Alzheimer’s disease is a progressive neurodegenerative disorder generally affecting people above the age of 65 years. Even though the pathophysiological hallmarks of AD were established more than a hundred years ago, there is yet to be a drug that can stop its characteristic neuronal damage. Of the five currently FDA-approved drugs, galantamine has a unique mechanism of action. Apart from being an AChE inhibitor, galantamine can effectively potentiate (positive allosteric modulator) the effect of agonists at nAChRs at concentrations lower than those required for its action as an AChE inhibitor. Perhaps the clinical benefits observed with galantamine are associated mainly with its nAChRs-PAM action and not its AChE inhibitory effect. Inhibiting AChE causes a delay in the degradation of ACh and a prolonged presence of ACh might act at either nAChRs or mAChRs. By indirectly targeting mAChRs as well, AChE inhibitors may lead to potential side effects. Hence there is a need for specific nAChR agents. The aim of this study was to identify the structural features of galantamine that contribute solely towards its a7 nAChR-PAM effect. In doing so, we wish to divorce the structural features that might be important for interacting with AChE. Using the deconstruction approach, we have synthesized structurally abbreviated analogs of galantamine. To study the probable interactions, we docked these molecules in human a7 nAChR homology models. Ultimately, it is of interest to determine which analogs retain the PAM activity of galantamine and to address that, a preliminary screening was performed with a select few analogs using the two-electrode voltage clamp technique

As a social endeavour, the practice of nursing is expected to minimise risk of harm to patients. In reality, the risk of breaching or failing to meet a standard of practice, with resultant harm to patients is ever present. Such variations to the expected standard may result in harm to the patient and be viewed as unprofessional conduct within the legislative context. The phenomenon of unprofessional conduct can have significant and sometimes dire outcomes for patients and nurses and provides challenges to understand antecedents to its occurrence and the impact on the nurse. From this realisation, the significance of this study is twofold. Firstly, the literature revealed that an allegation of unprofessional conduct and the associated experience of being reported to a regulatory authority can have significant psycho-social and professional impact on the nurse. Secondly, the phenomenon has received little formal analysis. The purpose of this grounded theory study was to explore the phenomenon of alleged unprofessional conduct, and to develop a theory that provided understanding of the phenomenon and a framework for action. Data was obtained from in-depth interviews of a specialised sample of 21 nurses in any state or territory of Australia who had been the subject of notification by a nursing regulatory authority of alleged unprofessional conduct. Data analysis occurred simultaneously using the constant comparative method. This resulted in the generation of a substantive theory, explaining how nurses dealt with an allegation of unprofessional conduct. This study found that nurses experienced varying degrees and combinations of personal and professional vulnerability. This put them at risk of either making an error, breaching a practice standard, and/or at risk of being reported to a nurse regulatory authority for an allegation of unprofessional conduct. The core social process, a transformation of the personal and professional self is a process that the nurse both 'engages in' and 'goes through', in response to the social problem, being reported to a nurse regulatory authority for alleged unprofessional conduct, and its aftermath. The social process is made up of two categories: loss of the assumptive world: the experience of deconstruction and relearning the world. Loss of the assumptive world is comprised of being confronted, deconstruction of the personal self and deconstruction of the professional self. The category Relearning the world: the experience of reconstruction is constructed of the sub-categories, preserving the self: minimising the unravelling; reconstructing the personal self; reconstructing the professional self; and living within the world. Consequences of the category relearning the world are dynamic and influenced by a number of factors. The ability to transact the deconstructed self and move through the reconstructive processes and experience can be viewed in the following states, stymied, evolving or transacted. The personal and professional transformation of the individual nurse is influenced by the degree of deconstruction initially experienced, the interplay with the influencing factors internal and external support processes; resilience; time; and the constant of vulnerability. The findings of this study have implications for clinical, management, education and research practices in nursing. It also exposes problems with the use of nurse regulatory authorities as a punitive strategy for nurses who err. The uncovering of this substantive theory articulates a process whereby nurses are transformed personally and professionally in response to a traumatic or challenging life event. This substantive theory has value in providing a decision making framework for managing breaches of nursing standards, as a learning tool to identifying and managing risk in nursing and providing a framework for self and external support to nurses who may find themselves in this situation.

The existence of at or curved extra spatial dimensions provides new insights into several of the problems which face the Standard Model of particle physics, including the gauge hierarchy problem, the smallness of neutrino masses, and the dark matter problem. However, higher-dimensional gauge theories are not renormalizable and can only be considered as low-energy effective theories, with limited applicability. Dimensional deconstruction provides a class of manifestly gauge invariant possible ultraviolet completions of higher-dimensional gauge theories, formulated within conventional quantum eld theory. In dimensional deconstruction, the fundamental theory is a four-dimensional quantum eld theory and extra spatial dimensions are generated dynamically at low energies. In this thesis, we study di erent applications of dimensional deconstruction in the contexts of neutrino masses, mixing and oscillations, Kaluza{Klein dark matter, and e ective eld theories for discretized higher-dimensional gravity. A different possibility to understand the smallness of neutrino masses is provided by the see-saw mechanism. This is a genuinely four-dimensional mechanism, where the light neutrino masses are induced by the addition of heavy right-handed Majorana neutrinos or by other heavy degrees of freedom, such as scalar SU(2)L triplet elds. It has the attractive feature of simultaneously providing a mechanism for generating the observed baryon asymmetry of the Universe. We study in this context a specific left-right symmetric see-saw model. / QC 20100716

This study will embrace certain features of postmodern experience so as to underline subjective embodiment as the condition, corollary, and appropriate focus of textual, rhetorical, and sociopolitical criticism. It will theorize somantics as a conceptual toolkit for mapping the structural correspondence of embodiment to the symbolic order, each thus emerging as the other’s non-foundational “efficient reason.” This study will argue that the flesh mediates the theoretic divisions of structuralism, deconstruction, psychoanalysis, and existentialism, although not in a priori or essentialist ways. It will draw from their vocabularies, combining them into a vocabulary of its own while retexturing their relation to one another. It thus aspires to reduce all rhetorics and metaphysics to the somantic, so as to sabotage conservative fundamentalisms and to establish the terms for an argument with enthusiasts of transhumanism. Moreover, this study will suggest that theoretic systems, cultural messages, and sociopolitical speech-acts inattentive to the condition of embodiment—whether that of their agents, interlocutors, or material mediums of expression— must then seem at once suspicious, maladaptive to the sense contingencies of the moment, and deserving of somantic reduction. In correcting these faults, it will also resist systematizing or universalizing sense-experience; it will function rather as a corpus of maps that rechart the volatile, moment-to-moment interimplication of the somatic and the symbolic. Thus this study takes axiomatically Frederic Jameson’s claim that intertextuality replaces history in the era of transnational capital, seeing in this argument the strategic advantage of taking a theoretic standpoint against diachronic modalities of time. Arguing for the reconstruction of certain narratives as distortions, if not outright falsifications, of the simultaneation of needs, impressions, and changes in a subject’s sense-experience, this study will redirect attention to the relation of certain discourses to the bodies of their interlocutors.

In Toni Morrison’s Jazz and Eudora Welty’s The Optimist’s Daughter, extreme opposition is prevalent as the authors describe the makeup of each character, as well as the setting and plot in these novels. What are they accomplishing by portraying such opposition? By using Jacque Derrida’s deconstructive theory and Julia Kristeva’s definition of abjection as theoretical guides to navigate these novels, examples of how both authors use extreme opposition in each element of their works are cited and explored. Through this process, the realization that opposing extremes can harmoniously lie side by side and have as many similarities as differences is discovered. By the conclusion, the unifying quality that love plays in both novels, as well as the authors’ intents to change their readers traditional concept of love, is evident.

Title from second page of PDF document. Includes bibliographical references (p. 319-330).

The aim of this research was to empower Coloureds in Greenspark based on qualitative and quantitative research from a narrative approach so that they can develop their potential as leaders in the community by means of a group work leadership development programme. The thesis comprises of five Sections. SECTION A This section indicates the actuality of the research. The problem statement as well as the aim and five objectives are explained in this section. This research was undertaken within the DR & U model, namely The Developmental and Utilization model of Grinnell (1981) with a combined qualitative and quantitative research approach. This research was done from a social constructivist paradigm, and the research epistemology was qualitative by nature. The exploratory design was used as research plan. In order to note down data collection and processing systematically, video recordings were made of the group discussions. Two external evaluators as well as the group members themselves were also used to do the evaluation. The group work leadership development programme was also evaluated by the group members by means of a self-compiled questionnaire. SECTION B This section took the form of five articles in which the research findings were reported. All five articles form part of the overarching research aim and objectives and of the entire research project. However, each article is a distinctive subdivision of the entire research project, because it also functions independently - each with an own objective, own research methodology as well as a distinctive content. Section B consists of the following articles: Article 1 The objective of Article 1 was to establish the role the empowerment approach plays from the post-modern perspective in social work, by means of literature analysis. Empowerment was applied differently in different situations within the post-modern philosophy. Group work as a method of social work is a possible way in which the empowerment of individuals can be dealt with. Together with the community, the parties involved are responsible for empowering individuals. Article 2 The objective of this article was to establish the points of departure of the narrative approach by means of a literature analysis. From the literature analysis, it became clear that the narrative approach does not work with strategies, but with responsibilities, in which each individual takes responsibility for his/her own social construction, which includes his/her choices for life. Article 3 Article 3 discussed the role the narrative approach plays in group work within social work. Guidelines for dealing with empowerment within the group work process from the narrative approach were determined by means of a literature analysis. The focus was on relevant literature with specific reference to narrative theory, which included empowerment as well as the post-modern way of thinking and the description of group work. Article 4 The objective of Article 4 was to determine the role the narrative approach possibly plays in group work. The theoretical knowledge was utilised from the narrative approach in developing a group work leadership development programme. Article 5 With Article 5, the objective was to evaluate the group work development programme. This evaluation was attended to by two external consultants, as well as the group members themselves. SECTION C In Section C, the synoptic findings, conclusions and recommendations with regard to this research were discussed. The limitations of the research under review were indicated and recommendations were made with the view to use it in group work theory and in practice for training and research purposes. SECTION D Although each article and sections A and C are accompanied by an own source list, a combined source list of the entire research is given in this section. SECTION E All addendums that were referred to in the thesis are contained in this section. / Thesis (Ph.D. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

The field of peace education presently remains undertheorized suffusing praxis and pedagogy as foundation within the edifices of dissembling postModernity marked within the Institute of Rationality. (Re)imag(e)(in)ing critical pedagogy in a peace education-to-come, enjoins readers/writers along a putative journey through the violence of metaphysics in the fundamental question of difference bridging chiastic ethico-philososphical terrain, reconceptualizing pedagogical endeavour in ethicus obligatus to the other towards a renewing peace literacy within academe. Peace education can reconstitute the force of community on planes of difference unfolding socialis aequitus and peace, reframing the nature of our being, self and other as the appositional realm of separation/connection. The opening of peace, as concept, ethos, through critical pedagogy in/by the fashioning of discursive forms acknowledging the semio-theoretical chain constructing human social relationality proffers a solid theoretical foundation for the field of peace education, re-tracing difference across socio-ethno-politico-historical structures. Central tenets of the evolving field of peace education are reconfigured in deontological proposition through deconstruction as precursorial project in reason affording performative discourse transversing the transcendental signified, peace, in another idiom eclipsing spatio-temporal illusion, affording diachronous affirmation and revelation in a crucial luminous snapshot within the post-conflict setting of Northern Ireland concerning fundamental matters of peace and education. Peace education as constituent element of contemporary peace knowledges and principal arena for education for peace within the unconditional university is fundamentally challenged in a commitment to peace literacy to adduce and address all interwoven questions of difference, justice, peace, and education within academe. A new beginning compels another reading in presence honouring the other and Other in ethico-philosophico-pedagogy radically questioning our individual and collective rationality in relation to understandings of human social relationality and the transperformative tenets of peace education in difference through différance, cathecting presence anew while (re)configuring academe primarily concerned with difference, peace, and social justice as discursis unfolding impossibility. Consequently, the order of phallogocentricism and its sponsoring patriarchal institution that would sublimate a discourse on/of difference in substitution, as the same irrupts in the fissure another perspectivity opening through presence, presence in meaning, presence in spatiality, presence in temporality in the impossibility of the limit.

The aim of this research was to empower Coloureds in Greenspark based on qualitative and quantitative research from a narrative approach so that they can develop their potential as leaders in the community by means of a group work leadership development programme. The thesis comprises of five Sections. SECTION A This section indicates the actuality of the research. The problem statement as well as the aim and five objectives are explained in this section. This research was undertaken within the DR & U model, namely The Developmental and Utilization model of Grinnell (1981) with a combined qualitative and quantitative research approach. This research was done from a social constructivist paradigm, and the research epistemology was qualitative by nature. The exploratory design was used as research plan. In order to note down data collection and processing systematically, video recordings were made of the group discussions. Two external evaluators as well as the group members themselves were also used to do the evaluation. The group work leadership development programme was also evaluated by the group members by means of a self-compiled questionnaire. SECTION B This section took the form of five articles in which the research findings were reported. All five articles form part of the overarching research aim and objectives and of the entire research project. However, each article is a distinctive subdivision of the entire research project, because it also functions independently - each with an own objective, own research methodology as well as a distinctive content. Section B consists of the following articles: Article 1 The objective of Article 1 was to establish the role the empowerment approach plays from the post-modern perspective in social work, by means of literature analysis. Empowerment was applied differently in different situations within the post-modern philosophy. Group work as a method of social work is a possible way in which the empowerment of individuals can be dealt with. Together with the community, the parties involved are responsible for empowering individuals. Article 2 The objective of this article was to establish the points of departure of the narrative approach by means of a literature analysis. From the literature analysis, it became clear that the narrative approach does not work with strategies, but with responsibilities, in which each individual takes responsibility for his/her own social construction, which includes his/her choices for life. Article 3 Article 3 discussed the role the narrative approach plays in group work within social work. Guidelines for dealing with empowerment within the group work process from the narrative approach were determined by means of a literature analysis. The focus was on relevant literature with specific reference to narrative theory, which included empowerment as well as the post-modern way of thinking and the description of group work. Article 4 The objective of Article 4 was to determine the role the narrative approach possibly plays in group work. The theoretical knowledge was utilised from the narrative approach in developing a group work leadership development programme. Article 5 With Article 5, the objective was to evaluate the group work development programme. This evaluation was attended to by two external consultants, as well as the group members themselves. SECTION C In Section C, the synoptic findings, conclusions and recommendations with regard to this research were discussed. The limitations of the research under review were indicated and recommendations were made with the view to use it in group work theory and in practice for training and research purposes. SECTION D Although each article and sections A and C are accompanied by an own source list, a combined source list of the entire research is given in this section. SECTION E All addendums that were referred to in the thesis are contained in this section. / Thesis (Ph.D. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2006.

This paper aims to investigate a medial construction of securitization. It aims to comprehend the way a discourse of securitization is constructed and in what sense a certain group of immigrants are constructed as an existential threat within it. With postcolonialism, discourse theory and securitization theory providing the theoretical framework the discourse of a far-right internet newspaper is analysed. It is argued that the discourse indeed ought to be considered a discourse of securitization while also maintaining that the relevant group of immigrants are constructed as an existential threat. What this paper thus argues, is that, at least to a limited extent, a securitization of migration is occuring in Swedish far-right media.