Hypertension is associated with a reduction in sensitivity to pain in both animals and humans. Changes in nociception pre-date elevations in blood pressure in animals genetically predisposed to hypertension, and preliminary findings with male offspring of hypertensives indicate that genetic risk for hypertension is related to decreased pain sensitivity in humans. Sensitivity to naturalistic and laboratory pain stimuli was compared in normotensive females with and without a parental history of hypertension in three studies. Genetic risk for hypertension was associated with decreased sensitivity for blood donation venipuncture pain and electric shock, but not for menstrual pain or the cold pressor test. These findings provide modest support for the notion that hypoalgesia is present in females at risk for hypertension. Issues for future research include extension of these findings to other pain stimuli, use of multiple indices of risk, assessment of the effects of cyclic hormonal changes on the relationship between pain sensitivity and risk for hypertension, and further study of the mechanisms and pathophysiological implications of this effect.

Our study shows that the secretion of a major glycosylated, phosphoprotein with a molecular weight of 69kDa (pp69) is a specific marker for non-transformed NRK-49F cells. Antibody raised against pp69 recognizes, in addition to pp69, another major phosphoprotein with a molecular weight of 62kDa (pp62) secreted by RR1022 and spontaneously transformed NRK-49F cells (spt-NRK-49F). Immunoprecipitation of total cell lysates from both NRK-49F and RR1022 cells with anti-pp69 antibody detected only pp69. Treatments with: epidermal growth factor (EGF), transforming growth factor-$ beta$ (TGF-$ beta$) retinoic acid (RA), and TPA modulate the levels of pp69 present in the conditioned media. Furthermore, TPA and EGF induce the synthesis of 3 internal peptides with molecular weights of 58, 54, and 44 kDa which appear to be pre-processed forms of pp69. / Treatment of NRK-49F cells with insulin, EGF, TGF-$ beta$, PPA, levamisole and spermine clearly demonstrate alterations in the phosphorylation of pp69, concomitant with changes in extracellular phosphatase activity.

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.

The obligation to maintain and develop professional competence throughout an individual’s career is a fundamental requirement of a maintaining a professional accounting designation. Accountants can select their continuing professional development (CPD) from a number of modalities. The study was a cross sectional sample created by self selection from a researchers' email invitation to accountants in Canada to determine which modalities accountants preferred, and the selection factors they used in making those selections. A total of 428 accountants from across Canada completed the online survey. The results found that the accountants had taken courses in all modalities presented with live seminar and live webinar being the most popular modalities. Accountants preferred synchronous over asynchronous courses. The factors most important to accountants are content, cost and CPD hour requirements. Generally, the differences found in selection factors for distance versus face-to-face modalities related to the flexibility of the distance course to reduce time away from work. The ranking of selection factors for synchronous courses in general did not differ from those for asynchronous courses with the exception of self-paced courses where the pace and time away from work were ranked higher than for other courses. Further research is suggested to determine the value of both live and recorded seminars and webinars, as well as potential opportunities for mobile modality use for CPD courses. Additional research should be conducted to determine why differences were found in ranking in demographics in order to ensure that future CPD courses are offered in modalities that provide benefits for all respondents. / 2012-06

Summary PHYSICAL SELF – IMAGE FORMATION FACTORS OF 9 – 10 FORMERS Intense social, economic, political and transformational processes, ongoing in the Western Europe, induce changes in the general culture, influencing changes in the body culture as a subject. Physical activity becomes a healthy way of life, new lifestyle, when self-image is shaped through body. In the work I describe the psychological, biological and social factors, influencing girls’ body self-image shaping. The group of social factors, not yet sufficiently examined in Lithuania, consists of a number of smaller components. Conception of body beauty can be predetermined by historical development or sociocultural influence. Mass media broadly informs about body shaping, it is an often topic in the discussions between friends, it is actively promoted and influenced by parents. All this is observed by a young person, mismatching or thinking that she is mismatching the given appearance standards and sensitively reacting in the critical adolescence period. It is not so easy to form positive physical improvement motivation, because the body culture values are formed slowly, results are observed in some time. More and more investigations have been performed lately, searching for new body development technologies and seeking to improve physical activity or teenagers. Aim of the investigation: to find out factors of physical self-image shaping among the girls of senior forms. Tasks of investigation: 1. To analyse... [to full text]

Chronic low back pain (CLBP) is a challenging problem in Nova Scotia and is a leading cause of disability and a contributor to high health related costs to the system. The primary objective of this thesis is to develop and test a methodology for the creation of an electronic standardized assessment tool for chronic conditions such as CLBP using a triangulation method. The methodology involves evidence-based, expert and explicit clinical knowledge in the development of the tool. The outcome of this research is the development of a methodology model for the generation of electronic standardized assessment form for CLBP with 30 predictive factors. Experts evaluated the form for its use and usefulness, usability, and standardized terminologies. Intra-Class Correlation (ICC) and Cronbach’s alpha were used to measure inter-rater reliabilities among experts. The results were in the fair and moderate levels of agreement due to the limitation in sample size and the variation of disciplines among participants.

Three experiments have been completed to investigate whether and how a software technique called real-time image mosaicing applied to a restricted field of view (FOV) might influence target detection and path integration performance in simulated aerial search scenarios, representing local and global spatial awareness tasks respectively. The mosaiced FOV (mFOV) was compared to single FOV (sFOV) and one with double the single size (dFOV). In addition to advancing our understanding of visual information in mosaicing, the present study examines the advantages and limitations of a number of metrics used to evaluate performance in path integration tasks, with particular attention paid to measuring performance in identifying complex routes. The highlights of the results are summarized as follows, according to Experiments 1 through 3 respectively. 1. A novel response method for evaluating route identification performance was developed. The surmised benefits of the mFOV relative to sFOV and dFOV revealed no significant differences in performance for the relatively simple route shapes tested. Compared to the mFOV and dFOV conditions, target detection performance in the local task was found to be superior in the sFOV condition. 2. In order to appropriately quantify the observed differences in complex route selections made by the participants, a novel analysis method was developed using the Thurstonian Paired Comparisons Method. 3. To investigate the effect of display size and elevation angle (EA) in a complex route environment, a 2x3 experiment was conducted for the two spatial tasks, at a height selected from Experiment 2. Although no significant differences were found in the target detection task, contrasts in the Paired Comparisons Method results revealed that route identification performance were as hypothesised: mFOV > dFOV > sFOV for EA = 90°. Results were similar for EA = 45°, but with mFOV being no different than dFOV. As hypothesised, EA was found to have an effect on route selection performance, with a top down view performing better than an angled view for the mFOV and sFOV conditions.

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