Intersecting identities: labour and delivery nurses' experience of pregnancy and childbirth

L&D nurses play an integral role in the childbirth experience. With a predicted shortage of nurses and an increasing number of women experiencing complications in pregnancy, it is essential that the needs of L&D nurses are understood so they can continue to meet the growing demands of their profession. Although research pertaining to midwifery and L&D nursing is growing, studies pertaining to pregnant registered nurses working on L&D are limited. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to begin to address this gap. My primary research question was: “What is the pregnancy and birth experience of a registered nurse working on L&D?” To address this question, data were collected through individual, semistructured interviews completed via videoconferencing with nurses who worked while pregnant on L&D units. From these data, thematic analysis resulted in one overarching theme of transformation. The thematic arc of transformation captures the transitions of a pregnant nurse’s identity as she becomes pregnant, experiences her own birth story, returns to practice, and views birthing with new eyes because of her own journey. The theme of transformation is supported by three categories, with each category representing unique transitions the nurse goes through: (a) balancing act, (b) the power of the sisterhood, and (c) becoming a mother. Providing a description of an L&D nurse’s pregnancy and childbirth experience can inform how human and professional resources are allocated and implemented for L&D nurses who work while pregnant, which may increase the retention and well-being of these skilled healthcare providers

Impact de quelques notions morphosyntaxiques anglaises sur l’écrit des apprenants anglophones du français langue seconde

In the learning of French among Anglophone L2 French learners in an English-speaking environment, some French grammatical structures tend to be negatively influenced by their dominant language, English. This study seeks to explore the negative impact that certain English morphosyntactic elements have on the writing of anglophone learners in French. The study focuses on two basic grammatical elements common to both languages: possessive pronouns and past participle. Learners’ errors in French are investigated based on the theories of contrastive analysis propounded by Bloomfield and Skinner as well as Corder’s error analysis. This study also makes use of the theory of translanguaging in formulating questionnaires. The results of the study, based on tests administered to intermediate level French students at the University of Lethbridge show that the grammatical errors committed in written French are directly linked to both interlinguistic interference and the phenomenon of overgeneralization, which is intralinguistic. / Dans l'apprentissage du français comme L2 chez les apprenants anglophones dans un environnement anglophone, la langue dominante, l’anglais, a tendance à influencer négativement l’acquisition de certaines structures grammaticales. Cette étude vise à explorer l'impact négatif de certains éléments morphosyntaxiques anglais sur l'écrit en français des apprenants anglophones. L'étude porte sur deux éléments grammaticaux de base communs aux deux langues : les pronoms possessifs et les participes passés. Les erreurs en français des apprenants sont étudiées sur la base des théories de l'analyse contrastive proposées par Bloomfield et Skinner ainsi que de l'analyse des erreurs de Corder. Cette étude se sert également de la théorie du « translanguaging » dans la formulation des questionnaires. Les résultats de l'étude, basés sur des tests administrés aux étudiants de français au niveau intermédiaire à l'Université de Lethbridge, montrent que les erreurs grammaticales commises à l’écrit en français sont directement liées à la fois à l'interférence interlinguistique et au phénomène de surgénéralisation qui est intralinguistique

An attachment parenting group for caregivers of adolescents who self-injure

Collected Parenting: Using Attachment to Care for Self-Injury is an eight-week psychoeducational counselling group that was designed to support those who are caring for an adolescent who engages in non-suicidal self-injury (NSSI). The group content was developed based off of a comprehensive literature review on self-injury and attachment informed parenting. The Collected Parenting Group was developed to provide caregivers with education about NSSI, a space for them to receive support from peers and mental health professionals, as well as education about attachment informed parenting and practical strategies for using it to care for and manage NSSI. A group leader’s manual is provided to guide the organizing, content structure, marketing and facilitation of the Collected Parenting Group.Social Sciences and Humanities Research Counci

Two types of withdraw-to-eat movement related to food size in long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis): insights into the evolution of the visual control of hand shaping in anthropoid primates

Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution 3.0 Unported License (CC BY 3.0) appliesThe details of the evolutionary steps in the transition from nonvisual guidance of hand movements for feeding, as displayed by many non-primate species, to visual guidance of hand movements in primates are sparse. Contemporary theory holds that a small-bodied stem primate evolved visual control of the reach to guide a hand to obtain small insects and fruit items from the terminal branches of trees. The subsequent evolution of the visual control of hand and finger shaping movements of the grasp of anthropoids is uncertain. The present study finds that Balinese long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis), video recorded while spontaneously eating at the Sacred Monkey Forest Sanctuary in Ubud in Indonesia, displayed two types of hand movements associated with two types of withdraw movements to place food items in the mouth. Small food items were brought directly to the mouth with hand supination, often with no visual monitoring after grasping. Large food items that protruded from the hand were visually monitored to orient the food item on the initial part of the withdraw but visually disengaged with a head movement and often a blink before the item was placed in the mouth. The results are discussed in relation to the idea that visual information related to orientating food items of varying sizes to an appropriate position in the mouth contributed to the evolution of the visual control of hand shaping skills in anthropoid primates.Ye

"I'm a little bit like a small-town preacher, these people are my congregation": conducting professional journalism in rural Alberta

93 pagesIn rural settings, professional work is adapted to fit the needs of the community (Mellow, 2005). I question what, if any, professional adaptations are made by journalists who work in rural communities. The production of journalistic work is highly contextual, and it is important to understand how working in rural areas impacts the development of a professional identity in journalists. I approach this study through a symbolic interactionist lens, utilizing semi-structured interviews with journalists working in a designated rural community in Alberta. Between July- August 2021, nine journalists were interviewed. My findings show deep, ingrained attachments that journalists have to their communities. These participants take the notion of objectivity and mold it to their own unique surroundings and relationships, highlighting the evident subjectivity of objective reporting. These findings are compared with the state of local media in Canada with a discussion on the changing nature of journalistic work

Mathematical modeling of eIF5B-mediated non-canonical translation initiation as a chemotherapeutic target

Glioblastoma is an extremely aggressive brain cancer that has a median survival time of 15 months, and a 95% mortality rate within 5 years. Standard-of-care therapy has not changed in over 15 years, and has unfortunately been limited in success. Glioblastomas tend to grow rapidly, creating hypoxic conditions within their cells. Under these conditions, the alpha subunit of eIF2 is phosphorylated, resulting in its inability to deliver the initiator tRNA to the ribosome during canonical translation initiation. In healthy cells, if the stress persists and is not alleviated, this may trigger a form of programmed cell death known as apoptosis. However, cancer cells exploit a non-canonical translation initiation pathway that replaces eIF2 with eIF5B to deliver the tRNAi to the pre-initiation complex. Some anti-apoptotic proteins are translated using this pathway, such as X-linked inhibitor of apoptosis (XIAP). The XIAP mRNA contains an IRES element which allows it to be translated using this non-canonical pathway. XIAP is up-regulated in glioblastoma cells, and therefore the eIF5B-mediated non-canonical translation initiation pathway is a promising therapeutic target for those suffering from this deadly disease. In this thesis, ordinary differential equation (ODE) and delay-differential equation (DDE) models are assembled to analyze the canonical and non-canonical translation initiation pathways. Four inhibitor classes are proposed and examined for both pathways. Results are presented in the forms of sensitivity analyses, 3D surface plots and contour plots which allow us to determine several potentially therapeutically effective combinations of inhibitor concentrations and KD values for each mode of inhibition. The results indicate that a direct eIF5B inhibitor or non-canonical ternary complex inhibitor are the most promising therapeutic targets.New Frontiers in Research Fun

Comment le droit d'auteur entrave à la créativité et à l'apprentissage, et comment les communautés canadiennes d'études sur les médias peuvent agir

Open access. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC 4.0) appliesYe

Recreational trail impacts on the plant communities of Castle and Castle Wildland Provincial Parks in southern Alberta

I measured the effect of recreational trails on plant species richness, community composition, and the presence of exotic and rare species in the Castle Provincial Parks of Alberta, Canada, by surveying 142 transects adjacent to or far from trails. I also characterized the habitat of species from the rare genus Botrychium Swartz and tested a species distribution model (SDM) to identify suitable Botrychium habitat. Plant communities near trails had higher species richness, shifts in composition, and greater occurrence of exotic plant species. These effects extended farther from off-highway vehicle (OHV) trails than from footpaths, but only in mixed/broadleaf and shrubland vegetation. The SDM was not a strong predictor of Botrychium presence, but I found Botrychium in 29% of surveyed sites. To minimize trail effects such as colonization by exotic species, managers should prioritize closing trails to OHVs or limiting OHV traffic, particularly in mixed/broadleaf and shrubland vegetation.Alberta Conservation Association, Alberta Environment and Park

"Always at work": Canadian academic librarian work during COVID-19

Open access article. Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 International license (CC BY-NC-ND 4.0) appliesTo learn about the experiences of librarians working through COVID-19, we conducted semi-structured interviews with academic librarians from across Canada on issues such as workload, collegiality, and overall satisfaction with their working conditions during the pandemic. Themes emerged around job security, workload changes (both in terms of hours worked and the type of work being done), working from home, relationships with colleagues and administrators (including the perceived speed of the institution’s pandemic response and the state of communication from or with administration), and hopes for the future. This article focuses on the semantic elements of librarian work during COVID-19 uncovered during thematic analysis, including an in-depth discussion of how academic librarians’ workload changed; a second planned article will focus on latent themes on the caring nature of library work. This study connects isolated individual situations with the overall picture of what librarians’ work looked and felt like during the COVID-19 pandemic. For library administrators, we identify the ways in which institutional support helped or hindered librarians in doing their work.Ye

Making sense of employment after a cardiac arrhythmia diagnosis

The sensemaking process that employees engage in after receiving the life altering diagnosis of cardiac arrhythmia has not been examined to date. This interpretive study uses sensemaking as a framework of data collection and analysis to examine the employment-related processes, procedures, and activities that individuals undertake after being diagnosed with a cardiac arrhythmia. Qualitative research methods are used to explore this experience from the viewpoint of the employee.Cardiac Arrhythmia Network of Canada (CANet