Searching for feasible stationary states in reaction networks by solving a Boolean constraint satisfaction problem.

We analyze the solutions, on single network instances, of a recently introduced class of constraint-satisfaction problems (CSPs), describing feasible steady states of chemical reaction networks. First, we show that the CSPs generalize the scheme known as network expansion, which is recovered in a specific limit. Next, a full statistical mechanics characterization (including the phase diagram and a discussion of the physical origin of the phase transitions) for network expansion is obtained. Finally, we provide a message-passing algorithm to solve the original CSPs in the most general form.

From sixty-two interviews on 'the worst and the best episode of your life'. Relationships between internal working models and a grammatical scale of subject-object affective connections.

The authors address the issue of inferring unconscious internal working models of interaction through language. After reviewing Main's seminal work of linguistic assessment through the 'adult attachment interview', they stress the idea of adults' internal working models (IWMs) as information-processing devices, which give moment-to-moment sensory orientation in the face of any past or present, animate or inanimate object. They propose that a selective perception of the objects could match expected with actual influence of objects on the subject's self, through very simple 'parallel-processed' categories of internal objects. They further hypothesise that the isomorphism between internal working models of interaction and grammatical connections between subjects and objects within a clause could be a key to tracking positive and negative images of self and other during discourse. An experiment is reported applying the authors' 'scale of subject/object affective connection' to the narratives of sixty-two subjects asked to write about the 'worst' and 'best' episodes of their lives. Participants had previously been classified using Hazan & Shaver's self-reported 'attachment types' (avoidant, anxious and secure) categorising individuals' general expectations in relation to others. The findings were that the subject/object distribution of positive and negative experience, through verbs defined for this purpose as either performative or state verbs, did significantly differ between groups. In addition, different groups tended, during the best episodes, significantly to invert the trend of positive/negative subject/object distribution shown during the worst episode. Results are discussed in terms of a psychoanalytic theory of improvement through co-operative elaboration of negative relational issues.

Prototypical expectations of safety: a developmental approach to the assessment of the psychoanalytic process.

The author proposes that developmental research into the main experiential components of internal working models and process research into central patterns of interaction between analyst and patient may share similar theoretical assumptions. A developmental hypothesis bridging these two areas of research is proposed, in which repeated success or difficulty in mutual regulation during infancy result in an emotionally charged set of 'prototypical expectations' that continually influence the sense of personal safety. The author argues that prototypical expectations interfere in the psychoanalytic process because they allow the defensive warding off of negative expectations and so parallel explorations of new relational solutions. An analysand's narratives can be considered to express the conflict between negative transference (generally expressed in relation to extra-transference interactions) and defensive positive transference (more likely to be explicitly connected with the therapeutic situation). During the analytic process, ambivalent transference should appear in both 'worst' and 'best' types of narrative as an indication of warded-off negative transference working through. In this paper an application of the negative prototypical expectations processing hypothesis is presented through a formal discussion of the relational structure of the narratives of a 17-year-old boy's first four analytic sessions. The author demonstrates that this hypothesis makes it possible to predict the transference and the countertransference topics with which the patient and the analyst will have to cope during the treatment.

[Histological study of the coronary arteries during the first six months of life (author's transl)]. / Studio istologico delle arterie coronarie nei primi sei mesi di vita.

The Authors report on the results of a preliminary study on the histological aspects of the coronary arteries during the first six months in the life of the infant. After having reviewed the data relative to the distribution according to sex and age, the causes of death and the localization of the alterations, they draw attention to the discordant opinions still held to date on the pathogenetical interpretations of the medical reports under their observation particularly in reference to the connections with coronary arteriosclerosis in the adult.