The purpose of this study was to determine the effect of ideological perspective-taking training on female identity development. The primary hypothesis of the study was that those subjects engaged in the training sessions would show advancement in identity development that exceeded that of normal adolescent development. Ninety-eight subjects were pretested for the study. Attrition due to elimination during prescreening and failure to complete the training phase of the study left 50 subjects. Participants were assigned to a treatment group, an engaged control group, or a maturational control group. Both the treatment and engaged control groups participated in two sessions a week for a 4-week period. Posttesting was completed during the final week of the study. One-way analysis of variance and a repeated measures analysis of variance were computed on the pretest and posttest scores. There were no significant advances in ideological identity for those participating in the training program. Validity and reliability of the dependent measures are assessed and discussed. Implications for future research are presented.

The purpose of this study was to determine if there was an association between current level of conflict between divorced parents and their attendance or nonattendance at the divorce education pilot program. A telephone interview was used to examine current level of postdivorce conflict. The first portion of the telephone interview used questions that were taken from the Family of Origin Scale (FOS). Questions were selected as they related to various stages of divorce. The second portion of the questionnaire obtained sociodemographic data. as well as information regarding relitigation. The telephone interview was administered to 160 individuals who participated in the divorce education pilot program and to 59 individuals who did not participate. Hypothesis one stated that attendance at the divorce education program will not be associated with the current level of postdivorce conflict. This hypothesis was rejected as a statistically significant association between postdivorce conflict and class attendance was demonstrated. Both males and females in the nonattendance group had higher mean conflict scores than the attendance group. Also, females in both groups had higher mean conflict scores than their male counterparts. Hypothesis two stated that attendance at the divorce education program will not be associated with the number of custody and visitation legal issues since the initial custody arrangement. Hypothesis two was also rejected as attendance at the divorce education class was found to be weakly associated with whether a subject will return to court or not. A demographic summary for subjects returning to court was also created. The need for continued research on postdivorce conflict was addressed. The theoretical implications of the study were highlighted. as well as other recommendations concerning the role of marriage and family therapists who work with families experiencing divorce.

This study explored the use of rituals in substance abuse counseling. Data were obtained from a total of 25 mental health workers in the substance abuse field from the northern region of Utah. Four research questions were asked about rituals and their use in substance abuse counseling: (I) Are addictions therapists using rituals? (2) How did therapists determine when to use rituals? (3) What types of rituals do they use? and (4) How do therapists assess ritual effectiveness? Results indicated that about three fourths of the mental health workers questioned were using rituals in their treatment protocol with substance abuse clients. The most common methods used for determining when to implement rituals into treatment were (a) clients were emotionally stuck, (b) client's cognitive ability, and (c) therapist's perception. The findings also suggested that therapists presented means of assessing the effectiveness of the rituals they implemented, but the data also supported past literature findings that showed little empirical means of assessment.

No description available.

No description available.

According to the different studies, there is a strong correlation between (GDP) per capita as the index of economic growth and indicators of human development such as life expectancy, infant mortality, adult literacy, political and civil rights. Based on Millennium Development Goals, which is a program made by UN to reduce extreme poverty and improve human development in developing countries, we can find the indicator of which has key role and affect the other goals of human development directly and clearly. Considering the concept of education accurately we also would be faced with subject of literacy for both genders in a society. Recent empirical research reveals the benefit of women's education and describes the importance of this subject for the economic development.Therefore the main object of this paper is the relation between human development and economic growth and the effect of education on human capital accumulation and thereby on the economic growth, especially the case of female literacy rate and its consequences for human development. This paper will analyze the effect of the human development on the economic growth and well being with special attention to the female education concept related to the MDG in developing countries generally. It will consider mainly the sub Saharan countries as developing countries. For this purpose we will verify the theoretical literature via comparing statistic and charts for the region under consideration.

Epithelial to mesenchymal cell transformation (EMT) in the atrioventricular canal (AV canal) produces a population of fibroblast cells that contribute to the mitral and tricuspid valves of the fully formed heart. Formation of these cells is critical for normal heart development and disruption of this process leads to congenital heart disease. This study describes the role of the homeodomain containing transcription factor Mox-1 during this cell transformation process. Mox-1 protein and mRNA expression were detected during cell transformation in the cardiac cushions. This expression corresponded in time to stages of EMT characterized by cell shape change and invasion of the extracellular matrix. Antisense oligonucleotides to Mox-1 inhibited cell transformation in cultured AV canal explants. Previous reports indicated that the TGFβ3 signaling pathway also regulates cell transformation at similar stages. Experiments inhibiting the TGFβ3 pathway also inhibit Mox-1 expression. A 2kb portion of the Mox-1 promoter was cloned and a portion of this construct demonstrated a capacity to initiate transcription in AV canal cultures. The active fragment of the Mox-1 promoter was responsive to TGFβ3 signaling. This study indicates that Mox-1 is necessary but not sufficient for cell transformation in the AV canal cushions and is regulated by an important signaling pathway involved in this process.

The activity of hippocampal pyramidal cells (place cells) is correlated with the position of a rat in a given environment, suggesting that the rat hippocampus may contain a cognitive map of the environment. Internally-generated information about the motion of the rat may be the strongest initial determinant of place-cell firing. With experience in a given environment, cues and landmarks may gain control over place-cell firing, allowing the correction of errors or drift in the self-motion information. This 'binding' of cues to the hippocampal map may involve long-term potentiation (LTP). Because hippocampal LTP is impaired in aged rats, cues and landmarks should be poorly bound to the hippocampal map in aged rats. To test this prediction, aged and adult rats were trained to run back and forth on a linear track. The position of the start box was changed from trial to trial, so that self-motion information (i.e., the distance of the rat from the start box) and visual-cue information (the position of the rat in the room) were mismatched. In this situation, self-motion information controls place-cell firing during the initial portion of each journey. At some point in each journey, however, the hippocampal map realigns, so that place-cell firing is controlled by visual-cue information. If age-related LTP deficits impair the binding of cues to the hippocampal map, this realignment should be delayed in aged rats. As predicted, the realignment occurred nearer to the end of the track in the aged rats. Moreover, the delayed realignment was correlated with the rats' ability to find a hidden goal at a position relative to the visual cues. The results suggest that some of the spatial-learning deficits observed in aged rats may be due to impaired binding of cues to the hippocampal map. In addition, despite the fact that the animals in the present study had never been trained with a stable start box (the anchor point for self-motion information), place-cell firing was controlled by self-motion information for a large portion of each outbound journey. This result supports a strong initial role of self-motion information in determining the hippocampal representation of a rat's position.

<p> Intercalated discs (ICDs) are cardiac-specific structures located at the longitudinal termini of cardiomyocytes. Classically, the functions assigned to ICDs include mechanical and electrical communications among adjacent cardiomyocytes. More recently, it has been increasingly realized that ICDs also function in signal transduction and regulation of the surface expression of ion channels. Accordingly, defects of ICD components are shown to cause a number of human cardiac diseases and changes of ICDs are associated with cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias, and heart failure. The expansion of our knowledge about the development, function and maintenance of ICDs are promoted by identification, cataloging and characterization of the molecular components of the ICDs. In this thesis, I characterize a family of Xin repeat-containing proteins, which are striated muscle-specific and localized to the ICDs in the cardiomyocytes. This thesis provides novel insights into the mechanism of the formation, maintenance and functions of ICDs. </p><p> Our previous studies showed that the Xin repeat-containing proteins play critical role in cardiac morphogenesis and cardiac function. Knocking down the <i>Xin</i> in chicken embryo collapses the wall of developing heart chambers and leads to abnormal cardiac morphogenesis. In mammals, a pair of paralogous genes, <i>Xin&alpha;</i> and <i>Xin&beta; </i>, exists. Ablation of the mouse <i>Xin&alpha;</i> (<i> mXin&alpha;</i>) does not affect heart development. Instead, the mXin&alpha;-deficient mice show adult late-onset cardiac hypertrophy and cardiomyopathy with conduction defects. The ICD structural defects in mXin&alpha;-null mice occur between 1 and 3 months of age and progressively worsen with aging. The mXin&alpha;-deficient hearts up-regulate mXin&beta;, suggesting a partial compensatory role of mXin&beta;. </p><p> In this thesis, I focus on two questions. First, what are the molecular mechanisms of mXin&alpha;'s functions that account for the observed phenotypes in the mXin&alpha;-deficient hearts? And second, what are the functions of mXin&beta;? Through biochemical methods and electron microscopy, I demonstrated that mXin&alpha; binds and bundles actin filaments. In addition, a direct interaction between mXin&alpha; and the adherens junction protein &beta;-catenin facilitates mXin&alpha;'s interaction with the actin filaments. Based on this in vitro characterization of mXin&alpha;, we proposed that mXin&alpha; may act as a direct link between the adherens junctions and actin cytoskeleton, thus providing an important means to strengthening the intercellular adhesion at the ICDs. To characterize mXin&beta;'s roles, I generated and characterized <i> mXin&beta;</i>-knockout mice. I showed that complete loss of mXin&beta; leads to cardiac morphological defects, diastolic dysfunction and heart failure, which lead to severe growth retardation and early postnatal lethality. I also showed that mXin&beta; might be involved in a number of cell signaling pathways and provide multiple lines of evidence to support mXin&beta;'s roles in the formation of ICDs. </p><p> In summary, this thesis provides novel insights into the specialization of the adherens junctions at the ICDs to withstand the contractile forces, and the molecular mechanisms for the establishment, maintenance and function of ICDs. The knowledge gained from the roles of Xin proteins in cardiac development and function will likely provide new insights for improved therapeutic strategies for human cardiomyopathy, arrhythmias and heart failure.</p>

<p> The child care setting represents a crucial environment for infants and children to establish healthy feeding practices in order to prevent overweight and obesity. The objective of this research was to investigate the association between parental care (PC) and child care (CC) on infant feeding practices, food consumption, nutrient intake and growth in infants receiving Special Supplemental Nutrition Program for Women Infants and Children (WIC) assistance. Our hypothesis was that unhealthy feeding practices would be more common in CC compared to PC thus leading to greater weight for length (WFL) and weight for age (WFA) z-score at 1 year of age for infants in CC. This study sampled 105 infants aged 2 to 8 months of age from the Champaign Urbana WIC office from October 2009-August 2011. Mothers completed a 3-day food record and survey at the time of recruitment to assess their infant's feeding practices, nutrient intake, health status, and demographic characteristics. Baseline and follow-up weight and length for these children within the first year of age were collected from the WIC office.</p><p> The major differences in demographic characteristics of the study sample included child care hours per week, maternal employment, household income, and single parent home by CC use. Infants in CC had an average of 29 hours of care per week compared to the 0.64 hours in the PC group (p&lt;0.01). A larger (p&lt;0.01) percentage of mothers were employed in the CC group (73.9%) compared to the PC group (22%). However, the household income was greater (p&lt;0.01) in the PC group ($15,986 &plusmn; $10,284 PC vs $9,967&plusmn; $7,489.5 CC). In addition, there was a higher (p=0.04) percentage of single parents in the CC group (30.5 % PC vs. 50% CC).</p><p> Breastfeeding duration and age of solid food introduction did not differ between care type. Breastfeeding duration was on average 2.3 months while average solid food introduction was 4.4 months. No differences were observed between PC and CC infants in the rates of formula introduction. When comparing food consumption at the time of recruitment, there were no differences in the number of servings per day of food groups, but the CC group showed lower consumption of formula (p=0.03) and breast milk (p=0.18) compared to PC.</p><p> Energy intake did not differ between care type after adjusting for feeding practices and child, maternal and household characteristics. However, there was a pattern of greater energy intake in the PC group. Child age (&beta;=34.8, p&lt;0.01) and number of servings of infant formula (&beta;=86.0, p&lt;0.01) were the strongest predictors of energy intake. There was greater (p=0.05) calcium intake in the CC group (788 mg CC vs. 742 mg PC). Otherwise, there were no differences in macro or micronutrient intakes between CC and PC.</p><p> For growth measures, infants in PC had a significantly greater change in WFL (&beta;=2.06, p=0.05) and WFA (&beta;=1.69, p=0.01) z-score and a greater follow-up z-score, after adjusting for feeding practices and child, maternal and household characteristics. There were no differences by care type in the length for age (LFA) z-score over the first year of life. </p><p> The strongest predictors of the change in WFL z-score were PC use (&beta;=2.06, p=0.05), maternal pre-pregnancy BMI (&beta;=0.14, p&lt;0.01), birth order (&beta;=1.63, p&lt;0.05), maternal age (&beta;=-0.34, p&lt;0.01), birth weight (&beta;=-1.77, p=0.06), non-Black/African American (&beta;=3.09, p=0.02) and male gender (&beta;=-2.12, p=0.06). Change in WFA z-score was significantly affected by CC use (&beta;=1.69, p=0.01), lower birth weight (&beta;=-1.74, p&lt;0.01), greater pre-pregnancy BMI (&beta;=0.09, p&lt;0.01), and less servings of infant formula (&beta;=-0.53, p=0.05). Change in LFA was unaffected by CC use (&beta;=1.69, p=0.11), but significantly affected by lower pre-pregnancy BMI (&beta;=-0.04, p=0.04) and black race (&beta;=-2.54, p=0.05).</p><p> Thus, we concluded that CC use did not affect feeding practices, overall nutrient intake or LFA z-scores for infants receiving WIC assistance. There was significantly greater calcium intake in the CC group. CC use also showed a trend of less formula and breast milk. Infants in PC had a statistically greater change in WFL and WFA compared to those in CC. The main finding in this study is that CC use may have influenced differences in the change in WFL and WFA z-scores, but not overall infant feeding practices, nutrient intake and LFA z-score. Future longitudinal studies are warranted to explore the role of CC use on feeding practices, nutrient intake and growth.</p>