A replication and expansion of the exposure effects of online model photos and social comparison goals on planned behaviors and self-efficacy to lose weight

This study replicated and expanded social comparison theory predictions in regard to how exposure to online models and explicit comparison goals affected planned behaviors and self-efficacy to lose weight in men and women. A 2 (models’ attractiveness: more attractive vs less attractive) × 2 (models’ weight status: lower vs higher) × 2 (explicit social comparison instructions: present vs absent) × 2 (gender: female vs male) factorial design was adopted ( N = 418). Women and men exposed to online photos of more attractive models reported higher planned behaviors to lose weight relative to those who were exposed to photos of less attractive models, thus replicating previous research. Participants exposed to more attractive and higher weight models reported higher self-efficacy to lose weight relative to those exposed to more attractive and lower weight models. Contrary to the prediction, women who did not receive social comparison instructions showed higher planned behaviors to lose weight relative to women who were instructed to explicitly compare themselves against the models. The study discusses implications for social comparison research and avenues for future inquiry.

3D gravity in a box

The quantization of pure 3D gravity with Dirichlet boundary conditions on a finite boundary is of interest both as a model of quantum gravity in which one can compute quantities which are ``more local" than S-matrices or asymptotic boundary correlators, and for its proposed holographic duality to T\overline{T}TT¯-deformed CFTs. In this work we apply covariant phase space methods to deduce the Poisson bracket algebra of boundary observables. The result is a one-parameter nonlinear deformation of the usual Virasoro algebra of asymptotically AdS_33 gravity. This algebra should be obeyed by the stress tensor in any T\overline{T}TT¯-deformed holographic CFT. We next initiate quantization of this system within the general framework of coadjoint orbits, obtaining — in perturbation theory — a deformed version of the Alekseev-Shatashvili symplectic form and its associated geometric action. The resulting energy spectrum is consistent with the expected spectrum of T\overline{T}TT¯-deformed theories, although we only carry out the explicit comparison to \mathcal{O}(1/\sqrt{c})𝒪(1/c) in the 1/c1/c expansion.

The Making of Evident Expertise: Transforming Chemical Analytical Methods into Judicial Evidence

This article investigates the question of how forensic toxicologists established the credibility of chemical analytical methods in poisoning lawsuits in the nineteenth century. After encountering the problem of laypersons in court, forensic toxicologists attempted to find strategies to make their evidence compelling to an untrained audience. Three of these strategies are discussed here: redundancy, standard methods, and intuitive comprehensibility. Whereas redundancy was not very practical and legally prescribed standard methods were not very popular with most forensic toxicologists, intuitive comprehensibility proved effective and popular. This strategy relied on employing methods which did not require chemical knowledge to be understandable. The methods aimed to generate a visual aid and to be obvious in their results. Two forms of this strategy are discussed here: the presentation of the actual material and explicit comparison. I argue that this shift towards presenting forensic toxicology expertise as evident represents an important step in the history of forensic expertise.

The development of linguistic and cultural meanings of English colour lexis: dynamics and modern state

The article is devoted to the study of the dynamics of development and the current state of linguacultural meanings in colour terms that are used in English-language women’s prose. In the course of the analysis of the theoretical and methodological material, it has been revealed that the colour terms in the literary text contribute to the fact that the descriptions and pictures drawn by its author are perceived as correctly as possible by the reader, and the latter more accurately perceives the sensations and emotions experienced by the characters at different moments of the story. During the analysis of the corpus of selected contexts (more than 700 fragments) with colour terms (500 units) from the works of fiction of modern women’s prose – criminal literature of the British writer Elizabeth Haynes – a number of features have been established. All the analyzed works are rich in the use of various colours, generally the main ones, and their shades, but there are also other colours. Thematic groups of colour terms include descriptions of the appearance of the main and secondary characters, everyday realia of the surrounding world, phenomena and objects of the natural world, and other abstract notions. Frequently occurring primary colour terms that do not have a transfer of meaning have been distinguished, and less frequent secondary colour terms with a transfer of meaning, and the secondary ones usually had a more complex morphological and syntactic structure. The selected colour terms that describe the appearance of the characters and have a transfer of meaning are divided into two groups, one of which includes colour terms with a metaphorical component, and the other contains colour terms that form transferred epithets. Within the framework of the description of natural phenomena and objects, the authors distinguish fully metaphorized colour terms, partially metaphorized colour terms that include a metaphorized component that does not extend its influence to the other structural elements of the colour term, as well as colour terms represented by an explicit comparison. In general, colour terms fill the work with a deep content, an additional meaning that the author lays down when writing a literary work.

Quantum corrections to generic branes: DBI, NLSM, and more

We study quantum corrections to hypersurfaces of dimension d + 1 > 2 embedded in generic higher-dimensional spacetimes. Manifest covariance is maintained throughout the analysis and our methods are valid for arbitrary co-dimension and arbitrary bulk metric. A variety of theories which are prominent in the modern amplitude literature arise as special limits: the scalar sector of Dirac-Born-Infeld theories and their multi-field variants, as well as generic non-linear sigma models and extensions thereof. Our explicit one-loop results unite the leading corrections of all such models under a single umbrella. In contrast to naive computations which generate effective actions that appear to violate the non-linear symmetries of their classical counterparts, our efficient methods maintain manifest covariance at all stages and make the symmetry properties of the quantum action clear. We provide an explicit comparison between our compact construction and other approaches and demonstrate the ultimate physical equivalence between the superficially different results.

The power of randomization by sex in multilocus genetic evolution

Background Many hypotheses have been proposed for how sexual reproduction may facilitate an increase in the population mean fitness, such as the Fisher-Muller theory, Muller’s ratchet and others. According to the recently proposed mixability theory, however, sexual recombination shifts the focus of natural selection away from favoring particular genetic combinations of high fitness towards favoring alleles that perform well across different genetic combinations. Mixability theory shows that, in finite populations, because sex essentially randomizes genetic combinations, if one allele performs better than another across the existing combinations of alleles, that allele will likely also perform better overall across a vast space of untested potential genotypes. However, this superiority has been established only for a single-locus diploid model. Results We show that, in both haploids and diploids, the power of randomization by sex extends to the multilocus case, and becomes substantially stronger with increasing numbers of loci. In addition, we make an explicit comparison between the sexual and asexual cases, showing that sexual recombination is the cause of the randomization effect. Conclusions That the randomization effect applies to the multilocus case and becomes stronger with increasing numbers of loci suggests that it holds under realistic conditions. One may expect, therefore, that in nature the ability of an allele to perform well in interaction with existing genetic combinations is indicative of how well it will perform in a far larger space of potential combinations that have not yet materialized and been tested. Randomization plays a similar role in a statistical test, where it allows one to draw an inference from the outcome of the test in a small sample about its expected outcome in a larger space of possibilities—i.e., to generalize. Our results are relevant to recent theories examining evolution as a learning process. Reviewers This article was reviewed by David Ardell and Brian Golding.

Exploring the Platonic Heaven of Law

The aim of this article is to explore the general principles of EU law from a comparative law perspective. Instead of offering a descriptive overview of the cases where the CJEU has relied on explicit comparison in its case law concerning the general principles. I shall articulate this article as follows: first, I shall recall the reasons why comparative law is on paper of crucial importance to the CJEU when interpreting the general principles. Second, I shall mention the different methodological options possible for the CJEU in this field. Third, I shall look at comparative law as a source of transparency in the legal reasoning of the Court by recalling some problematic cases, where the lack of explicit comparison caused harsh criticism for the case law of the Luxembourg Court.

On the Refined Conjectures on Fitting Ideals of Selmer Groups of Elliptic Curves with Supersingular Reduction

In this paper, we study the Fitting ideals of Selmer groups over finite subextensions in the cyclotomic $\mathbb{Z}_p$-extension of $\mathbb{Q}$ of an elliptic curve over $\mathbb{Q}$. Especially, we present a proof of the “weak main conjecture” à la Mazur and Tate for elliptic curves with good (supersingular) reduction at an odd prime $p$. We also prove the “strong main conjecture” suggested by the second named author under the validity of the $\pm $-main conjecture and the vanishing of a certain error term. The key idea is the explicit comparison among “finite layer objects”, “$\pm $-objects”, and “fine objects” in Iwasawa theory. The case of good ordinary reduction is also treated.

Implicit Mental Motor Imagery Task Demonstrates a Distortion of the Body Schema in Patients With Eating Disorders

Objectives: A rich body of literature has established the role of body image distortion and dissatisfaction in the development and maintenance of eating disorders. However, many of the currently used techniques require explicit comparison of the person’s body to an external stimulus. As the body schema is a largely unconscious construct, explicit comparison tasks may reflect a proxy, rather than the body schema itself. Methods: Here we use an implicit mental motor imagery (MMI) task to interrogate the body schema in healthy control participants (N=40) and participants at a residential eating disorder treatment center (N=42). By comparing the time it takes to imagine making a movement along a part of the body to the time it takes to actually make the same movement, we were able to assess participants’ mental image of their body (i.e., body schema). Results: We found that participants with eating disorders, but not healthy controls, exhibited distortions of the body schema such that they believed their abdomen, buttocks, and thighs to be larger than they really are. Additionally, the MMI task used here provided information above and beyond traditional self-report measures (i.e., Body Shape Questionnaire). Together the MMI task and traditional measures provide the most information. Conclusions: Findings using the novel MMI task are in line with the literature; participants with eating disorders consider themselves to be larger than they truly are. Taken together, results of this study suggest that MMI tasks provide complementary information to traditional self-report measures. (JINS, 2018, 22, 000–000)

Varieties of Rural Experience: Country Communities in Virginia and Wessex

After an initial reflection on just what might be meant by ‘rural experience’, the essay turns to an explicit comparison of the author's childhood experiences on his maternal grandparents’ farm in Afton, Virginia, with Thomas Hardy's rendition in his novel, Under the Greenwood Tree, of his childhood experiences in Upper Bockhampton, Dorsetshire. Both Miller and Hardy seem to represent their childhood places as examples of genuine ‘organic communities’, but the essay shows in detail ways in which the model of organic community does not quite work in either case. This ‘non-working’, however, is not the same in each instance. The essay shows this in detail, especially by way of attention to the southern heritage of slavery in modern Afton, and by way of the narrator's ironic detachment in Under the Greenwood Tree as well as through the photographs that illustrated early editions of Hardy's novel and through the reference in the subtitle to the novel as ‘A Rural Painting of the Dutch School’.