Multistate genetic switches play a crucial role during embryonic development and tumorigenesis. An archetypical example is the three-way switch regulating epithelial-hybrid-mesenchymal transitions. We devise a special WKB-based approach to investigate white Gaussian and shot noise effects on three-way switches, and construct an effective landscape in good quantitative agreement with stochastic ...

UNLABELLED Self-criticism is a vulnerability risk factor for a number of psychological disorders, and it predicts poor response to psychological and pharmacological treatments. In the current study, we evaluated the efficacy of a loving-kindness meditation (LKM) programme designed to increase self-compassion in a sample of self-critical individuals. Thirty-eight individuals with high scores on ...

This study explored the effects of oxytocin on Compassion Focused Imagery (CFI), that is, imagining another "mind" being deeply compassionate to oneself, and the interaction of these effects with self-criticism and feeling socially safe with others. Forty-four healthy participants (29 men and 15 women) completed self-report measures of self-criticism, attachment style, and social safeness befor...

Partner-specific perfectionistic concerns (PC) include concern over mistakes, self-criticism, and socially prescribed perfectionism as it pertains to one's partner. The social disconnection model proposes that PC influences well-being indirectly through interpersonal problems. Thus, we hypothesized that social negativity (expressed anger, hostility, and rejection) would mediate the relationship...

Halvorson (2012) argues that the semantic view of theories leads to absurdities. Glymour (2013) shows how to inoculate the semantic view against Halvorson’s criticisms, namely by making it into a syntactic view of theories. I argue that this modified semantic-syntactic view cannot do the philosophical work that the original “languagefree” semantic view was supposed to do. According to Clark Gly...

Discrepancies (i.e., a subjective sense of falling short of one's own standards) are a key part of the perfectionism construct. Theory suggests discrepancies confer vulnerability to depressive symptoms. Since most research in this area is cross-sectional, longitudinal research is needed to disentangle directionality of relationships and to permit stronger causal inferences. Determining whether ...

Given the rapid development and dissemination of various information types within CMC, source evaluation methodology is increasingly difficult and has been complicated further by dominant academic approaches. We trace the reification of book-based evaluation criteria and how its exalted status has been undergirded by a mentality that reinscribes old patterns of credibility onto wholly new entit...

The current study sets out to explore test anxiety in adolescent students. The effect of sociodemographic variables on test anxiety was controlled for and the relationship between test anxiety and other psychological constructs, such as self-criticism, social anxiety, acceptance and mindfulness, was examined. In addition, the predictive effect/power of these variables was analyzed and a compara...

Coarse Particles and Dust Storm Mortality In a paper titled "Episodes of High Coarse Partide Concentrations Are Not Associated with Increased Mortality," Schwartz et al. (1) concluded that "coarse particles from windblown dust are not associated with mortality risk." The authors seem to have overlooked the medical literature on the health effects of the historic U.S. dust storms of the dust bow...