Perceived parenting and psychological well-being in UK ethnic minority adolescents

Background: Warm, caring parenting with appropriate supervision and control is considered to contribute to the best mental health outcomes for young people. The extent to which this view on ‘optimal’ parenting and health applies across ethnicities, warrants further attention. We examined associations between perceived parental care and parental control and psychological well-being among ethnically diverse UK adolescents.<p></p> Methods: In 2003 a sample of 4349 pupils aged 11–13 years completed eight self-reported parenting items. These items were used to derive the parental care and control scores. Higher score represents greater care and control, respectively. Psychological well-being was based on total psychological difficulties score from Goodman's Strengths and Difficulties Questionnaire, increasing score corresponding to increasing difficulties.<p></p> Results: All minority pupils had lower mean care and higher mean control scores compared with Whites. In models stratified by ethnicity, increasing parental care was associated with lower psychological difficulties score (better mental health) and increasing parental control with higher psychological difficulties score within each ethnic group, compared with reference categories. The difference in psychological difficulties between the highest and lowest tertiles of parental care, adjusted for age, sex, family type and socio-economic circumstances, was: White UK =−2.92 (95% confidence interval −3.72, −2.12); Black Caribbean =−2.08 (−2.94, −1.22); Nigerian/Ghanaian =−2.60 (−3.58, −1.62); Other African =−3.12 (−4.24, −2.01); Indian =−2.77 (−4.09, −1.45); Pakistani/ Bangladeshi =−3.15 (−4.27, −2.03). Between ethnic groups (i.e. in models including ethnicity), relatively better mental health of minority groups compared with Whites was apparent even in categories of low care and low autonomy. Adjusting for parenting scores, however, did not fully account for the protective effect of minority ethnicity.<p></p> Conclusions: Perceived quality of parenting is a correlate of psychological difficulties score for all ethnic groups despite differences in reporting. It is therefore likely that programmes supporting parenting will be effective regardless of ethnicity.<p></p&gt

Altruistic Contents of Quantum Prisoner's Dilemma

We examine the classical contents of quantum games. It is shown that a quantum strategy can be interpreted as a classical strategies with effective density-dependent game matrices composed of transposed matrix elements. In particular, successful quantum strategies in dilemma games are interpreted in terms of a symmetrized game matrix that corresponds to an altruistic game plan.Comment: Revised according to publisher's request: 4 pgs, 2 fgs, ReVTeX4. For more info, go to http://www.mech.kochi-tech.ac.jp/cheon

Queen control of a key life-history event in a eusocial insect

In eusocial insects, inclusive fitness theory predicts potential queen–worker conflict over the timing of events in colony life history. Whether queens or workers control the timing of these events is poorly understood. In the bumble-bee Bombus terrestris, queens exhibit a ‘switch point’ in which they switch from laying diploid eggs yielding females (workers and new queens) to laying haploid eggs yielding males. By rearing foundress queens whose worker offspring were removed as pupae and sexing their eggs using microsatellite genotyping, we found that queens kept in the complete absence of adult workers still exhibit a switch point. Moreover, the timing of their switch points relative to the start of egg-laying did not differ significantly from that of queens allowed to produce normal colonies. The finding that bumble-bee queens can express the switch point in the absence of workers experimentally demonstrates queen control of a key life-history event in eusocial insects. In addition, we found no evidence that workers affect the timing of the switch point either directly or indirectly via providing cues to queens, suggesting that workers do not fully express their interests in queen–worker conflicts over colony life history

A solvable model of the evolutionary loop

A model for the evolution of a finite population in a rugged fitness landscape is introduced and solved. The population is trapped in an evolutionary loop, alternating periods of stasis to periods in which it performs adaptive walks. The dependence of the average rarity of the population (a quantity related to the fitness of the most adapted individual) and of the duration of stases on population size and mutation rate is calculated.Comment: 6 pages, EuroLaTeX, 1 figur

Noise and Correlations in a Spatial Population Model with Cyclic Competition

Noise and spatial degrees of freedom characterize most ecosystems. Some aspects of their influence on the coevolution of populations with cyclic interspecies competition have been demonstrated in recent experiments [e.g. B. Kerr et al., Nature {\bf 418}, 171 (2002)]. To reach a better theoretical understanding of these phenomena, we consider a paradigmatic spatial model where three species exhibit cyclic dominance. Using an individual-based description, as well as stochastic partial differential and deterministic reaction-diffusion equations, we account for stochastic fluctuations and spatial diffusion at different levels, and show how fascinating patterns of entangled spirals emerge. We rationalize our analysis by computing the spatio-temporal correlation functions and provide analytical expressions for the front velocity and the wavelength of the propagating spiral waves.Comment: 4 pages of main text, 3 color figures + 2 pages of supplementary material (EPAPS Document). Final version for Physical Review Letter

Competition and cooperation in one-dimensional stepping stone models

Cooperative mutualism is a major force driving evolution and sustaining ecosystems. Although the importance of spatial degrees of freedom and number fluctuations is well-known, their effects on mutualism are not fully understood. With range expansions of microbes in mind, we show that, even when mutualism confers a distinct selective advantage, it persists only in populations with high density and frequent migrations. When these parameters are reduced, mutualism is generically lost via a directed percolation process, with a phase diagram strongly influenced by an exceptional DP2 transition.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Co-evolution of strategy and structure in complex networks with dynamical linking

Here we introduce a model in which individuals differ in the rate at which they seek new interactions with others, making rational decisions modeled as general symmetric two-player games. Once a link between two individuals has formed, the productivity of this link is evaluated. Links can be broken off at different rates. We provide analytic results for the limiting cases where linking dynamics is much faster than evolutionary dynamics and vice-versa, and show how the individual capacity of forming new links or severing inconvenient ones maps into the problem of strategy evolution in a well-mixed population under a different game. For intermediate ranges, we investigate numerically the detailed interplay determined by these two time-scales and show that the scope of validity of the analytical results extends to a much wider ratio of time scales than expected

Effects of precompetition state anxiety interventions on performance time and accuracy among amateur soccer players: Revisiting the matching hypothesis

In this study, we tested the matching ypothesis, which contends that administration of a cognitive or somatic anxiety intervention should be matched to a participant's dominant anxiety response. Sixty-one male soccer players (mean age 31.6 years, s=6.3) were assigned to one of four groups based on their responses to the Competitive State Anxiety Inventory-2, which was modified to include a directional scale. Interventions were randomly administered in a counterbalanced order 10 min before each performance trial on a soccer skill test. The dominantly cognitive anxious group (n=17), the dominantly somatic anxious group (n=17), and the non-anxious control intervention group (n=14) completed a baseline performance trial. The second and third trials were completed with random administration of brief cognitive and somatic interventions. The non-anxious control group (n=13) completed three trials with no intervention. A mixed-model, GroupTreatment multivariate analysis of variance indicated significant (P0.05), or performance time or accuracy (P>0.05). The present findings do not provide support for the matching hypothesis for state anxiety intensity and direction, or for performance

Group selection models in prebiotic evolution

The evolution of enzyme production is studied analytically using ideas of the group selection theory for the evolution of altruistic behavior. In particular, we argue that the mathematical formulation of Wilson's structured deme model ({\it The Evolution of Populations and Communities}, Benjamin/Cumings, Menlo Park, 1980) is a mean-field approach in which the actual environment that a particular individual experiences is replaced by an {\it average} environment. That formalism is further developed so as to avoid the mean-field approximation and then applied to the problem of enzyme production in the prebiotic context, where the enzyme producer molecules play the altruists role while the molecules that benefit from the catalyst without paying its production cost play the non-altruists role. The effects of synergism (i.e., division of labor) as well as of mutations are also considered and the results of the equilibrium analysis are summarized in phase diagrams showing the regions of the space of parameters where the altruistic, non-altruistic and the coexistence regimes are stable. In general, those regions are delimitated by discontinuous transition lines which end at critical points.Comment: 22 pages, 10 figure