Background: Studies exploring ‘anticipated regret’ concerning alcohol rarely consider the broader consequences of excessive drinking that might be regretted. Even if specific regrettable experiences are identified, interventions targeting them may not succeed because individuals are often optimistic about their risk susceptibility. Objectives: This study examined the consequences young adult drinkers reported, and the extent to which these were regretted. It then explored whether consequences and regrets differentiated between high risk, low risk and light drinkers, and whether regret was related to optimism. Methods: A cross-sectional on-line questionnaire measured drinking behaviour, consequences (frequency) and regrets (extent of likely regret) and risk perceptions (in general, and compared to others). Results: 273 participants were recruited (light (30%), low-risk (40%), and high-risk drinkers (30%). PCA detected three types of experience (common – e.g. vomiting; after-effects – e.g. being depressed; a…
Movement, which draws on motor skills and executive functions for managing them, plays an important role in literacy learning (e.g., movement of mouth during oral reading and movement of hand and fingers during writing); but relatively little research has focused on movement skills in students with specific learning disabilities (SLDs) as the current study did. Parents completed normed Movement Assessment Battery for Children Checklist - 2nd edition (ABC-2), ratings and their children in grades 4 to 9 (M=11 years, 11 months; 94 boys, 61 girls) completed diagnostic assessment used to assign them to diagnostic groups: control typical language learning (N=42), dysgraphia (impaired handwriting) (N=29), dyslexia (impaired word decoding/reading and spelling) (N=65), or oral and written language learning disability (OWL LD) (impaired syntax in oral and written language) (N=19). The research aims were to (a) correlate the Movement ABC-2 parent ratings for Scale A Static/ Predictable Environment (15 items) and Scal…
The paper treats the important problem related to risk controlled by the simultaneous presence of critical events, randomly appearing on a time interval and shows that the expected time fraction of simultaneously present events does not depend on the distribution of events durations. In addition, the paper shows that the probability of simultaneous presence of critical events is practically insensitive to the distribution of the events durations. These counter-intuitive results provide the powerful opportunity to evaluate the risk of overlapping of random events through the mean duration times of the events only, without requiring the distributions of the events durations or their variance. A closed-form expression for the expected fraction of unsatisfied demand for random demands following a homogeneous Poisson process in a time interval is introduced for the first time. In addition, a closed-form expression related to the expected time fraction of unsatisfied demand, for a fixed number of consumers initiati…
Aim. We have investigated the phylogeography and genetic structure of the Speckled Wood butterfly (Pararge aegeria) across its entire distribution range and studied its dispersal both on mainland and across sea straits. The apparent lack of gene flow between Sardinia and Corsica was further investigated by means of mating experiments. Location. Europe and North Africa. Methods. We sampled 345 individuals and sequenced one mitochondrial gene (Cytochrome c Oxidase subunit I, COI) for all samples and two nuclear genes (wingless and zerknullt) for a subset of the specimens. A total of 22 females from Corsica and Sardinia were used to establish a series of crosses to investigate reproductive compatibility and were screened for the presence of Wolbachia. Bayesian inference (BI) and haplotype networks were employed to infer phylogenetic relationships and a Principal Coordinate Analysis (PCoA) was used to represent 4 geographical patterns of genetic diversity. Mating and courtship data were analysed using linear mixe…
The paper provides for the first time a comprehensive introduction into the mechanisms through which the method of separation achieves risk reduction and into the ways it can be implemented in engineering designs. The concept stochastic separation of critical random events on a time interval, which consists of guaranteeing with a specified probability a specified degree of distancing between the random events, is introduced. Efficient methods for providing stochastic separation by reducing the duration times of overlapping critical random events on a time interval are presented. The paper shows that the probability of overlapping of critical events, randomly appearing on a time interval, is practically insensitive to the distribution of their duration times and to the variance of the duration times as long as the mean of the duration times remains the same. A rigorous proof is presented that this statement is valid even for two random events on a time interval. The paper also provides insight into various mec…
This article introduces a Special Issue on ‘Cultural Geographies of Precarity’. In recent years, the term precarity has become increasingly prevalent in geographical literature. And yet, to date, there remains limited discussion regarding how precarity is being culturally, as well as socially and economically, entrenched. To that end, this Special Issue provides timely perspectives on the cultural geographies of precarity in two key ways. First, it highlights how precarity is mediated and reproduced through a set of collective affects and imaginaries that not only normalize but often actively celebrate precarious modes of living in contemporary society, by branding them, for example, as innovative, flexible and entrepreneurial. Second, it focuses attention on how precarity is lived and resisted through the materialities and micro-space-times of everyday routines and places. Together, the four papers that constitute this Special Issue highlight the importance of a cultural geographies perspective on precarity …
(1) The plant endoplasmic reticulum (ER) is crucial to the maintenance of cellular homeostasis. The ER consists of a dynamic and continuously remodelling network of tubules and cisternae. Several conserved membrane proteins have been implicated in formation and maintenance of the ER network in plants, such as RHD3 and the reticulon proteins. Despite the recent work in mammalian and yeast cells, the detailed molecular mechanisms of ER network organisation in plants still remain largely unknown. Recently novel ER network-shaping proteins called Lunapark (LNP) have been identified in yeast and mammalian cells. (2) Here we identify two arabidopsis LNP homologues and investigate their subcellular localisation via confocal microscopy and potential function in shaping the ER network using protein-protein interaction assays and mutant analysis. (3) We show that AtLNP1 overexpression in tobacco leaf epidermal cells mainly labels cisternae in the ER network whereas AtLNP2 labels the whole ER. Overexpression of LNP prot…