The outbreak of COVID-19 is affecting the lives of millions of families around the world. The current study was carried out in Israel, following the pandemic’s initial outbreak and during the ...resulting enforced quarantine, confining parents and children to their homes. A sample of 141 Israeli mothers with at least one child between the ages of 3 and 12 (
M
= 6.92, SD = 2.55) participated as volunteers. About half the sample (50.7%) consisted of girls. Most mothers were cohabiting with a spouse (93%). Mothers completed online questionnaires about their perceptions about the health and economic threats of COVID-19, availability of social support, their anxiety symptoms, hostile/coercive and supportive/engaged parenting behavior, and their children’s behavior problems. Results showed expected significant associations between the mothers’ reports about having little social support, their anxiety symptoms, hostile/coercive and supportive/engaged parenting behavior, and children’s externalizing problems. Likewise, expected significant associations were found between mothers’ perceptions about the health and economic threats of COVID-19, their anxiety symptoms, hostile/coercive parenting behavior, and children’s internalizing and externalizing problems. Importantly, maternal anxiety and hostile/coercive parenting behavior mediated the associations between lack of support, negative perceptions about the health and economic threats of COVID-19, and children’s behavior problems. These findings stress the importance of mothers’ mental health and parenting behaviors for children’s socioemotional adaptation in the context of COVID-19. Implications of the findings for family interventions intended to help parents and children at this time are suggested.
Highlights
Maternal anxiety mediates the associations between COVID-19’s contextual features and children’s behavior problems.
Hostile/coercive parenting behavior mediates the associations between COVID-19’s contextual features and children’s behavior problems.
Mothers’ mental health and parenting are crucial for children’s socioemotional adaptation in the context of COVID-19.
Social distancing policies may lead to lack of social support, which is a risk for mothers’ anxiety and parenting.
In this paper, we use Aleksandrov's reflection principle to prove symmetry of solutions to F(∇Sn2u+uI)=f(u,u2+|∇Snu|2), where u is the support function of a convex body, and F is a function of ...principal radii. As a corollary, alongside Ivaki, arXiv:2307.06252, we provide an alternative proof of the uniqueness of solution to the isotropic Gaussian-Minkowski problem.
In the present paper, we devote our effort to Cauchy boundary value problems for biharmonic equations. In general, the investigated problem is ill-posed. Therefore, we develop a filter method to ...defeat the ill-posedness of the problem. Explicit convergence rate is established under both a priori and a posteriori parameter choice rules. Finally, a numerical example is presented to illustrate the ill-posedness of the problem as well as the effectiveness of the proposed method.
Maternal mental health problems during pregnancy and the postnatal period are a major public health issue. Despite evidence that symptoms of both depression and anxiety are common during pregnancy ...and the postpartum, the impact of maternal anxiety on the child has received relatively less attention than the impact of maternal depression. Furthermore, the evidence base for the direct impact of maternal anxiety during pregnancy and the postpartum on children’s emotional outcomes lacks cohesion. The aim of this systematic review is to summarise the empirical evidence regarding the impact of maternal prenatal and postnatal anxiety on children’s emotional outcomes. Overall, both maternal prenatal and postnatal anxiety have a small adverse effect on child emotional outcomes. However, the evidence appears stronger for the negative impact of prenatal anxiety. Several methodological weaknesses make conclusions problematic and replication of findings is required to improve the identification of at-risk parents and children with appropriate opportunities for intervention and prevention.
The method of fundamental solutions is a more and more popular meshless method for solving boundary or initial–boundary value problems. The most important issue in this method is the determination of ...the positions of the source points. The accuracy of the method depends strongly on the distribution of the source points. In this paper placement of these points for transient heat conduction problems is studied. The problems are initial–boundary value problems and they are considered in a time-space domain. Because of that, the placement of the source points differs from the classical distribution of the source points for boundary values problems. In the paper, four different possible sources distributions are considered for 1D, 2D and 3D transient heat conduction problems. The results show very good accuracy in case of the source points placed in a space much bigger than the considered region, additionally with the negative time coordinate.
This study tested the efficacy of a 5 × 1.5 h/session, group-based, parent-focused, behavioural intervention (BI) targeting sleep problems in preschool children. Parents were randomised to either the ...BI (N = 62) or care as usual (CAU; N = 66) conditions. Outcomes included sleep, anxiety, behavioural problems, internalising and externalising symptoms, transition to school and academic achievement. Assessments were conducted at pre- and post-BI intervention (in the year prior to formal schooling), and then at follow-ups 1 and 2 in the first year of formal schooling. Relative to the CAU, the BI condition demonstrated significantly greater improvements in sleep, anxiety, behaviour problems and internalising and externalising symptoms from pre-to post-intervention. Improvements in sleep, anxiety, and internalising symptoms were maintained, while behaviour and externalising symptoms were further improved upon at school follow-up 2. For the BI group, improvements in sleep at post-intervention were found to mediate improvements in anxiety, internalising, and externalising symptoms, but not behaviour problems, at school follow-ups 1 and 2. There were no significant effects of condition on school transition or academic outcome measures. The results suggest that the BI is effective for sleep, anxiety, behaviour, internalising and externalising symptoms, but not for school transition or academic outcomes.
ACTRN12618001161213.
•Tested a parent-focused, behavioural sleep intervention for preschool children.•Compared a behavioural sleep intervention (BI) and care as usual (CAU) condition.•BI showed greater improvements over time for sleep, anxiety and behaviour problems.•Improvements in sleep mediated improvements in anxiety and behaviour problems.
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present the method for solving the inverse Cauchy-type problem for the Laplace’s equation. Calculations were made for the rectangular domain with the target ...temperature on three boundaries and, additionally, on one of the boundaries, the heat flux distribution was selected. The purpose of consideration was to determine the distribution of temperature on a section of the boundary of the investigated domain (boundary Γ1) and find proper method for the problem regularization.
Design/methodology/approach
The solution of the direct and the inverse (Cauchy-type) problems for the Laplace’s equation is presented in the paper. The form of the solution is noted as the linear combination of the Chebyshev polynomials. The collocation method in which collocation points had been determined based on the Chebyshev nodes was applied. To solve the Cauchy problem, the minimum of functional describing differences between the target and the calculated values of temperature and the heat flux on a section of the domain’s boundary was sought. Various types of the inverse problem regularization, based on Tikhonov and Tikhonov–Philips regularizations, were analysed. Regularization parameter α was chosen with the use of the Morozov discrepancy principle.
Findings
Calculations were performed for random disturbances to the heat flux density of up to 0.01, 0.02 and 0.05 of the target value. The quality of obtained results was next estimated by means of the norm. Effect of the disturbance to the heat flux density and the type of regularization on the sought temperature distribution on the boundary Γ1 was investigated. Presented methods of regularization are considerably less sensitive to disturbances to measurement data than to Tikhonov regularization.
Practical implications
Discussed in this paper is an example of solution of the Cauchy problem for the Laplace’s equation in the rectangular domain that can be applied for determination of the temperature distribution on the boundary of the heated element where it is impossible to measure temperature or the measurement is subject to a great error, for instance on the inner wall of the boiler. Authors investigated numerical examples for functions with singularities outside the domain, for which values of gradients change significantly within the calculation domain what corresponds to significant changes in temperature on the wall of the boiler during the fuel combustion.
Originality/value
In this paper, a new method for solving the Cauchy problem for the Laplace’s equation is described. To solve this problem, the Chebyshev polynomials and nodes were used. Various types of regularization of this problem were considered.
Bat algorithm is a population metaheuristic proposed in 2010 which is based on the echolocation or bio-sonar characteristics of microbats. Since its first implementation, the bat algorithm has been ...used in a wide range of fields. In this paper, we present a discrete version of the bat algorithm to solve the well-known symmetric and asymmetric Traveling Salesman Problems. In addition, we propose an improvement in the basic structure of the classic bat algorithm. To prove that our proposal is a promising approximation method, we have compared its performance in 37 instances with the results obtained by five different techniques: evolutionary simulated annealing, genetic algorithm, an island based distributed genetic algorithm, a discrete firefly algorithm and an imperialist competitive algorithm. In order to obtain fair and rigorous comparisons, we have conducted three different statistical tests along the paper: the Student׳s t-test, the Holm׳s test, and the Friedman test. We have also compared the convergence behavior shown by our proposal with the ones shown by the evolutionary simulated annealing, and the discrete firefly algorithm. The experimentation carried out in this study has shown that the presented improved bat algorithm outperforms significantly all the other alternatives in most of the cases.
•Present a literature review about the rectangular 2D-SPP constraints.•A systematic literature review was conducted and 223 articles were selected.•Real-life practical constraints were classified ...into seven different groups.•A bibliometric analysis of the rectangular 2D-SPP academic literature was developed.•Suggest opportunities to address real-life practical constraints.
Over the years, methods and algorithms have been extensively studied to solve variations of the rectangular two-dimensional strip packing problem (2D-SPP), in which small rectangles must be packed inside a larger object denominated as a strip, while minimizing the space necessary to pack all rectangles. In the rectangular 2D-SPP, constraints are used to restrict the packing process, satisfying physical and real-life practical conditions that can impact the material cutting. The objective of this paper is to present an extensive literature review covering scientific publications about the rectangular 2D-SPP constraints in order to provide a useful foundation to support new research works. A systematic literature review was conducted, and 223 articles were selected and analyzed. Real-life practical constraints concerning the rectangular 2D-SPP were classified into seven different groups. In addition, a bibliometric analysis of the rectangular 2D-SPP academic literature was developed. The most relevant authors, articles, and journals were discussed, and an analysis made concerning the basic constraints (orientation and guillotine cutting) and the main solving methods for the rectangular 2D-SPP. Overall, the present paper indicates opportunities to address real-life practical constraints.
We consider the problem of reconstructing unknown inclusions inside a thermal conductor from boundary measurements, which arises from active thermography and is formulated as an inverse boundary ...value problem for the heat equation. In our previous works, we proposed a sampling-type method for reconstructing the boundary of the unknown inclusion and gave its rigorous mathematical justification. In this paper, we continue our previous works and provide a further investigation of the reconstruction method from both the theoretical and numerical points of view. First, we analyze the solvability of the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map gap equation and establish a relation of its solution to the Green function of an interior transmission problem for the inclusion. This naturally provides a way of computing this Green function from the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map. Our new findings reveal the essence of the reconstruction method. A convergence result for noisy measurement data is also proved. Second, based on the heat layer potential argument, we perform a numerical implementation of the reconstruction method for the homogeneous inclusion case. Numerical results are presented to show the efficiency and stability of the proposed method.
•In this paper, we provide a further investigation of the reconstruction method from both the theoretical and numerical points of view. The highlights are as follows.•First, we analyze the solvability of the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map gap equation and establish a relation of its solution to the Green function of an interior transmission problem for the inclusion. This naturally provides a way of computing this Green function from the Neumann-to-Dirichlet map. Our new findings reveal the essence of the reconstruction method. A convergence result for noisy measurement data is also proved.•Second, based on the heat layer potential argument, we perform a numerical implementation of the reconstruction method for the homogeneous inclusion case. Numerical results are presented to show the efficiency and stability of the proposed method.
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