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What lurks preserved beneath lake bottoms is giving Ian R. Walker clues on how climate may change in the future.

The establishment of effective relationships is fundamental to good nursing practice and the fulfillment of nurses’ moral responsibilities. While intrapartum nurses are uniquely placed to establish relationships that can directly influence the woman’s experience of childbirth, there has been limited investigation of the relationships, identities and values that underlie nurses’ varied approaches and responses to labouring women. The purpose of this study was to explore intrapartum nurses’ understanding of their moral responsibilities from a social-moral perspective, using Margaret Urban Walker’s “expressive-collaborative” model of morality. Interviews were conducted with fourteen registered nurses working in a birthing unit of a Canadian teaching hospital. Four themes were identified that captured nurses’ moral responsibilities, including: organizing and coordinating care, responding to the unpredictable, recognizing limits of responsibilities to others, and negotiating care with women and families. Nurses enacted their moral responsibilities to labouring women in a variety of ways depending on their personal and professional experience, the circumstances, the people involved and the context of care. A key factor influencing responses to women was the degree to which understandings and expectations related to birth were deemed to be reasonable and mutually agreed upon among nurses, physicians, women and their families. Nurses also described limits on their responsibilities to others. Their choice of response to circumstances in which practice was constrained departed from the idealized expectations and ‘expert’ practices often reflected in professional guidelines. While nurses were able to identify contextual influences that constrained their ability to maintain effective relationships with women, the influence of their own values on the care they provided was less apparent. This suggests a need to challenge normative assumptions related to care of women in childbirth, including the provision of choice and family centred care, in order to create environments that can support and sustain practices that build understanding, mutuality and trust between nurses and birthing woman. In addition, given the contested nature of childbirth and the lack of shared understandings of what constitutes ‘best’ care, there is a need to develop collaborative models of inter-professional maternity care that include the voices of women as a central component.

DNA mismatch repair (MMR) is a highly conserved pathway that maintains genomic stability primarily by correcting mismatches generated during DNA replication. MMR deficiency leads to microsatellite instability (MSI), which is a hallmark of HNPCC (Hereditary Nonpolyposis Colorectal Cancer). Human mismatch repair is initiated by MutSα, a heterodimer of MSH2 and MSH6 subunits. Mismatch binding by MutSα triggers a series of downstream MMR events including interacting and communicating with other MMR proteins. The ATPase domain of MutSα is situated in the C-termini of its both subunits, and ATP binding is required for dissociation of MutSα from a mismatch. In eukaryotic cells, a strand break, which resides either 3’ or 5’ to the mismatch up to several hundred base pair away, determines the strand specificity of MMR. However, in spite of extensive studies, the mechanism by which MutSα locates and senses a nick from the mismatch, and coordinates the subsequent steps of MMR remains poorly understood. Two controversial models have been proposed to explain how the mismatch and the strand break communicate each other. Sliding model proposes that MutSα slides along the DNA helix from the mismatch to the strand break in an ATP binding-dependent but not ATP hydrolysis-dependent manner. Stationary model postulates that MutSα remains bound at the mismatch, and a protein-mediated DNA loop forms, physically bringing the mismatch and the nick in contact. Here, we tested these models in vitro, using a circular plasmid DNA substrate with a single GT mismatch and two Lac repressor (Lac I) binding sites as conditional physical 'roadblocks', one on either side of the mismatch, which when present, prevent MutSα from sliding bi-directionally along the DNA. The results showed that DNA excision initiates under conditions that block MutSα sliding, suggesting that initiation of excision is independent of whether MutSα slides from the mismatch to the nick. This result implies that the communication between the mismatch and the nick is likely through interactions between the mismatch-bound MutSα and other MMR components at the strand break, supporting the stationary model. Therefore, these studies provide significant insight into the mechanisms of mismatch correction in human cells.

The ability to recognise the movements made by humans and other animals, referred to as biological motion, is a specialised human ability that develops at an early age. This perceptual ability is strong even for the minimal amount of information contained in a point-light display, which has been used to study specific features of biological motion to find out what properties contribute to this ability. The perception of biological motion depends on visual perception, visual attention and motor cognition, and perception depends both on the global form, configural information and local information of a body in motion. Depending on the situation, either global or local motions will be more salient and processed to a greater extent by the perceptual system. Previous research has shown that the local and configural information contained in the feet play an important role for identification, direction discrimination and the inversion effect. The salience of the feet for perception has previously been studied when they are subjected to focused attention, but not reflexive attention. The goal of this study was to investigate if the local and configural information of the feet can trigger reflexive attention and be incidentally processed by the visual system in a direction discrimination task. To test this experimentally, a masking paradigm was used where the feet were placed in a mask consisting of scrambled walkers. The results show that the feet affect recognition of target direction when the target is upright, but not when inverted. An interesting and unexpected finding was that for upright targets, the feet aid recognition when they move in the opposite direction of the target. Due to the experimental setup, it is difficult to say with certainty what the results imply, and suggestions for a follow-up study are presented. / Kognitionsvetenskap handlar om hur människor tänker, uppfattar världen och interagerar med omgivningen och med andra människor. Inom kognitiv psykologi har människors förmåga att uppfatta andra människors och djurs rörelser studerats länge. Vi kan känna igen vänner och familj på det unika sätt som de rör sig och forskningen har visat att vi har förmågan att identifiera många olika typer av rörelser och handlingar även när den tillgängliga informationen är minimal. Studier som använt s.k. punktljusdisplayer, där endast vita punkter som representerar kroppens stora leder visas mot en svart bakgrund, har visat att förmågan att känna igen biologiska rörelser är mycket känslig och robust för störningar. Forskare har undersökt vilken information hos rörelser som vi använder för att lyckas med detta, och hur visuell perception och uppmärksamhet fungerar då vi tittar på punktljusdisplayer. Det har visat sig att fötterna har en stor inverkan på igenkänning av rörelseriktning och att det framförallt är på grund av fötterna som det är svårt att känna igen rörelser som presenteras uppochner. Något som inte har testats tidigare är om fötterna är så starka signaler att de kan påverka vår perception även om vi inte riktar fokuserad uppmärksamhet mot dem, utan endast reflexiv uppmärksamhet. Den här studien har testat om fötter kan trigga just reflexiv uppmärksamhet och påverka hur vi känner igen rörelseriktningen hos en gående punktljus-figur. Resultaten visar att fötternas specifika rörelsemönster kan trigga reflexiv uppmärksamhet i situationer då rörelserna är upprätta och då fötterna rör sig i motsatt riktning från den figur som deltagare fokuserar på. Experimentdesignen har dock inneburit att resultaten är svåra att tolka. För att säkrare kunna säga huruvida resultaten beror på fötterna föreslås en ny studie, och detaljer kring vilka justeringar som borde göras i en sådan studie presenteras.

Walker's latest three novels address in some way walker's notions of spirituality and her idea that many people suffer from a type of spiritual sickness which prevents them from realizing the fullest extent of their spirituality. The well as with themselves. Possessing the Secret of Joy doesnot discuss Walker's thoughts on spirituality as much as her earlier works. Instead, the book focuses on Tashi, the main character, who suffers a form of physical mutilation which leads to her spiritual suffering.By looking at Walker's novels and by reading other works, both fictional and nonfictional, including the influential work The Great Cosmic Mother by Monica Sjoo and Barbara Mor, I have developed a theory of Walker's spirituality. Using this idea about spirituality, I then examined Walker's novels for evidence of forms of spiritual sickness in her characters and studied the ways in which the characters overcame their respective spiritual difficulties. / Department of English

The establishment of effective relationships is fundamental to good nursing practice and the fulfillment of nurses’ moral responsibilities. While intrapartum nurses are uniquely placed to establish relationships that can directly influence the woman’s experience of childbirth, there has been limited investigation of the relationships, identities and values that underlie nurses’ varied approaches and responses to labouring women. The purpose of this study was to explore intrapartum nurses’ understanding of their moral responsibilities from a social-moral perspective, using Margaret Urban Walker’s “expressive-collaborative” model of morality. Interviews were conducted with fourteen registered nurses working in a birthing unit of a Canadian teaching hospital. Four themes were identified that captured nurses’ moral responsibilities, including: organizing and coordinating care, responding to the unpredictable, recognizing limits of responsibilities to others, and negotiating care with women and families. Nurses enacted their moral responsibilities to labouring women in a variety of ways depending on their personal and professional experience, the circumstances, the people involved and the context of care. A key factor influencing responses to women was the degree to which understandings and expectations related to birth were deemed to be reasonable and mutually agreed upon among nurses, physicians, women and their families. Nurses also described limits on their responsibilities to others. Their choice of response to circumstances in which practice was constrained departed from the idealized expectations and ‘expert’ practices often reflected in professional guidelines. While nurses were able to identify contextual influences that constrained their ability to maintain effective relationships with women, the influence of their own values on the care they provided was less apparent. This suggests a need to challenge normative assumptions related to care of women in childbirth, including the provision of choice and family centred care, in order to create environments that can support and sustain practices that build understanding, mutuality and trust between nurses and birthing woman. In addition, given the contested nature of childbirth and the lack of shared understandings of what constitutes ‘best’ care, there is a need to develop collaborative models of inter-professional maternity care that include the voices of women as a central component.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--Tufts University, 2001. / Adviser: Elizabeth Ammons. Submitted to the Dept. of English. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 268-289). Access restricted to members of the Tufts University community. Also available via the World Wide Web;

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Georgia State University, 2007. / Title from file title page. Jacqueline A. Rouse, committee chair; Ian C. Fletcher, Allison Calhoun-Brown, committee members. Electronic text (198 p.) : digital, PDF file. Description based on contents viewed Nov. 28, 2007. Includes bibliographical references (p. 191-198).