GP zone formation without quenched-in vacancies in Al–12 wt% Mg alloy

Dissolution of GP zones, formed in aged Al–12?wt%?Mg alloy at ?15 and 24°C, occurs during primary dilatometric and calorimetric tests, but the effect disappears after secondary tests, at low heating and cooling rates (1–2°C/min). After a?new holding at the above temperatures, GP zones again form and β and β′ phases precipitate. The results suggest the formation of GP zones without the presence of quenched-in vacancies.     

Psychometric Properties of the Persian Version of the Personal Meaning Profile in Iran

Journal of Religion and Health - The Personal Meaning Profile (PMP) is a widely used instrument to measure people’s perceptions of personal meaning in their lives. This study aimed...     

Premarital sexual, child rearing, and family attitudes of Iranian men and women in the United States and in Iran

Sexual, child rearing, and family attitudes of 160 Iranian immigrants in the United States (61 men, 99 women) and 97 Iranians (55 men, 42 women) in Iran were compared. Iranians in the United States in general, and women in particular, compared with their counterparts in Iran, expressed more permissive attitudes toward premarital sex and sex education, more tolerance toward homosexuality, and a greater acceptance of marital dissolution. Iranians in both countries assigned a high value to the maternal role and to family loyalty but did not endorse unrestricted freedom for youngsters. Influences of attitudinal disparity on interpersonal and family relationships are discussed, and implications for marriage counseling and family therapy are suggested.     

Exploring EFL Learners’ Metaphorical Conceptions of Language Learning: A Multimodal Analysis

Journal of Psycholinguistic Research - Owing to the limitations of linguistic modes to portray aptly L2 learners’ metaphors of language learning experience, growing attention has been paid to...     

The influence of action video game playing on eye movement behaviour during visual search in abstract,in-game and natural scenes

Action game playing has been associated with several improvements in visual attention tasks. However, it is not clear how such changes might influence the way we overtly select information from our visual world (i.e. eye movements). We examined whether action-video-game training changed eye movement behaviour in a series of visual search tasks including conjunctive search (relatively abstracted from natural behaviour), game-related search, and more naturalistic scene search. Forty nongamers were trained in either an action first-person shooter game or a card game (control) for 10 hours. As a further control, we recorded eye movements of 20 experienced action gamers on the same tasks. The results did not show any change in duration of fixations or saccade amplitude either from before to after the training or between all nongamers (pretraining) and experienced action gamers. However, we observed a change in search strategy, reflected by a reduction in the vertical distribution of fixations for the game-related search task in the action-game-trained group. This might suggest learning the likely distribution of targets. In other words, game training only skilled participants to search game images for targets important to the game, with no indication of transfer to the more natural scene search. Taken together, these results suggest no modification in overt allocation of attention. Either the skills that can be trained with action gaming are not powerful enough to influence information selection through eye movements, or action-game-learned skills are not used when deciding where to move the eyes.     

Patience mediates the relationship between mindfulness and pain in patients with cardiovascular diseases

The aim of the present study was to investigate the mediating role of patience in the relationship between mindfulness and pain among patients with cardiovascular disease. A cross-sectional design was employed. One hundred and ten patients with cardiovascular diseases were conveniently sampled from the clinic of Imam Reza in the city of Shiraz in Iran. Participants completed self-report measures of mindfulness, patience, and pain. Structural equation modeling was performed with Amos 16.0. Results indicated that mindfulness and patience had a significant inverse relationship with pain. There was also a significant positive relationship between patience and mindfulness. Estimated indirect effects showed that patience partly mediated the relationship between mindfulness and pain. These results show that among cardiovascular patients, increases in mindfulness are associated with reductions in pain as a function of increased patience. Therefore, patience is plausibly a key mechanism for understanding the impact of mindfulness on pain reduction.     

Exploring the psychometric properties of the CES-D-10 and its practicality in detecting depressive symptomatology in 27 low- and middle-income countries

The Center for Epidemiological Studies Depression-10 (CES-D-10) scale is known for its good psychometric properties in measuring depressive symptoms, however, some researchers question its applicability across various settings. This study explored the factor structure of the CES-D-10 in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs). This cross-sectional survey consisted of 16,723 university students across 27 LMICs that completed self-report instruments assessing socio-demographic information and depressive symptoms using the CES-D-10. Data analysis included: exploratory factor analysis, item response theory and differential item functioning. Results indicate that a two-factor model (depressive affect and positive affect) had the best fit for this population and accounted for 52% of the total observed variance with an internal consistency, α = .77 for the depressive affect items and α = .57 for the positive affect items. The graded response model (GRM), however, indicated that the depressive affect factor had a good fit, unlike the positive affect factor. The depressive affect factor was found to consistently model depression for females better than males. Relative to their Asian counterparts, African, Caribbean and South American participants of similar depressive affect responded differently on all items of the depressive affect factor. The depressive affect factor seems most ideal for LMICs and shows gender and cross-cultural variability.     

Involvement of hippocampal nitric oxide in spatial learning in the rat

Nitric oxide (NO) is thought to be involved in synaptic plasticity contributing to learning and memory in several brain areas including the hippocampus. The hippocampus is believed to have a critical role in the processing of spatial information. But, data on the role of hippocampal NO in spatial learning are not consistent. So the effect of NO synthase (NOS) inhibition in the CA1 region of rat hippocampus on spatial localization was investigated in the Morris water maze (MWM). Male albino Wistar rats cannulated in their CA1 region received bilateral injections of vehicle (saline) or N(omega)-nitro-L-arginine methyl ester (L-NAME), a NOS inhibitor (50, 100 and 200 microg/0.5 microl) through the cannulae 30 min before training each day. Animals were subjected to 5 days of training in the MWM; 4 days with the invisible platform to test spatial learning and the 5th day with the visible platform to test motivation and sensorimotor coordination. The results showed dose-dependent increases (p<0.001) in escape latency, traveled distance, heading angle, and dose-dependent decreases (p<0.01) in target quadrant entries in L-NAME-received groups as compared to the control group. This impairment was reversed by co-administration of mole-equivalent doses of L-arginine (L-Arg), the NO precursor. L-Arg alone at the dose of 129.2 microg, increased heading angle (p<0.01) with no effect on other parameters. On the basis of the present data, it is concluded that processes mediated by NO synthesis in the hippocampus are essentially involved in spatial learning.