Self-Efficacy And Dependence In Personal & Clinical Relationships: A Qualitative Analysis Of Narratives About Life With Chronic Back Pain

Objectives: People with chronic back pain encounter considerable psychological and social challenges. Through personal narratives, this project examines the ever-evolving relationship between chronic back pain, sense of self-efficacy, and perceived role in interpersonal relationships, both in the community and within the health care system. Methods: In-person semi-structured interviews were conducted with 20 adult patients attending a specialized interventional spine pain clinic. The interview transcripts were subjected to inductive thematic analysis, and themes were labeled descriptively. Participant responses were intentionally not analyzed within the context of an existing theoretical framework, so that the content of participant responses would directly drive the emphasis of the findings. Results: Participants described chronic back pain as a lonely struggle amid diminished capacity to work, enjoy leisure time, and contribute to social relationships. Feelings of needing to handle pain independently contrasted with the reality of having to rely on others for help, and this tension created anxiety. Participants negotiated these emotional complexities in their relationships with treatment providers as well, needing to advocate for themselves in a system that often presented inadequate treatment options, and where providers varied in responsiveness to participants’ psychosocial experience of pain. Discussion: The lived experience of chronic back pain was characterized by a conflict between the desire for self-efficacy, a sense of isolation, and the paradoxical need to rely on others. Participants found existing biomedically focused treatment modalities to be largely inadequate in reducing pain, improving function, or enhancing their quality of life. Interdisciplinary interventions that allow patients to navigate chronic back pain by seeking help for their diminished capability, while rebuilding and retaining a sense of autonomy and self-worth, are indicated

Investigations Into the Pathogenesis of Acute Equine Laminitis.

A profound decrease in perfusion of the laminar capillaries has been documented during acute equine laminitis, resulting in ischemia of the laminar tissue. Oxygen radicals are believed to mediate ischemia/reperfusion injury. The effects of (1) three hours of surgical ligation of the major blood supply of the equine digit followed by ligature release, (2) resection of the medial and lateral palmar digital arteries, and (3) digital intraarterial infusions of an oxygen radical generating system, were investigated. Laminitis was not induced by any of these manipulations. Clinical signs and alterations in hemograms observed following these procedures are reported. Preliminary identification of xanthine oxidase and superoxide dismutase activities in laminar tissue is described. Due to similarities in physiologic alterations and histopathologic lesions, laminitis has been described as the manifestation of a Shwartzman reaction. The effects of palmar digital intraarterial infusions of E. coli endotoxin followed in 24 hours by jugular vein infusion of the same endotoxin were investigated. Clinical signs and alterations in hemograms were consistent with the known effects of endotoxin in the horse. Laminitis did not develop. Exposure to black walnut (Juglans nigra) trees or shavings has been associated with the development of laminitis in the horse. Experimentally, laminitis may be consistently induced by the intragastric administration of an aqueous extract of black walnut heartwood. The laminogenic agent in black walnut has not been reported. In the present study the partial characterization of black walnut heartwood extracts was accomplished by gas chromatographic/mass spectrometric methods. Subsequently, identified components of the extracts were individually administered to horses, as were various crude fractions obtained from pH fractionations and precipitations of black walnut heartwood extracts. The clinical effects and laminogenic potentials of each is reported

An analysis of English textbooks on fifth grade level on oral reporting

Thesis (M.A.)--Boston University, 1949. This item was digitized by the Internet Archive

The Spark That Lit the Flame: The Creation, Deployment, and Deconstruction of the Story of Mohammed Bouazizi and the Arab Spring

The story of Mohammed Bouazizi is credited with being the spark that lit the flame, first of the Tunisian Revolution, then the Arab Spring as a whole, creating a domino effect that brought down the Tunisian, Egyptian, Libyan and Yemeni leaders, and threatened to topple still more. In this thesis I explore the narrative structure of the Tunisian revolution, how the story of Mohammed Bouazizi represented that structure and how the narrative sparked the Arab Spring. I also ask how narrative is created and what role social media played in allowing this particular story to become a part of the national narrative. Through an examination of the Tunisian narrative in history and from multiple angles, I endeavor to place Mohammed Bouazizi\u27s story in its proper context. Finally, I come to the conclusion that the story is more a product of collective narrative and consciousness than a triumph of truth in medi

An officiating training program for high school girls in field hockey, basketball, and softball

This item was digitized by the Internet Archive. Thesis (Ed.M.)--Boston Universityhttps://archive.org/details/officiatingtrain00cum

New Approaches in Engineering Somatic Embryogenesis in Loblolly Pine Suspension Cultures

Many industries including agriculture and healthcare require efficient methods for replication of plants with optimal traits. The loblolly pine (Pinus taeda) is a valuable crop in the timber industry, occupying 30 million acres of U.S. land, and breeding efforts aim to produce a crop with ideal phenotypic traits, including superior growth and wood quality. One method to large-scale clonal crop propagation is somatic embryogenesis (SE), the process through which asexual (somatic) plant cells undergo differentiation in vitro, resulting in germination-competent embryos. There are three main stages of growth and development that lead to the production of embryos: 1) aggregated cells that form embryonic suspensor masses (ESMs) are grown and scaled up in maintenance cultures; 2) ESMs are plated on solid media to initiate SE; and 3) embryos are separated from the ESM and germinated to generate plants. However, this process is not fundamentally understood, leading to large, unpredictable variability in embryo yield, a number only determined 8-12 weeks downstream of SE initiation. This work aims to glean fundamental insight into culture dynamics and correlations with outcomes while simultaneously providing engineering strategies to improve embryo yield. Here, a variety of process manipulations and their effects on SE process outcomes and performance are presented. Induction of stress-related pathways through exogenous addition of plant stress hormones prior to moving a culture into development was shown to improve the rate of SE, and this knowledge was used to explore a means for more efficient embryo production. A clear link between the total volume of small cell aggregates and embryo yield was demonstrated, enabling yield prediction at a timepoint 12 weeks before previously possible. Finally, methods for culture protein modification without genetic transformation were developed through inhibition or supplementation of endogenous extracellular arabinogalactan proteins (AGPs), which were found to significantly influence SE in loblolly pine. Techniques were developed to characterize the influence of these treatments on embryo yield as well as the molecular response of the cultures, including culture stress (determined by phenolic content), growth (using a Coulter counter), and total and specific protein biomarkers. The work presented here is among the first studies that consider process engineering as a simple and cost-effective means to improve the overall feasibility of SE on both an academic and industrial scale