Absolutism, Relativism, and Universalism in Personality Traits Across Cultures: The Case of the Big Five

Personality is a broad concept used to organize the myriad ways that people differ psychologically from one another. There is evidence that such differences have been important to humans everywhere, in that personality-relevant terms appear in all known languages. Empirical attempts to identify the most useful individual differences and their structure have emphasized cross-cultural evidence, but rigid adherence to a Big Five model has sometimes meant ignoring heterogenous results. We start with a framework for more precisely defining the universality versus cultural-specificity of personality concepts and models in order to better assess cross-cultural evidence. As this 50th anniversary of the IACCP is also the 50th anniversary of the first large lexical study of personality and more or less of the Big Five model, we take the opportunity to explore both how personality has been studied across contexts using the lexical method, and in 100 articles on personality topics (most using questionnaires) that were identified in the pages of JCCP. Personality articles in JCCP, classified into three types based on their balance of emic and etic components, illustrate larger trends in personality psychology. With the benefit of hindsight, we reflect on what each type has to offer going forward, and we encourage cross-cultural personality psychologists to go beyond imposed etic studies that seek primarily to confirm Western models in other contexts. The kinds of insights that more integrative emic and etic approaches can bring to the study of psychology across cultures are highlighted, and a future research agenda is provided

Aluminium-oxide wires for superconducting high kinetic inductance circuits

We investigate thin films of conducting aluminium-oxide, also known as granular aluminium, as a material for superconducting high quality, high kinetic inductance circuits. The films are deposited by an optimised reactive DC magnetron sputter process and characterised using microwave measurement techniques at milli-Kelvin temperatures. We show that, by precise control of the reactive sputter conditions, a high room temperature sheet resistance and therefore high kinetic inductance at low temperatures can be obtained. For a coplanar waveguide resonator with 1.5\,k$\Omega$ sheet resistance and a kinetic inductance fraction close to unity, we measure a quality factor in the order of 700\,000 at 20\,mK. Furthermore, we observe a sheet resistance reduction by gentle heat treatment in air. This behaviour is exploited to study the kinetic inductance change using the microwave response of a coplanar wave guide resonator. We find the correlation between the kinetic inductance and the sheet resistance to be in good agreement with theoretical expectations.Comment: 16 pages, 7 figure

Coronary CT angiography for the assessment of atherosclerotic plaque inflammation: postmortem proof of concept with histological validation.

To evaluate the diagnostic utility of multiphase postmortem CT angiography (PMCTA) to detect plaque enhancement as a surrogate marker of inflammation, using fatal coronary plaques obtained from autopsies following sudden cardiac death. In this retrospective study, we included 35 cases (12 women, 34%; median [IQR] age, 52 [11] years), with autopsy-proven coronary thrombosis, histological examination, and multiphase PMCTA. Two radiologists blinded towards histological findings assessed PMCTA for plaque enhancement of the culprit lesion in consensus. Two forensic pathologists determined the culprit lesion and assessed histological samples in consensus. Cases with concomitant vasa vasorum density increase and intraplaque and periadventital inflammation were considered positive for plaque inflammation. Finally, we correlated radiology and pathology findings. All 35 cases had histological evidence of atherosclerotic plaque disruption and thrombosis; 30 (85.7%) had plaque inflammation. Plaque enhancement at multiphase PMCTA was reported in 21 (60%) and resulted in a PPV of 95.2% (77.3-99.2%) and an NPV of 28.6% (17-43.9%). Median histological ratings indicated higher intraplaque inflammation (p = .024) and vasa vasorum density (p = .032) in plaques with enhancement. We found no evidence of a difference in adventitial inflammation between CT-negative and CT-positive plaques (p = .211). Plaque enhancement was found in 2/3 of fatal atherothrombotic occlusions at coronary postmortem CT angiography. Furthermore, plaque enhancement correlated with histopathological plaque inflammation and increased vasa vasorum density. Plaque enhancement on multiphase CT angiography could potentially serve as a noninvasive marker of inflammation in high-risk populations. Phenotyping coronary plaque more comprehensively is one of the principal challenges cardiac imaging is facing. Translating our ex vivo findings of CT-based plaque inflammation assessment into clinical studies might help pave the way in defining high-risk plaque better. • Most thrombosed coronary plaques leading to fatality in our series had histological signs of inflammation. • Multiphase postmortem CT angiography can provide a noninvasive interrogation of plaque inflammation through contrast enhancement. • Atherosclerotic plaque enhancement at multiphase postmortem CT angiography correlated with histopathological signs of plaque inflammation and could potentially serve as an imaging biological marker of plaque vulnerability