Racial Identity Development and Self-Objectification with Biracial Women

The purpose of this presentation is to review the current literature regarding biracial, black/white, identity development of young women with respect to objectification theory (Frederickson & Roberts, 1997). The author discusses these intersections within biracial woman’s views of self. Specifically, physical attributes in relation to the social exchange and sexual strategies mate selection theories are examined within historical and societal contexts. The author includes implications for culturally competent therapy and directions for future research with biracial females

The diverse requirements of ARS2 in nuclear cap-binding complex-dependent RNA processing

ARS2 is a stable component of the nuclear cap-binding complex (CBC) and is critical for RNA Polymerase II transcript processing. Moreover, ARS2, and its orthologue SERRATE in plants, has been implicated in having a role in most established CBC-dependent functions. This review will provide insight into the functions of ARS2/SERRATE in numerous RNA Polymerase II transcript processing events, which happen co-transcriptionally from initiation to termination, and post-transcriptionally during maturation and export into the cytoplasm. Additionally, we will discuss what is known regarding ARS2/SERRATE structure in plants and in mammals

Visual Attention: Bottom-Up Versus Top-Down

AbstractVisual attention is attracted by salient stimuli that ‘pop out’ from their surroundings. Attention can also be voluntarily directed to objects of current importance to the observer. What happens in the brain when these two processes interact

Does ethnicity, gender or age of physiotherapy students affect performance in the final clinical placements? An exploratory study

This is the post-print version of the final paper published in Physiotherapy. The published article is available from the link below. Changes resulting from the publishing process, such as peer review, editing, corrections, structural formatting, and other quality control mechanisms may not be reflected in this document. Changes may have been made to this work since it was submitted for publication. Copyright @ 2013 Elsevier B.V.Objectives - To explore demographic differences in awarded marks of the final clinical placement in a physiotherapy undergraduate programme. Design - Retrospective analysis of clinical placement assessment marks. Setting - A London university offering clinical placements throughout South East England. Participants - 333 physiotherapy students entering physiotherapy training between 2005 to 2009. Main outcome measures Marks awarded following assessment using a clinical placement assessment form. Results - The mean mark (SD) for age were standard entry 71 (7.4) vs. mature entry 72 (7.99) (ns); for gender male 72 (8.45) vs. female 71 (7.21) (ns); and ethnicity White British 72 (7.71) vs. ethnic minority 70 (7.01) (p = 0.023). No interaction effects were observed between the independent variables and only ethnicity demonstrated a statistically significant effect (mean difference (MD) 2.4% 95%CI 0.5 to 4.3, F = 5.24, p = 0.023). This difference was maintained in most subcategories. Significant differences were observed for the interpersonal section (MD 2.21% 95%CI 0.14 to 4.28, F = 4.409, p = 0.03), the clinical reasoning section (MD 2.39% 95%CI 0.53 to 4.25, F = 6.37, p = 0.012) and the treatment section (MD 2.93 95%CI 1.10 to 4.83, F = 9.198, p = 0.003). Conclusions - Physiotherapy students from minority ethnic backgrounds were awarded a significantly lower mark than their white majority peers in final clinical placements, although the difference was small. Potential reasons are considered, with the strongest recommendation being for further enquiry into the potential relationship between ethnicity and success in undergraduate physiotherapy education

Development of the CoMac Adherence Descriptor™: a linguistically-based survey for segmenting patients on their worldviews

Nonadherence to prescribed medication and healthy behaviors is a pressing health care issue. Much research has been conducted in this area under a variety of labels, such as compliance, disease management and, most recently, adherence. However, the complex factors related to predicting and, more importantly, understanding and explaining adherence, have nevertheless remained elusive. However, through an in-depth linguistic analysis of patient talk, the International Center for Intercultural Communication (ICIC) at Indiana University has produced a psycholinguistic coding system that uses patients' own language to cluster them into distinct groups based on their worldviews. ICIC's studies have shown, for example, that patients reveal their fundamental perceptions about themselves and their environment in their life narratives; clustering of individual patients based on these different perceptions is possible via the use of differential language in survey questions, and differential language can be used to tailor messages for individual patients in a manner that these individuals prefer over generically worded communication. In grant-funded research, an interdisciplinary team of researchers at the ICIC reviewed the literature and identified three basic psychosocial tenets related to adherence: control orientation, based on locus of control research; agency, based on self-efficacy; and affect or attitude and emotion. These three constructs were selected because, in the published literature, they have been consistently found to be connected to patient adherence. Based on this research, a survey, the CoMac Descriptor™ was developed. This report shows that The Descriptor™ questions and responses are valid and reliable in segmenting patients across psychosocial constructs, which will have positive implications for health care providers and patients