An examination of gender differences in attitudes towards partner infidelity

The present study is designed to take a new approach to studying gender differences in reactions to partner infidelity by measuring attitudes toward partner infidelity. No previous studies have directly examined attitudes toward partner sexual versus emotional infidelity, nor have studies assessed the strength of these attitudes. Thus, this study was designed as an initial investigation of overall evaluative differences between men and women. It was found that women held significantly more negative attitudes towards emotional infidelity than did men, with no gender differences in attitude held towards sexual infidelity. For sexual infidelity, more positive attitudes toward partner sexual infidelity were associated with lower reported distress for both men and women, with the relationship being significantly more pronounced for men. For emotional infidelity, attitude strength moderated the relationship between attitude towards emotional infidelity and distress about emotional infidelity. There was a significant relationship between attitudes toward partner emotional infidelity and distress when attitude strength was high but not when attitude strength was low.Department of Psychological ScienceThesis (M.A.

Respecting Working Mothers with Infant Children: The Need for Increased Federal Intervention to Develop, Protect, and Support a Breastfeeding Culture in the United States

The author argues that the benefits of breastfeeding are overwhelming and that more needs to be done to ensure that all women have a viable option to continue breastfeeding upon returning to work, particularly the working poor and minorities. Those least likely to breastfeed are more likely to be part of an at risk population in terms of health. Most significantly, the lack of a cohesive policy in the workplace has had a disparate impact on the most vulnerable populations of breastfeeding mothers and their children. The lack of federal protection and a patchwork of protection in the states have contributed to our failure to achieve breastfeeding goals set in the 1990\u27s. Federal laws and decisions are reviewed. The author has undertaken a comprehensive review of the state statutes to demonstrate the disparities in protection. The review also serves as a guide for potential federal legislation. Federal legislation must provide a floor beneath which no mother may fall. The author proposes what components are crucial in enacting such legislation and examines a bill recently introduced in the House of Representatives

An explicit bijection between semistandard tableaux and non-elliptic sl_3 webs

The sl_3 spider is a diagrammatic category used to study the representation theory of the quantum group U_q(sl_3). The morphisms in this category are generated by a basis of non-elliptic webs. Khovanov- Kuperberg observed that non-elliptic webs are indexed by semistandard Young tableaux. They establish this bijection via a recursive growth algorithm. Recently, Tymoczko gave a simple version of this bijection in the case that the tableaux are standard and used it to study rotation and joins of webs. We build on Tymoczko's bijection to give a simple and explicit algorithm for constructing all non-elliptic sl_3 webs

Double Epistemologies and ‘Respons-ability’ in Public Healthcare: Talanoa with Tongans in New Zealand : A thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Arts in Social Anthropology At Massey University Auckland, New Zealand

Pacific health policy in Aotearoa/New Zealand focuses on reducing health inequities between the majority population and Pacific Islander communities. At the same time, the public health system increasingly promotes a neoliberal form of ‘responsibilisation’ that emphasises individual self-help, risk management, and risk reduction. This research engages with Tongan epistemological scholarship to ask: how do concepts central to contemporary western public health philosophy and practice, such as personal health management, individual risk, or managing increased genetic risk, factor for New Zealand Tongans? Using the talanoa methodology of Pacific research, this thesis investigates how members of the Tongan community in Auckland understand the divide separating biomedical models of genetic risk and their own cultural views of health, relatedness, and responsibility. I argue that responsibility-focused public health policy in A/NZ, despite effort to create culturally responsive ethnically-targeted health messaging, can have unintended pathologising consequences for Tongan people. The focus of A/NZ public health policy on ‘reducing inequalities’ makes it harder for the health system to fully recognise the cultural and ontological embeddedness of Tongan models of health. Acknowledging that many Tongans do move within the ‘interstitial space’ (vā) between epistemologies I ask how Tongans and their public health practitioners can be ‘respons-able’ to one another if they do not understand each other’s realities

Measurement of the b-jet cross-section with associated vector boson production with the ATLAS experiment at the LHC

A measurement of the cross-section for vector boson production in association with jets containing b-hadrons is presented using 35 pb-1 of data from the LHC collected by the ATLAS experiment in 2010. Such processes are not only important tests of pQCD but also large, irreducible backgrounds to searches such as a low mass Higgs boson decaying to pairs of b-quarks when the Higgs is produced in association with a vector boson. Theoretical predictions of the V+b production rate have large uncertainties and previous measurements have reported discrepancies. Cross-sections measured using in the electron and muon channels will be shown. Comparisons will be made to recent theoretical predictions at the next-to-leading order in alpha_s.Comment: Presented at the 2011 Hadron Collider Physics symposium (HCP-2011), Paris, France, November 14-18 2011, 3 pages,6 figure.

SOCS Proteins in Macrophage Polarization and Function

Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Choosing Lag Lengths in Nonlinear Dynamic Models

Given that it is quite impractical to use standard model selection criteria in a nonlinear modeling context, the builders of nonlinear models often choose lag length by setting it equal to the lag length chosen for a linear autoregression of the data. This paper studies the performance of this procedure in a variety of circumstances, and then proposes some new and simple model selection procedures, based on linear approximations of the nonlinear forms. The idea here is to apply standard selection criteria to these linear approximations, rather than to autoregressions that make no provision for nonlinear behavior. A simulation study compares the properties of these proposed procedures with the properties of linear selection procedures.Nonlinear time series models, Neural networks, Model selection criteria, Polynomial approximations, Volterra expansions.

Molecular genetic analysis of chemical-induced sporulation of Myxococcus xanthus

Mutants resistant to glycerol-induction of sporulation were isolated from wild-type M. xanthus. The glycerol-resistant qlrA and alrB loci, previously mapped by Mx.8 transductions, were analysed by restriction mapping of clones and by complementation analysis. The location of the qlrA gene(s) was mapped to within a 2.2kb region, whilst the qlrB region proved very complex. The qlrA and qlrB gene products were reguired early in chemical-induced sporulation since two chemical-inducible lacZ fusions were not expressed in either qlrA or qlrB mutants during chemical-induction. Only a minority of the glycerol-resistant mutants were unable to undergo fruiting body sporulation. Complementation studies of the qlrA and qlrB regions confirmed that mutations in chemical-induced and fruiting body sporulation were not linked. This suggests that the induction pathways of chemical-induced sporulation and fruiting body sporulation share few common genes. Glycerol-resistant mutants were isolated from a non- motile strain, which is unable to form fruiting bodies. The majority of these mutants were able to form spores in the absence of fruiting bodies. Two mutants were unable to form spores. Isolating such mutants may provide a means of identifying truly sporulation-deficient mutants. Expression from the chemical-inducible isqB>lacZ fusion, identified previously in a promoter probe vector, was blocked in 24 different glycerol-resistant mutants. Hence, the gene product was reguired late in the chemical-induced sporulation pathway. The complete transcription unit was cloned and disruption of the region by the insertion of a tetracycline cassette demonstrated that the gene is not essential for chemical- induced or starvation-induced sporulation. Expression from a second chemical-inducible lacZ fusion, ÎÎDK4530, identified previously by random Tn£ lac insertion, was suppressed by amino acids in the growth media during chemical-induced sporulation and was blocked in both qlrA and qlrB mutants. Hence, expression of the gene product is dependent on both the qlrA+ and qlrB+ genes