Hispanic Acculturation and Perceived Discrimination\u27s Impact on Emerging Adult\u27s Internalizing and Externalizing Symptoms Over Time: A Longitudinal Investigation.

Perceived discrimination and acculturation are key minority status and cultural variables that impact Hispanic mental health. Despite discrimination being a chronic stressor and acculturation being a developmental process, the impact of these experiences have been primarily investigated cross-sectionally. This paper uses longitudinal analyses to explore how perceived discrimination and acculturation impact growth internalizing and externalizing symptoms over time, adding nuance to previous literature. Using the Pathways to Desistance Mexican American sample (N =332), this paper utilized latent growth curve analyses to evaluate acculturative theories on mental health and the immediate and longitudinal impact of discrimination on a broad spectrum of mental health outcomes. Results indicate that higher initial status in Mexican orientation predicted less growth in internalizing symptoms, and growth in Mexican orientation predicted less growth in alcohol use, substance use, and criminal offending over time. Interestingly, growth in American cultural orientation did not predict growth in internalizing or externalizing symptoms. Baseline perceived police discrimination cross-sectionally was associated with greater internalizing, substance use, and criminal offending, but did not predict growth in mental health challenges. Moderation analyses also indicated that higher initial status in Mexican orientation and American orientation was related to less growth in internalizing symptoms but unrelated to externalizing symptoms. Neither Mexican nor American orientation moderated the impact of discrimination on internalizing or externalizing symptoms. Altogether these results provide no support for the position of Americanization being key to better mental health outcomes, and supports the acculturative theories that point to integrated cultural identities and strong Hispanic cultural identity being protective against mental health

Diffusion-limited deposition with dipolar interactions: fractal dimension and multifractal structure

Computer simulations are used to generate two-dimensional diffusion-limited deposits of dipoles. The structure of these deposits is analyzed by measuring some global quantities: the density of the deposit and the lateral correlation function at a given height, the mean height of the upper surface for a given number of deposited particles and the interfacial width at a given height. Evidences are given that the fractal dimension of the deposits remains constant as the deposition proceeds, independently of the dipolar strength. These same deposits are used to obtain the growth probability measure through Monte Carlo techniques. It is found that the distribution of growth probabilities obeys multifractal scaling, i.e. it can be analyzed in terms of its $f(\alpha)$ multifractal spectrum. For low dipolar strengths, the $f(\alpha)$ spectrum is similar to that of diffusion-limited aggregation. Our results suggest that for increasing dipolar strength both the minimal local growth exponent $\alpha_{min}$ and the information dimension $D_1$ decrease, while the fractal dimension remains the same.Comment: 10 pages, 7 figure

Diffusion-limited deposition of dipolar particles

Deposits of dipolar particles are investigated by means of extensive Monte Carlo simulations. We found that the effect of the interactions is described by an initial, non-universal, scaling regime characterized by orientationally ordered deposits. In the dipolar regime, the order and geometry of the clusters depend on the strength of the interactions and the magnetic properties are tunable by controlling the growth conditions. At later stages, the growth is dominated by thermal effects and the diffusion-limited universal regime obtains, at finite temperatures. At low temperatures the crossover size increases exponentially as T decreases and at T=0 only the dipolar regime is observed.Comment: 5 pages, 4 figure