This thesis contributes to the feminist economics' literature on caring labour with an empirical study of aged care nursing. This study critiques the positivist paradigm of neoclassical economics and argues that the Cartesian dualisms deeply embedded in both neoclassical economics and medicine result in an undervaluing of caring labour. Data was collected from nurses and managers working in residential aged care facilities in metropolitan Adelaide. Qualitative methods are utilised to uncover the role of nursing culture, underpinned by notions of gender, embedded in aged care nurses' work. This study explores how dualistic constructs such as love versus money and public versus private have become central to nursing work and impact on the way nurses' work is valued in residential aged care. The feminist economics' concept of provisioning provides a framework in which nurses' work can be valued. This framework is used to present a matrix to illustrate how nurses' work crosses these dualisms and uses a 'web of meaning' as a conceptual device to explain the inter-connectedness of nurses' work. The feminist economics' concept of provisioning is used as a means of overcoming the limitations that a dualistic world view has imposed on understanding the complexities of paid caring work. The empirical evidence presented in this thesis shows that aged care nurses do both nursing work and training in unpaid time and are vulnerable to exploitation. The remuneration they are paid is inadequate when the difficulty of the work they do and the level of responsibility they take is recognised. Their work contains a strongly non-commodified element, where the development of two-way relationships between nurses and the people they care for, their relatives and friends, other staff and the wider community are important. A key conclusion is that nurses focus on the intrinsic rewards of their work, which are undermined because aged care nursing is under-resourced. In particular, nurses do not have enough time to be caring which impacts negatively on their job satisfaction and the level of care they can provide.

Abstract Aim: The purpose of the study is to show the influence of Proton Pump Inhibitors (PPI in form of esomeprazole) on the bioactivation of dietary nitrate (sodium-nitrate solution) in submaximal exercise, through affecting the gastric pH. Method: Randomized, doubled-blinded, placebo-controlled and crossover study with six subjects (mean ± SD, age 29 ± 5years, height 170 ± 5 centimeters, weight 70 ± 5 Kg, BMI 24,36 ± 1,75 Kg/m2 blood pressure 119/ 77 ± 6 mmHg, 3 male and 3 female). They were tested in two different trials. Every trial consisted of two parts. One part was cycling on 4 different submaximal stages (80W/60RPM, 80W/90RPM, 120W/60RPM, 120W/90RPM) for 5 minutes each, with 90 minutes rest in between. The same protocol was repeated. In the beginning of the resting time a sodium nitrate solution (NaNO3-, 10mg/kg body weight) was ingested. VO2, VCO2, RER, VE, Lactate, Glucose, heart rate and blood pressure were recorded. Venous blood samples were taken. Whether esomeprazole (10mg) or a placebo were taken 24h, 12h and directly before being tested in both trials. Subjects were pleased to have a nitrate poor diet starting when taking the pills. An information sheet was provided. Results: No significant differences were found between the post values and the treatment. Tendencies of a higher oxygen consumption when taking esomeprazole (2,62%) in comparison to placebo (0,11%) were observed. Systolic BP decreased by 3,91% with the placebo while it decreased just 2,04% with esomeprazole after intake. Sex-specific differences occurred in the metabolism of esomeprazole and dietary nitrate. RER showed a significant post nitrate difference between the female and male participants with t=.006 and a significance in predietary nitrate intake. VE in female (40,79 ± 7,20 L/min) and (50,03 ± 10,09 L/min) in male were as well significant (t=.017). Conclusion: Tendencies of effects of PPI are seen in the post-values of VO2 and BP after intake of dietary nitrate. Gender-differences are shown in RER and VE. More research is needed to see the impact of dietary nitrate on the human body under submaximal load.

What we are investigating in experience-based essay is children’s free play in preschool. The purpose is to find out exactly how free the so called “free play” is and what interventions from the teachers can result in and contribute to when it comes to children’s play in preschool. Our main questions are: In what way should preschool teachers intervene in children’s playing situations? Should preschool teachers work against stereotypical gender roles everyday play situations? Why is children’s unrestricted play important in preschool? We are starting of this scientific essay by introducing two stories that’s self-experienced in our roles as preschool teachers. In the first story we are writing about a dilemma that occurs when a play situation leads up to the teacher feeling that the best solution is to end the game. In the second story we are describing a dilemma that occurs as the teacher decides to intervene in the children’s play and the intervention results in the children getting bored and eventually decides to leave the game themselves. With the help from different theories and from the knowledge we’ve been taught due to our preschool teacher education, we are reflecting on how we managed these play situations and what we could have done differently. We are doing this to get different point of views to what children’s free play means, get an insight on the act and responsibility of teachers and also to get more insight to what meaning gender specific toys and boundaries possibly can have in children’s play. We are starting the reflection from a gender perspective and are analyzing with the help from a scientific article with the focus on gender specific toys. Our final reflection is that the teachers have a positive attitude towards the free play, but that they are subconsciously controlling with both rules and the way that toys are to be used. Through this work we have come to the conclusion that it is important that the teachers are present, supportive and involved in the children’s play due to its possibility of being a process dealing with real life events. It isalso important to work with equality in children’s play at preschool to break down current unequal structures between genders. / Det vi undersöker med denna erfarenhetsbaserade essä är barns fria lek i förskolan. Syftet är att ta reda på hur fri den så kallade fria leken är och vad pedagogers ingripande i barns leksituationer kan resultera i och bidra till vad gäller barns lek i förskolan. Våra frågeställningar vi vill belysa är: Hur ska pedagoger gripa in i leksituationer? Ska pedagoger i förskolan motverka stereotypa könsroller i vardagliga leksituationer? Varför är barns fria lek viktig i förskolan? Vi påbörjar denna vetenskapliga essä med att introducera två berättelser vi själva upplevt i våra roller som pedagoger på förskola. I första berättelsen skriver vi om ett dilemma som uppstår då en leksituation leder till att pedagogen upplever att den bästa lösningen är att avsluta leken. I den andra berättelsen beskriver vi ett dilemma som uppstår när pedagogen lägger sig i barnens lek som leder till att barnen tröttnar och tillslut självmant väljer att gå ifrån leken. Med hjälp av olika teorier och de kunskaper vi tillägnat oss från vår utbildning till förskollärare reflekterar vi över hur vi hanterade dessa leksituationer och vad vi hade kunnat göra annorlunda. Detta gör vi för att få olika synsätt gällande vad barns fria lek betyder, få syn på pedagogens agerande och ansvar samt för att få mer inblick i vad könsbundna leksaker och gränssättning kan ha för betydelse i barns lek. Vår slutliga reflektion är att pedagogerna har en positiv inställning till den fria leken, men att pedagogerna är inne och omedvetet styr med både regler och hur leksaker ska användas. Vi har genom detta arbete kommit fram till att det är viktigt att pedagoger är närvarande, stöttande och sätter sig in i barns lek då det kan vara bearbetning av verkliga händelser. Det är även viktigt att arbeta med likvärdighet ibarns lek på förskolan för att bryta nuvarande ojämlika uppbyggnader mellan könen.

Males and age group 1 to 5 years show a much higher risk for childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL). We performed a case-only genome-wide association study (GWAS), using the Illumina Infinium HumanCoreExome Chip, to unmask gender- and age-specific risk variants in 240 non-Hispanic white children with ALL recruited at Texas Children’s Cancer Center, Houston, Texas. Besides statistically most significant results, we also considered results that yielded the highest effect sizes. Existing experimental data and bioinformatic predictions were used to complement results, and to examine the biological significance of statistical results. Our study identified novel risk variants for childhood ALL. The SNP, rs4813720 (RASSF2), showed the statistically most significant gender-specific associations (P < 2 x 10-6). Likewise, rs10505918 (SOX5) yielded the lowest P value (P < 1 x 10-5) for age-specific associations, and also showed the statistically most significant association with age-at-onset (P < 1 x 10-4). Two SNPs, rs12722042 and 12722039, from the HLA-DQA1 region yielded the highest effect sizes (odds ratio (OR) = 15.7; P = 0.002) for gender-specific results, and the SNP, rs17109582 (OR = 12.5; P = 0.006), showed the highest effect size for age-specific results. Sex chromosome variants did not appear to be involved in gender-specific associations. The HLA-DQA1 SNPs belong to DQA1*01:07and confirmed previously reported male-specific association with DQA1*01:07. Twenty one of the SNPs identified as risk markers for gender- or age-specific associations were located in the transcription factor binding sites and 56 SNPs were non-synonymous variants, likely to alter protein function. Although bioinformatic analysis did not implicate a particular mechanism for gender- and age-specific associations, RASSF2 has an estrogen receptor-alpha binding site in its promoter. The unknown mechanisms may be due to lack of interest in gender- and age-specificity in associations. These results provide a foundation for further studies to examine the gender- and age-differential in childhood ALL risk. Following replication and mechanistic studies, risk factors for one gender or age group may have a potential to be used as biomarkers for targeted intervention for prevention and maybe also for treatment.

No description available.

Suicide holds an ambivalent position in contemporary social and cultural contexts. It questions what it means to live and die, yet provides no clear-cut answers about death or dying, life or living. This thesis explores some of the ways suicide has been understood and represented, to demonstrate that knowing suicide is dependent not only on what suicide means, but also on how meanings of suicide become part of knowledge. Knowing suicide is not a matter of responding to it as self-evident, transparent, neutral and obvious, but rather is implicated in social processes and norms central to how knowledge gains intelligibility. Guided by poststructuralist, postmodernist, feminist and postfeminist philosophies, the thesis takes up gender and gendering as its central focus, to interrogate how knowledge about suicide becomes knowledge. Critically examining a wide variety of textual sources, it argues that suicide is principally rendered as a masculine, and even a masculinist, practice. Knowing suicide today is anchored in suicidology - the study of suicide - and maintained by institutional sites of practice including sociology, law, medicine, psy-knowledge and newsprint media, each of which is analysed here. Suicide as masculine and masculinist practice is invoked through multiple, often-contradictory and inextricably linked readings of gender, even while claiming homogeneity. Its gendered foundations can however be made to appear gender-neutral, even when actually gender-saturated. The twin gender movements of neutrality and repleteness are in fact crucial to the knowing of suicide. The thesis establishes that knowing suicide can never occur outside discourse. Even more importantly, how suicide enters discourse cannot be thought outside gender. The body matters to the production of deeply problematic understandings of agency, intent and violence, on which the production of suicide as masculine and masculinist depends. It becomes clear that such dependence rests not only on gender, but also on race and sexuality, as conditions of its knowing. The thesis suggests that further attention be given to the production and maintenance of highly reductive and limiting homogenous truth claims in suicide - truth claims that validate and privilege some interpretations of suicide, at the expense of rendering others less legitimate and serious. If the processes and practices of interpreting suicide become a site of permanent debate, they are more likely to challenge the ways in which masculinist ways of knowing render, and limit, the intelligibility of suicide.

Background: Angola suffered a long-lasting military conflict. Therefore, traditional knowledge of plant usage is still an important part of cultural heritage, especially concerning the still very poor health care system in the country. Our study documents for the first time traditional knowledge of plant use of local Bakongo communities in the northern province of Uíge on a large scale with a focus on medicinal plants and puts data in context to different parameters of age, gender and distance to the provincial capital. Methods: Field work was carried out during nine field trips in 13 municipalities between October 2013 and October 2016. In 62 groups, 162 informants were interviewed. Herbarium specimens were taken for later identification. Database was analysed using Relative Frequency of Citations, Cultural Importance Index, and Informant Consensus Factor. Furthermore, significances of influence of age, gender and distance were calculated. Results: Our study presents 2390 use-reports, listing 358 species in 96 plant families, while just three out of 358 mentioned species are endemic to Angola about one-fifth are neophytes. The larger the distance, the higher the number of use citations of medical plants. Although women represent just a fifth of all citations (22%), their contribution to medicinal plants was proportionally even higher (83%) than those of men (74%). Fifty percent of all plants mentioned in the study were just listed by men, 12% just by women. We made some new discoveries, for example. Gardenia ternifolia seems to be promising for treatment of measles, and Annona stenophylla subsp. cuneata has never been ethnobotanically nor phytochemically investigated. Conclusions: While the study area is large, no significant influence of the distance in regard to species composition in traditional healer’s concepts of the respective village was pointed out. Although several plants were just mentioned by women or men, respectively, no significant restriction to gender-specific illnesses in medical plant use could be found. Merely concerning the age of informants, a slight shift could be detected.

Previous research has shown gender differences in the motivations to be physically active, in mobile phone gratifications, and social media usage, but so far these areas have not been studied together. Based on the uses and gratification approach and self-determination theory, we aimed to identify gender-specific gratifications and determinants of fitness app usage in combination with fitness-related Facebook groups. Results of an online survey (N = 171) and of a mobile experience sampling method (N = 31) revealed that the app Runtastic was primarily used for achieving goals and to improve enjoyment for physical activity, with men and older participants sharing results with others in Facebook groups more often than women and younger participants. Conclusions regarding genderspecific targeting strategies and user-centered design and content of mHealth features are presented.

Text in German / Am Beginn der Menschheit steht das von Gott erschaffene Paar, in der Postmo­ derne ist es das aufgeklarte, autonome Individuum. Eine Diskrepanz zwischen ursprunglicher Schopfungsintention und der postmodernen Lebenswelt wird deutlich. Denn Mann und Frau wurden auf eine ganzheitliche Lebensgemein­ schaft hin erschaffen, die nicht nur den trinitarischen Gott widerspiegeln soli, sondem fur einen gelingenden Lebensvollzug urn die konstitutive Notwendigkeit der Gebundenheit des GeschOpfes an seinen Schopfer weiss. Das Bewusst­ sein, dass der Mensch nur in dieser existentiellen Verankerung zum wahren Mann- oder Frausein befahigt wird, ist in der aufgeklarten Postmoderne, primar durch deren zentrales Merkmal, der Absolutsetzung von Freiheit, abhanden ge­ kommen. Erschwerend kommt die Ablehnung der (ontologischen) Sundhaftig­ keit hinzu, was nicht nur das Heilsgeschehen per se obsolet werden lasst,son­ dern zugleich die Wiederherstellung der Beziehung zu Gott als Quelle allen Le­ bens a priori verunmoglicht. Damit verschliesst sich das postmoderne Indivi­ duum aber gleichzeitig die Meglichkeit zur Annaherung an die Schopfungs­ intention von Beziehung und Abhangigkeit der Geschlechter durch die in Jesus erlangte,endgultige Oberwindung der Sunde und deren Konsequenzen. Das Wissen urn die Intention Gottes mit Mann und Frau ist deshalb so entscheidend, weil vom Vorhandensein eines schopfungsbedingt angelegten anthropologischen Grundskriptes ausgegangen wird, welches die Beziehung und Abhangigkeit der Geschlechter entscheidend pragt.1 Das Geschlechterver­ haltnis ist also nicht beliebig und Folgen los veranderbar, resp. den sozio-kul­ turellen Vorgaben und Erwartungen anpassbar, eben weil dessen Kern unver­ anderbar ist. Dem steht jedoch das postmoderne Verstandnis gegenuber, wel­ ches die Geschlechteridentitat des evolvierten Primaten als reine sozio-kulturel­ le Konstruktion und damit als beliebig modellier- und veranderbar versteht. Ge­ nau in dieser Diskrepanz zwischen unaufhebbarem anthropologischem Grund­ skript einerseits und der vermeintlich ganzlichen Beliebigkeit des Geschlechter­ verhaltnisses andererseits liegt ein zentraler Grund fOr die Heute stark Problem belasteten Ehen. At the beginning of humanity we find man and woman as a couple created by God; in post-modern society, however, this place is taken by the enlightened individual. The discrepancy is evident. Man and woman were created for a lifelong marriage which was not only to reflect the triune creator but which was anchored in the dependence on the creator as a constitutive necessity for building a solid, successful and lifelong marriage. This awareness of the fundamental necessity of God as the creator of man has been lost in post-modern society. Instead we find the claim for absolute freedom, linked to the negation of the ontological sinfulness of man. It is obvious that such negation makes the cross and resurrection of Jesus Christ by which sin is finally overcome superfluous, rending the re-establishement of the relationship between God and man impossible. But it is by this grounding in God the creator and redeemer alone that man and woman will unterstand marriage in its originally intended depth and fullness. The present study has resulted in discerning a fundamental, God-given anthropological script which defines both relation and dependence of man and woman; this implies that these fundamental elements cannot be deliberately transformed and/or adapted to various socio-cultural norms and expectations. However, the post-modern understanding of gender presents itself in clear opposition to this creational view. Nowadays, gender identity is seen solely as a socio-cultural structure and therefore subject to unlimited changes and modifications. In this study, one main reason for the instability of marriages in postmodern society has been discerned in the discrepancy between the permanent anthropological basic script and the apparent variability of the relation and dependence between man and woman. The negation of God the creator and redeemer proves to be of equal importance, as it is only through and in him that the basic script for marriage can be realized in its originally intended allembracing dimension. / Systematic Theology and Theological Ethics / D. Th. (Systematic Theology)

Die Arbeit untersucht die Position der Öffentlichen Bibliotheken im Bibliotheksfeld der Bundesrepublik Deutschland. Den theoretischen Rahmen bildet die Theorie der sozialen Felder von Pierre Bourdieu. Dargestellt werden zunächst die Außengrenzen des Bibliotheksfeldes sowie seine administrative Verortung. Es folgen professionssoziologische Aspekte, insbesondere die Verbands- und Ausbildungsstruktur. Der Schwerpunkt liegt dabei auf der Binnengliederung des Feldes und seiner historischen Spartentrennung in „wissenschaftliche“ und „Öffentliche“ Bibliotheken. Dazu gehören eine Untersuchung der technisch-administrativen Infrastruktur und der ideologischen Verortung der Öffentlichen Bibliotheken. Die Kapitalbinnenstruktur des Feldes wird anhand von Daten der Deutschen Bibliotheksstatistik analysiert. Den Hauptteil der Arbeit bildet eine empirische Untersuchung der Diskursstruktur anhand einer quantitativen Analyse von 7.159 Aufsätzen, Vorträgen und Beiträgen zu Mailinglisten, die den allgemeinen bibliothekarischen Fachdiskurs in den Jahren 1964 bis 2016 abbilden. Aus dieser Untersuchung werden Schlüsse auf die informelle Feldstruktur unterhalb der Institutionenebene gezogen. Weitere Ergebnisse betreffen die genderspezifische Arbeitsteilung und die ideologische und kapitalbezogene Position der Öffentlichen Bibliotheken im Bibliotheksfeld. / The dissertation examines the position of public libraries in the library “field” (as described by Pierre Bourdieu) of the Federal Republic of Germany. This includes the outer borders of the field and the administrative position of libraries as well as sociological aspects such as the structure of professional associations and formal qualifications. A focus lies on the historical division between “research” and “public” libraries. This includes an analysis of technical and administrative infrastructure as well as different ideologies. An analysis of the German Library Statistics investigates the capital-based substructure of the field. The main empirical work consists of an analysis of the structure of the professional discourse between 1964 and 2016, i.e. a quantitative analysis of 7.159 articles, conference papers and e-mail-posts that cover the main part of the national professional discourse. This allows conclusions about the informal structure of the field underneath the institutional level. Further results refer to the gender-specific division of labour and the ideological and resource-based position of public libraries in the library field.