In this memoir, I use the elements and conventions of creative nonfiction to examine particular strands of my experience for significance. Initiated as an inquiry into my father's suicide, this book quickly shifted focus, re-centering around my own development as an individual, a woman, and a writer. Both my father's suicide and the subsequent birth of my daughter serve as focal points for this inquiry, which I use to articulate and explore questions related to identity development, male-female relationships and gender roles, female sexuality, mental illness, trauma, loss, grief, and the inheritance of intergenerational traumas. In places, my investigation also broadens to consider the social, economic, and cultural contexts in which my story, and my family's story, have taken place. My goal in writing this book was to reclaim something of value from a series of personal and familial tragedies and triumphs. I believe that the act of using tragedy as raw material for a new creation is in itself an act of hope. By bearing witness—both to the events that have occurred, and to my personal experience of these events—I see myself as contributing to a larger human project. Every contribution to this project, whether technological innovation or philosophical revelation, shares a common goal: that of counterbalancing the brevity of our physical lives with the richness of our shared human experience.

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In this hermeneutic phenomenological study, a purposive sample of 12 religious women considered their experiences of religiosity with their mothers and larger family systems. Adult daughters reflected on the significance and meaning of religion in their lives and relationships, particularly the interaction of mothers and adult daughters concerning spirituality, beliefs, and experiences including intergenerational transmission of religiosity. Adult daughters were queried regarding maternal religious influence and the challenges of being women. Data were collected to saturation and analyzed to consider individual narratives about families into the development of three themes: Family Connections, Religious Consciousness, and Encountering Community. Gilligan's theory of moral development, including the ethic of caretaking, is employed to consider religiosity in the adult daughter-mother relationship. Limitations, clinical implications, and future directions are explored. In summary, spheroids increase anti-inflammatory potential of eBMSCs and are practical for clinical use. Increased anti-inflammatory efficacy was demonstrated in a model of in vivo inflammation. This dissertation provides an understanding of the anti-inflammatory activities of eBMSC spheroids that can be used to develop an OA therapy. / Ph. D.

Yes / The structural formation and development of isotactic polypropylene (iPP) upon the micro-injection molding process was investigated at different mold temperatures and molecular weights utilizing a real-time synchrotron radiation small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) technique combined with a customized micro-injection molding apparatus. Shish-kebab structure and parent-daughter lamellae were found to be formed during micro-injection molding for all iPP samples. In the case of kebab lamellae, a considerable growth in the long period and in the average thickness of lamellar crystallites and amorphous domains is observed at initial stages of crystallization for samples molded at varying temperatures. This effect is caused by the successive formation of thin lamellae in the outer layer and thick lamellae in the inner layer during the manufacturing process as evidenced by the spatial distribution of the crystalline lamellae across the thickness. In addition, the length of the shish formation increases remarkably at the onset of crystallization, the extent of which is dependent on the mold temperature. Despite the large changes of the lamellar stacks and the shish misorientation, the final length of the shish remains essentially unchanged when varying mold temperature. Since there is a critical orientation molecular weight above which the chains are stretched and oriented to form stable shish, the iPP sample with a low molar mass exhibits an overall decrease in the scattering intensity of SAXS patterns compared to the high molecular weight polypropylene. / This work is financially sponsored by the National Key R&D Program of China (2018YFB0704200), National Natural Science Foundation of China (21674119, 21790342 and 51525305), and Royal Society Newton Advanced Fellowship, United Kingdom (NA150222).

Women of Needles and Holes is a hybrid memoir focusing on the immigrant story of the speaker's lineage through the lens of mother-daughter relationships. Through a collection of lyrical essays, prose poems, journal entries, and poems, the narrative explores the concept of curing or succumbing to generational curses. There is an emphasis on the importance of female relationships and the complicated nature of motherhood. The speaker's maternal line is explored by framing the grandmother's and mother's stories through needle and sewing motifs. The family's Cuban and Spanish heritage is considered through the perception of each woman's relationship with both countries. The speaker's matriarchal history binds together when shifts in point-of-view occur such as in "A Cuban Cockroach," "The Burning Street," and excerpts from the speaker's mother's journal. Women of Needles and Holes explores what it means to pass down customs, female roles, traumas, and fears.

This research focused primarily on exploring the talk of mothers of daughters with Anorexia Nervosa, paying specific attention to their emic perceptions of the underlying causes of Anorexia Nervosa. The research sought to reveal the discourses underpinning participants talk. Further, the way in which these discourses serve to construct Anorexia Nervosa in particular ways as well as the function these discourses serve were explored. This study is qualitative and exploratory in design and provides a unique understanding of Anorexia Nervosa in the form of emic accounts gleaned from mothers' own experiences. The findings of this research suggest that mothers of daughters with Anorexia Nervosa primarily reproduce a discourse on the causality of Anorexia Nervosa that is family or biomedically focused. Through analysis of the discourses embedded in participants’ talk, it became evident that participants reproduce discourses of gender and femininity and are influenced by societal pressure as well as the constructions of womanhood and motherhood. Insight into a side of the mother of the Anorectic, often concealed in the literature, was revealed through a semi-structured interview process with nine urban, middle-class, white South African mothers of daughters with Anorexia Nervosa. Interviews were then transcribed and analysed according to Braun and Clarke's thematic analysis. Incorporating the silenced voices of mothers of daughters with Anorexia Nervosa appears to have allowed for the emergence of a more generous view of the mother and has contributed to a larger set of discursive repertoires through which to understand Anorexia Nervosa. This research further gave rise to the realisation of a need for a critical education program whereby taken for granted notions can be revealed and actively engaged. This program would ideally seek to free the anorexic woman as well as the mother from the constraints of the uncritically constructed conceptualisations of Anorexia Nervosa and femininity.

Using qualitative analysis, this thesis analyzes intergenerational support, conflict, and ambivalence between aging mothers and their middle aged adult daughters. In-depth interviews with 30 mother-daughter pairs explored respondents&amp / #8217 / relationship history, changes in the relationship over the life course (childhood, adolescence, young adulthood, marriage of daughter, parenthood of daughter, widowhood of mother), social network composition, frequency of contact, expectations, type and frequency of intergenerational support, intimacy, compliance, conflict or disagreement, and comparison of self with the other party in terms of parenting styles and filial behaviors. Moreover, similarities and differences in the personalities of mother-daughter dyads were investigated from both mothers and daughters perspective. Participants reported that, there is an ample amount of intergenerational support between aging mothers and their adult daughters. Conflicts between mother-daughter pairs arise from interference, irritating personality traits and behaviors and differing views. Daughters experience more ambivalent feelings than mothers in their relationship. Both parties employ passive and secondary relationship maintenance tactics with the goal of preserving relationship harmony. Three distinct types of mother-daughter relationship emerged: close/peaceful, ambivalent and distant. Mother-daughter relationships have undergone transformations with life stages: daughters&amp / #8217 / marriage, daughters&amp / #8217 / parenthood, mothers&amp / #8217 / aging and declining health and mothers&amp / #8217 / widowhood. Effects of certain historical events and social changes emerged from the study. The research findings were discussed with reference to Turkish cultural characteristics and they were compared with Western research findings.

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Mother Tongue is an exploration of loneliness as a first language. For the collection's speaker, loneliness is not an abstract emotion, but her first movement, first breath – her mother tongue. Through depictions of childhood and young adulthood, such as the origins of birth in "birth speak" or the mature reflections of "like adults should do," Mother Tongue answers the question — who does a child wrought with loneliness become? Using language to translate the sentiments of the body, the many faces of grief, and the mosaic of memory, the collection traverses the speaker's relationship with her mother as a nurturer of pain in poems like "on an evening walk in mt. vernon," with her father as a witness of his near-death experience in "the night I learn my father's kidneys are failing," and with her brother as a shadow of his mental illnesses in "a conversation with my brother as test." Throughout the collection, poems like "a letter to my father's subconscious" and "what I've learned about absence while studying korean" play with false cognates and the elasticity of sound, while poems like "glimmers" make a connection between the instinct of hunger and the recurrence of loneliness, where the speaker relishes, "in spanish, I can say I have hunger / as if I could give it back." Acting as Mother Tongue's anchor is the "vacation in_____" series, which features the speaker in conversation with a male partner and describes a depth of loneliness unalleviated by presence, ultimately conveying the inability to find satisfaction in another person. From grappling with an inner deadness in "[the dead girl]" to finding hope in "new heaven, new earth," Mother Tongue is a wrestle with language, the self, the past, and God, cementing itself as a journey toward reconciliation, and if possible, being birthed again.

The increasing awareness about the important role that fathers play in their daughters’ lives, have lead to the undertaking of this study. The goal of this study was to determine whether there is a specific parenting style of fathers that will contribute to the achieving of a higher level of emotional intelligence in grade 2 daughters. Quantitative research with an exploratory and descriptive nature was used. Data were collected with the use of the Parenting Styles and Dimensions Questionnaire (PSDQ) as well as the Cilliers Emotional Intelligence Test. The sample consisted of 24 Grade 2 girls and their parents. The conclusion was that the relationship between parenting style dimensions and emotional intelligence was not showed through the parenting style or dimension mostly used, but through the parenting style dimension that was used the least. / Thesis (M. Diac. (Spelterapie))