This study examined factors that influenced loneliness among rural elders in China. Data were collected from the latest wave of Living and Employment of Population Survey in 2005 (provided by Renmin University, China). The sample of this survey consisted of 284 rural elders in China. T‐tests was used to examine the influence of gender, marital status, health, financial support, and living arrangements differences in loneliness perception among Chinese rural elders. Multiple regression analysis was conducted to understand the influences of age and socio‐economic status on loneliness among the rural elders. This study provided insights for a better understanding of individual, social, and familial factors that influenced subjective loneliness in later life. Findings from this study might contribute to policymaking decisions regarding improvements of psychological well‐being among older adults in China.

INTRODUCTION: Mental health is a component of one‘s overall health and more research needs to be conducted to understand contributing factors. An estimated 26% of people over 18 years of age suffer from a mental illness in any given year; and mental disorders are the leading cause of disability in the United States for the age group of 15 to 44. Depression is a common illness and affects more women than men and nearly 1 in 10 adults each year. AIM: Some believe that public housing has negative implications for health and this furthers research interest. This study uses secondary data collected from interview surveys and examines variables of depression, living conditions, and crime among a sample of 385 public housing residents. This research investigates the correlation, if any, between crime and mental health as well as living conditions and mental health. METHODS: Data analysis was conducted in SPSS. Descriptive statistics were conducted to examine the demographic profile of the sample. The CES-D depression scale, a valid and reliable instrument, was used as to measure mental health outcomes. Living conditions and crime variables were also scored and measured. Correlation analyses were conducted to determine associations among study variables. RESULTS: The mean age of residents was 51.19 (SD = 17.27), 94% of residents were African American, and 73% were female. Approximately 65% of residents were not depressed, 55% living in normal living conditions, and 71% had a low fear of crime. There was a small, but positive significant correlation among mental health, crime, and poor living conditions. CONCLUSION: Advanced analyses of survey data would help researchers gain a better sense of how public housing residents‘ mental health outcomes are impacted by their surroundings.

The prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in Canada is on the rise, creating the need for evidence-based care practices designed to support individuals with AD and their care providers. Declines in memory, language, visual-spatial, executive abilities, and functional capacity associated with AD create the need for caregiver assistance during the completion of activities of daily living (ADLs). Unfortunately, assisting individuals with more advanced stages of AD is further complicated by communication breakdowns that occur in the dyad (i.e., caregiver and the individual with AD) established to meet a common goal: to complete ADLs. Clinically recommended communication strategies are the current solution used to support caregivers interacting with individuals with AD. However, there are limitations to these recommendations, including that the majority are based on caregiver experience, few are supported by empirical research, and little is known about which strategies are effective when assisting individuals with moderate to severe AD specifically during the context of completing ADLs. This dissertation presents novel research studies that systematically examined formal caregivers’ use of communication strategies while successfully assisting residents with moderate and severe AD during the completion of a representative ADL. Two observational studies and one focus group interview study were conducted to address our hypotheses and research objectives. Key findings from the studies comprising this dissertation were: (1) caregivers used a variety of verbal and nonverbal task-focused communication strategies when successfully assisting residents with AD during the completion of a representative ADL; (2) the task-focused communication strategies caregivers most frequently used were supported by empirical literature and included the use of one direction or idea (i.e., proposition) at a time, closed-ended questions, and paraphrased repetition; (3) when assisting residents with severe AD, caregivers used the resident’s name, one proposition, and paraphrased repetition significantly more than when assisting residents with moderate AD; and (4) the communication strategies that caregivers perceived to use in their care practice indicate that person-centered dementia care is a central aspect to facilitating the completion of ADLs. This research is an important step towards the development of evidence-based communication strategies for caregivers assisting individuals with AD during ADLs.

The prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD) in Canada is on the rise, creating the need for evidence-based care practices designed to support individuals with AD and their care providers. Declines in memory, language, visual-spatial, executive abilities, and functional capacity associated with AD create the need for caregiver assistance during the completion of activities of daily living (ADLs). Unfortunately, assisting individuals with more advanced stages of AD is further complicated by communication breakdowns that occur in the dyad (i.e., caregiver and the individual with AD) established to meet a common goal: to complete ADLs. Clinically recommended communication strategies are the current solution used to support caregivers interacting with individuals with AD. However, there are limitations to these recommendations, including that the majority are based on caregiver experience, few are supported by empirical research, and little is known about which strategies are effective when assisting individuals with moderate to severe AD specifically during the context of completing ADLs. This dissertation presents novel research studies that systematically examined formal caregivers’ use of communication strategies while successfully assisting residents with moderate and severe AD during the completion of a representative ADL. Two observational studies and one focus group interview study were conducted to address our hypotheses and research objectives. Key findings from the studies comprising this dissertation were: (1) caregivers used a variety of verbal and nonverbal task-focused communication strategies when successfully assisting residents with AD during the completion of a representative ADL; (2) the task-focused communication strategies caregivers most frequently used were supported by empirical literature and included the use of one direction or idea (i.e., proposition) at a time, closed-ended questions, and paraphrased repetition; (3) when assisting residents with severe AD, caregivers used the resident’s name, one proposition, and paraphrased repetition significantly more than when assisting residents with moderate AD; and (4) the communication strategies that caregivers perceived to use in their care practice indicate that person-centered dementia care is a central aspect to facilitating the completion of ADLs. This research is an important step towards the development of evidence-based communication strategies for caregivers assisting individuals with AD during ADLs.

Research objective. The study was aimed to establish the competitive peculiarities of the multi-component agrocenose (maize, living mulches, weeds) and its effects on soil properties under sustainable farming conditions. Research tasks. To accomplish the research objective the following tasks were set - to study: 1. The influence of living mulches, grown in a maize monocrop, on soil physical properties (soil moisture dynamics, shear resistance, penetration resistance, soil structure and its stability), chemical characteristics (total nitrogen, available phosphorus and potassium content, pH) and biological characteristics (urease and saccharase activity); 2. The dynamics of biomass accumulation of living mulches and weeds; 3. The impact of living mulches on weed infestation in a maize crop and on weed seed contamination in a ploughlayer; 4. Maize crop irradiance conditions and their influence on different components of the agrophytocenose; 5. Projection coverage of maize inter-rows; 6. Maize productivity and biometric indicators; 7. The relationships between the factors tested. / Tyrimų tikslas – įvertinti daugiakomponentės agrocenozės – kukurūzų, tarpinių augalų, piktžolių – konkurencinius ypatumus ir jos poveikį dirvos savybėms tvaraus ūkininkavimo sąlygomis. Tyrimų uždaviniai. Tyrimų tikslui pasiekti numatyta ištirti: 1. Įsėlinių tarpinių augalų, augusių kukurūzų monopasėlyje, poveikį dirvos fizikinėms (dirvos drėgnio dinamikai, šlyties pasipriešinimui, kietumui, dirvos struktūrai ir jos patvarumui), cheminėms (suminio azoto, judriojo fosforo ir kalio kiekiui, pH), biologinėms (ureazės ir sacharazės aktyvumui) savybėms; 2. Įsėlinių tarpinių augalų ir piktžolių biomasės kaupimosi dinamiką; 3. Įsėlinių tarpinių augalų poveikį kukurūzų pasėlio piktžolėtumui bei armens užterštumui piktžolių sėklomis; 4. Kukurūzų pasėlio apšvitos sąlygas ir jų poveikį skirtingiems agrofitocenozės komponentams; 5. Kukurūzų tarpueilių projekcinį padengimą; 6. Kukurūzų produktyvumo ir biometrinius rodiklius; 7. Tiriamųjų veiksnių sąsajas ir poveikio priežastingumą.

In the last decade processes known as living/controlled radical polymerizations (L/CRP) have been developed which permit the synthesis of high-value specialty polymers. Currently, the three processes that have demonstrated the most potential are: reverse addition fragmentation chain transfer polymerization (RAFT), atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP) and stable free radical polymerization (SFRP). While each process has their strengths and weaknesses with regard to specific polymers and architecture, the viability of these systems to industrial scale production all lie in the ability to perform the polymerization in a water based system because of process, environmental and economic advantages. The most effective method of controlling the polymerization of vinyl acetate in bulk has been RAFT. We have developed a miniemulsion RAFT polymerization using the xanthate methyl (ethoxycarbonothioyl)sulfanyl acetate. The miniemulsion is stabilized with 3 wt% sodium lauryl sulfate, initiated with the azo-based water-soluble VA-060. The main focus of this research was adapting ATRP to a miniemulsion system. It was determined that ionic surfactants can be successfully employed in emulsion-based ATRP. The cationic surfactant cetyltrimethylammonium bromide provides excellent stability of the latex over a range of surfactant loadings (allowing the particle size to be easily manipulated), at temperatures up to 90 C, for a wide variety of ATRP formulations. A new method of initiation was developed for reverse ATRP, using the redox pair hydrogen peroxide/ascorbic acid. This nearly eliminated the induction period at the start of the polymerization, increased the polymerization rate 5 fold and, surprisingly, enabled the formation of well-controlled polymers with a number-average molecular (Mn) weight approaching 1 million (typically ATRP is limited to ~200 000). The ability to control the particle size and the number of polymer chains (through the target Mn) over a wide range of values allowed us to determine that ATRP is influenced by compartmentalization effects. The knowledge gained from our work in L/CRP was used to develop the surfactant-free SFRP of styrene. A multi-stage approach was adopted starting from dilute styrene/water solutions to favor the formation of the alkoxyamine and short chain SG1-oligomers (stage one) before the addition of the majority of the styrene (stage two). / Thesis (Ph.D, Chemical Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2007-09-14 12:09:32.266

Living radical polymerization has proved to be a powerful tool for the synthesis of polymers as it allows for a high degree of control over the polymer microstructure and the synthesis of tailored molecular architectures. Although it has great potential, its use on an industrial scale is limited due to environmental and economical aspects. Nitroxide mediated polymerization is explored to bring this technology closer to adoption in commercial applications. One of the obstacles encountered using nitroxide mediated polymerization in microemulsion systems is the difficulty in controlling both the particle size and target molecular weight. Due to the nature of the formulation, a decrease in the target molecular weight is coupled to an increase in the particle size. For many applications, it is important to be able to design polymer particles with both specifications independently. Strategies to decouple these two properties and processing conditions required for targeting a range of particle sizes and molecular weights for n butyl acrylate latexes are presented. Furthermore, in an attempt to reduce the large amounts of surfactant typically used in microemulsions, these methods were explored at low surfactant to monomer ratios (0.2 to 0.5 by wt.) in order to reduce the costs associated with excess surfactant and post processing steps for surfactant removal (high surfactant levels also give poor water-resistance in coatings). Stable nanolatexes with particle sizes <40 nm have been obtained by other groups using NMP in microemulsions with SG1 but have done so by using much higher surfactant to monomer ratios (~2.5 by wt.) and at much lower solids content (6 10 wt. %). In this work, molecular weights of 20,000 to 80,000 g∙mol-1 were targeted and stable, n-butyl acrylate microemulsions with particle sizes ranging from 20 120 nm were prepared at a solids content of 20 wt. % using much lower surfactant concentrations. Although numerous studies have shown the effects of process parameters on particle sizes and methods to control the molecular weight, the decoupling of the molecular weight and particle size effect in NMP microemulsions under these conditions has not been done to this extent. In copolymer systems, nitroxide mediated polymerization also provides an efficient method to synthesize well defined block copolymers. Random copolymers are widely used as protective colloids, but the use of block copolymers for these applications has not been well studied. It is unclear what effects do the importance of a narrow molecular weight distribution and purity of block copolymers have on their performance as protective colloids. In order to investigate this, a range of block copolymers with different properties would need to be synthesized for systematic analysis. The direct synthesis of polystyrene b poly(acrylic acid) copolymers of varying lengths and compositions was successful by use of nitroxide mediated polymerization in bulk and solution polymerization. The characterization of these amphiphilic block copolymers was explored by titration and nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. / Thesis (Master, Chemical Engineering) -- Queen's University, 2012-09-28 15:43:00.513

The present thesis is a study of the economic consequences of declining real wages in the United States. It proposes that, when the real wages of the majority of the U.S. workforce declined in the 1970s, 1980s and the first half of the 1990s, household labour supply increased. Consequently, real family income in the bottom eighty percent of the income distribution rose. Wage-earning households were not only struggling to maintain their acquired standard of living as real wages were declining, but they were also, perhaps more importantly, trying to raise their standard of living. It was precisely when household labour supply hit a ceiling in the second half of the 1990s, that household debt exploded. Surging household debt from the late 1990s until 2007 – driven primarily by home mortgage debt – suggests that the culturally powerful “American Dream” motivated wage-earning households to seek and expect a continuously rising standard of living via home ownership even in the face of topped out work hours and historically low real wages.

Background This thesis explores processes involved in stakeholders’ attempts to secure sustainability of three short-term funded community health initiatives known as healthy living centres (HLCs). The overall aim was to identify and examine development of sustainability strategies in Scottish HLC organisations. In contrast to retrospective accounts examining influences on extent of sustainability little is known about how this concept is considered by organisations approaching the end of funding. Organisational development theorising has focused on organisational change, with no attention given to sustainability processes in short-term funded organisations. Building on a concurrent longitudinal evaluation of a larger sample of HLCs, the temporal nature of this PhD study offered scope to explore development of, influences on and changes to stakeholders’ sustainability strategies over time. Methods The study used a qualitative evaluation methodology. A case study approach framed the HLCs, permitting comparison between sites. An ethnographic approach using observations and in-depth interviews was employed. Interviews were undertaken with stakeholders (comprising managers, staff, partners and board members) from each HLC. Managers were interviewed on several occasions. Latterly, interviews were undertaken with respondents holding policy, practice and funding posts. A thematic analysis, informed by grounded theory, was carried out. This used a constant comparative methodology to understand the data against the backdrop of the PhD study aims and wider literature. Findings Findings examine stakeholders’ accounts of the impact of a range of issues on HLC sustainability strategies. These are located in the context of health and community sector restructuring. Especially challenging were: efforts to secure local partners and further lottery funding; consideration of new funding criteria and models of service delivery; and limitations in demonstrating effectiveness. Addressing such challenges, managers’ strategic positioning signified attempts to influence HLCs’ fit within local health structures. Stakeholders’ accounts highlighted attempts to secure continuation of HLCs’ original identity; ensuring continued accessibility of Centres to local communities; and, seeking continuation of developmental methods of work. External respondents’ perspectives illuminated how policy-driven changes restricted system-wide attention to HLC sustainability. Latterly, Government-provided funding offered a short-term fix, enabling continuation of attempts to secure sustainability. Conclusions and implications This study offers new perspectives on the temporal exploration of sustainability of shortterm funded health initiatives. Analysis of stakeholders’ accounts over time provides insight into the effects of restructuring and ways in which system-wide flux impacted on influences known to enhance the likelihood of sustainability. Recommendations address programme design and wider responsibilities of health system actors in positioning and considering a future for such organisations after short-term funding ends.

It is estimated that by 2050 the proportion of older adults in the U.S. will reach 20% (U.S. Census Bureau, 2008). This increase in the elderly population will likely be associated with a greater need for supportive services in various sectors, including healthcare and housing, such as assisted living communities. Many older adults choose to reside in assisted living communities due to increased difficulty managing health conditions or performing activities of daily living (e.g., bathing, toileting, walking). A primary goal of assisted living communities is to help residents maintain their health and well-being. However, little is known about how caregiving staff detect and interpret relevant cues, and what behaviors are taken to address concerns about residents. In addition to investigating these questions, the role of experience in the job was examined by comparing workers with a relatively low level of experience (1 month-16 months) to those with a relatively high level of experience (3+ years). These questions were addressed using a Critical Incident Interview and a Scenario-based Interview. The cues discussed by participants were categorized as Cognitive, Physical, or Emotional in nature. Participants reacted with concern to most of the scenarios, although the ratings they assigned to indicate their level of concern showed a high level of variability across participants. The explanations participants generated for the various scenarios were classified as either general or specific, with the majority of explanations coded as specific. Specific explanations were primarily that the situation was the result of a Cognitive/Emotional/Social issue or a Physical health issue. Of the actions participants described taking to handle the scenarios, gathering and using information was discussed far more than any other action. Participants discussed needing information related to the resident, such as their health, current and recent state, and personal history, as well as elaboration of the cues that initiated the concern in the first place, such as how long the symptom had been present. Participants also discussed various types of knowledge that they used in their decision making process. The most frequently discussed type of knowledge was health conditions and symptoms. Lastly, the data from the current study did not generally reveal differences between the two levels of experience that were examined. A revised model of caregiver decision making and practical contributions are discussed.