Parental rearing style as a predictor of attachment and psychosocial adjustment during young adulthood

Parental rearing-styles are crucial for psychosocial adjustment both during childhood and adulthood. The current study examined whether: (a) parental rearing-styles predicted psychosocial adjustment in young-adulthood, (b) this relationship was mediated by attachment styles , and ( c ) gender differences occur in these relationships. Two hundred and forty (103 male and 132 female) university students completed measures assessing parental rearing-style , current attachment style, romantic relationship satisfaction, friendship quality, self-esteem, and social competence. Multigroup structural equation modelling, conducted separately by gender, revealed that parental rearing-style predicted psychosocial adjustment during young-adulthood. Further, there was also evidence of gender differences and that self-models and other-models of attachment mediated this relationship. Together, these findings reinforce the importance of perceived parental rearing-style for subsequent psychosocial adjustment

On the Lifetime of the pi+pi- Atom

The pi+pi- atom decays -in the ground state - predominantly into two neutral pions. We present a general expression for the corresponding decay width in the framework of QCD (including photons). It contains all terms at leading and next-to-leading order in isospin breaking. The result allows one to evaluate the combination |a_0-a_2| of pi-pi S-wave scattering lengths from pi+pi- lifetime measurements, like the one presently performed by the DIRAC experiment at CERN.Comment: 4 pages, LaTeX-fil

Substitution in a sense

The Reference Principle (RP) states that co-referring expressions are everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. On first glance, (RP) looks like a truism, but a truism with some bite: (RP) transforms difficult philosophical questions about co-reference into easy grammatical questions about substitutability. This has led a number of philosophers to think that we can use (RP) to make short work of certain longstanding metaphysical debates. For example, it has been suggested that all we need to do to show that the predicate ‘( ) is a horse’ does not refer to a property is point out that ‘( ) is a horse’ and ‘the property of being a horse’ are not everywhere intersubstitutable salva congruitate. However, when we understand ‘substitution’ in the simplest and most straightforward way, (RP) is no truism; in fact, natural languages are full of counterexamples to the principle. In this paper, I introduce a new notion of substitution, and then develop and argue for a version of (RP) that is immune to these counterexamples. Along the way I touch on the following topics: the relation between argument forms and their natural language instances; the reification of sense; the difference between terms and predicates; and the relation between reference and disquotation. I end by arguing that my new version of (RP) cannot be used to settle metaphysical debates quite as easily as some philosophers would like

How does informational heterogeneity affect the quality of forecasts?

We investigate a toy model of inductive interacting agents aiming to forecast a continuous, exogenous random variable E. Private information on E is spread heterogeneously across agents. Herding turns out to be the preferred forecasting mechanism when heterogeneity is maximal. However in such conditions aggregating information efficiently is hard even in the presence of learning, as the herding ratio rises significantly above the efficient-market expectation of 1 and remarkably close to the empirically observed values. We also study how different parameters (interaction range, learning rate, cost of information and score memory) may affect this scenario and improve efficiency in the hard phase.Comment: 11 pages, 5 figures, updated version (to appear in Physica A

Energy level displacement of the excited nl state of pionic hydrogen

The energy level displacements of the excited nl states of pionic hydrogen and the contribution of the ns -> 1s transitions and the (pi^-p)_Coul -> 1s transitions of the pi^-p pair, coupled by the attractive Coulomb field in the S-wave state with a continuous energy spectrum, to the shift of the energy level of the ground state of pionic hydrogen, caused by strong low-energy interactions, are calculated within a quantum field theoretic, relativistic covariant and model-independent approach developed in nucl-th/0306047.Comment: 18 pages, no figures, latex, text is revised, references are adde

Using ocean models to predict spatial and temporal variation in marine carbon isotopes

Natural-abundance stable isotope ratios provide a wealth of ecological information relating to food web structure, trophic level, and location. The correct interpretation of stable isotope data requires an understanding of spatial and temporal variation in the isotopic compositions at the base of the food web. In marine pelagic environments, accurate interpretation of stable isotope data is hampered by a lack of reliable, spatio-temporally distributed measurements of baseline isotopic compositions. In this study, we present a relatively simple, process-based carbon isotope model that predicts the spatio-temporal distributions of the carbon isotope composition of phytoplankton (here expressed as δ13CPLK) across the global ocean at one degree and monthly resolution. The model is driven by output from a coupled physics-biogeochemistry model, NEMO-MEDUSA, and operates offline; it could also be coupled to alternative underlying ocean model systems. Model validation is challenged by the same lack of spatio-temporally explicit data that motivates model development, but predictions from our model successfully reproduce major spatial patterns in carbon isotope values observed in zooplankton, and are consistent with simulations from alternative models. Model predictions represent an initial hypothesis of spatial and temporal variation in carbon isotopic baselines in ocean areas where a few data are currently available, and provide the best currently available tool to estimate spatial and temporal variation in baseline isotopic compositions at ocean basin to global scales

Optimising performance in educational teams : the effect of time perspective

Although there have been many studies researching how time perspective factors influence the behaviour of individuals there has been little research to date studying how people with different time perspectives work together in teams, and whether team performance can be improved dependent on the combination of time perspectives of the individuals within the team. A mixed method design was used to study quantitatively whether there were any relationships between team performance in a higher educational setting and the time perspective factors of the Zimbardo Time Perspective Inventory (Zimbardo & Boyd, 1999), and qualitatively to see what participants felt about team work generally. It then examined whether there were any differences in these views between high and low scorers on two of the time perspective factors that were shown to be associated with team performance. Correlational studies were carried out with educational teams that worked together for three different time periods: the long-duration teams worked together over an academic year; the medium-duration teams worked together over 8-10 weeks within one academic semester; and the short-duration teams worked together on four tasks over a 30-45 minute time period. The results showed that there was a significant positive relationship with the Future factor and a significant negative relationship with the Present Fatalistic factor and improved performance in the long-duration task; a significant negative relationship with the Present Fatalistic factor and improved performance in the medium-duration task; and no significant relationships between any of the factors and performance in the short-duration task. These outcomes demonstrated that some aspects of time perspective can significantly influence team performance. These deep level demographics, however, are only apparent when the team works together for a sufficient length of time. The longer the team works together the greater the number of time perspective factors affect performance. As well as looking at the mean time perspective factor scores within the team, the variance between team members and the minimum and maximum scores were also analyzed to see if a team with diverse time perspective characteristics, or with just one person scoring particularly high or low in a factor, influenced the performance of the educational teams. In the long-duration team the more heterogeneous the team was in the Future factor the worse the team performed; the higher the minimum score in the Future factor the better the team performed. In the medium-duration teams the higher the maximum score on Present Fatalism the worse the team performance. A further study was carried out to demonstrate this relationship experimentally by placing participants into teams of high or low scorers on the Future and the Present Fatalism factors and noting their performance. Various problems were encountered that affected this research and so the results were somewhat unproductive. A qualitative thematic analysis study was undertaken in order to establish what twelve participants identified about having to take part compulsorily in educational team projects within a Higher Education module. Five themes were identified: team organization, which included the roles within the team, the individual within the team and the internal organization of the team; the leadership roles and responsibilities; the social support received from team membership; and the rewards and the disadvantages of being a team member. Following on from this, a descriptive analysis was carried out to explore the differences in how team work is seen between high and low scorers in both the Future factor and the Present Fatalistic factor. There were certain differences between the high and low scorers on the Present Fatalistic factor based around the type of teams mentioned, particularly with procrastinatory and confidence enhancement behaviours. Overall, this thesis provides evidence for the effect of the Future and Present Fatalism factors in affecting team performance, and knowledge and understanding of one’s team members’ time perspective should therefore be a consideration when placing people in educational teams for long and medium-duration team projects