Is Symptomatic Long QT Syndrome Associated with Depression in Women and Men?

We examined whether long QT syndrome (LQTS) mutation carrier status or symptomatic LQTS are associated with depression, and whether there are sex differences in these potential relationships. The sample comprised 782 participants (252 men). Of the 369 genetically defined LQTS mutation carriers, 169 were symptomatic and 200 were asymptomatic. The control group consisted of 413 unaffected relatives. Depression was assessed using the Beck Depression Inventory-II (BDI-II). No association was found for LQTS mutation carrier status with depression. The multinomial logistic regression showed that LQTS mutation carrier men with arrhythmic events scored higher on depression compared with the control group, even when adjusting for age, β-blockers, antidepressants, and social support (OR = 1.09, 95 % CI [1.02, 1.15], p = .007). The binary logistic regression comparing symptomatic and asymptomatic LQTS mutation carriers showed that symptomatic LQTS was associated with depression in men (OR = 1.10, 95 % CI [1.03, 1.19], p = .009). The results were unchanged when additionally adjusted for education. These findings suggest that symptomatic LQTS is associated with depression in men but not in women. Overall, however, depression is more frequent in women than men. Thus, regular screening for depression in LQTS mutation carriers and their unaffected family members can be important.     

Does identification predict community involvement? Exploring consequences of social identification among the Jewish minority in Poland

Previous research indicated that people who strongly identify with their own group are more involved in the group's actions. The current study examines the relation between three dimensions of group identification (affect, ties, centrality) and forms of community involvement among members of the Jewish minority in Poland. The strength of ingroup ties predicted involvement in the ethnic minority community. The link between identification and involvement was mediated by the cultural dominance. The reported study was the first quantitative survey of the Jewish community in post‐War Poland. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Men's attraction to women's bodies changes seasonally

Humans exhibit seasonal variation in hormone levels, behaviour, and perception. Here we show that men's assessments of women's attractiveness change also seasonally. In five seasons (from winter 2004 to winter 2005) 114 heterosexual men were asked to assess the attractiveness of the same stimuli: photos of a female with three different waist-to-hip ratios; photos of female breasts, and photos of average-looking faces of young women. For each season, the scores given to the stimuli of the same category (body shape, breast, and face) were combined. Friedman's test revealed significant changes for body shape and breast attractiveness assessments across the seasons, but no changes for face ratings. The highest scores for attractiveness were given in winter and the lowest in summer. We suggest that the observed seasonality is related to the well-known 'contrast effect'. More frequent exposure to women's bodies in warmer seasons might increase men's attractiveness criteria for women's body shape and breasts.     

Annotation Theories over Finite Graphs

In the current paper we consider theories with vocabulary containing a number of binary and unary relation symbols. Binary relation symbols represent labeled edges of a graph and unary relations represent unique annotations of the graph’s nodes. Such theories, which we call annotation theories, can be used in many applications, including the formalization of argumentation, approximate reasoning, semantics of logic programs, graph coloring, etc. We address a number of problems related to annotation theories over finite models, including satisfiability, querying problem, specification of preferred models and model checking problem. We show that most of considered problems are NPTime- or co-NPTime-complete. In order to reduce the complexity for particular theories, we use second-order quantifier elimination. To our best knowledge none of existing methods works in the case of annotation theories. We then provide a new second-order quantifier elimination method for stratified theories, which is successful in the considered cases. The new result subsumes many other results, including those of [2, 28, 21].     

Regulatory Focus in Materialists and Its Consequences for Their Well-Being

Journal of Happiness Studies - The article concentrates on regulatory focus (promotion and prevention) as a factor involved in the relationships between materialism and well-being alongside two...     

Generalization of Scott's formula for retractions from generalized Alexandroff's cube

In the paper [2] the following theorem is shown: Theorem (Th. 3,5, [2]), If α=0 or δ=∞ or α?δ, then a closure space X is an absolute extensor for the category of 〈α, δ〉 -closure spaces iff a contraction of X is the closure space of all 〈α, δ〉-filters in an 〈α, δ〉-semidistributive lattice. In the case when α=ω and δ=∞, this theorem becomes Scott's theorem: Theorem ([7]). A topological space X is an absolute extensor for the category of all topological spaces iff a contraction of X is a topological space of “Scott's open sets” in a continuous lattice. On the other hand, when α=0 and δ=ω, this theorem becomes Jankowski's theorem: Theorem ([4]). A closure space X is an absolute extensor for the category of all closure spaces satisfying the compactness theorem iff a contraction of X is a closure space of all filters in a complete Heyting lattice. But for separate cases of α and δ, the Theorem 3.5 from [2] is proved using essentialy different methods. In this paper it is shown that this theorem can be proved using, for retraction, one uniform formula. Namely it is proved that if α= 0 or δ= ∞ or α ? δ and \(F_{\alpha ,\delta } \left( L \right) \subseteq B_{\alpha ,\delta }^\mathfrak{n} \) and if L is an 〈α, δ〉-semidistributive lattice, then the function $$r:{\text{ }}B_{\alpha ,\delta }^\mathfrak{n} \to F_{\alpha ,\delta } \left( L \right)$$ such that for x ε ? ( \(\mathfrak{n}\) ): (*) $$r\left( x \right) = inf_L \left\{ {l \in L|\left( {\forall A \subseteq L} \right)x \in C\left( A \right) \Rightarrow l \in C\left( A \right)} \right\}$$ defines retraction, where C is a proper closure operator for \(B_{\alpha ,\delta }^\mathfrak{n} \) . It is also proved that the formula (*) defines retraction for all 〈α, δ〉, whenever L is an 〈α, δ〉 -pseudodistributive lattice. Moreover it is proved that when α=ω and δ=∞, the formula (*) defines identical retraction to the formula given in [7], and when α = 0 and δ=ω, the formula (*) defines identical retraction to the formula given in [4].     

Interpolation and amalgamation properties in varieties of equivalential algebras

Important positive as well as negative results on interpolation property in fragments of the intuitionistic propositional logic (INT) were obtained by J. I. Zucker in [6]. He proved that the interpolation theorem holds in purely implicational fragment of INT. He also gave an example of a fragment of INT for which interpolation fails. This fragment is determined by the constant falsum (), well known connectives: implication () and conjunction (), and by a ternary connective defined as follows: (p, q, r)= ^df (pq)(pr).Extending this result of J. I. Zucker, G. R. Renardel de Lavalette proved in [5] that there are continuously many fragments of INT without the interpolation property.This paper is meant to continue the research mentioned above. To be more precise, its aim is to answer questions concerning interpolation and amalgamation properties in varieties of equivalential algebras, particularly in the variety determined by the purely equivalential fragment of INT.     

Q-ultrafilters and normal ultrafilters in B-algebras

The first part of the paper deals with some subclasses of B-algebras and their applications to the semantics of SCI _B , the Boolean strengthening of the sentential calculus with identity (SCI). In the second part a generalization of the McKinsey-Tarski construction of well-connected topological Boolean, algebras to the class of B-algebras is given.