published_or_final_version / Modern Languages and Cultures / Master / Master of Philosophy

Background: The construct sense of coherence (SOC) is proposed to explain the variation in the way people cope and it has been linked with positive mental health. Evidence suggests that level of SOC may be able to predict therapeutic outcome. There is a lack of evidence regarding individual predictors for treatment response of guided self-help services. Therefore, SOC is an important construct to consider. Objectives: The purpose of this study was to investigate whether a client’s sense of coherence at the start of a guided self-help intervention could predict their therapeutic outcome. The possibility that coping style mediated this relationship was also examined. Method: The study employed a longitudinal survey design. Participants were patients aged 30-64 years attending a guided self-help service for mild-moderate psychological difficulties. Participant data was collected pre and post intervention (3 weeks to 3 months after initial appointment). Results: A significant negative association was found between SOC and pre intervention anxiety and depression scores. No significant relationship was found between SOC and post intervention anxiety and depression scores (therapeutic outcome). Multiple regression analysis found that sense of coherence and coping style were not significant predictors of therapeutic outcome. Conclusions: It is important to determine the causality of SOC’s relationship with mental health because if SOC can be influenced via psychological intervention this may promote positive mental health and effective coping. Therefore, further research is required to determine if SOC has clinical application.

There are good reasons for wanting to adopt an intentionalist account of experiences generally, an account according to which having an experience is a matter of representing the world as being some way or other according to which, that is, such mental episodes have intrinsic, conceptual, representational content. Such an approach promises, for example, to provide a satisfying conception of experiences' subjectivity, their phenomenal character, and their crucial role in constituting reasons for our judgements about the world. It promises this, moreover, without incurring the difficulties that face the adverbialist and the friends of such items as qualia and "private objects". Still, even many of those who have been persuaded of that much are inclined to make an exception of the bodily sensations, since pains and the rest have traditionally been taken to be peculiarly "blank" instances of brute, non-conceptual feeling. In this study, I reject that tradition and argue that sensation experiences are indeed representational, and hence not in that respect exceptional. The idea that they are nevertheless distinctive in other ways vis-à-vis ordinary perceptual experiences has led intentionalists such as John McDowell to adopt an account of their content that is both mentalist and radically subjectivist: an account, in other words, that takes the items represented by such experiences to be mental and constitutively dependent on their being represented. To my mind, such subjectivism is both viciously circular like the parallel view of colours and at odds with the admirably intentionalist aspirations of these views. Hence I turn to consider objectivist versions of intentionalism, views that assimilate sensations to somatosensory perceptual experiences such as those that inform us of, for example, the position of our own limbs. Admittedly, these views not only risk losing the "interiority" of sensations, but I argue that they also cannot be combined with mentalism and that this generates considerable difficulties difficulties that have either been ignored or underestimated by those working with less demanding conceptions of content. Nonetheless, I make a number of preliminary moves to show how such difficulties might be dealt with, and how the objectivist can register even the distinctively "inner" character of sensations by, amongst other things, focussing on the peculiarities of somatosensory content. So the prospects for intentionalism about sensations are, I argue, good.

HIV-associated sensory neuropathy (HIV-SN) is one of the most common neurological problems of HIV. It is frequently painful and reduces quality of life. HIV-SN can be caused both by HIV itself and by exposure to neurotoxic antiretrovirals such as stavudine. The South African Department of Health now recommends use of tenofovir in place of stavudine as first line treatment. However many people remain on stavudine and or live with the side effects. Stavudine is still prescribed in many other resource-poor countries. This thesis presents the first systematic study of clinical and genetic risk factors for the development of symptomatic HIV-SN in Black Southern Africans. I recruited 404 Black HIV-positive Africans from the Virology Clinic of the Charlotte Maxeke Academic Hospital, Johannesburg and assessed HIV-SN using the AIDS Clinical Trials Group (ACTG) Brief Peripheral Neuropathy Screen. HIV-SN was defined as present if the patient had both symptoms and signs of peripheral neuropathy. If present, the distribution and intensity of symptoms were recorded. Of those exposed to stavudine, 57% (226/395) had HIV-SN. Pain was the most common symptom and was experienced by 74% (172/226). Of these, 76% (128/172) reported their pain as moderate to severe. As in previous studies, increasing age and height were independently associated with risk of HIV-SN. However nadir and current CD4 T-cell counts and sex were not associated with SN. Patients donated blood for DNA extraction and single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs) were selected from the literature and genotyped using Illumina Golden GateTM technology. 342 individuals were assessed for genetic associations with HIV-SN and a subset of 159 positive for HIV-SN were assessed for associations with painful HIV-SN. I completed four genetic analyses: SNPs and haplotypes from TNF and adjacent genes from the major histocompatability complex on chromosome six were assessed for association with HIV-SN. I found no association with TNF-1031, even though this had associated with risk of HIV-SN in Caucasian, Chinese and Malay cohorts. Novel associations were identified between HIV-SN protection and 5 other SNPs (BAT1 rs3130059, rs2523504; ATP6V1G2 rs2071594; NFKBIL1 rs2071592, rs2071591). Associations were also found with haplotypes: FV15-23 weakly associated with risk and FV30-31 associated with protection against HIV-SN in this cohort. Analysis of 8 SNPs not previously assessed produced two novel associations with LTA SNPs (rs1041981, rs909253), where the minor alleles conferred protection against HIV-SN. Analysis of linkage disequilibrium (LD) suggests that there is linkage disequilibrium within the TNF block, that it differs between ethnicities and that TNF-1031 is unlikely to be a causative SNP for risk of HIV-SN. SNPs from other cytokines and chemokines implicated in the pathogenesis of HIVSN and the associated pain were assessed in Chapter 5. The major allele of the antiinflammatory gene IL4 (rs2243250) associated with risk of HIV-SN. This allele has been associated with higher CD4 T-cell counts, so I have proposed a role for high IL- 4 in early stage HIV-SN. A 3-SNP haplotype of IL10 associated with protection against HIV-SN whilst another IL10 haplotype showed a trend for risk of painful HIVSN. These data and the involvement of TNF haplotype (Chapter 4) suggest an inflammatory etiology for HIV-SN. Polymorphisms of UCP2 (rs659366) and UCP3 (rs1800849) have previously associated with risk of diabetic neuropathy. These SNPs encode uncoupling proteins 2 and 3 which regulate reactive oxygen species and may affect development of neuropathy via the effects of oxidative stress and mitochondrial dysfunction. Alleles of these SNPs did not associate with HIV-SN in this cohort. Patterns of linkage disequilibrium may differ between the two ethnicities or UCP2 and UCP3 may associate with a mechanism particular to diabetic neuropathy. I also assessed a ‘pain protective haplotype’ and SNPs of GCH1 which have been associated with decreased pain intensity in radicular pain following lumbar discectomy. Associations of the 3-SNP ‘pain protective’ haplotype (rs10483639*C, rs3783641*A and rs8007267*T) and a 6-SNP haplotype containing this motif with protection against pain were significant but dependent on age, sex and CD4 T-cell count. Association of another 3-SNP haplotype (rs10483639*G, rs3783641*T and rs8007267*C) with increased risk of pain in HIV-SN was also not independent of age, sex and CD4 T-cell count. The weaker associations here compared to Caucasian cohorts may be a result of differing LD between ethnicities or demonstrate different pain mechanisms between HIV-SN and radicular pain following lumbar discectomy. My results highlight the prevalence of HIV-SN and frequency of pain in this Southern African cohort. The genetic studies identify a likely inflammatory component and identify genes worthy of further investigation both in HIV-SN and the associated pain.

No description available.

Cette recherche étudie la place du licenciement dans les trajectoires professionnelles, en confrontant les pratiques de réductions d’effectifs et les réactions de salariés cadres et techniciens licenciés. La thèse défend l’idée d’une banalisation du licenciement dans la gestion de l’emploi, qui prend la forme d’une atténuation de la logique de rupture que constitue le licenciement. L’extension du risque du licenciement et l’atténuation dont il fait l’objet n’ont pas banalisé pour autant l’épreuve pour les salariés. Le licenciement bouleverse les identités professionnelles, même pour des catégories jusque-là relativement épargnées. Quand cette acceptation du licenciement peut donner lieu à des recompositions identitaires, elles sont plus le signe d’une réponse imposée qu’une reconfiguration d’un nouveau rapport au travail. Tandis que les arrangements face à la mobilité sont isolés et ne reposent pas sur un socle collectif, l’épreuve du licenciement est individuelle et collective. / This research studies the place of redundancy in careers, by confronting the practices of downsizing and the reactions of executives and technicians who have been made redundant. The thesis defends the idea of a “normalisation” of redundancy in the management of employment. The softening of the break due to the redundancy is at the core of this normalisation process led by managers. But such evolutions on the management’s side and the increase of the risk of redundancy do not minimize at all this experience for employees. Redundancy still destabilizes professional identities, even for categories of workers who have been relatively unaffected up to now. When the acceptance of redundancy leads to a new adaptation from employees, this indicates more a necessary reaction than a reconfiguration of a new relationship to the work. Adaptations of employees always remain individual. No clue of collective adaptations has been identified. However the test of redundancy is experienced both individually and collectively, as it destabilizes the working collective in companies.

Abstract not available

The primary objective of the research is to examine the attempt of new urbanism principles to promote a sense of community through its pedestrian-oriented design guidelines of neighborhoods. The following questions will be addressed to examine the subject. First, do residents of a new urbanism neighborhood have a higher level of sense of community than residents of a typical suburban neighborhood? Second, is there an evidential support that pedestrian-oriented design features of new urbanism enhance the sense of community in a neighborhood? Finally, do residents of a pedestrian-oriented design neighborhood have more out-of-door activities in their neighborhood than residents of a typical suburban neighborhood? To examine the relationship between neighborhood design and sense of community, a comparative study was conducted in four subdivision neighborhoods located in the Houston metropolis, Texas. The first two neighborhoods exhibit pedestrian-oriented design principles and features of new urbanism, although each to different degrees. The other two neighborhoods are typical suburban neighborhoods that are not specifically designed to accommodate pedestrians and usually have less public spaces. The methods of collecting data are self-administered questionnaires, systematic observations, and unstructured interviews of residents in the four neighborhoods. The research findings provide evidence that the residents in pedestrian-oriented neighborhoods have a higher level of supportive acts of neighboring (SAON) and neighborhood attachment & weak social ties (NA&WST) than those of typical suburban neighborhoods. The findings also provide partial support for the relationships between the design factor (pedestrian-oriented design) and two dimensions of sense of community investigated-SAON and NA&WST. Additionally, the findings strongly indicate that the social processes, measured through selected demographic and nonenvironmental design variables, have their own unique and vital role on the sense of community in the neighborhoods, and that physical design has no impact on the way the social processes work on the sense of community in the neighborhood. The roles of physical design and social process are independent from each other. Finally, the results partially support the hypothesis that residents of pedestrian-oriented design neighborhoods have a higher level of out-of-door activities than residents of typical suburban neighborhoods.

Sense-antisense transcripts (SATs) are messenger RNA (mRNA) transcripts that have regions that are complementary to regions of other mRNA transcripts. SATs may play an influential role in the regulation of gene expression. One evolutionary event that has had a dramatic impact on many genomes is the widespread dispersal of repetitive sequences which includes transposable elements (TEs) as well as simple and tandem repeats. Approximately 45% of the human and 37.5% of the mouse genomes are composed of repeats derived from transposable elements. A group of SATs was identified as resulting from transposable elements integrating into the coding strand of some genes and into the template strand of the coding region of other genes. These SATs may add to the complexity of an organism's regulatory network or they may be the result of rather recent TE activities yet to succumb to sequence divergence. The human, mouse and bovine genomes were analyzed for SATs using publicly available datasets and bioinformatics analysis tools. Each sense-antisense binding region (SABR) was aligned to transposable elements from the RepBase repeat database revealing many SABRs containing TE sequence in a large portion of the sequence. A Gene Ontology analysis on subsets of the data showed enrichments for the functional category of "DNA repair" and the component category "cytoplasm". An analysis of the substitution rates in human and mouse across the 3' UTRs of transcripts containing SABRs at the 5' end of their 3' UTRs showed that the substitution rate in the region of the SABR was lower than compared to the beginning of the 3' UTR. The lower percent GC composition found at the 3' end of the 3' UTRs could be attributed to conserved poly-A signals in this region.

Abstract The purpose of the study was to investigate the playfulness and the humor sense on a comparative analysis of different personalities. The samples of this study were by employment service in thirty organizations on questionnaire. The measure instruments used in this study include ¡§Adult Playfulness Scale¡¨, ¡§Multidimensional Sense of Humor Scale¡¨, ¡§Locus of Control Scales¡¨ and ¡§PANAS Scales¡¨. The samples of this study were 1213 employees. The results of survey were analyzed by one-way ANOVA, descriptive statistics analysis, reliability analysis, and factor analysis. The results of the study were as follows: 1. There were significant differences in the playfulness of the employees under the different sex, age, marriage status, job position, Type A personality, Locus of Control personality, Positive Affectivity, and Negative Affectivity. 2. There were significant differences in the humor sense of the employees under the different sex, age, marriage status, Locus of Control Personality, Positive Affectivity, and Negative Affectivity. 3. There were comparative analysis the highest trend between the playfulness and the humor sense on employees of sex for male, age under thirty, graduated above mater degree, Control Personality, the high tread Positive Affectivity, and the low tread Negative Affectivity.