration, which does not incorporate active heat removal, and testing in a water-cooled calorimeter designed to mimic the heat removal that would be experienced in a reactor core

A novel millet-based probiotic fermented food for the developing world

© 2017 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Probiotic yogurt, comprised of a Fiti sachet containing Lactobacillus rhamnosus GR-1 and Streptococcus thermophilus C106, has been used in the developing world, notably Africa, to alleviate malnutrition and disease. In sub-Saharan African countries, fermentation of cereals such as millet, is culturally significant. The aim of this study was to investigate the fermentation capability of millet when one gram of the Fiti sachet consortium was added. An increase of 1.8 and 1.4 log CFU/mL was observed for S. thermophilus C106 and L. rhamnosus GR-1 when grown in 8% millet in water. Single cultures of L. rhamnosus GR-1 showed the highest _max when grown in the presence of dextrose, galactose and fructose. Single cultures of S. thermophilus C106 showed the highest _max when grown in the presence of sucrose and lactose. All tested recipes reached viable counts of the probiotic bacteria, with counts greater than 106 colony-forming units (CFU)/mL. Notably, a number of organic acids were quantified, in particular phytic acid, which was shown to decrease when fermentation time increased, thereby improving the bioavailability of specific micronutrients. Millet fermented in milk proved to be the most favorable, according to a sensory evaluation. In conclusion, this study has shown that sachets being provided to African communities to produce fermented milk, can also be used to produce fermented millet. This provides an option for when milk supplies are short, or if communities wish to utilize the nutrient-rich qualities of locally-grown millet

Time-resolved homodyne characterization of individual quadrature-entangled pulses

We describe a simple and efficient setup to generate and characterize femtosecond quadrature-entangled pulses. Quantum correlations equivalent to about 2.5 dB squeezing are efficiently and easily reached using the non-degenerate parametric amplification of femtosecond pulses through a single-pass in a thin (0.1 mm) potassium niobate crystal. The entangled pulses are then individually sampled to characterize the non-separability and the entropy of formation of the states. The complete experiment is analysed in the time-domain, from the pulsed source of quadrature entanglement to the time-resolved homodyne detection. This particularity allows for applications in quantum communication protocols using continuous-variable entanglement.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure