Ageing in place and social isolation in rural dwelling older adults : a thesis presented in partial fulfilment of the requirements for the degree of Master of Science in Health Psychology at Massey University, Manawatu, New Zealand

This research set out to answer three related research questions. Firstly, if and how rural dwelling older adults experience social isolation; secondly, what aspects of community were seen as contributing to or buffering against social isolation; and thirdly, how these aspects affected older adults’ ability to age in place in their rural communities. This research used a social constructionist informed thematic analysis to analyse the interviews from seven participants over the age of 65 who lived in rural areas of the Manawatu-Whanganui Region classed as ‘rural with low urban influence’ under Statistics New Zealand’s Urban/Rural Profile (2004). The findings from this research revealed that the participants did not experience social isolation from surrounding urban centres due to increased accessibility but did experience some social isolation within their rural communities due to social, demographic and economic changes in their localities. These changes had significant implications for possible social interactions and the participant’s ability to age in place and was influenced by whether a participant felt included or excluded in their rural community. The participants formed two definitions of social isolation based on their experiences. One, based on travel time relative to distance; and the other based on expectations of social interaction frequency when living a ‘rural lifestyle’ in a ‘rural community’. These findings contribute to the literature on social isolation, ageing in place, and age friendly rural communities within a New Zealand context, by drawing attention to the nuanced ways in which social isolation might be experienced, and by reflecting on the significance of the connections between people and places in the construction of ‘communities’

Winter Quarter General Faculty Meeting Agenda and Minutes, February 17, 1981

Agenda and minutes from the Winter Quarter General Faculty Meeting held on February 17, 1981

Fall Quarter Faculty Meeting Agenda and Minutes, November 18, 1980

Agenda and minutes from the Fall Quarter Faculty Meeting held on November 18, 1980

excerpts from The Names

A new poetry collection, The Names, from which these excerpts come, will appear spring, 2016

Academic Council Meeting Agenda and Minutes, November 3, 1980

Agenda and minutes from the Wright State University Academic Council Meeting held on November 3, 1980

Fremont\u27s Expeditions Through Kansas, 1842-1854

John Charles Fremont made five exploring expeditions through Kansas. The first three expeditions were made at the expense and under the direction of the United States Government. The two later ones were private ventures financed principally at the expense of Senator Thomas H. Benton, Fremont\u27s father-in-law, and himself. A full account of the five exploring expeditions could almost form a complete history of the Trans-Mississippi West during that time--June, 1842, to February, 1854. The purpose of the study was to examine these five expeditions as they apply to Kansas, and to determine what results were achieved by his travels and subsequent reports. Special emphasis was given to his accounts of the Kansas scene, especially his influence in changing the concept of \u27 the Great American Desert. A study was made of the available Fremont papers. The bulk of the Fremont personal papers were destroyed many years ago in a warehouse fire in New York. In writing the account of his five expeditions through Kansas various sources were used. Of the first two Fremont wrote official reports; the third he described in full in his Memoirs of My Life (1886); the fourth and fifth he left without official record, although his letters and documents help reconstruct the expeditions. Bigelow’s Life of Colonel Premont (1856) and Upham\u27s Life, Explorations, and Public Services of John Charles Fremont (1856) help, as secondary sources, to give us a graphic account of the fourth expedition. S. N. Carvalho in his Incidents of Travel and Adventure in the Far West gives the most complete and authentic account of the fifth expedition

Letter from Lilburn W. Boggs to George Sibley, March 26, 1839

Transcript of Letter from Lilburn W. Boggs to George Sibley, March 26, 1839. Boggs discusses hiring an engineer for the Missouri Board of Internal Improvements

‘How to be here?’, dialoging into climate-change: an interview with Tim Lilburn

This interview with Canadian, poet, philosopher and essayist Tim Lilburn was commissioned for this Special Issue. Lilburn discusses with Cary Campbell, the general dilemma of ‘how to be here’ – both: how to connect to land and place as a member of settler society, as well as; how to inhabit this moment of acute climate crisis – discussing ideas from Lilburn’s (2017) previous book The Larger Conversation: Contemplation and Place, and the forthcoming Interiority & Climate-Change. This interview follows up from an earlier dialogue between Lilburn and Campbell, published by Philosophasters.org in 2019, and republished below with permission

Protease-associated cellular networks in malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum

Abstract Background Malaria continues to be one of the most severe global infectious diseases, responsible for 1-2 million deaths yearly. The rapid evolution and spread of drug resistance in parasites has led to an urgent need for the development of novel antimalarial targets. Proteases are a group of enzymes that play essential roles in parasite growth and invasion. The possibility of designing specific inhibitors for proteases makes them promising drug targets. Previously, combining a comparative genomics approach and a machine learning approach, we identified the complement of proteases (degradome) in the malaria parasite Plasmodium falciparum and its sibling species 123, providing a catalog of targets for functional characterization and rational inhibitor design. Network analysis represents another route to revealing the role of proteins in the biology of parasites and we use this approach here to expand our understanding of the systems involving the proteases of P. falciparum. Results We investigated the roles of proteases in the parasite life cycle by constructing a network using protein-protein association data from the STRING database 4, and analyzing these data, in conjunction with the data from protein-protein interaction assays using the yeast 2-hybrid (Y2H) system 5, blood stage microarray experiments 678, proteomics 9101112, literature text mining, and sequence homology analysis. Seventy-seven (77) out of 124 predicted proteases were associated with at least one other protein, constituting 2,431 protein-protein interactions (PPIs). These proteases appear to play diverse roles in metabolism, cell cycle regulation, invasion and infection. Their degrees of connectivity (i.e., connections to other proteins), range from one to 143. The largest protease-associated sub-network is the ubiquitin-proteasome system which is crucial for protein recycling and stress response. Proteases are also implicated in heat shock response, signal peptide processing, cell cycle progression, transcriptional regulation, and signal transduction networks. Conclusions Our network analysis of proteases from P. falciparum uses a so-called guilt-by-association approach to extract sets of proteins from the proteome that are candidates for further study. Novel protease targets and previously unrecognized members of the protease-associated sub-systems provide new insights into the mechanisms underlying parasitism, pathogenesis and virulence.</p

Hyperpolarized noble gas magnetic resonance imaging of the ex vivo rodent lung

The work described within this thesis was conducted at the University of Nottingham between April 2011 and March 2014. Due to the inter-disciplinary nature of this work it was undertaken by the author in conjunction with the other scientists in the Translational Imaging group at the Sir Peter Mansfield Magnetic Resonance Centre, University of Nottingham and collaborators in both the Pulmonary Biology group, University of Nottingham and the Respiratory Pharmacology group, Imperial College London. Pulmonary hyperpolarized (hp) noble gas magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has seen increasing development and utility over the past two decades. However the application of this relatively new pulmonary imaging modality to small animal models is technically challenging. Ex vivo lung models have allowed for the investigation of functional respiratory measurements in small animals but have yet to be utilized with hp noble gas MRI. The ex vivo lung model presented within this work allowed for the study of pulmonary physiology using hp 129Xe and hp 83Kr MR imaging in intact lungs from both healthy rodents and rat models of respiratory disease. Novel hp 129Xe imaging protocols were developed to provide measurements of functional respiratory parameters and to gather information of regional gas distribution in healthy excised rodent lungs. Furthermore the developed 129Xe methodology was used to study regional responses in an ex vivo model of human asthma after intravenous deliveries of increasing quantities of the bronchoconstricting agent methacholine. The ex vivo model provided the platform to develop the novel lung imaging technique of hp 83Kr surface quadrupolar relaxation (SQUARE) MRI with this new methodology used to study an excised rat model of emphysema potentially providing the first application for this quadrupolar noble gas isotope in the field of respiratory medicine