Feeling good about being hungry: food-related thoughts in eating disorder

Objectives: This study explores the relationships to food and hunger in women living with anorexic type eating difficulties and asks how imagery-based elaborations of food and eating thoughts are involved in their eating restraint, and recovery. Design: The qualitative idiographic approach of Interpretative Phenomenological Analysis (IPA) was used. Four in-depth semi-structured interviews were conducted with women self-selected as having experienced anorexia or anorexic like behaviour. Methods: The data was analysed using IPA and an audit of the analysis was conducted to ensure that the process followed had been systematic and rigorous and appropriately considered reflexivity. Results: Hunger was perceived positively by participants as confirmation that they were achieving their goal of losing weight, or avoiding weight gain. Hunger conferred a sense of being in control for the participants. Intrusive thoughts about food were reported as being quickly followed by elaborative mental imagery of the positive aspects of weight loss, and the negative consequences of eating. Imagery appeared to serve to maintain anorexic behaviours rather than to motivate food seeking. However, negative imagery of the consequences of anorexia were also described as supporting recovery. Conclusions: The finding that physiological sensations of hunger were experienced as positive confirmation of maintaining control has potentially important clinical and theoretical implications. It suggests further attention needs to be focused upon how changes in cognitive elaboration, involving mental imagery, are components of the psychological changes in the development of, maintenance of, and recovery from, anorexia

Geometry of W-algebras from the affine Lie algebra point of view

To classify the classical field theories with W-symmetry one has to classify the symplectic leaves of the corresponding W-algebra, which are the intersection of the defining constraint and the coadjoint orbit of the affine Lie algebra if the W-algebra in question is obtained by reducing a WZNW model. The fields that survive the reduction will obey non-linear Poisson bracket (or commutator) relations in general. For example the Toda models are well-known theories which possess such a non-linear W-symmetry and many features of these models can only be understood if one investigates the reduction procedure. In this paper we analyze the SL(n,R) case from which the so-called W_n-algebras can be obtained. One advantage of the reduction viewpoint is that it gives a constructive way to classify the symplectic leaves of the W-algebra which we had done in the n=2 case which will correspond to the coadjoint orbits of the Virasoro algebra and for n=3 which case gives rise to the Zamolodchikov algebra. Our method in principle is capable of constructing explicit representatives on each leaf. Another attractive feature of this approach is the fact that the global nature of the W-transformations can be explicitly described. The reduction method also enables one to determine the ``classical highest weight (h. w.) states'' which are the stable minima of the energy on a W-leaf. These are important as only to those leaves can a highest weight representation space of the W-algebra be associated which contains a ``classical h. w. state''.Comment: 17 pages, LaTeX, revised 1. and 7. chapter

Self-referent versus other-referent information processing in dysphoric, clinically depressed and remitted depressed subjects

Examined the processing of responses directed toward the self versus others by dysphoric, clinically depressed and remitted depressed Ss. In Exp 1, 30 dysphoric Ss found positive and negative responses toward the self equally informative. 30 nondysphoric Ss found positive responses toward the self more informative. When responses were directed toward others, dysphorics found positive responses more informative than negative responses, while nondysphorics found positive and negative responses directed toward others equally informative. Exp 2 replicated these results with 27 clinically depressed and 27 nondysphoric Ss, showing that remitted depressed Ss found positive responses more informative, regardless of direction to self or others. Results suggest that positive and negative constructs are differentially accessible for these groups

High-throughput sequencing reveals a simple model of nucleosome energetics

We use nucleosome maps obtained by high-throughput sequencing to study sequence specificity of intrinsic histone-DNA interactions. In contrast with previous approaches, we employ an analogy between a classical one-dimensional fluid of finite-size particles in an arbitrary external potential and arrays of DNA-bound histone octamers. We derive an analytical solution to infer free energies of nucleosome formation directly from nucleosome occupancies measured in high-throughput experiments. The sequence-specific part of free energies is then captured by fitting them to a sum of energies assigned to individual nucleotide motifs. We have developed hierarchical models of increasing complexity and spatial resolution, establishing that nucleosome occupancies can be explained by systematic differences in mono- and dinucleotide content between nucleosomal and linker DNA sequences, with periodic dinucleotide distributions and longer sequence motifs playing a secondary role. Furthermore, similar sequence signatures are exhibited by control experiments in which genomic DNA is either sonicated or digested with micrococcal nuclease in the absence of nucleosomes, making it possible that current predictions based on high-throughput nucleosome positioning maps are biased by experimental artifacts.Comment: 36 pages, 13 figure

An Introduction to Conformal Field Theory

A comprehensive introduction to two-dimensional conformal field theory is given.Comment: 69 pages, LaTeX; references adde

Fibre bundle formulation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics: I. Introduction. The evolution transport

We propose a new systematic fibre bundle formulation of nonrelativistic quantum mechanics. The new form of the theory is equivalent to the usual one but it is in harmony with the modern trends in theoretical physics and potentially admits new generalizations in different directions. In it a pure state of some quantum system is described by a state section (along paths) of a (Hilbert) fibre bundle. Its evolution is determined through the bundle (analogue of the) Schr\"odinger equation. Now the dynamical variables and the density operator are described via bundle morphisms (along paths). The mentioned quantities are connected by a number of relations derived in this work. The present first part of this investigation is devoted to the introduction of basic concepts on which the fibre bundle approach to quantum mechanics rests. We show that the evolution of pure quantum-mechanical states can be described as a suitable linear transport along paths, called evolution transport, of the state sections in the Hilbert fibre bundle of states of a considered quantum system.Comment: 26 standard (11pt, A4) LaTeX 2e pages. The packages AMS-LaTeX and amsfonts are required. Revised: new material, references, and comments are added. Minor style chages. Continuation of quan-ph/9803083. For continuation of the this series see http://www.inrne.bas.bg/mathmod/bozhome

Stress Reactivity, Depressive Symptoms, and Mindfulness: A Gulf Arab Perspective

Explorations of the relationship between stress reactivity and depression are relatively scarce outside of Europe and North America. This research examined the relationship between emotional reactivity to daily life stressors (stress reactivity) and depressive symptoms among citizens of the United Arab Emirates (UAE). Emirati college students ( N = 286, 76% females) completed a culturally grounded measure of daily life stress, along with measures of depression and anxiety symptoms. Stress reactivity was associated with elevated depression and anxiety symptoms. In a second study, we examined the efficacy of a Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction (MBSR) program within the same population. Emirati College women ( N = 24) were randomly assigned to either an 8-week MBSR program or a waiting list control group (WLC). MBSR participants demonstrated significantly greater reductions in stress reactivity and depressive symptoms compared with the WLC group. These findings extend the stress reactivity literature to an Arabian Gulf nation. Interventions that help young adults better manage responses to daily life stress may play an important role in reducing the prevalence of depressive illness in the region

Effect of Thermoelectric Cooling in Nanoscale Junctions

We propose a thermoelectric cooling device based on an atomic-sized junction. Using first-principles approaches, we investigate the working conditions and the coefficient of performance (COP) of an atomic-scale electronic refrigerator where the effects of phonon's thermal current and local heating are included. It is observed that the functioning of the thermoelectric nano-refrigerator is restricted to a narrow range of driving voltages. Compared with the bulk thermoelectric system with the overwhelmingly irreversible Joule heating, the 4-Al atomic refrigerator has a higher efficiency than a bulk thermoelectric refrigerator with the same $ZT$ due to suppressed local heating via the quasi-ballistic electron transport and small driving voltages. Quantum nature due to the size minimization offered by atomic-level control of properties facilitates electron cooling beyond the expectation of the conventional thermoelectric device theory.Comment: 8 figure