When Daughters Leave:Essay Writing and The Fugitive Subject

Following Paul Heilker’s suggestion in his book, The Essay: Theory and Pedagogy for an Active Form (1996), that we should think of the essay as ‘less than a thing than it is an action, less an artifact than an activity, less a noun than a verb’, this paper eschews conventional academic forms of critiques and imagines a more open form that makes room for the personal, the subjective, the conceptual and the creative, thus writing critique as a rhetorical, textual and creative performance. Reading and writing about two poems that draw on the myth of Demeter and Persephone, and threaded through by other writers and theorists, and experiences, ‘When Daughters Leave’ performs a ‛tableau vivant’ of subjectivity on the page by employing two individual ‘I’ voices who function both separately, neither a ‘we’ nor an ‘I’, to highlight the porous quality of that first person pronoun. The essay also explores the textual and affective terrain of mothers and daughters as subjects and objects of writing, and as metaphors for thinking about subjectivity in an essay about essay writing

Sexual well-being and aging patterns: Findings of a cluster analysis among older adults in Portugal and Spain

Objectives: From a cross-cultural perspective, aging well may encompass pertinent challenges in terms of adjustment, sexual well-being, and satisfaction with life in the late years. Considering the paucity of empirical data concerning cultural diversity of experiencing aging, this study aims to help fill this gap by assessing the specific patterns of sexual satisfaction, adjustment to aging (AtA), and life satisfaction with life (SwL) of older adults in Portugal and Spain. Methods: This cross-national study included 326 older adults, age 65 and older, from Portugal and Spain. Five instruments were applied: (a) Adjustment to Aging Scale (ATAS); (b) Satisfaction with Life Scale (SwLS); (c) New Sexual Satisfaction Scale-Short (NSSS-S); (d) Mini-Mental State Exam; and (e) Sociodemographic, Health and Lifestyle questionnaire. K-means cluster analysis was employed to identify and characterize the clusters considering adjustments to aging, sexual satisfaction, and life satisfaction. One-way ANOVAs were conducted to analyze differences in sexual well-being among clusters. Results: Findings indicated three clusters, which explained 77.7% (R-sq = 0.777) of the total variance: Cluster 1: “Most skilled” (n = 26, 8.0%), Cluster 2: “Least adjusted” (n = 115, 35.3%), and Cluster 3: “Aging strivers” (n = 185, 56.7%). Participants in Cluster 1 were mostly Portuguese, with high levels of AtA, sexual satisfaction, and SWL. Conversely, Cluster 2 included mostly Portuguese participants with moderate sexual satisfaction and lower levels of AtA and SwL. Participants from Cluster 3 were mostly Spanish, with moderate levels of AtA and reduced sexual satisfaction and SwL. Conclusions: This study innovates by exploring the elaborate interplay among sexual satisfaction, AtA, and SwL in a cross-cultural perspective, with implications for tailoring interventions, service planning, development, and evaluation of culturally diverse older populations.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Dust in Brown Dwarfs IV. Dust formation and driven turbulence on mesoscopic scales

Dust formation in brown dwarf atmospheres is studied by utilising a model for driven turbulence in the mesoscopic scale regime. We apply a pseudo-spectral method where waves are created and superimposed within a limited wavenumber interval. The turbulent kinetic energy distribution follows the Kolmogoroff spectrum which is assumed to be the most likely value. Such superimposed, stochastic waves may occur in a convectively active environment. They cause nucleation fronts and nucleation events and thereby initiate the dust formation process which continues until all condensible material is consumed. Small disturbances are found to have a large impact on the dust forming system. An initially dust-hostile region, which may originally be optically thin, becomes optically thick in a patchy way showing considerable variations in the dust properties during the formation process. The dust appears in lanes and curls as a result of the interaction with waves, i.e. turbulence, which form larger and larger structures with time. Aiming on a physical understanding of the variability of brown dwarfs, related to structure formation in substellar atmospheres, we work out first necessary criteria for small-scale closure models to be applied in macroscopic simulations of dust forming astrophysical systems.Comment: A&A accepted, 20 page

Underneath the sheets: A cross-cultural cluster analysis of older adults’ patterns of aging and sexual well-being in Portugal and Mexico

This study aims to assess the patterns of life satisfaction with life (SwL), sexual satisfaction, and adjustment to aging (AtA), of older adults in Mexico and Portugal. A sample of 658 older adults, aged 65 years-old and older, from Mexico and Portugal were recruited for this cross-cultural study. The following measures were applied: (a) Adjustment to Aging Scale (ATAS); (b) Satisfaction with Life Scale (SwLS); (c) New Sexual Satisfaction Scale (NSSS); (d) Mini-Mental State Exam; and (e) Sociodemographic, health and lifestyle questionnaire. Clusters were identified and characterized by using K-means cluster analysis, encompassing SwL, AtA, and sexual satisfaction. Sexual well-being differences among clusters were analyzed with One-way ANOVAs. Findings indicated three clusters, which explained 76.4% (R-sq=0.764) of the total variance: Cluster #1: “Moderately adjusted older adults” (n=355, 53.9%), Cluster #2: “Moderately fulfilled older adults” (n=265, 40.3%), and Cluster 3: “Well adjusted and satisfied older adults” (n=38, 5.8%). Participants in Cluster #1 were mostly Mexican, with moderate levels of AtA and reduced sexual satisfaction and SwL. Conversely, Cluster #2 predominantly consisted of Portuguese participants with moderate sexual satisfaction and SwL, and lower levels of AtA. Participants from Cluster #3 were mostly Portuguese with high levels of AtA, sexual satisfaction, and SwL. This innovative study explored the intricate relationship between sexual well-being, the ability to adjust to aging, and overall SwL, in two different cultural contexts. Findings contributed to the understanding of the relationship between these three variables and for developing tailored future interventions and service planning with older adults in different cultures.Fundação para a Ciência e Tecnologia - FCTinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Suitability of the Attitudes to Aging Questionnaire Short Form for use among adults in their 50s: A cross-sectional e-survey study

This cross-sectional e-survey study examines the suitability (reliability and validity) of the 12-item Attitudes to Aging Questionnaire Short Form (AAQ-SF) for use among adults in their 50s. The AAQ-SF instrument was originally designed to capture subjective perceptions of physical change, psychosocial loss, and psychological growth by asking people aged 60 and beyond how they feel about growing older. Our sample comprised 517 people residing in three Canadian provinces. Respondents completed the Attitudes to Aging Questionnaire Short Form, the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale, and a short sociodemographic profile. Our findings replicate the original AAQ-SF structure for physical change, psychosocial loss, and psychological growth, with a promising internal consistency range for the third subscale. In our sample, psychological growth is best represented as ‘Self’ and ‘Generativity’, with a particularly greater capacity to explain variations in scores for item 18 and item 21. Physical change and psychosocial loss scores strongly differed based on perceived health and chronic illness presence. Psychosocial loss and psychological growth were moderately correlated with two aspects of self-esteem. We relate these patterns of findings within the context of prevailing growth and development theory and their perceived implications within the context of COVID-19 and post-pandemic life.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Educational Gerontology

The aging population in the developed world has implied increasing age diversity in the workforce of organizations. Consequently, mutual perceptions about one’s coworkers and age discrimination are becoming increasingly important. This study aims to explore how perceptions about older workers’ work (un)adaptability, work effectiveness, and workplace age discrimination vary according to participants’ psychosocial factors, such as age group, gender, education level, and work sector. This study included a sample of 453 workers in Portugal, diverse in terms of age, gender, education level, and work sector. Four different instruments were used: (a) a sociodemographic questionnaire; (b) an older workers’ Work Adaptability scale; (c) an older workers’ Work Effectiveness Scale and; (d) the Workplace Age Discrimination Scale (WADS). Results: Middle-aged and older participants perceive older workers as more adaptable than younger participants. The oldest group of participants perceives older workers to be more workeffective and experience the highest levels of age discrimination in the workplace, when compared to the other age groups. Also, participants with lower levels of education tend to perceive higher levels of workplace age discrimination, when compared to participants with high school and higher education. Conclusions: Generational perceptions in the workplace are perceived by workers differently, hence organizations should implement age management strategies to address age discrimination, particularly due to the increasing proportion of older workers.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio