RESILIENCE ATTRIBUTES AMONG UNIVERSITY STUDENTS: A COMPARATIVE STUDY OF PSYCHOLOGICAL DISTRESS, SLEEP DISTURBANCES AND MINDFULNESS

Australian university students report experiencing higher levels of psychological distress compared to other Australians, and are at increased risk of developing mental health problems. Psychological distress has been connected with poor academic performance, higher attrition rates and sleep disturbances. A protective factor associated with sleep-related selfregulation is mindfulness. Mindfulness based programs have shown benefits in stress reduction and resilience. Resilience is considered a protective factor that interacts with stressors to reduce the likelihood of negative outcomes. Resilience is also associated with positive social and personal well-being together with enhanced mental health and adjustment to university life. The current study examines the attributes of resilient university students, by comparing the differences between high and low resilient students on levels of reported psychological distress, sleep disturbances and mindfulness. A total of 89 university students participated in the study aged between 18 to 57 years. Results showed that university students with high levels of resilience reported significantly lower levels of psychological distress and significantly higher levels of mindfulness, compared to university students reporting low levels of resilience. There were no significant differences reported with regard to sleep disturbances. The findings add to extant knowledge of resilience and provide support for universities to develop strategies that promote resilience in university students to reduce the risk of students developing mental health problems, thus enabling students to flourish under academic pressures

The measurement of subjective wellbeing in people with intellectual disability in Australia

The importance of measuring quality of life, and most particularly the personal wellbeing of people with intellectual disabilities (ID), is now recognized. The measurement of wellbeing is an important component of program evaluation and can assist in the identification and planning of individualized support needs. There remains, however, a need for further research in this area. This paper describes a new scale, the Personal Wellbeing Index Intellectual Disability Scales (PWI-ID), which has been shown to be valid and reliable. Data is presented regarding its use in the measurement of wellbeing in people with ID and the focus of discussion is on its advantages and limitations.<br /

Computation of flow behind three side-by-side cylinders of unequal/equal spacing

This paper aims to simulate unstable gap flows of three side-by-side cylinders unequally/equally spaced at T1/d = 1.5 and T2/d = 1.6 in a uniform cross flow (Re=300). The simulation is carried out using ANSYS Flotran 7.0. A mesh-independent study is conducted on a single cylinder at Re=100. The Strouhal number and wake flow characteristics compare well with experimental results. Simulation of three side-by-side cylinders in uniform cross flow has revealed that the gap flows are unstable and constantly re-orientating, which has the effect of restructuring the wake flows behind the cylinders. The flow field for unequal spacing of the cylinders is similar to the equal spacing case for some period of time with a symmetrical near wake. However, at other times, the wake flow is asymmetrical. This agrees well with the visualisation of Wang et al. (2002), in which the gap flows and the wake flow are constantly in transition

Evidence supporting the recent origin and species status of the Timberline Sparrow

The Timberline Sparrow (Spizella taverneri), although originally described as a species, is currently classified as a subspecies of the more widespread Brewer\u27s Sparrow (S. breweri). We investigated the taxonomic status and recent evolutionary history of these species by comparison of both morphological and molecular characters. Morphometric comparisons using 6 external and 18 skeletal measurements show that S. taverneri specimens from two widely separated populations (Yukon and southwestern Alberta, Canada) are indistinguishable with respect to size yet are significantly larger (by 3%) than representatives of several breweri populations. Analysis of 1,413 base pairs of mitochondrial DNA (mtDNA) for 10 breweri and 5 taverneri samples representing widely scattered breeding populations revealed a maximum divergence among any breweri-taverneri pair of 0.21% and an overall average of 0.13%. In contrast, the average (± SE) pairwise distance among the other Spizella species is 5.7 ± 0.5%. We discovered that breweri and taverneri could be distinguished on the basis of a single, fixed nucleotide difference. Of an additional 11 taverneri and 8 breweri surveyed for this diagnostic site, a single bird (morphologically a taverneri) from northwest British Columbia did not sort to type. Overall, 18 of 18 breweri and 15 of 16 taverneri were diagnosable. We interpret these results to suggest that gene flow does not currently occur between these two forms and that each is on an independent, albeit recently derived, evolutionary course. The molecular data are consistent with theoretical expectations of a Late Pleistocene speciation event. We believe that for passerine birds, this is the first empirical validation of this widely accepted evolutionary model. The data presented corroborate plumage, vocal, and ecological evidence suggesting that these taxa are distinct. As such, we suggest that Spizella taverneri be recognized as a species

The taxonomic rank of Spizella taverneri: A response to Mayr and Johnson

Mayr and Johnson suggest that Spizella taverneri should be a subspecies of the biological species S. breweri, because it is possibly not reproductively isolated. We originally concluded that evidence from mitochondrial DNA sequences, habitat preferences, timing of breeding, vocalizations, and morphology supported the recognition of S. taverneri as a phylogenetic and biological species. Nothing in the commentary by Mayr and Johnson causes us to change that conclusion. We believe that it is probable that these two allopatric taxa are isolated. Contrary to Mayr and Johnson, we believe that more information is given by ranking S. taverneri as a species, because it reveals the fact that they are independently evolving taxa. The classification of Spizella should convey the sister-species status of S. taverneri and S. breweri, without regard for balancing the degree of sequence divergence among species, as suggested by Mayr and Johnson