Mrs. Brook: Confidence Woman and Mother Usurper

The presentation of Mrs. Brook in The Awkward Age is problematic. James seems to have intended to portray her sympathetically. Yet he will not allow the reader to feel sympathy for her. I suggest that James undermines the very sympathy he wants to evoke, because Mrs. Brook would otherwise have too much power. Combined in her are two character types which appear frequently in James\u27s novels, and which I call the confidence woman and the mother usurper. Occasionally, a mother usurper may show some of the confidence woman\u27s traits, or vice versa. But the two types always (with the exception of Mrs. Brook) serve discrete functions and exercise discrete powers. As a result of their combination in her, Mrs. Brook shows the tendency to become a much more significant character than James wants either confidence women or mother usurpers to be. It is necessary, therefore, to undo her in some way, and James undoes her by undermining the sympathy we would otherwise have for her

Racial Attitudes of University Faculty Members: Does Interracial Contact Matter?

Using primary data from a Midwestern university, this study examines racial attitudes of white faculty members. Contact theory is used to understand the variation in the number of racial minority students that white faculty members advise, independent of individual characteristics and social organizational factors. Findings indicate that white faculty members rate Asian/Asian American college students most favorably overall. In general, faculty then ranked white, African American, Latino, and Native American college students in descending order with respect to a host of characteristics. Finally, supporting contact theory, white faculty members who went to high schools with more racial minorities and who work with more colleagues who are racial minorities are significantly more likely to advise racial minority students. One implication of these outcomes is that greater interracial contact between white faculty members and racial minority colleagues and students is likely to have a positive impact on campus climate race relations

The Use of Magnets for Introducing Primary School Students to Some Properties of Forces Through Small-group Pedagogy

Seventeen Grade Six students were divided into small groups to study the concept of forces in the context of magnets and their properties. The researcher, a pre-service primary school teacher, encouraged the students into conversation about magnets and it was found that, without hesitation, they talked about their prior experience of magnets. The words, \u27pushing\u27 and \u27pulling\u27, endemic to an early introduction to the notion of force, were used spontaneously by the students when referring to the repulsion and attraction properties of magnets. In conversation, the students were prepared to make claims or hypotheses about magnet behaviour and often sought evidence for these. This study indicates that, given the right context, the rudimentary elements of argumentation can be appropriated naturally by children. In this paper, the focus is on the push-pull character of forces and the fact that forces appear to interact in pairs. [Author abstract

Using bicistronic constructs to evaluate the chaperone activities of heat shock proteins in cells

Heat shock proteins (Hsps) are molecular chaperones that prevent the aggregation of client proteins by facilitating their refolding, or trafficking them for degradation. The chaperone activities of Hsps are dependent on dynamic protein-protein interactions, including their oligomerisation into large multi-subunit complexes. Thus, tagging Hsps with fluorescent proteins can interfere with their chaperone activity. To overcome this limitation, we have exploited bicistronic constructs for the concurrent expression of a non-Tagged Hsp and fluorescent reporter from a single mRNA in cells. We used the Hsp-encoding bicistronic constructs in a cell-based model of protein aggregation, using a destabilised (mutant) form of firefly luciferase (mFluc) that forms inclusion bodies in cells. Expression of Hsp40, Hsp70, or Hsp40 and Hsp70 in cells expressing mFluc decreased the formation of inclusion bodies by 25-46% compared to controls. Moreover, there was a concentration-dependent decrease in the proportion of cells with inclusions when Hsp70, or Hsp40 and Hsp70 were co-expressed with mFluc in cells. The Hsp-encoding bicistronic constructs enable transfection efficiencies and concentration-dependent effects of Hsp expression to be determined using fluorescence based techniques, without the need to tag the Hsp with a fluorescent protein

Mathematical modelling with Bayesian inference to quantitatively characterize therapeutic cell behaviour in nerve tissue engineering

Cellular engineered neural tissues have significant potential to improve peripheral nerve repair strategies. Traditional approaches depend on quantifying tissue behaviours using experiments in isolation, presenting a challenge for an overarching framework for tissue design. By comparison, mathematical cell–solute models benchmarked against experimental data enable computational experiments to be performed to test the role of biological/biophysical mechanisms, as well as to explore the impact of different design scenarios and thus accelerate the development of new treatment strategies. Such models generally consist of a set of continuous, coupled, partial differential equations relying on a number of parameters and functional forms. They necessitate dedicated in vitro experiments to be informed, which are seldom available and often involve small datasets with limited spatio-temporal resolution, generating uncertainties. We address this issue and propose a pipeline based on Bayesian inference enabling the derivation of experimentally informed cell–solute models describing therapeutic cell behaviour in nerve tissue engineering. We apply our pipeline to three relevant cell types and obtain models that can readily be used to simulate nerve repair scenarios and quantitatively compare therapeutic cells. Beyond parameter estimation, the proposed pipeline enables model selection as well as experiment utility quantification, aimed at improving both model formulation and experimental design

Mer än produkter - En diskursanalytisk studie av friande och fällande uttalanden från Reklamombudsmannen

More than Products : A discourse analytical study of the vindicating and convicting dictums from the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman In society today we are exposed to more advertising than ever before. In Sweden the design of advertisements are regulated in part by laws and in part by a self-regulating system called the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman. Amongst other things, the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman handles advertisements that have been reported discriminating on the basis of gender. Studies show that exposure to advertisements that portray women as objects or in sexualized ways can contribute to an acceptance of violence against women and van reduce self-image amongst women. The following study aims to examin the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman‘s vindicating and convicting dictums and what values these dictums convey about women. We have studied 30 dictums and made a discourse analysis with the theoretical framework of intersectionality and gender. Our findings show six different discourses that explains how the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman justifies their vindicating and convicting dictums. We found that women are being portrayed as lesser human beings. They are often reduced to sex objects and dehumanized. Even though the Swedish Advertising Ombudsman has taken on the mission to condemn advertisements that are degrading towards women, this study show that discriminative and offensive values are present and reproduced both in the convicting and vindicating dictums

The influence of taphonomy on histological and isotopic analyses of treated and untreated buried modern human bone

The chemical (e.g., preservation/embalming) treatment of skeletal remains can reduce overall DNA quality and quantity. The histological and stable isotope examination of treated and untreated human remains improves our understanding of how chemical preservatives impact bone diagenesis and will determine if chemical treatment adversely affects stable isotope ratio analysis of collagen. Fidelity in the application(s) of stable isotope interpretations requires that the isotope delta (δ) values have not been altered postmortem. Re-associated antimeres and refits of chemically treated and untreated rib and long bones from eight casualties [thin-sectioned human bone (n = 43) and collagen extraction/stable isotope analysis (n = 42)] from the World War II Battle of Tarawa were examined to compare skeletal elements from the same individual that had different taphonomic histories. Histological analyses included scoring upon the Oxford Histological Index (OHI) and Birefringence scale, recording microbial invasion, and general observations. The collected data were analyzed via simple descriptive statistics and paired samples t-tests. Treated remains scored higher on the OHI and for Birefringence, indicating that bone quality was good to excellent. The untreated samples scored lower on the OHI and Birefringence scales suggesting poorer preservation than the treated remains. Histology results were supported by the isotope sample preparation results: the collagen % yield was higher for treated bone than untreated bone. Additionally, chemical preservation had no meaningful impact on isotope δ values of treated and untreated remains from the same element or pair-matched elements. Overall, treated remains exhibited good preservation while untreated remains exhibit poorer preservation with significant microfocal destruction to the extent that little histological analyses can be applied. Stable isotope ratio analysis is viable for both treated and untreated remains indicating this testing modality likely can be used for most treated remains, regardless of origin

Lactate concentrations after functionality test in trotters with upper airway diseases

I denne studien har vi sett på om det er en sammenheng mellom laktatverdier i blodet og lufttrykkmålinger på travhester med øvre luftveislidelser undersøkt på tredemølla ved NMBU dyresykehuset-hest. Formålet med studien var å se om det finnes en sammenheng mellom signifikante endringer i trakealtrykket og laktatverdier i blodet. Hypotesen var at hester med en alvorlig øvre luftveislidelse vil få høyere laktatverdier i blodet som følge av redusert oksygen inn og raskere aktivering av anaerobe systemer. Trakealtrykkmålingene ble brukt som en objektiv verdi på alvorlighetsgraden av obstruksjonen, i tillegg til diagnostisering ved hjelp av videoendoskopi. Det var ingen statistisk sammenheng mellom signifikante endringer i trakealtrykket og økte laktatverdier, selv om hestene med signifikante endringer i trakealtrykket hadde gjennomsnittlig høyere laktatkonsentrasjoner i blodet. En tilleggsundersøkelse ved studien var at undersøke hvor nøyaktig den håndholdte laktatmåleren Scout4 var til å måle laktat, sammenlignet med gullstandarden blodgass. Den håndholdte laktatmåleren var lite nøyaktig ved de nivåer av laktat hestene i studien nådde opp i