Maternal representations of past and current attachment relationships, and emotional experience across the transition to motherhood: A longitudinal study.

Sad and anxious feelings are known to increase in the immediate postpartum period, whereas studies on new mothers' other emotional qualities such as anger are scarce. In laboratory studies, attachment security was found to be associated with effective emotion regulation in challenging situations. This study investigated attachment representations of experiences with parents and of current experiences with the partner as predictors of sad, anxious, and angry feelings across the transition to motherhood. Seventy-seven pregnant women in their third trimester were administered the Adult Attachment Interview and the Current Relationship Interview. The Differential Emotions Scale was given in pregnancy and at the infant's ages of 2 weeks, 2, 4, and 6 months, asking both mothers and fathers about maternal emotional experience. Sadness and anxiety increased 2 weeks postpartum and returned to below baseline over the following months, while anger did not change. Contrary to mothers with an insecure representation of their couple relationship, those with a secure representation reported and displayed increased sadness and anxiety 2 weeks after giving birth, from which they quickly recovered. For mothers secure in their representation of past attachment relationships with parents, an increase of low-level anger emerged 4 months postpartum, which did not occur in insecure participants and receded quickly. It can be concluded that secure representations of current and past attachment relationships help new mothers express and recover from negative emotions. These findings further elucidate the associations between attachment status and emotion regulation while adding a couple perspective. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Physikalisch-chemische und mikrobiologische Wirkung gesputterter photokatalytischer Titanoxid-Schichten

Crystalline TiO₂ layers show interesting properties for different applications. Rutile layers can be used as optical layers with high refractive index and as transparent protective layers with good mechanical properties. Both, anatase and rutile are photo-semiconductors and exhibit in a different degree photocatalytic, photo-induced hydrophilic and antifogging properties. For a better control of the TiO₂ deposition and thin film properties a special deposition system has been developed: a reactive pulse magnetron sputtering (PMS) system. Layers with different content of crystalline phases were deposited at dynamic deposition rates of about 45 nm·m/min (corresponding to about 160 nm/min in a stationary coating system). Moreover, the anionic doping of the layers succeeded by nitrogen as well as the cationic doping by different metals. The layer structure was determined by XRD. Furthermore, the following properties connected with photo-induced hydrophilicity or photocatalysis were studied: the photo-induced decrease of the water contact angle, the decomposition of methylene blue and lumogen orange as well as the inhibition of algae and bacteria. By doping the layers some of these properties can be improved significantly in comparison to undoped titanium oxide. Some doped layers showed a high activity also under visible irradiation only without UV.     

High Yield,Reproducible and Quasi‐Automated Bilayer Formation in a Microfluidic Format

A microfluidic platform is reported for various experimentation schemes on cell membrane models and membrane proteins using a combination of electrical and optical measurements, including confocal microscopy. Bilayer lipid membranes (BLMs) are prepared in the device upon spontaneous and instantaneous thinning of the lipid solution in a 100‐μm dry‐etched aperture in a 12.5‐μm thick Teflon foil. Using this quasi‐automated approach, a remarkable 100% membrane formation yield is reached (including reflushing in 4% of the cases), and BLMs are stable for up to 36 h. Furthermore, the potential of this platform is demonstrated for (i) the in‐depth characterization of BLMs comprising both synthetic and natural lipids (1,2‐diphytanoyl‐sn‐glycero‐3‐phosphocholine (DPhPC) and L ‐α‐phosphatidylcholine (L ‐α‐PC)/cholesterol, respectively) in terms of seal resistance, capacitance, surface area, specific capacitance, and membrane hydrophobic thickness; (ii) confocal microscopy imaging of phase separation in sphingomyelin/L‐α‐PC/cholesterol ternary membranes; (iii) electrical measurements of individual nanopores (α‐hemolysin, gramicidin); and (iv) indirect assessment of the alteration of membrane properties upon exposure to chemical stimuli using the natural nanopore gramicidin as a sensor.     

Modification of the polyphenolic and aromatic fractions of red wines aged on lees assisted with ultrasound

The ageing on lees is a technique particularly interesting in the production of red wines due to the possibility of enhancing some of their sensory characteristics. Different authors have researched the ultrasound assistance to accelerate this ageing process in wines. The present work evaluated the modification that both fractions, polyphenolic and aromatic, of red wines suffer during the ageing on lees process assisted with ultrasounds and with the addition of oak chips. The results obtained during the experimental design indicate that the ultrasound treatment decreased the concentration of proanthocyanidins (between 20.3% and 32.8% with and without oak chips, respectively) and the total pigment content (with the highest reduction in the control sonicated wine 55.9% without chips and lees and from 47.8% to 48.9% when having oak chips/lees and lees, respectively). In addition, it has been observed that the ultrasound treatment did not affect the amount of fermentative volatile compounds present in the wine but, it increased the concentration of phenolic aldehydes coming from oak wood chips (10.8% in control wine and from 35.92% with oak chips/lees to 55.8% with lees).     

Depicting communities of Romani studies: on the who,when and where of Roma related scientific publications

Scientometrics - Contemporary research on Roma from diverse disciplines has grown strongly during the last years. This is the first bibliometric study on the field of Romani studies considering the...     

Overcoming psychological resistance toward using recycled water in California

We use data from a representative sample of adult Californians (N = 1500) to examine the relation between information and sociodemographic factors to the willingness to adopt recycled water in 10 different applications. We find that direct consumption or skin contact with recycled water stirs the strongest resistance. We conducted a randomized experiment to test how respondents would react to learning that there is large, existing, indirect potable use program in Orange County. While both messages boost support for almost all uses of recycled water, respondents still resist drinking, bathing and cooking with it. Contrary to some previous findings, the response to both information cues generally does not appear to depend upon level of education.     

Multi-Dimensional Scattered Ranking Methods for Geographic Information Retrieval*

Geographic Information Retrieval is concerned with retrieving documents in response to a spatially related query. This paper addresses the ranking of documents by both textual and spatial relevance. To this end, we introduce multi-dimensional scattered ranking, where textually and spatially similar documents are ranked spread in the list, instead of consecutively. The effect of this is that documents close together in the ranked list have less redundant information. We present various ranking methods of this type, efficient algorithms to implement them, and experiments to show the outcome of the methods.*This research is supported by the EU-IST Project No. IST-2001-35047 (SPIRIT).     

Exploring the role of experience and compatibility in using mobile technologies

Advancements in mobile technologies hold the promise to reshape the way professionals work. With the help of these Information and Communication Technologies (ICTs), employees can break free from the bounds of spatial and temporal constraints, being able to use the technology to work anywhere, anytime. However, hardly any research to date has attempted to understand the (voluntary) acceptance process of transitioning from a static desktop to a mobile environment. Therefore, the primary objective of this paper is to examine antecedents of an adoption decision for mobile (or ubiquitous) devices. Besides arguing that the notion of adoption becomes a different meaning in a mobile environment, we hypothesize that usage of a mobile device is mainly determined by a users compatibility perceptions between the desktop environment and the target system. In addition, we argue that prior experience plays a major role in determining these compatibility notions.     

An empirical investigation of factors influencing object-oriented database querying

Object-oriented databases (OODBs) provide an effective means for capturing complex data and semantic relationships underlying many real-world database applications. Because users' interactions with databases have increased significantly in today's era of client–server computing, it is important to examine users' ability to interact with such databases. We investigated a number of factors that potentially affect performance in writing queries on an OODB. First, we evaluated the utility of graphical and textual schemas associated with emerging OODBs from the perspective of database querying. Second, we examined the use of two different strategies (navigation and join) that could be used in writing OODB queries. Third, we examined a number of factors that potentially contribute to the complexity of an OODB query.Our exploratory study examined the performance of 20 graduate students in an experiment in which each participant wrote queries for two problems, one using a graphical OODB schema and the other a textual OODB schema. The participants had no prior exposure to the object-oriented data model. We found that there was no difference in query writing performance (either accuracy or time) using the graphical and textual schemas. Examination of query strategy revealed that a significant number of participants used a join strategy, rather than the navigation strategy that matches the database structure. Use of the join strategy resulted in significantly less accurate and slower query writing than did the navigation strategy. From the viewpoint of complexity, the number of objects referenced in a query, the number of starting points in the from clause, and the presence of special operators influenced both the accuracy and time of query writing.