This study investigated the relationship between specific psychosocial factors and susceptibility to the common cold in a sample of 124 distance runners. A cross-sectional survey design was used to assess the role of life events, coping, hardiness, training workload and competition frequency in the athlete's risk of infection. Using correlational statistical techniques, it was found that the magnitude of recent life changes and the avoidance coping strategy of denial were positively related to self-reported symptoms of the common cold. Furthermore, a significant inverse correlation was observed between hardiness and symptom duration scores. However, approach coping, training workload and competition frequency were not significantly related to the dependent measures. The results of this study suggest that certain stress-related psychosocial factors are associated with susceptibility to the common cold in distance runners. Several strategies for the prevention and treatment of upper respiratory tract infections in this group are implied by these findings. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

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No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

This study investigated the relationship between specific psychosocial factors and susceptibility to the common cold in a sample of 124 distance runners. A cross-sectional survey design was used to assess the role of life events, coping, hardiness, training workload and competition frequency in the athlete's risk of infection. Using correlational statistical techniques, it was found that the magnitude of recent life changes and the avoidance coping strategy of denial were positively related to self-reported symptoms of the common cold. Furthermore, a significant inverse correlation was observed between hardiness and symptom duration scores. However, approach coping, training workload and competition frequency were not significantly related to the dependent measures. The results of this study suggest that certain stress-related psychosocial factors are associated with susceptibility to the common cold in distance runners. Several strategies for the prevention and treatment of upper respiratory tract infections in this group are implied by these findings. / Psychology / M.A. (Psychology)

This thesis is concerned with transnational literature and writers of the Middle Eastern and South Asian diasporas. It argues that the diasporic position of the authors enables their roles as comprador subjects. The thesis maintains that the figure of the comprador is always acted upon by its ontological predisposition, so that diasporic positionality often involves a single subject which straddles and speaks from two or more different subject positions. Comprador authors can be said to be co-opted by Western metropolitan publishing companies who stand to benefit by marketing the apparent marginality of the homelands about which these authors write. The thesis therefore proceeds from the notion that such a diasporic position is the paradoxical condition of the transnational subject or writer. I submit that there is, to some degree, a questionable element in the common political and cultural suggestions that emerge upon closer evaluation of diasporic literature. Indeed, a charge of complicity has been levelled against authors who write, apparently, to service two distinct entities – the wish to speak on behalf of a minority collective, as well as the imperial ‘centre’ which is the intended interlocutor of the comprador author. However, it is this difference, the implied otherness or marginality of the outsider within, which I argue is sometimes used by diasporic writers as a way of articulating with ‘authenticity’ the cultures and politics of their erstwhile localities. This thesis is concerned, therefore, with the representation of ‘the East’ in four novels by diasporic, specifically comprador writers, namely Salman Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, Hanif Kureishi’s The Buddha of Suburbia, and Khaled Hosseini’s The Kite Runner and A Thousand Splendid Suns. I suggest that the ‘third-world’ and transnational literature can also be a selling point for the transnational subject, whose representations may at times pander to preconceived ideas about ‘the Orient’ and its people. As an illustration of this double-bind, I offer a close reading of all the novels to suggest that on the one hand, the comprador author writes within the paradigm of the ‘writing back’ movement, as a counter-discourse to the Orientalist representations of the homeland. However, the corollary is that such an attempt to ‘write back’, in a sense, re-inscribes the very discourse it wishes to subvert, especially because the literature is aimed at a ‘Western’ audience. Moreover, the template of the comprador could be used to explain how a transnational post-9/11 text from an Afghan-American, for instance, may be put to the service of the imperial machine, and read, therefore, as a supporting document to the U.S. policy on Afghanistan.

The master´s thesis is focused on technology of injection plastics. The specified part is guard cover of mobile phone. The first part of thesis is focused on description of technology with priority on construction of form. The second part of thesis includes calculations of parameters, which are needed for production, along with techno-economic evaluation of selected construction design.