The psychological basis of adolescent worship

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston UniversityFor the basic psychological characteristics that in turn will assist in determining a program of worship, we have considered but five, others of which could be added. Those mentioned are habit, social consciousness, conversion, loyalty and hero-worship. Each of these we feel are essential if we are to properly and adequately construct a worship program

Women’s experiences and reactions when a fetal malformation is detected by ultrasound examination

Background: Second trimester ultrasound examination among pregnant women in Sweden is almost universal. The detection of a fetal malformation on ultrasound puts health care providers and pregnant women in a difficult and precarious situation. What information and how it is communicated is crucial to women’s decision-making about continuing or terminating at pregnancy. The main aim of this thesis was to describe and analyze women’s experiences and reactions following the detection of a fetal malformation on an ultrasound scan. Methods: Two semi-structured in-depth interviews were performed, with women informed of a fetal malformation following an ultrasound scan. A total of 27 women took part in the first round of interviews: women continuing their pregnancy were interviewed, either in gestational week 30 or three weeks after the diagnosis; those terminating their pregnancy were interviewed two to four weeks after termination (Paper I). A second interview with 11 women who terminated their pregnancy was conducted six months after termination (Paper III). Two questionnaires were also administered. The first, answered by 99 women (Paper II) and comprising 22 study- specific questions along with emotional well-being and socio-demographics variables and medical and obstetric history, was conducted at the same time as the first stage of interviews. The other questionnaire, answered by 56 women incorporated common self- report instruments and was performed three times: first in gestational week 30, and then two respectively six months postpartum (Paper IV). Qualitative data were analyzed through content analysis, and quantitative data were analyzed through descriptive statistics. Results: The timing, duration, and manner of women’s initial counseling and ongoing support were shown to be important in the interaction between women and caregivers. Positive interactions improved the women’s ability to understand the information and fostered feelings of trust and safety, which in turn reduced their anxiety. Most of the women who expected a baby with an abnormality expressed their need for information on several occasions to help them make this difficult decision. They also wished for information from different specialists and continuity of care. These needs were even stronger in women who chose to terminate their pregnancy. We found women continuing their pregnancy to be at high risk of depressive symptoms, major worries, and high anxiety levels, both in mid-pregnancy, and at two months and one year postpartum. Despite these findings, the results of the maternal-fetal attachment scale for women who continued their pregnancy with a fetus diagnosed with a malformation indicated a high level of attachment. Conclusions and Clinical Implications: Effective communication, empathy and compassion, and consistent follow-up routines are important to ensure good treatment and care of this group of women. Taking these results into account may improve caregivers’ ability to counsel these vulnerable patients and to ensure that their needs are properly met

Rockfall and snow avalanche impact dynamics for road protection design at Svarthola, Senja. A hazard evaluation aided by numerical models and physical formulas

Rockfalls and snow avalanches are a major natural hazard and common phenomenon in mountainous areas in Norway, endangering people and infrastructure. Svarthola, on Fv 862, Senja, is a 100 m long unprotected stretch of road that experiences a high frequency of mass movements. The road is situated at a tunnel portal, between a 100 m high cliff and the fjord. As such, it is the only short access route between the northern and western parts of the island, and frequent road closures have created safety and access issues. It is therefore classified by Troms and Finnmark County as one of the most dangerous roads in the region, and the installation of a protection structure is considered necessary. This study focuses on the impact dynamics from rockfalls (kinetic energy, velocity, jump height) and snow avalanches (snow pressure, velocity, flow height) at Svarthola for protection design. An analysis of the hazard at the site was performed through fieldwork and desktop mapping in order to estimate the size of the mass movements relevant for the design. This data were used in numerical modelling to obtain the impact dynamics. The road experiences frequent rock fall inundation, with boulders up to 2 m3 causing damage and road closures. Rockfall analysis shows variable impact dynamics for the different event scenarios, ranging from 1,700 kJ for annual events up to 7,100 kJ for a 100-year event. The analysis showed impact velocities between 22 and 50 m/s. The median jump heights were 0.9-1.2 m, where some rock blocks can jump >20 m if they hit the lower cliff part above the road. The fall height of a block can be up to 100 m. The road experiences a lower frequency of snow avalanches but they are often leading to road closures. Impact dynamics were obtained through numerical modelling and physical formulas. The impact dynamics for a 100-year dry-slab avalanche event with a volume of 16,900 m3 is estimated as follows: snow pressure of 130-270 kPa, impact velocity between 20 and 37 m/s and flow height of 2-3.7 m in the northern part of the road and up to 1.2 m in the southern part. Finally, an analysis of the relationship between the rockfall and avalanche history and climate factors were done with the aim to propose the implications of climate change. Svarthola will most likely experience more rockfall events in the future due to the projected increase in rainfall intensity and frequency. The dry-snow avalanche hazard may disappear completely due to the rarity of snow cover in these low coastal areas, but the likelihood of wet-snow avalanches and slushflows may increase in a wetter climate

Wasted Intuitions: New York City’s Solid Waste Management System and the Ambiguous Effects of Traditional Collective Good Provision Analysis

Refuse Collection services\u27 status as a public good has been highly contested. As it is both rivalrous and excludable, basic theory predicts that private provision of solid waste management services will be more efficient. Private trash carters are able to specialize in a way that municipality-run services simply cannot. New York City is unique in that its solid waste management system is rigidly split: residential trash is managed by the city; commercial trash is managed by private businesses. This thesis explores how New York City\u27s public and private solid waste management systems complicate these initial intuitions through a welfare analysis. Price, wage, and operating efficiency are used to measure consumer, employee, and employer welfare respectively. New York City’s private refuse collection industry is characterized by weak unions, systemic bloat, and poor safety standards. Furthermore, they offer higher prices, lower wages, and are less efficient in comparison to their public counterpart. The city hopes to assuage some of these problems by creating Commercial Waste Zones

Numerical studies of rotationally controlled lock exchange flow over a sill

Numerical experiments of lab scale on dense water inflow in a channel initially filled with freshwater, where a sill is present. The focus has been on the dynamics at the top of the sill, and especially on the behavior of the flow when rotation is added.Masteroppgave i anvendt og beregningsorientert matematikkMAMN-MABMAB39

From Tweets to the Streets. New Media and Political Engagement - A Case Study of Amnesty International and the Egyptian Uprisings

Despite the so-called ‘great retreat’, in which people arguably are distancing themselves from the political sphere and civic engagement, the last two years has seen an upsurge in political activities. Outside the realms of institutionalised politics, i.e. political parties, lies a whole terrain of alternative political activities, including social movements and media institutions. Following the Egyptian revolution in 2011 there has been increased attention on the democratic potential of new media with the coining of terms, such as “Facebook revolution” and “Twitter revolution”. The question remains, however, to what extent new media can facilitate political empowerment and participation. Through a case study of Amnesty International and the Egyptian uprisings this paper will argue that faced with few attractive political opportunities, the Egyptian people created their own democratic space, a digital public sphere, where they could impact on society. This paper further argues that new media facilitates communication, rapid information exchange and education by opening up operational spaces for marginalised groups who might otherwise be excluded from the public sphere due to power hierarchies. Furthermore, new media challenges mainstream media’s hegemony and information monopoly by increasing the number of voices in public deliberation. However, it will be emphasised that despite the technology-as-progress discourse, one should not place too much value on new media as facilitator for social and political change. Nevertheless, based on a broad definition of the political, that acknowledges maximalist forms of democratic participation, we may begin to understand the democratic potential of new media

Population Dynamics and Genotypic Richness of the Threatened Acropora spp. and their Hybrid in the U.S. Virgin Islands

Since the 1980’s, there has been an unprecedented decline in the reef-building Caribbean corals, Acropora cervicornis and A. palmata, which has led to their listing as “threatened” under the U.S Endangered Species Act. Despite this protective status, these Acropora species continue to experience declines primarily attributed to disease, global climate change, and storm damage. Recent evidence suggests the hybrid of these threatened species (A. prolifera) is found at abundances similar to or higher than the parental species at many sites throughout the Caribbean. However, there is still much that is unknown as to how and why hybrids may be increasing in abundance at select sites. In 2007, scientists from NOAA NMFS established 9 permanent transects at three sites in the USVI to quantify fish diversity and coral tissue condition in A. cervicornis thickets. Over the years, they observed that A. prolifera seemed to be increasing in abundance on transects that were once dominated by A. cervicornis. This dataset provided a unique opportunity to investigate whether a shift from a threatened parental species to its hybrid may have occurred. This study has two objectives, (1) to quantify the change in A. cervicornis and A. prolifera percent cover and colony health over a 9-year period, and (2) to compare the genotypic diversity among the three Caribbean acroporids on and near the transects to determine the primary method of propagation, i.e., sexual versus asexual. For this study, I used transect photographs taken in March, July and November 2009, April 2012, and August 2017 to compare intra- and interannual variation in acroporid cover and colony health. Striking losses were observed in A. cervicornis cover between March 2009 and August 2017. At Thatch Cay, A. cervicornis declined from 25.7% to 8.9% between March 2009 and November 2009, but remained stable (10.2%) up to August 2017. Acropora cervicornis cover declined from 13.2% to 0% at Lovango Cay, and from 8.2% to 0% at No-Name Bay. At the one site (No-Name Bay) that A. prolifera was present during the original surveys of the transects, the percent cover remained relatively high and stable over the sample period. At No-Name Bay, A. prolifera percent cover (18.2%) was significantly higher than A. cervicornis (5.4%) by November 2009. It appears that A. prolifera expanded in the habitat left void by the decline in A. cervicornis. The general health of A. cervicornis based on the amount of healthy versus white and pale tissue appeared to decline at all sites between March 2009 and November 2009. To determine if the high percent cover on some transects was derived from asexual propagation or sexual recruitment, 139 tissue samples were collected in 2017 and genotyped using five microsatellite markers. No significant difference in genotypic richness (number of unique genotypes divided by the sample size) was observed among A. cervicornis (0.62), A. prolifera (0.64), and A. palmata (0.68). This suggests that the hybrid colonization is from multiple sexually derived individuals, not just asexual propagation from a rare hybridization event. High genotypic diversity, stable population abundance, and healthier colonies, suggest acroporid hybrids may become the primary habitat building coral of shallow reefs in the U.S. Virgin Islands. Due to considerable differences in morphologies between A. cervicornis and A. prolifera, it is unclear how a shift to the hybrid may affect the organisms that occupy acroporid structure and if the same ecological functions can be fulfilled

Effect of cinacalcet on urine calcium excretion and supersaturation in genetic hypercalciuric stone-forming rats

Idiopathic hypercalciuria is the most common metabolic abnormality in patients with nephrolithiasis. Through successive inbreeding, we have developed a strain of rats whose urine calcium (UCa) excretion is ∼8–10-fold greater than that of control rats and who spontaneously form kidney stones. We have termed these rats genetic hypercalciuric stone-forming (GHS) rats. The physiology of the hypercalciuria in the GHS rats closely parallels that of man. We have recently shown that the GHS rat kidneys have an increased number of receptors for calcium (CaR) compared to Sprague–Dawley rats, the strain of rats originally bred to develop the GHS rats. Calcimimetics, such as cinacalcet (Cin), increase the sensitivity of the CaR to Ca. The effects of Cin on UCa are complex and difficult to predict. We tested the hypothesis that Cin would alter urinary (U) Ca and supersaturation with respect to calcium hydrogen phosphate (CaHPO4) and calcium oxalate (CaOx). GHS or control rats were fed a normal Ca diet (0.6% Ca) for 28 days with Cin (30 mg/kg/24 h) added to the diet of half of each group for the last 14 days. The protocol was then repeated while the rats were fed a low Ca (0.02% Ca) diet. We found that Cin led to a marked reduction in circulating parathyroid hormone and a modest reduction in serum Ca. Cin did not alter UCa when the GHS rats were fed the normal Ca diet but lowered UCa when they were fed the low Ca diet. However, Cin did not alter U supersaturation with respect to either CaOx or CaHPO4 on either diet. If these findings in GHS rats can be confirmed in man, it suggests that Cin would not be an effective agent in the treatment of human idiopathic hypercalciuria and resultant stone formation