Objective: Pregnancy requires thorough monitoring and management because not only is it a time where normal physiological and psychological changes put a mother under stress and strain, but maternal sensitivity begins to develop, and the developing foetus needs a well regulated intrauterine environment. Such important processes can be compromised by abnormal or inconsistent physiological and emotional regulation. The study aimed to explore pregnant women’s regulation capacity at rest and their physiological reactivity, and return to physiological baseline, in response to infant related stimuli. Methods: Extended analyses of previously acquired psycho-physiological data at baseline, and pre- and post-presentation of relevant audio-visual stimuli. Results: Baseline physiological activity was significantly different between pregnant participants and controls. There were, however, no other differences in reactivity. Conclusion: Findings were inconsistent with previous research which indicates infant stimuli to become increasingly salient throughout pregnancy.

The venerable phenomena of Anderson localization, along with the more recent many-body localization (MBL), both depend crucially on the presence of disorder. Here we introduce a family of simple translationally invariant models of fermions locally coupled to spins, which have a disorder-free mechanism for localization. This mechanism is due to a local $\mathbb{Z}_2$ gauge symmetry and we uncover the connection to lattice gauge theories. We diagnose the localization through long-time memory of initial conditions after a global quantum quench. One of the defining features of the models that we study is the binary nature of the emergent disorder, related to the $\mathbb{Z}_2$ degrees of freedom. This results in a qualitatively different behaviour in the strong effective disorder limit compared to typically studied models of localization. For example it gives rise to the possibility of a delocalization transition via quantum percolation in higher than one dimension. In connection to the recently proposed quantum disentangled liquid (QDL) we also study the entanglement properties of our models. The QDL provides an alternative to both complete localization and to the eigenstate thermalization hypothesis. Our models highlight the subtlety of defining a QDL and we offer new insights into their entanglement properties. While the simplest models we consider can be mapped onto free fermions, we also include interactions which leads to MBL-like behaviour characterised by logarithmic entanglement growth. We further consider interactions that generate dynamics for the conserved charges, which give rise to only transient localization behaviour, or quasi-MBL. Finally, we present a proposal for the experimental measurement of gauge field correlators for our model in two-dimensions. This proposal is based on interferometric techniques which are feasible using current experimental capabilities. Furthermore, the interacting generalizations of our models can be similarly implemented in experiments, providing access to the dynamics of strongly interacting lattice gauge theories, beyond what can be simulated on a classical computer.

One of the most important roles of the skin is the formation of an effective barrier to prevent desiccation as well as to keep out foreign pathogens and allergens. This is a tightly regulated process and involves many structural proteins, lipids, enzymes and biochemical components. One of the proteins that has an indispensable role in barrier formation is filaggrin, which is encoded by the filaggrin gene (FLG) that lies within a cluster of epidermal genes known as the epidermal differentiation complex (EDC) on chromosome 1q21. Recent studies in Europe have shown that null mutations in FLG lead to the loss of the filaggrin protein; this is the underlying genetic cause of ichthyosis vulgaris (IV) and is a significant predisposing factor for atopic dermatitis (AD) and other atopic conditions such as asthma, allergic rhinitis and food allergy. In this thesis, the critical role of FLG-null mutations was examined and confirmed as a strong predisposing factor for AD in Singaporean Chinese patients. In addition, AD patients with FLG mutations also showed an increased susceptibility for recurrent skin infections. Interestingly, a diverse and wide spectrum of FLG-null mutations was identified in the Singaporean Chinese population, as opposed to the dominance of a few common FLG mutations in Europe. This result highlighted discrete genetic variations between different ethnic groups. FLG-null mutations were also shown to have significant gene modifying effects on other skin barrier genes such as steroid sulphatase gene (STS) to exacerbate the phenotype of X-linked ichthyosis (XLI). Next, the effect of FLG¬-null mutations on other complex conditions such as acne vulgaris and childhood peanut sensitisation was investigated but no significant association of FLG mutations with these diseases were observed in the Singaporean Chinese population. Lastly, a study was attempted to search for a candidate gene for psoriasis within the EDC, through the use of fine mapping techniques. With the advent of faster and cheaper next generation sequencing (NGS) in the near future, the quest for susceptibility factors in complex traits will increase in effectiveness and speed.

Eating Disorders are a range of disorders marked by abnormal eating habits. These habits can often have a detrimental effect on the body and have the potential to complicate acute medical problems if they are a pre-existing condition. Due to this, it is important that members of the healthcare team be aware of the nature of these disorders from both a physical and mental health perspective in order to provide the best, most holistic care. In this study, individuals with nursing experience in acute medical and acute psychiatric care were asked 11 questions concerning the assessment and knowledge of eating disorders along with demographic information such as age, area of practice and years of experience. The results of this study showed the average score of the questions involving treatment (7-11) were higher than that of the assessment questions (1-6) and that years of practice experience had no correlation, positive or negative, to overall score. These findings are consistent with the literature that suggests that nurses could potentially benefit from additional education regarding their disorders and their unique presentation, as it can be inferred that years of practice alone does not determine competency in the area especially, according to this study, in terms of assessment and identification.

For the last 100 years, poor motor coordination in children has been recognized as a developmental problem. As early as 1937, these children were classified as “clumsy.” Since then, other terms such as “motorically awkward,” “motor impaired,” and “physically awkward” have been used to describe these children, and the terms “developmental apraxia” and “perceptual motor difficulties” have been used to characterize this developmental problem. Since the 1994 International Consensus Conference on Children and Clumsiness, the term “developmental coordination disorder” (DCD) has been used to describe the condition of children with motor incoordination.

The objective of this study was to explore the attitudes toward antisocial personality disorder among clinicians. The researcher created a 15 question survey to interview clinicians in hopes of eliciting information about their attitudes toward this population. The survey consisted of seven open ended questions and eight Likert scale questions. The researcher analyzed the data by transcribing the interviews and looking for common themes among the responses. Likert scale questions were tallied and compared in SPSS to determine the spread of the answers. The results of the study showed there are negative attitudes among clinicians currently in direct treatment settings; attitudes were more neutral among clinicians who are currently not involved in direct practice. In applying the theory of reasoned action it is suggested clinicians in direct practice who hold negative views display behaviors that affect the treatment process and outcome. The researcher’s recommendation for future study is to explore the attitudes of other helping professionals in comparison to social work practitioners.

The purpose of this study was to investigate how special education teachers implement evidence-based practices for non-verbal communication skills of children with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). This study interviewed six early childhood special education teachers from preschools in the Southern California. According to the teacher interviews, joint attention deficits in children with ASD were overcome using visual aids, toys, and basic sign gestures. Peer tutoring, functional communication training and drawing were found to improve nonverbal communication skills. In addition, children with ASD regularly played with their typically developing peers. In conclusion, a co-teaching model can benefit children with ASD and also reduce the stigma typically developing children may have of their peers in special education classes. However, a larger sample size is needed so that findings from this research can be generalized to a larger population of special education teachers and children with ASD.

Cocaine use disorder is a serious public health issue for which no approved pharmacotherapies exist. The development of a pharmacotherapy for cocaine use disorder is a priority for the National Institute on Drug Abuse. Amphetamine maintenance has been shown to be effective to reduce cocaine use in double-blind placebo controlled clinical trials, but has not been approved due to concerns over safety and abuse liability. Development of new pharmacotherapies is facilitated by preclinical testing for effectiveness and identification of new targets for medication development. The first part of this dissertation develops a novel non-human primate cocaine self-administration choice procedure that is modeled after a human laboratory cocaine self-administration choice procedure to improve translational research and facilitate medication development. The second part of this dissertation is devoted to examining the mechanisms of amphetamine maintenance-induced decreases in cocaine use. In the novel non-human primate choice procedure, monkeys chose between injections of cocaine or food pellets (0, 1, 3 or 10) in a 9-choice discrete trials procedure. The reinforcers were available on concurrent independent progressive-ratio schedules. Monkeys chose between cocaine and food in a dose- and magnitude-dependent manner. Maintenance on 7 days of lisdexamfetamine and amphetamine decreased cocaine choices without decreasing food responding, providing evidence that this model may be able to predict drugs that will have clinical efficacy to decrease cocaine use. The next set of experiments examined the effects of amphetamine maintenance on the abuse-related behavioral (intracranial self-stimulation, ICSS) and neurochemical [nucleus accumbens dopamine (DA) and serotonin (5-HT)] effects of cocaine, methylenedioxypyrovalerone, and methamphetamine in rats. Amphetamine maintenance produced sustained increases in ICSS baseline responding and nucleus accumbens DA levels without affecting 5-HT levels. Amphetamine maintenance also attenuated the behavioral and neurochemical abuse-related effects of cocaine but not those of methamphetamine, and with MDPV, amphetamine maintenance decreased the abuse-related neurochemical effect of MDPV, but not the abuse-related behavioral effect. This suggests that amphetamine would likely be most effective against cocaine, least effective against methamphetamine and between the two for MDPV. These data suggest targets that selectively release DA will be the most effective against cocaine use disorder.

Nathan Phillip Stout

Eating disorder clients show low motivation, poor follow-through, and inordinate premature dropout rates in treatment. Earlier studies support the use of pretherapy training to help clients understand the tasks and challenges of therapy. However, a pretherapy intervention, such as showing prospective clients a video that outlines recovery issues and themes, had not yet been developed specifically for the prevalent, recalcitrant problem of eating disorders. Thus, of particular interest to clinicians who treat eating disorders may be the development of a theoretically sound, pretherapy videotape that outlines recovery issues. One of the purposes of this study was to review prior investigations of the effects of pretherapy films/videos on therapy outcomes. However, the central focus of this dissertation was to develop a pretherapy video for use with eating disorder clients, and using quantitative methods, assess the quality and likely therapeutic utility of the pretherapy video. The video was developed to be theoretically consistent with Bandura's modeling paradigm, social learning theory. Eating disorder clients, a comparison group of college women, and professional clinicians who are experienced at treating women with eating disorders were asked to view and evaluate the video (developed to orient prospective clients to recovery issues during treatment for eating disorders). All three groups reportedly found the recovering women portrayed in the video credible, believable, and persuasive. All groups of observers indicated that the video presented an understandable and hopeful message possessing emotional impact, and they avowed that the video created expectations for improvement. Also, the viewers believed the pretherapy video would likely increase knowledge of eating disorder recovery, and that future eating disorder clients viewing the video would likely learn new information that would facilitate their recovery. Additionally, the three groups indicated the video seemed to be of general relevance and therapeutic utility to women with eating disorders.