An Empirical Investigation Of The Concept Of “Pornography”

“Pornography” as a concept remains unclear. The lack of consensus about the meaning of pornography is particularly problematic for empirical enterprises where inconsistent conceptualizations of pornography undermine the reliability and validity of research findings, impede the integration of knowledge across studies, and contribute to the miscommunication of research findings to the general public. With this in mind, the goal of this dissertation was to explore the concept of pornography, particularly as it was understood by lay individuals, with the hope of uncovering insights that would strengthen research practices in this field. To this end, seven studies were conducted using both qualitative and quantitative methods to explore the meaning and use of pornography as a construct. This research found that while 14 different conceptual elements were used to define pornography among academics, open-ended responses provided by lay persons tended to describe pornography as the depiction of sexual content, particularly sexual behaviour and nudity. Further, closed-ended quantitative measures confirmed the importance of sexual behaviour and nudity for understanding pornography, and also indicated the importance of the sexually arousing properties of such materials for lay persons. When decisions about the extent to which various images could be considered pornographic or not pornographic were examined, pornography judgments were found to be very reliable and did not differ by gender, experience with sexually explicit materials, or extent of erotophobia or right-wing authoritarianism. Finally, 26 unique content-based features of photographic images were found to account for 69-72% of the variance in pornography judgments made in response to sexual images. In sum, across studies, there was evidence of surprising consistency in the ways that lay undergraduate respondents understood and employed the concept of pornography. For most individuals studied, pornography was simply about the depiction of sexual behaviour and nudity, and empirical researchers in this area would do well to align their conceptual and operational definitions of pornography accordingly

Small-scale variability of the cross-shelf flow over the outer shelf of the Ross Sea

The importance of cross-shelf transport across the Ross Sea on local and remote processes has been well documented. In the Ross Sea, mid-water intrusions of Circumpolar Deep Water (CDW) are modified by shelf water near the shelf break to form Modified Circumpolar Deep Water (MCDW). In 2010–2011, we deployed multi-platform technologies focused on this MCDW intrusion in the vicinity of Mawson and Pennell Banks to better understand its role in ecosystem processes across the shelf. The high-resolution time and space sampling provided by an underwater glider, a short-term mooring, and a ship-based survey highlight the scales over which these critical cross-shelf transport processes occur. MCDW cores were observed as small-scale well-defined features over the western slopes of Pennell and Mawson Banks. The mean transport along Pennell Bank was estimated to be about 0.24 Sv but was highly variable in time (hours to days). The observations suggest that the core of MCDW is transported by a predominately barotropic flow that follows topography around the banks toward the south until the slope of the bank flattens and the warmer water moves up and over the bank. This pathway is shown to link the source MCDW with an area of high productivity over the shallows of Pennell Bank

Access to Pediatric Type 1 Diabetes Care in Montana

Introduction: Management of Type 1 Diabetes (T1D) requires significant family effort and specialty support. We aimed to understand how living in a rural state impacts families’ experiences during and after diagnosis.https://knowledgeconnection.mainehealth.org/lambrew-retreat-2023/1013/thumbnail.jp

Is female psychopathy linked with child abuse? An empirical investigation using a person-centered approach

Childhood abuse is associated with increased psychopathic features among girls, but most prior research is based on data from correctional samples of female delinquents and less is known about how specific forms of childhood abuse affect specific features of psychopathy. Using a school-based community sample of 696 girls aged 9–17 years from Barbados and Grenada, the current study examined latent profiles of psychopathic personality traits and their associations with physical, emotional, and sexual abuse. Latent profile analysis (LPA) revealed four distinct psychopathy groups among girls, including a ‘low psychopathy’ group (41.9% of girls), ‘high psychopathy’ group (4.8%), ‘high interpersonal manipulation and egocentricity’ group (37.4%), and a ‘moderate psychopathy’ group (16%). There was considerable evidence of physical abuse, emotional abuse, and sexual abuse among participants. Sexual abuse was associated with a 116% increased likelihood of membership in the high psychopathy group and a 57% increased likelihood of membership in the high interpersonal manipulation and egocentricity group. These results indicate that sexual abuse is a powerful distal factor in the development of psychopathic personality functioning, especially more severe variants

The effect of Ferbanat L nano-fertilizer on the growing of Petunia x grandiflora ’Musica Blue’

During our experiment, the effect of Ferbanat L concentrations were examined by Petunia x grandiflora ‘Musica Blue’ production.The leaf and shoot length, number of flower buds, diameter of flowers, and the date of appearing the first buds were measured. The solution ofFerbanat L in 0.1 % concentration was the most effective on shoot length (21.7 cm). Remarkable increase was observed by the other treatmentgroups as well comparing to the control group (5.6 cm), the plants treated with solution of Ferbanat L 0.2% (16.5 cm) and 0.3% (14.4 cm)had significant effect as well. The nano-fertilizer had not positive effect on the other examined parameters as leaf and flower size, number offlower buds or chlorophyll content. The culture period shortened five days

The effect of Ferbanat L nano-fertilizer on the growing of Petunia x grandiflora ’Musica Blue’

During our experiment, the effect of Ferbanat L concentrations were examined by Petunia x grandiflora ‘Musica Blue’ production. The leaf and shoot length, number of flower buds, diameter of flowers, and the date of appearing the first buds were measured. The solution of Ferbanat L in 0.1 % concentration was the most effective on shoot length (21.7 cm). Remarkable increase was observed by the other treatment groups as well comparing to the control group (5.6 cm), the plants treated with solution of Ferbanat L 0.2% (16.5 cm) and 0.3% (14.4 cm) had significant effect as well. The nano-fertilizer had not positive effect on the other examined parameters as leaf and flower size, number of flower buds or chlorophyll content. The culture period shortened five days

A Subsurface Eddy Associated With a Submarine Canyon Increases Availability and Delivery of Simulated Antarctic Krill to Penguin Foraging Regions

The distribution of marine zooplankton depends on both ocean currents and swimming behavior. Many zooplankton perform diel vertical migration (DVM) between the surface and subsurface, which can have different current regimes. If concentration mechanisms, such as fronts or eddies, are present in the subsurface, they may impact zooplankton near-surface distributions when they migrate to near-surface waters. A subsurface, retentive eddy within Palmer Deep Canyon (PDC), a submarine canyon along the West Antarctic Peninsula (WAP), retains diurnal vertically migrating zooplankton in previous model simulations. Here, we tested the hypothesis that the presence of the PDC and its associated subsurface eddy increases the availability and delivery of simulated Antarctic krill to nearby penguin foraging regions with model simulations over a single austral summer. We found that the availability and delivery rates of simulated krill to penguin foraging areas adjacent to PDC were greater when the PDC was present compared to when PDC was absent, and when DVM was deepest. These results suggest that the eddy has potential to enhance krill availability to upper trophic level predators and suggests that retention may play a significant role in resource availability for predators in other similar systems along the WAP and in other systems with sustained subsurface eddies

Protein-Ligand Interaction Energy-Based Entropy Calculations: Fundamental Challenges For Flexible Systems

Entropy calculations represent one of the most challenging steps in obtaining the binding free energy in biomolecular systems. A novel computationally effective approach (IE) was recently proposed to calculate the entropy based on the computation of protein-ligand interaction energy directly from molecular dynamics (MD) simulations. We present a study focused on the application of this method to flexible molecular systems and compare its performance with well-established normal mode (NM) and quasiharmonic (QH) entropy calculation approaches. Our results raise substantial concerns on the general applicability of IE in terms of reproducibility, reasonable absolute values of the entropy and agreement with NM and QM approaches. IE shows significant variation in the computed entropy values depending on the MD frames chosen for calculations. These deviations render reproducibility of IE calculations to be far from sufficient. We conclude that IE is recommended to be used after substantial modifications with respect to its sampling methodology