Whole body vibration (WBV) training is a relatively new training technique and is considered low intensity as it elicits non-voluntary muscle contractions generated by mechanical vibrations. The aim of this study was to examine the effects of a 6-week WBV training paradigm on the physical capacities and fatigability of overweight young female adults. We hypothesized that WBV would increase fat free mass as well as leg power and strength, decrease the fatigue index of the lower limbs during the Wingate test, increase fatigue resistance, improve neuromuscular efficiency and decrease fatigue perception in overweight young female adults. Participants (n=24) were overweight young female adults (body fat percentage 30-35) between the ages of 20 and 40 and were randomized into 2 groups; control group (CON; n=10) or whole body vibration group (VIB; n=14). This study consisted of six weeks of training and four testing sessions: 2 before (sessions 1 & 2) and 2 following (sessions 3 & 4) the training regimen. During testing sessions 1 and 3, the basal metabolic rate, body composition, leg power (Wingate), elasticity index (EI), squat and countermovement jumps and fatigue perception (questionnaires) were assessed for all subjects. Isokinetic tests to measure strength and muscle fatigue tests were performed during testing sessions 2 and 4. The training protocol lasted 6 weeks and exercises were performed 3 times a week. Sessions lasted 30 minutes and entailed 15 sets of 1-minute exercises followed by 1-minute rest intervals. One set consisted of 15 controlled and timed squats (15 flexion and extension per minute). The VIB group performed their exercises on the power Plate® pro 6. Vertical vibration amplitude settings were kept on low (2mm) throughout the entire 6 weeks and set at a frequency of 30Hz for weeks 1-3 and increased to 35Hz for weeks 4-6. The CON group performed the same exercises without vibration. iv The results revealed that a 6-week WBV training regimen had no effect on body composition or basal metabolic rate. WBV training did not affect EI as evidenced by similar squat jump and countermovement jump measures for both the CON and VIB groups. WBV training had no effect on leg power as measured using the Wingate ergocycle. The Wingate test did show a decrease in the fatigue index for both groups (p˂0.05). Unexpectedly, a decrease in strength was found in extension phase during the eccentric contractions (120°/s) and flexion phase during concentric contractions (120°/s and 180°/s). As there were no changes in fat free mass, it seems that the reduction in strength was due to central changes. The fatigue rate represented by regression slopes showed that the VIB group was more fatigue resistant post training compared to the CON group. Fatigue perception as measured using a multidimensional approach with questionnaires (FSS, MFI and SHARP) revealed no changes in fatigability for either group. To conclude, this study demonstrated that WBV training in overweight young female adults had minimal effects on the physical capacities and fatigability of our subjects. Higher intensity vibration parameters, a longer training regimen or individualized vibration parameters may have greater benefits for overweight subjects and should be considered in future studies.

The Old Curiosity Shop, Charles Dickens' fourth novel, has been given little serious critical attention by modern scholars. The purpose of this study was to analyze the novel, ignoring the accepted prejudices against it and establishing it as a complex artistic creation.The organization of the study rests on the thesis that after Master Humphrey, the narrator of the first three chapters, dismisses himself from the story, the novel divides into four sections each focused on one of the four major characters--Nell, Kit, Quilp, and Dick. The sections are not divided in the novel, but are complexly interwoven with the sections presenting different views of the major themes of the novel.Master Humrhrey's three-chapter introduction to the novel sets the plots of the four sections in motion and establishes the major concerns of the novel—alienation, creativity, and materialism. More important, Master Humphrey is the only artist whose consciousness is penetrated while he is in the act of creating.Nell’s section contains the most lengthy treatment of the major themes, but does not present the novel’s and as with Nell, his self-imposed, alienation ends in death. The similarity between Mrs. Quilp anid Nell, and Nell, Mrs. Quilp's enjoyment of her suffering combine to raise the doubt that Nell's problems are imposed externally. Quilp's creativity is reflected in his ability to appear differently to different people around him. He recreates himself constantly.Dick Swiveller's progression from a morally careless rogue to a caring hero is the triumph of the novel, and his section contains the novel's solutions to the thematic problems. Unlike Nell, Kit, and Quilp, who retreat from society, Dick searches for companionship. He and the Marchioness solve the problem of alienation by finding each other. He also presents a compromise between the greed of Quilp and the grandfather and Nell's renunciation of material goods with his theory that money simply makes things more pleasant. Dick is the greatest creative artist in the novel for be uses his imagination to create a refuge for himself and his friends within an alien world. He creates through imaginative power the haven which Nell cannot find in her flight.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the effect of group counseling on the connotative meanings of "father", "mother", "myself", and "peers" held by adolescent delinquent girls in a state training, school. The research hypothesis of the study was that the connotative meanings of these four concepts expressed by girls who participated in short-term group counseling would become more positive than those who did not.Subjects for the study were inmates at the Indiana Girls School at Clermont, Indiana.. They were selected for the study on the basis of counselor recommendations, reading ability, and proximity to possible parole. Forty-eight subjects participated in the study.A list of variables such as persons, situations, and social institutions was compiled. Juvenile delinquents, as a group, tend to hold negative attitudes toward these variables. This list was reduced to the four most critical concepts selected by the raters: "father", "mother", "myself". and "peers".A semantic differential, constructed as prescribed by Osgood et al. (1957, p. 77-81), was used to measure the connotative meanings of the control and experimental groups toward the four derived concepts.The forty-eight subjects were randomly placed in either the control group or the experimental group. The experimental group was further divided into four subgroups, each with six members.The twenty-four subjects in thee experimental group participated in a one and one-half to two hour group counseling session per week for a period of eleven weeks. The control group experienced the same institutional environment except that they did not receive group counseling. Two of the groups were led by the female staff psychologist of the Indiana Girls School and two of the groups were led by a male doctoral intern from Ball State University. At the end of eleven weeks, the semantic differential was-again administered to the control group and the experimental group.A mean of each of the four-concepts was computed for each subject in the study and group means for the experimental group and the control group were calculated for each of the four concepts on the pre-test and post-test administrations. Significance of the difference of the differences between the experimental and the control groups from pre-test to post-test was determined by a two-tailed t-test. The degree of significance was established at the .05 level.Analysis of the data indicated that the experimental group, when compared to the control group, made significant positive changes in their connotative meanings of father, mother, myself, and peers. The null-hypothesis was rejected since the derived t-values exceeded the critical point at the .001 level. It may be concluded that group counseling had a positive effect on negative feelings and attitudes which are considered by penal authorities to impede treatment and rehabilitation.As a group, the control subjects tended to score lower on the research instrument. Their connotativee meanings of mother, myself, and peers, respectively, were slightly more negative at the conclusion of the experiment. Only "father" was seen as slightly more positive. It appears that the general institutional environment has some negative effects, over a period of time, on the attitudes of the incarcerated girls.The results of this study indicated several areas that are worthy of further exploration.Replication in other types of penal institutions to ascertain the effectiveness. of group counseling.Follow-up of the experimental group to determine the permanence of the changes effected by group counseling.Follow-up after parole to determine if positive changes are related to better post-institutional adjustment.The differences between the attitudes of Negro and Caucasian delinquent girls.The feelings of delinquent girls toward other concepts that were highly ranked by the raters, e.g., home, school, work, and marriage.

The Arizona Child Acoustic Database consists of longitudinal audio recordings from a group of children over a critical period of growth and development (ages 2-7 years). The goal of this database is to 1) document acoustic changes in speech production that may be related to physical growth 2) inform development of a model of speech production for child talkers. This work was funded by NSF BSC-1145011 awarded to Kate Bunton, Ph.D. and Brad Story, Ph.D, Principal Investigators. This database contains longitudinal audio recordings of 55 American English speaking children between the ages of 2-7 at 3-month intervals. Since children began the study at different ages, some children have fewer recording sessions than others. The database can also be used to provide cross-sectional data for children of a specific age. Please refer to the subject data table for information on specific sessions available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. All children were recorded using the same protocol; therefore, task numbers are consistent across children and sessions. A calibration tone is included as Record 1 for all sessions. The speech protocol focused on production of English monopthong and diphthong vowels in isolation, sVd, hVd, and monosyllabic real words. In addition, the protocol includes several nonsense vowel-to-vowel transitions. Speakers were prompted either verbally by investigators or by graphical prompts. Details of the protocol with reference to task numbers can be found in the protocol spreadsheet available here http://arizona.openrepository.com/arizona/handle/10150/316065. Details on data recording: All samples were recorded digitally using an AKG SE 300B microphone with a mouth to mic distance of approximately 10 inches. Signals were recorded digitally using a Marantz PMD671, 16 bit PCM (uncompressed) at 44.1KHz. Recordings are made available in .wav format. Individual zip files contain all recordings from a single session.

This thesis considers Thomas Middleton’s female trickster figures using A Mad World, My Masters, and No Wit No Help Like a Woman’s as example plays. I argue that by having his female characters successfully live by their wits, using their wit to manipulate custom in their intrigues, Middleton allots his women, who are not formally educated, a sophisticated understanding of social and gender politics. This level of understanding requires the women to possess a substantial amount of inherent intelligence and reason, offering a view of women’s capacity for intelligence that diverges considerably from traditional early modern English views.

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Female Genital Mutilation (FGM) has been a tough topic to discuss in both local and global spheres. In the past twenty years however, a space has been created for it in the public consciousness. The object of this study is to trace the shifts that have occurred in how FGM has been talked about and make the ongoing dialogue visible. This is achieved by examining feminist debates, human rights discourse and the media as not only primary definers of the issue but also as sites of discourse production. / In moving from the local to global agenda, more actors have become involved in the debates and as such have further complexified an already complex practice. Each site offers a unique perspective and representation on the FGM controversy and has contributed to how the West has made meaning of the practice.

Female offenders’ experiences within the criminal justice system and the way in which they become involved with the criminal justice system are very different than that of male offenders. Previous research that has been conducted on female offending does show that womens’ contact with the criminal justice system can often be related to histories of abuse and to mental illness, and that these can also be related to subsequent re-contacts with the criminal justice system. Abuse, mental illness and gender, along with control variables (age, aboriginal identity, LSI-OR score), were investigated in a sample of 522 male and female Ontario Provincial offenders. When males and females were compared at the bivariate level using a chi-square comparison, females were found to be significantly more likely to re-contact. Abuse and mental illness were not found on their own to be significantly related to re-contact, but when the relationship between the three variables was examined, mental illness was found to be both significant and positively correlated to both gender and abuse. Examination into the relationship between the variables found a strong relationship between gender and abuse, gender and mental illness, mental illness and abuse as well as strong relationship in the three way interaction between gender, mental illness and abuse. The cross tabulation demonstrated that women who had experienced abuse were identified as being much more likely to be suffering from a mental illness. Logistic regression was used to model the relationship between re-contact, gender, abuse and the risk for re-contact. All possible interactions (as noted above) were included in the model, but the model that best fit the data included only the controls (age, aboriginal identity, LSI-OR score), gender, abuse, mental illness and the interaction between mental illness and gender. Results indicated that there was a significantly higherrisk for re-contact for females with mental illness, compared with men with mental illness or or to men and women without mental illness.. Even though abuse as a single variable or as part of an interaction was not found to be significantly related to re-contact, it is still of importance to note that the chi-square comparisons demonstrated that abuse is significantly related to gender and mental illness, therefore the relationship was still important when looking at the implications of the research. It is recommended that future research further investigate the different needs of male and female offenders and the role that experienced physical, sexual and emotional abuse, mental illness and gender plays in not only offending behaviour, but in the treatment and rehabilitation of offenders within the provincial correctional system.

This study addressed substantial limitations in the literature pertaining to intimate partner violence (IPV). In particular, I addressed the gender symmetry debate, and identified factors associated with the dynamics of violent relationships by examining the correlates related to perpetrating and suffering IPV for both men and women. Finally, I examined attitudes towards IPV, communication behaviour, and conflict management techniques as a function of abuse history. Participants were recruited from three samples of the New Zealand population (student, general, and incarcerated). The inclusion of an incarcerated sample enabled the examination of more severe, frequent and injurious violence than is typically experienced within the student and general samples. There were three phases to the study. The first phase explored incidence rates and psychological correlates of IPV. As expected, the incidence of IPV was highest within the incarcerated sample (Chapter 5). Of greater significance, the incidence of IPV was similar for males and females, with the majority of violence being bi-directional (Chapters 4 & 5). Moreover, the psychological correlates associated with IPV were similar for perpetrators and victims, and males and females (Chapters 4 & 5). Due to the bi-directional nature of IPV, analyses presented in Chapters 4 and 5 were limited by the categorisation of participants as both perpetrators and victims. In Chapter 6, I overcame this limitation. The attitudes of victims were examined separately to individuals experiencing bi-directional violence. Validating the findings of Chapters 4 and 5, the attitudes and behaviours of victims and perpetrators were similar. These included being more hostile and negative towards others and ones� partner, being more controlling, and reporting more communication problems. I also further explored gender symmetry in IPV. Male and female IPV was found to be similar in frequency, severity, and similarly associated with control. However, the type of acts perpetrated differed across gender. During the second and third phase of the study, I further examined participants� communication behaviour (Chapter 7), conflict behaviour, and attitudes (Chapter 8). Findings revealed that perpetrators and victims employed less facilitative and polite linguistic devices (Chapter 7) and reported fewer skills for dealing with conflict (Chapter 8) than did other individuals. An examination of attitudes towards IPV revealed males and females had similar attitudes and were more condoning of female, than male-perpetrated IPV. Moreover, individuals with a history of IPV were the most condoning of violence. Additionally, a number of correlates associated with experiencing IPV were also associated with attitudes condoning IPV (Chapter 8). Overall, the findings revealed IPV to be bi-directional and gender symmetrical. Male and female IPV was similar in incidence, severity, and injury. Furthermore, the psychological correlates associated with IPV were similar for men and women, and perpetrators and victims. Individuals with a history of IPV were more controlling, hostile towards others, more condoning of IPV, employed less positive communication styles, and lacked skills for dealing with conflict. In light of these findings, suggestions are offered for violence prevention initiatives in the discussion sections of each chapter and in the final chapter (Chapter 9).