The effect of social exclusion on state paranoia and explicit and implicit self-esteem in a non-clinical sample

Background and objectives: The relationship between self-esteem and paranoia may be influenced by social stress. This study aimed to replicate previous research on the impact ofsocial exclusion on paranoia and self-esteem in a non-clinical sample and to extend this work by examining the effect of exclusion on self-esteem at the 'implicit' level. Methods: Non-clinical participants (N = 85) were randomly allocated to the Inclusion or Exclusion condition of a virtual ball-toss game ('Cyberball'). They completed self-reportmeasures of state paranoia and self-esteem, and two implicit measures of self-esteem - theImplicit Association Task (IAT) and Implicit Relational Assessment Procedure (IRAP) -prior to and after exposure to Cyberball. Results: Social exclusion increased state paranoia. This effect was moderated by distress associated with trait paranoia. Exclusion was also associated with decreased self-reported self-esteem, as well as reduced implicit self-esteem on the IAT. Changes in self-reported self-esteem were associated with state paranoia at post-Cyberball. The IRAP indicated that reductions in implicit self-esteem may be due to increases in 'Me-Negative' and 'Others-Positive' biases (rather than reductions in 'Me-Positive' bias). Limitations: The current study involved a non-clinical sample and so findings cannot be generalized to clinical paranoia. Conclusions: These findings are consistent with previous evidence that paranoia is associated with negative self-evaluations, whereas positive self-evaluations can persist in paranoia. They also provide support for the suggestion that investigations of self-esteem in paranoia should extend beyond global self-esteem and might benefit from a distinction between positive and negative components. (C) 2017 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Low dose aspirin and cognitive function in middle aged to elderly adults: randomised controlled trial

Objective To determine the effects of low dose aspirin on cognitive function in middle aged to elderly men and women at moderately increased cardiovascular risk

String breaking by dynamical fermions in three-dimensional lattice QCD

The first observation is made of hadronic string breaking due to dynamical fermions in zero temperature lattice QCD. The simulations are done for SU(2) color in three dimensions, with two flavors of staggered fermions. The results have clear implications for the large scale simulations that are being done to search (so far, without success) for string breaking in four-dimensional QCD. In particular, string breaking is readily observed using only Wilson loops to excite a static quark-antiquark pair. Improved actions on coarse lattices are used, providing an extremely efficient means to access the quark separations and propagation times at which string breaking occurs.Comment: Revised version to appear in Physical Review D, has additional discussion of the results, additional references, modified title, larger figure

Beagle 2: Mission to Mars — current status

Beagle 2, developed in the UK, was launched on June 2, 2003. It landed on Mars on December 25th, 2003 in Isidis Planitia, a large sedimentary basin. To date, the team is awaiting signals from the Beagle 2 lander. Current status of the mission will be reported

TokaMaker: An open-source time-dependent Grad-Shafranov tool for the design and modeling of axisymmetric fusion devices

In this paper, we present a new static and time-dependent MagnetoHydroDynamic (MHD) equilibrium code, TokaMaker, for axisymmetric configurations of magnetized plasmas, based on the well-known Grad-Shafranov equation. This code utilizes finite element methods on an unstructured triangular grid to enable capturing accurate machine geometry and simple mesh generation from engineering-like descriptions of present and future devices. The new code is designed for ease of use without sacrificing capability and speed through a combination of Python, Fortran, and C/C++ components. A detailed description of the numerical methods of the code, including a novel formulation of the boundary conditions for free-boundary equilibria, and validation of the implementation of those methods using both analytic test cases and cross-code validation is shown. Results show expected convergence across tested polynomial orders for analytic and cross-code test cases

Hidden but Ubiquitous: The Pre-Rift Continental Mantle in the Red Sea Region

Volcanism in the western part of the Arabian plate resulted in one of the largest alkali basalt provinces in the world, where lava fields with sub-alkaline to alkaline affinity are scattered from Syria and the Dead Sea Transform Zone through western Saudi Arabia to Yemen. After the Afar plume emplacement (∼30 Ma), volcanism took place in Yemen and progressively propagated northward due to Red Sea rifting-related lithospheric thinning (initiated ∼27–25 Ma). Few lava fields were emplaced during the Mesozoic, with the oldest 200 Ma volcanic activity recorded in northern Israel. We report results from volcanic pipes in the Marthoum area, east of Harrat Uwayrid, where over a hundred pipes occupy a stratigraphic level in the early Ordovician Saq sandstones. Most of them are circular or elliptical features marked by craters aligned along NW-SE fractures in the sandstone resulting from phreatomagmatic explosions that occurred when rising magma columns came in contact with the water table in the porous sandstone host. These lavas have Sr-Pb-Nd-Hf isotopic compositions far from the Cenozoic Arabian alkaline volcanism field, being considerably more enriched in Nd-Hf and Pb isotopes than any other Arabian Plate lava ever reported. New K-Ar dating constrains their age from Late Cretaceous to Early Eocene, thus anticipating the Afar plume emplacement and the Red Sea rift. Basalt geochemistry indicates that these volcanic eruptions formed from low-degree partial melting of an enriched lithospheric mantle source triggered by local variations in the asthenosphere-lithosphere boundary. This mantle source has a composition similar to the HIMU-like enriched isotopic component reported in the East African Rift and considered to represent the lowermost lithospheric mantle of the Nubian Shield. The generated melt, mixed in different proportions with melt derived from a depleted asthenosphere, produces the HIMU-like character throughout the Cenozoic Arabian alkaline volcanism. Although apparently hidden, this enriched lithospheric component is therefore ubiquitous and widespread in the cratonic roots of the African and Arabian subcontinental mantle

Twistors, special relativity, conformal symmetry and minimal coupling - a review

An approach to special relativistic dynamics using the language of spinors and twistors is presented. Exploiting the natural conformally invariant symplectic structure of the twistor space, a model is constructed which describes a relativistic massive, spinning and charged particle, minimally coupled to an external electro-magnetic field. On the two-twistor phase space the relativistic Hamiltonian dynamics is generated by a Poincare scalar function obtained from the classical limit (appropriately defined by us) of the second order, to an external electro-magnetic field minimally coupled, Dirac operator. In the so defined relativistic classical limit there are no Grassman variables. Besides, the arising equation that describes dynamics of the relativistic spin differs significantly from the so called Thomas Bergman Michel Telegdi equation.Comment: 39 pages, no figures, few erronous statements (not affecting anything else in the papper) on page 23 delete

Calculation of quantum discord for qubit-qudit or N qubits

Quantum discord, a kind of quantum correlation, is defined as the difference between quantum mutual information and classical correlation in a bipartite system. It has been discussed so far for small systems with only a few independent parameters. We extend here to a much broader class of states when the second party is of arbitrary dimension d, so long as the first, measured, party is a qubit. We present two formulae to calculate quantum discord, the first relating to the original entropic definition and the second to a recently proposed geometric distance measure which leads to an analytical formulation. The tracing over the qubit in the entropic calculation is reduced to a very simple prescription. And, when the d-dimensional system is a so-called X state, the density matrix having non-zero elements only along the diagonal and anti-diagonal so as to appear visually like the letter X, the entropic calculation can be carried out analytically. Such states of the full bipartite qubit-qudit system may be named "extended X states", whose density matrix is built of four block matrices, each visually appearing as an X. The optimization involved in the entropic calculation is generally over two parameters, reducing to one for many cases, and avoided altogether for an overwhelmingly large set of density matrices as our numerical investigations demonstrate. Our results also apply to states of a N-qubit system, where "extended X states" consist of (2^(N+2) - 1) states, larger in number than the (2^(N+1) - 1) of X states of N qubits. While these are still smaller than the total number (2^(2N) - 1) of states of N qubits, the number of parameters involved is nevertheless large. In the case of N = 2, they encompass the entire 15-dimensional parameter space, that is, the extended X states for N = 2 represent the full qubit-qubit system.Comment: 6 pages, 1 figur