The influence of affect on attitude

Priests of the medieval Catholic Church understood something about the relationship between affect and attitude. To instill the proper attitude in parishioners, priests dramatized the power of liturgy to save them from Hell in a service in which the experience of darkness and fear gave way to light and familiar liturgy. These ceremonies “were written and performed so as to first arouse and then allay anxieties and fears ” (Scott, 2003, p. 227): The service usually began in the dark of night with the gothic cathedral’s nave filled with worship-pers cast into total darkness. Terrifying noises, wailing, shrieks, screams, and clanging of metal mimicked the chaos of hell, giving frightened witnesses a taste of what they could expect if they were tempted to stray. After a prolonged period of this imitation of hell, the cathedral’s interior gradually became filled with the blaze of a thousand lights. As the gloom diminished, cacophony was supplanted by the measured tones of Gregorian chants and polyphony. Light and divine order replaced darkness and chaos (R. Scott, personal correspondence, March 15, 2004). This ceremony was designed to buttress beliefs by experience and to transfigure abstractions into attitudes. In place of merely hearing about “the chaos and perdition of hell that regular performances of liturgy were designed to hold in check ” (Scott, 2003), parishioners shoul

Time-like and space-like electromagnetic form factors of nucleons, a unified description

The extended Lomon-Gari-Kr\"umpelmann model of nucleon electromagnetic form factors, which embodies \rho, \rho', \omega, \omega' and \phi vector meson contributions and the perturbative QCD high momentum transfer behavior has been extended to the time-like region. Breit-Wigner formulae with momentum-dependent widths have been considered for broad resonances in order to have a parametrization for the electromagnetic form factors that fulfills, in the time-like region, constraints from causality, analyticity, and unitarity. This analytic extension of the Lomon-Gari-Kr\"umpelmann model has been used to perform a unified fit to all the nucleon electromagnetic form factor data, in the space-like and time-like region (where form factor values are extracted from e+e- nucleon-antinucleon cross sections data). The knowledge of the complete analytic structure of form factors enables predictions at extended momentum transfer, and also of time-like observables such as the ratio between electric and magnetic form factors and their relative phase.Comment: 21 pages, 17 figures. Accepted for publication in PR

Information for Impact: Liberating Nonprofit Sector Data

This paper explores the costs and benefits of four avenues for achieving open Form 990 data: a mandate for e-filing, an IRS initiative to turn Form 990 data into open data, a third-party platform that would create an open database for Form 990 data, and a priori electronic filing. Sections also discuss the life and usage of 990 data. With bibliographical references

The influence of lifelong learning on mood

Mood state was assessed both before and after four different two-hour classes in the Osher Lifelong Learning Institute at Santa Clara University with the self-report Profile of Mood States-Brief Form (POMS-BF) developed by McNair, Lorr, and Droppleman (1992). Sixty-eight students (60% women), ages 49 to 92, filled in the 5-point mood assessment survey rating how they felt at that moment prior to the start of class and again two hours later, at the end of class. At the start of class these students reported very low levels of negative affect (tension, anger, depression, confusion, fatigue). Following the two-hour Osher class students felt even less angry, less tense, and less depressed than they were before the class. These results are discussed in relation to mood regulation and the detrimental impact of negative affect on cognition (e.g., Wilson, Mendes de Leon, Bennett, Bienias, Evans, 2004)

The Energy of Heavy Atoms According to Brown and Ravenhall: The Scott Correction

We consider relativistic many-particle operators which - according to Brown and Ravenhall - describe the electronic states of heavy atoms. Their ground state energy is investigated in the limit of large nuclear charge and velocity of light. We show that the leading quasi-classical behavior given by the Thomas-Fermi theory is raised by a subleading correction, the Scott correction. Our result is valid for the maximal range of coupling constants, including the critical one. As a technical tool, a Sobolev-Gagliardo-Nirenberg-type inequality is established for the critical atomic Brown-Ravenhall operator. Moreover, we prove sharp upper and lower bound on the eigenvalues of the hydrogenic Brown-Ravenhall operator up to and including the critical coupling constant.Comment: 42 page

The laplacian of a graph as a density matrix: a basic combinatorial approach to separability of mixed states

We study entanglement properties of mixed density matrices obtained from combinatorial Laplacians. This is done by introducing the notion of the density matrix of a graph. We characterize the graphs with pure density matrices and show that the density matrix of a graph can be always written as a uniform mixture of pure density matrices of graphs. We consider the von Neumann entropy of these matrices and we characterize the graphs for which the minimum and maximum values are attained. We then discuss the problem of separability by pointing out that separability of density matrices of graphs does not always depend on the labelling of the vertices. We consider graphs with a tensor product structure and simple cases for which combinatorial properties are linked to the entanglement of the state. We calculate the concurrence of all graph on four vertices representing entangled states. It turns out that for some of these graphs the value of the concurrence is exactly fractional.Comment: 20 pages, 11 figure

On the lattice of cotorsion theories

We discuss the lattice of cotorsion theories for abelian groups. First we show that the sublattice of the well-studied rational cotorsion theories can be identified with the well-known lattice of types. Using a recently developed method for making Ext vanish we also prove that any power set together with the ordinary set inclusion (and thus any poset) can be embedded into the lattice of all cotorsion theories

Effects of additional anterior body mass on gait

BACKGROUND: Gradual increases in mass such as during pregnancy are associated with changes in gait at natural velocities. The purpose of this study was to examine how added mass at natural and imposed slow walking velocities would affect gait parameters. METHODS: Eighteen adult females walked at two velocities (natural and 25 % slower than their natural pace) under four mass conditions (initial harness only (1 kg), 4.535 kg added anteriorly, 9.07 kg added anteriorly, and final harness only (1 kg)). We collected gait kinematics (100 Hz) using a motion capture system. RESULTS: Added anterior mass decreased cycle time and stride length. Stride width decreased once the mass was removed (p < .01). Added mass resulted in smaller peak hip extension angles (p < .01). The imposed slow walking velocity increased cycle time, double limb support time and decreased stride length, peak hip extension angles, and peak plantarflexion angles (p < .01). With added anterior mass and an imposed slow walking velocity, participants decreased cycle time when mass was added and increased cycle time once the mass was removed (p < .01). CONCLUSIONS: Gait adaptations may be commensurate with the magnitude of additional mass when walking at imposed slow versus natural velocities. This study presents a method for understanding how increased mass and imposed speed might affect gait independent of other effects related to pregnancy. Examining how added body mass and speed influence gait is one step in better understanding how women adapt to walking under different conditions.K12 HD055931 - NICHD NIH HHS; K23 AR063235 - NIAMS NIH HH