The purpose of this study was to determine what are the basic factors that influence one's attitudes toward death. Questions central to the proposed investigation are these:1. What factors can be identified which seem to predispose certain individuals to different types of attitudes toward death?2. What are the general societal participation styles of individuals of the various integration types? Can distinct styles be identified? For example, do those of one type have distinct occupations, marital status, similar residence size, and so forth as compared to those of another type?3. Are there specific differences among the integration types in terms of scores on tests measuring anomie? In other words, do some types have significantly greater amounts of anomie than other types?4. What specific factors are useful in determining an individual's measure of fear of death? Are some distinctions more useful than others in determining attitudes toward death?These questions are basically all interrelated. Tentative hypotheses may be suggested in regard to each of these questions:1. Fear of death varies inversely with the degree of integration of the individual in the social groups of which the individual forms a part.2. Fear of death varies inversely with the degree of internal orientation of the individual.3. Fear of death varies directly with the degree of anomie of the individual.A survey sample of 635 from various occupations, marital statuses, ages, and so forth was used for the study. A Fear of Death Scale was developed and administered along with Srole's Anomia Scale and Neal and Seeman's Internal-External Scale.The data generated indicate that basically fear of death is inversely correlated with the degree of integration of the individual in his or tier social groups. Those with higher rates of anomie did exhibit greater fears toward death. Those people who were more externally oriented also exhibited greater fears toward death. Both findings were predicted.A revision of Emile Durkheim's typology for suicides also yielded some results. The fatalistic type of attitude toward death which sees death as the price for a chosen life-style was tested by including police officers, Federal Bureau of Investigation agents, and State Policemen in the sample. All were very low on the fear of death scale as predicted. The anomie type, as already suggested, exhibited greater fears of death as expected. The altruistic type was more difficult to measure. Since the over-fifty category had significantly lower fears of death, it would seem to at least not detract from the theory. Those who saw religion as preparing them for death were also low on the fear of death scale which is also consistent. The egoistic type seemed most prevalent among those persons who had little meaning or purpose in life. Those persons also had higher fear of death scores as expected.The lower level hypotheses were generally also supported with some exceptions. Projected differences in fear of death between males and females were not there. Also, the older the respondent, the lower the fear of death. Had children been included in the sample, this might not nave been the case. A trend also existed in that the larger the size of residence, the higher the fear of death as was also predicted. The predicted differences in occupational categories were not as great as projected, but they were in the direction that was predicted.The best indicators of fear of death, other than the comparative scales used, were the age of the respondent and his or her marital status. Widowed persons were less fearful of death followed by married, divorced, and lastly, by single people as predicted.

Five policemen (26-46 years) participated in a Police Fitness Program lasting for 13 to 16 weeks. They either jogged or combined walking and jogging for a minimum of two miles per session until the time of the post test. As a result, all of the officers reduced their percentage of body fat, and four of the five policemen increased their maximal oxygen consumption. Training had no effect on the initial heart rate response to a fifteen second sudden exertion run on the treadmill at nine mph., twenty percent incline. The rate of recovery, however, was improved in all subjects. No electrocardiographic abnormalities were observed either before or after training. Because a limited number of subjects completed the study, the amount of data was insufficient to make any conclusive statements about the effects of physical training on the heart rate and electrocardiographic response to sudden exertion.

No description available.

Haemochromatosis is the most common single gene disorder to afflict North- West European populations. It is probably the most common genetic disorder of iron metabolism worldwide. As many as 1 in 250 people in the UK are affected and although the phenotype causes only a mild increase in gastrointestinal iron absorption a proportion of affected individuals will accumulate sufficient iron over their life-time to cause cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. Venesection treatment instituted before cirrhosis has established ensures a normal life expectancy, but clinical presentation is often late in life after irreversible organ injury has occurred. Identification of people at risk in the early, asymptomatic stage by measurements of iron status is unreliable. The genetic defect responsible for haemochromatosis has been sought in the hope that its identification might facilitate early diagnosis and that studies on the gene product would lead to a greater understanding of the mechanisms of mammalian iron absorption. Genetic linkage to HLA-A3 placed the gene responsible for haemchromatosis in, or close to, the major histocompatibilty complex (MHC) on the short arm of chromosome 6 and a positional cloning strategy has been adopted. This thesis describes work directed to the identification of the haemochromatosis gene by positional cloning. The region telomeric to the MHC was mapped using yeast artificial chromosomes, from which new microsatellites were isolated. These markers were used in linkage disequilibrium analyses and the mapping of a recombination breakpoint that defined a haemochromatosis gene region. This region was physically mapped in fine detail and positional candidates sought by EST database analysis. Before a systematic search for genes in the region began a strong positional candidate was reported (Feder et al 1996). Analysis of this mutation in patients from the UK confirmed this to be the ancestral haemochromatosis mutation.

There is now considerable evidence that endometriosis is likely to be a complex multifactorial trait, such as diabetes or asthma, in which a number of susceptibility loci interact with each other, and the environment, to produce the disease phenotype. This thesis presents studies on the genetic and environmental basis of endometriosis in both a non-human primate model and in women. The study of the autopsy records of 399 female rhesus monkeys identified 81 (20%) with spontaneous endometriosis. Age, exposure to ≥ 3 oestradiol implants (relative risk 9.7, P < 0.001) or ≥ 1 hysterotomy (relative risk 5.8, P = 0.006) were significant risk factors as determined by conditional logistic regression. Living descendants of the affected animals had MRI scans which suggested that 8/113 (7%) had at least one endometriotic lesion >1 cm in diameter. Segregation analysis was conducted on the resulting 12 pedigrees, which contained 64 half sib-pairs, 2 full sibpairs and 11 mother-daughter pairs. Human, affected sib-pairs and families were recruited for the OXEGENE study to conduct sib-pair analysis using microsatellite markers at 10cM resolution across the entire genome. MRI studies of the first-degree relatives of women with rAFS stage III-IV disease estimated that the relative risk (λ_R) may be as high as 14 (95% Cl 4.8 - 30.3). Candidate gene studies, comparing the frequency of the GALT N314D polymorphism, the CYP1A1 MspI polymorphism and the GSTM1 and T1 null mutations in two case groups, with either sporadic disease or a family history of endometriosis, and two control groups, did not show evidence of association. Linkage analysis using three microsatellite markers and 50 affected sib-pairs in the region to which GSTM1 maps (1p13) did not show evidence of linkage to this region. However, there was an apparent relationship between the presence of both the GSTM1 null mutation and the CYP1A1 MspI polymorphism and an increased risk of endometriosis. The initial findings of a sib-pair analysis, using 29 microsatellite markers across chromosome one in 128 affected sib-pairs, did not reveal evidence of linkage. These findings provide some insight into the aetiology of endometriosis in women.

No description available.

This research is concerned with menstruation as it is experienced and presented by women involved in feminist groups in Montreal. Biomedical discourse hegemony in the production of a discourse on women's body has been sometimes reinforced and sometimes questioned by feminist movements. The interviews reveal that despite the impact of feminist discourses, women's experience seems deeply influenced by biomedical and hygienist discourses and by negative stereotypes commonly found in society at large. Feminist discourses allow these women to open spaces of freedom and criticism in their practices and thoughts regarding menstruation.

Humans live in a world rich in multisensory information. Often information reaching one sense is completely unrelated to information reaching another sense; that is, they are spatially and temporally incongruent. The goal of the research presented in this thesis was to elucidate the behavioral and neural bases of attention to incongruent audiovisual information. Five issues were addressed: (1) developing an appropriate behavioral paradigm to test bimodal attention, (2) understanding the role of crossmodal suppression in unimodal attention, (3) exploring the interaction of auditory and visual sensory cortex during bimodal selective attention, (4) exploring the role of fronto-parietal networks in bimodal selective attention, and (5) exploring the neural correlates of bimodal divided attention. Two different behavioral paradigms demonstrated that attended information was remembered better than unattended information. Functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) revealed that crossmodal suppression of sensory cortex subserving a non-presented modality occurred consistently during unimodal attention tasks, and increased with attentional demand. During bimodal selective attention, activity was often enhanced in sensory cortex subserving an attended modality and suppressed in sensory cortex subserving an unattended modality, both compared to a bimodal passive baseline. This interaction depended in part on attentional demand and the nature of the stimulus information. No prefrontal regions were consistently activated by bimodal selective attention; however, dorsolateral prefrontal cortex (DLPFC) was recruited during one of the bimodal divided attention paradigms. Furthermore, temporary inactivation of the DLPFC using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) led to decreased bimodal divided attention performance using the same paradigm. However, using a different bimodal divided attention paradigm, DLPFC was not recruited and instead ventrolateral prefrontal cortex (VLPFC) showed task-induced deactivation. This divergence is explained by the unique requirements of the two bimodal divided attention paradigms. Overall, these findings provide improved understanding of how humans process and attend to multisensory information, and raise several questions for further investigation.

The Internet has emerged as a prominent medium of communication. Today, it has become the focus of enormous debate and evaluation. The objective of this study is to examine the evolution of its impact on society. In this regard, various interpretations of its societal impact are provided. First, the debate on the information society exhibits the widespread belief that society is transforming and a new type of society is emerging. Second, a chronological description of the evolution and development of the Internet displays its burgeoning growth and current utility and capacities. Third, optimistic and pessimistic perspectives elucidate opposite views of the potential it can have on society and humankind. Lastly, a synchronic analysis of media coverage, using The Globe and Mail as an illustration, demonstrates the present reporting of its impact. These various interpretations provide an understanding of the Internet's increasing significance and position within society.

Cholecystokinin, or "CCK" peptides, originally identified in the gastrointestinal tract, are now considered to be one of the most abundant peptide systems in the mammalian central nervous system. Prompted by recent findings that implicated the cholecystokinergic system in the pathophysiology of various illnesses, we developed a novel assay system to measure the various forms of cholecystokinin peptides in human plasma and cerebrospinal fluid. The system detects CCK-4, sulfated CCK-8 (CCK-8s) and nonsulfated CCK-8 (CCK-8ns) with equal affinity, with the lower detection limit of 2.7 fmol and an ED50 of 10.6 +/- 2.2 fmol. Using the assay system, we determined that mean CCK-like immunoreactivity (CCK-LI) in the plasma of 12 healthy subjects was 12.9 +/- 2.1 pM CCK-4 equivalents. / After developing the cholecystokinin assay system, we were able to combine our unique methodology with other established techniques to investigate the role of CCK in illnesses such as premenstrual dysphoric disorder (PMDD), anxiety, bulimia nervosa, and cardiomyopathy. / Briefly, we observed no significant differences in plasma CCK levels between women with PMDD and healthy volunteers. However, we found that, independent of diagnosis, plasma cholecystokinin concentrations were higher in women during their first visit to the clinic to participate in the study, as compared to later visits. / In addition, application of our assay system allowed us to determine that oral ingestion of caffeine increased plasma CCK-LI levels 2--4 fold in humans. Moreover, we observed substantial variation in post-caffeine cholecystokinin levels among individuals. / In another study of cholecystokinin and anxiety, we used our CCK assay to determine the effects of ondansetron, a serotonin receptor antagonist, on cholecystokinin levels in plasma. We found that multiple oral doses of ondansetron influence the pharmacokinetic parameters of exogenous CCK. / We also used the three-step assay system to measure CCK-LI in patients with the eating disorder, bulimia nervosa. Baseline fasted cholecystokinin plasma levels were lower in bulimic women as compared to control subjects. However, at "satiety", or the post-binge stage, CCK levels in bulimic women were similar to those of control women. / Finally, our investigation into the role of cholecystokinin in cardiomyopathy revealed that neuronal cholecystokinin receptor density was altered in the cardiomyopathic hamster brain, as compared to age- and sex-matched control animals. (Abstract shortened by UMI.)