Thesis (Ph.D.) -- University of Adelaide, Dept. of Health Sciences, 2000. / Includes bibliographical references (leaves 349-421).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1978. / eContent provider-neutral record in process. Description based on print version record.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1979.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Alabama at Birmingham, 2009. / Title from PDF title page (viewed on Sept. 3, 2009). Includes bibliographical references (p. 44-49).

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1978.

Thesis (M.S.)--University of Michigan, 1979.

Diabetic wounds frequently undergo impaired and prolonged wound healing due to a multitude of factors including hypoxia, impaired angiogenesis, hyperglycaemia, formation of ROS and AGEs, and infection - all of which may lead to cellular dysfunction. To date, however, treatment options for individuals suffering from impaired diabetic wound healing are limited, non-specific, and generally unsuccessful. The search for new and effective treatment strategies is severely hampered by the availability of adequately characterized screening models which comprehensively mimic the complexity of the diabetic wound healing process. In order to explore natural products as potential therapeutics to treat diabetic wounds and to encourage more research on this topic, this study sought out to develop and characterize a more convenient and cost effective in vitro screening assay which mimics the effects of protein glycation on the healing process of diabetic wounds. As proof of principal, this model was subsequently used to screen the potential of five wild mushroom species (P. tinctorius, R. capensis, B. badius, P. ostreatus and G. lucidum) as suitable diabetic wound healing therapies. The glycated gelatin model developed during this study was found to suitably mimic the diabetic state as it successfully simulated the major cellular dysfunctions in macrophages (NO production, phagocytosis, macrophage polarization, NF-ĸB translocation and COX-2 expression) and fibroblasts (proliferation and migration) documented during diabetic wound healing. Together these findings provide confidence that the model may serve as a valuable tool to study the poorly understood mechanisms which characterize cellular dysfunction in response to AGE accumulation and also to aid the identification of novel therapeutic agents to treat this pathology. Screening a number of mushroom extracts revealed that the ethanol extracts of R. capensis and P. ostreatus had the greatest potential for attenuating chronic inflammation due to their ability to promote macrophage phagocytosis, increased M2 activation (R. capensis) and decreased M1 activation (P. ostreatus) as well as reduced COX-2 expression while the water extract of G. lucidum proved to be the most promising candidate for stimulating fibroplasia as it was the most successful at promoting both fibroblast proliferation and migration. Different mushroom species were thus shown to promote different stages of the wound healing process providing sufficient evidence to support further studies related to the use of macrofungi as therapeutic agents in the search for more cost-effective and efficient treatment strategies for impaired diabetic wound healing.

The purpose of this project was to provide a psychologically based analysis of the concept of wisdom. Although wisdom has long been used to label competent people, psychologists have largely ignored wisdom in favour of such variables as intelligence. This study used a prototype analysis procedure to identify the attributes that characterize wise people together with the descriptors for intelligent, perceptive and other types of individuals. This served as a basis for describing wisdom and differentiating it from other competency descriptors. The study also examined generational differences in conceptions of wisdom and assessed the manner in which the prototype for wisdom influenced information processing. The project was divided into three studies. In Study I, groups of fifty young adults, middle aged adults and elderly adults provided descriptions of wise, intelligent and other types of individuals. In Study II, groups of subjects representing the same age cohorts rated the descriptors for wise people. An additional group of subjects rated descriptors associated with other categories. In Study III, thirty-eight young adults were administered a recognition memory task to assess the biasing effects of prototype descriptors. The results of Studies I and II indicated that wisdom is a well-defined, prototypically organized concept. Reliability analyses indicated within and between cohort agreement on the characteristics of wise people. Examination of overlap between categories indicated that wisdom was largely independent of other competency descriptors. A principal components analysis yielded five factors, which were labelled "Exceptional Understanding," "Judgement and Communication Skills," "Basic Competency," "Interpersonal Skills," and "Social Unobtrusiveness." The results of Study III indicated that people's memory processes were influenced by the prototypes of wise people. The evidence from Studies I, II and III suggest that wisdom may be viewed as a prototypically organized concept. These results both replicate previous studies and provide a more complete picture of the characteristics and abilities of wise people. The results are interpreted within a theory of development which emphasizes several factors that may contribute to the emergence of wisdom. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

This experiment investigated memory changes across the adult lifespan and some factors that might be associated with these changes. Adult participants of all ages (16 to 83 years old) were asked to orally describe scenic color photographs, and then following a delay, to re-describe these pictures from memory. Given information is objective, physical objects and their attributes that are depicted in a target picture, whereas beyond information is subjective, personal experiences and inferences that are not depicted in a target picture per se but are associated with a target picture. Chapter 3 examined the content of these picture descriptions for the amount of given and beyond information that was encoded and retrieved about target pictures. The results indicated an age-related decline in memory for given information and preserved memory for beyond information. Chapter 4 examined the relationship between perceptual and verbal ability and memory for given and beyond information. Perceptual ability was assessed by self-report measures of auditory and visual ability and verbal ability was measured by a standardized test. The results indicated that an age-related improvement in verbal ability, but not an age-related decline in perceptual ability, was related to memory for given and beyond information. Chapter 5 explored age-related changes in memory for feminine and masculine information across the adult female lifespan. Feminine and masculine information is information that would be considered exclusively relevant to young women and men, respectively. The results indicated an age-related increase in memory for feminine information and no age-related change in memory for masculine information. The divergent age-related changes in memory for given and beyond information and for feminine and masculine information were interpreted in terms of a developmental approach to schema theory and the lifespan psychology notions of selective optimization with compensation and loss in the service of growth. The present study suggests an integration between the domains of personality and cognitive psychology as one avenue for future research that could lead to a more complete understanding of memory and aging. / Arts, Faculty of / Psychology, Department of / Graduate

M.Phil. / The primary purpose of this study was to investigate in different age groups the various relationships between autorefraction and subjective refraction, between autorefraction and retinoscopy and between retinoscopy and subjective refraction. Multivariate statistical methods are used to explore the nature of the relationships between these three different methods of evaluating refractive state. This is the first occasion in which these statistical approaches have been used to address these relationships within a sample of black South Africans. The short-term variation of measurements of the autorefractor used in this study was evaluated by means of an artificial or model eye. Here samples of fifty measurements each were obtained every two hours over a period of one day. Scatter plots, meridional profiles and hypothesis tests of equality of variance-covariance and of equality of mean autorefraction are used for analysis of the measurements obtained. Such analysis suggests that the variability in autorefraction across the day was of small magnitude and less than that typically found with human eyes. The implication is that many other factors besides the instrument itself are responsible for the variation found when using an autorefractor on a human eye. These factors include changes in accommodation, ocular fixation, the blinking process and attention. The environment within which the autorefractor is placed is important and changes in, for example, temperatur may have subtle but significant influences. The major part of this dissertation describes a study performed over a period of about seven months during which a sample of 240 male and female subjects were chosen randomly from a larger group of about 2800 patients who came to have their eyes examined in a clinical practice. A questionnaire was completed by each subject and retinoscopy was performed followed by subjective refraction and then autorefraction. Ocular health was assessed and visual acuities were measured. The study subjects were further divided into six smaller subgroups according to their ages and the analysis of results obtained with retinoscopy, subjective refraction and autorefraction included both qualitative and quantitative multivariate methods such as stereo-pair scatter plots, trajectories of change of dioptric power, meridional profiles, confidence and distribution ellipsoids, and testing of hypotheses of equality of variance-covariance and of equality of means. All of these methods help in understanding the nature of the various relationships between the different refractive methods, and they also are important when considering concepts such as mean refractive state and variation of refraction in human eyes. They also are used to develop an understanding of the distribution or spread of the population of refractive states from which the 'sample was obtained. For the three refractive methods . (retinoscopy, subjective refraction and autorefraction) the spread or distribution of measurements in the six age groups suggests that generally the refractive behaviour of right and left eyes was similar. A possible shift towards hyperopia and more astigmatism with increasing age is apparent. For example, mean autorefraction for the right and left eyes in the youngest and oldest age groups (Groups 1 and 6 respectively) is -0.41/-0.06 x 148 and -0.32/-0.07 x 177 and 0.41/-0.57 x 102 and 0.57/-0.32 x 75. Similarly mean subjective refraction for the right and left eyes of Group 1 is 0.10/-0.14 x 97 and 0.30/-0.17 x 81 and is 0.78/-0.70 x 95 and 0.89/-0.47 x 82 for the right and left eyes of Group 6 respectively. Again mean retinoscopy for the iv right and left eyes of Group 1 and Group 6 respectively is 0.69/-0.05 x 91 and 0.65/-0.21 x 82 and 1.72/-0.88 x 89