Malonaldehyde, a very reactive member of the homologous series of dialdehydes, is associated with the autoxidative deterioration of lipids. Its measurement, in autoxidized lipid systems is an expression of the extent of oxidation, in lipids. Malonaldehyde lends itself well to such determinations because of the sensitivity and specificity of its quantification in complex lipid systems. Complete knowledge of the formation of malonaldehyde in autoxidized lipids. is lacking. Such knowledge would undoubtedly promote a better understanding of lipid autoxidation mechanisms. In this investigation, a method for detecting malonaldehyde through the use of its reaction with p-aminobenzoic acid was developed. This was adapted for use in measuring malonaldehyde in lipids and in tissue samples. The reaction between p-aminobenzoic acid and malonaldehyde was partially characterized, and a mechanism for the formation of the reaction product was postulated. The quantification of malonaldehyde in lipid systems by the use of p-aminobenzoic acid involves the use of a mild reducing agent such as stannous chloride to prevent interference from hyd roperoxides present in the system. The p-aminobenzoic acid reaction is highly specific for malonaldehyde and proceeds smoothly and rapidly at room temperature in a non-aqueous chloroform-methanol solvent system to yield a highly colored compound having a maximum absorbance at 406 mμ. and with a molar absorptivity of 73,500. The absorbance value may be converted directly to parts-per-million malonaldehyde through the use of a conversion factor in a simple equation. The limits of detectability of themethod are on the order of one ppm malonaldehyde. The measurement of malonaldehyde in the lipid fraction of tissue samples involves the prior extraction of the lipid with a non-aqueous chloroform-methanol solvent, by an extraction method which was developed for this purpose. The reaction of malonaldehyde with p-aminobenzoic acid involves the condensation of two molecules of p-aminobenzoic acid with one molecule of malonaldehyde. The reaction exhibits a rate maximum at a hydrogen ion concentrations of about 0.1 molar, and also exhibits rate dependencies upon the concentrations of both malonaldehyde and p-aminobenzoic acid. This strongly suggests that the reaction proceeds according to an S [subscript N] 2 mechanism. A postulated mechanism involves nucleophilic 1,4-addition of the amino nitrogen of p-aminobenzoic acid to the enol of malonaldehyde followed by-loss of water to form the enamine. The reaction with a second molecule of p-aminobenzoic acid involves nucleophilic substitution of the amino nitrogen at the carbonyl function of malonaldehyde followed by loss of water to form an imine linkage. / Graduation date: 1968

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No description available.

<p> Nonprofit organizations traditionally lack in areas such as financial resources, leadership development as well as a history of suffering from the effects of burnout. The concept of Emotional Intelligence has been associated with effective leadership skills such as employee motivation, job satisfaction and organizational loyalty. This study applied a non-experimental quantitative analysis to examine the models of Emotional Intelligence (ability and trait) and burnout as related to current nonprofit organizational leaders. Current nonprofit organizational leaders were assessed using the surveys Trait Emotional Intelligence Questioner- Short Form, Assessing Emotions Scale and the Maslach Burnout Inventory &ndash; General Survey. These surveys were distributed to identify the predictability of Emotional Intelligence ability from trait Emotional Intelligence, burnout, gender and age through the use of a multiple linear regression analysis. The multiple linear regression statistical analysis stepwise method found that trait Emotional Intelligence is a statistically significant predictor of identifying Emotional Intelligence ability of current nonprofit organizational leaders. The practical implications of this study provided nonprofit organizations the justification to create leadership developmental practices based in foundational psychological principles. The theoretical implications of this research identified that further scholarly literature be conducted on the correspondence of trait Emotional Intelligence and Emotional Intelligence ability as distinctly differing models that are associated through forecasting and prediction.</p>

This thesis examines the existence of an interaction between the gender of the defence attorney and the crime domain of the accused person represented by the defence attorney when predicting juror verdict, juror certainty in his/her verdict and juror perceptions of the credibility of the defence attorney. More broadly, this study explores a possible gender-domain congruency effect on juror decision-making and whether jurors apply gender schemas when processing information presented by male versus female attorneys in particular crime domains. Specifically, this investigation hypothesizes that in cases in which female defence attorneys represent crimes perceived to be in an area of women’s expertise, jurors resort to gender stereotypes, perceiving them as not only more credible than male defence attorneys but also more likely to find the accused person not guilty as well as have a greater degree of certainty in this verdict. To test this theory, an Ottawa community sample of 80 jury-eligible participants read one of four online case vignettes in which the crime domain and the gender of the defence attorney varied. Findings demonstrate a significant main effect of gender whereby mock jurors are more likely to impose a guilty verdict with a male versus a female defence attorney. Further, the crime domain of the accused person whom the defence attorney represents emerged as a significant main effect predicting the perceived credibility of the defence attorney. That is, regardless of gender, the defence attorney was perceived as more credible when representing the defendant accused of aggravated assault than of sexual assault. However, a significant interaction effect of the gender of the defence attorney and crime domain was not found. The implications of these findings as they relate to the impact of extralegal factors on juror decision-making are discussed, particularly in light of the continuing existence of gender stereotypes and their ramifications for modern Canadian juries.

<p> Police officers decide to detain and search civilians under uncertainty and risk, and both false positive and false negative errors can be costly. The courts apply the <i>reasonable suspicion</i> standard of proof to evaluate the constitutionality of nonconsensual stops and searches, placing an ambiguous and subjective assessment of a poorly understood psychological state at the center of laws, policies, and trainings on police-civilian contact. The law and psychology of suspicion may have important effects on the frequency, accuracy, and reporting of policing decisions. Investigating those effects requires an understanding of the policy landscape of police decision-making and the basic psychology of suspicion. </p><p> In this dissertation, I explore suspicion as a legal concept and as a psychological experience. I describe the role of the reasonable suspicion standard in judicial evaluations of the constitutionality of police practices, and the implications for the guidelines and trainings that agencies provide to officers. I contend that legal and quantitative analyses of policing practices should incorporate an understanding of the psychology of individual decision-making and the incentives created by the regulatory environment. The constitutional analysis assumes that civilian behavior, situational circumstances, and prior knowledge all affect an officer&rsquo;s experience of suspicion and subsequent actions. Very little is known, however, about the basic psychology of suspicion and how it might affect judgment and decision-making. </p><p> I investigate the psychological properties and covariates of interpersonal suspicion as reported by lay participants in a series of studies, establishing a baseline to which I will compare the effects of training and professional experience in future research. Using latent variable models and automated text analyses, I find that during experiences of interpersonal suspicion of a stranger, people tend to question the stranger&rsquo;s intentions and experience intuition, attentiveness, and wariness. In these situations, distrust is more closely associated with emotional arousal than interpersonal suspicion. On average, female participants report slightly higher situational interpersonal suspicion relative to male participants, and participants who identify as Black or African American report lower suspicion relative to those who identify as White, Latino, or Hispanic. </p><p> Relative to participants, the people who are targets of situational suspicion are more often described as male, Black, and Latino. On average, participants report a similar degree of suspicion across perceived target gender and racial categories, but there are significant differences among the associated emotions, inferences, and behavioral responses. Participants describing male and Black targets report experiencing greater fear and believing that the target&rsquo;s behavior was dangerous. Participants describing male targets are more likely to report inferring that the target&rsquo;s behavior was criminal, relative to participants describing female targets. </p><p> The dispositional tendency toward interpersonal suspicion is associated with neuroticism and low agreeableness in two samples of university students, and these findings are insensitive to variations in measurement instruments. In a simulation where university students take on the role of a police officer and report their suspicion in response to either Black or White male targets, I find that aggregate measures of dispositional interpersonal suspicion are uncorrelated with ratings of situational suspicion in response to the stimuli, which do not differ significantly by race of the target. An exploratory analysis suggests that dispositional suspicion, as measured by a single item, is associated with higher ratings of situational suspicion in response to White targets only. </p><p> My findings suggest that during experiences of interpersonal suspicion of strangers, people tend to question the stranger&rsquo;s intentions and experience intuition, attentiveness, and wariness, and that the type of cognitive arousal associated with suspicion may be context-specific. In the concluding discussion, I also identify findings that could be particularly relevant in the legal context, including the salience of intuition in experiences of suspicion and the variation associated with target race in the correlates of suspicion. I aim to advance the current understanding of suspicion and establish a foundation for future research on its role in legal decision-making.</p><p>

Cooperative species have long been the focus of much research due to the ‘special difficulty’ cooperation poses to the theory of evolution via natural selection. Despite this long history of scientific interest we actually know relatively little about the evolutionary genetics of cooperative mammalian species, especially in the wild. In this study I use long-term data from the Kalahari Meerkat Project to investigate some aspects of the evolutionary genetics of meerkats (Suricata suricatta). First, I reconstructed a genetically-validated pedigree of the Kalahari meerkat population. 1,494 meerkats (83% of the total known population) were genotyped at a panel of 18 highly variable microsatellite markers. This genetic data, in combination with phenotypic information and two different programs, COLONY2 and MASTERBAYES, was used to infer familial relationships. The resulting pedigree spanned seven generations and included 1,614 individuals of which 1,076 had both parents known. I conclude by discussing the particular merits of using COLONY2 to infer familial relationships for social animals such as meerkats. Second, I investigated the extent of inbreeding and inbreeding depression in early life traits in the Kalahari meerkat population. In the pedigree, 44% of individuals have non-zero (F>0) inbreeding coefficients. Although I found more inbreeding in meerkats than initially expected, there were few cases of inbreeding between very close relatives. Nonetheless, even low to moderate inbreeding appeared to result in inbreeding depression for pup mass at emergence, hind-foot length, growth until independence, and juvenile survival. I also found some tentative evidence for a positive effect of the social environment in ameliorating the effects of inbreeding depression. Third, I conducted a quantitative genetic analysis on mass, skull length, skull width, forearm length, and hind-foot length in up to five key meerkat life stage periods, while accounting for a number of fixed effects, including inbreeding coefficient. By attempting to apportion variance in these traits to a variety of sources I found that birth litter identity often explained much of the variance in morphological traits, although the magnitude of this effect appeared to decline with age. Furthermore, when birth litter was removed from models, the amount of variance explained by additive genetic effects tended to increase. Finally, I conducted a quantitative genetic analysis on two measures of cooperative care and on adult mass. Fixed effects, including inbreeding and relatedness coefficients, were also examined, which revealed that inbred individuals contribute more to pup-feeding, and that helper-recipient relatedness was negatively associated with baby-sitting. I found low heritable variation for baby-sitting (h2 = 0.10) and pup-feeding (h2 = 0.08), and higher heritable variation for adult body mass (h2 = 0.19). I also estimated the magnitude of non-genetic sources of variation in these traits and provide evidence for positive genetic correlations between baby-sitting and pup-feeding, and baby-sitting and adult mass.

The purpose of this study was to develop a self-report questionnaire that would address subjective symptoms associated with seizures in adolescents. The study was a preliminary investigation as to the reliability and validity of the Seizure Disorder Questionnaire.;Two groups of subjects were studied. The seizure group consisted of 31 adolescents diagnosed with epilepsy and contacted through the Epilepsy Clinic at the Medical college of Virginia, the Comprehensive Epilepsy Clinic at the University of Virginia, Cumberland Hospital for Children and Adolescents in New Kent, Virginia, and the Williamsburg-James City County public schools. The control group consisted of 125 adolescents who did not have seizure disorders and were contacted through the Williamsburg-James City County Schools. It was hypothesized that the seizure group would affirm higher frequencies of symptoms associated with seizures than the control group, and that a significant difference would exist between the groups.;It was concluded that the reliability of the Seizure Disorder Questionnaire was moderate to high. The preliminary estimate of validity was supported by a significant difference between groups on 24 of the original items in the Seizure Disorder Questionnaire. A factor analysis of the 24 items suggested three factors that may represent separate sets of seizure disorder symptoms in the areas of physiology, perception, and memory.

No description available.

The War on Drugs has been a contested issue in the United States for decades. Many believe that African Americans are targeted by the government and become victims of the penal system as a result of anti-drug policies. The purpose of this ethnographic study was to explore the impact of the war on drugs on African American men, women, and young adults from their perspectives. Racial threat theory provided the framework for the study. Data were collected through interviews with and observations of 30 African American participants who had experiences directly and indirectly with the War on Drugs. Participant were recruited through purposeful and snowball sampling. Results of coding analysis by way of NVivo revealed that that many African Americans experience mental health issues (specifically depression and anxiety) due to direct and indirect consequences of drug penalties. Findings also showed that fair sentencing is needed for African Americans, and that African Americans need to come together to impact social change in their communities. Findings may be used to promote drug policy reform, rehabilitation for African American offenders and their families by addressing the mental health challenges individuals face directly and indirectly due to the drug penalties; in addition to increasing the access to these mental health resources. Furthermore, political changes for decriminalization of marijuana and commuting sentences for those penalized for the drug are apart the social changes that would lessen the impact the War on Drugs has on African Americans.