Contextualization: Tanzanian Maasai Culture and the Implications for Worship and Women’s Ministry

Maasai religion, music, and cultural customs have a definite impact on the methodology of missions and relations with the people of their tribes, specifically in the areas of worship and women’s ministry. Maasai tribes have specific cultural needs that require ministry different from those usually employed in Western methodology. There are theological foundations of worship and women’s ministry that must be understood in order to properly execute the process of contextualization as it applies to the Christian gospel. An analysis of the history, religion, rituals, gender roles, and music of Maasai tribes in Tanzania coupled with an understanding of contextualization will aid in the discovery of the implications of culture for ministry within this specific tribal setting

Upstream Downtown: Theatre Creation Through a Feminist and Multispecies Lens

In the historically masculine Western sciences, we are told we can fully know a being by dissecting, labelling, testing, observing, and documenting. This article explores how multispecies and feminist theatre creation and performance, specifically in the style of clown and bouffon, can work to resist such narratives and offer a more sentient understanding of interspecies relationships. Our investigations focus on our journey as two female creators of Upstream Downtown, a research-based, physical theatre play about salmon and humans finding home in the settler colonial city of Toronto

INTEGRATIVE TREATMENT OF POSTOPERATIVE NAUSEA AND VOMITING: A BEST PRACTICE APPROACH

The purpose of this thesis was to create best practice recommendations to treat postoperative nausea and vomiting (PONV) during the first 24 postoperative hours in patients undergoing general anesthesia. PONV is a multifaceted and unpleasant phenomenon, increasing length and cost of stay. Pharmacotherapy is most often used to treat PONV though it may not be the most cost-effective intervention nor patient preference . The literature review was conducted through CINAHL, Embase and PubMed. The keywords used to search were PONV, postoperative nausea and vomiting, aromatherapy, P6 acupuncture, supplemental oxygen, supplemental fluid therapy, intravenous fluid therapy, pharmacotherapy, ondansetron, and 5HT3 antagonists. Dates of publication were limited to 2008 to 2018. The literature revealed evidence to support using acupuncture on the P6 acupoint site (N = 5), supplemental intravenous fluids with crystalloids (N = 4) and the use of ondansetron as a first line antiemetic in combination with dexamethasone (N = 4). Based on these results, a best practice recommendation for integrative nursing to treat PONV includes a bundle of interventions of controlled breathing, acupuncture of the P6 acupoint, intraoperative supplemental intravenous fluid of 30 mL/kg/hour crystalloid solutions, and the use of ondansetron as a first line antiemetic therapy combined with dexamethasone

An Evaluation of the Convergent Construct Validity of the Boldness Inventory of Psychopathy using a Five-Minute, 10% Carbon-Dioxide-Enriched Air Challenge

Psychopathy is a constellation of maladaptive interpersonal, affective, and behavioral features, including grandiosity, manipulativeness, emotional detachment, and impulsivity (Hare, 2003). Fearlessness, immunity to stress, self-assurance, and social dominance are considered to be adaptive features of psychopathy. Patrick and colleagues (2009) sought to reconcile differences between opposing conceptualizations of psychopathy by formulating a triarchic model of the condition. One core construct in this model, boldness, captures an ability to remain calm in the face of threat, an appetite for dangerous or risky activities, and an increased tolerance for uncertainty and danger. Boldness is believed to originate from differences in the brain’s defensive systems involved in the detection of threat and represents a phenotypic expression of fearlessness. Two principal problems in studies on psychopathy and fearlessness are the use of varying operationalizations of fear and an overreliance on non-laboratory-based methods to assess it. The current study examined boldness in relation to anticipatory anxiety and real-time fear in response to a CO2-enriched air challenge. It was hypothesized that boldness scores would relate negatively to (a) anticipatory anxiety ratings before the breathing challenge, (b) fear ratings taken midway through the challenge procedure, and (c) mean heart-rate midway through the challenge. Additionally, it was hypothesized that total boldness scores would relate negatively to STAI and BIS scores, and would be unrelated to PHQ-9 scores. As predicted, boldness related negatively to behavioral inhibition and state anxiety, although it also was unexpectedly linked to depressive symptoms. However, boldness was unrelated to anticipatory anxiety, fear ratings, and mean heart rate. The current study suggests boldness, as measured by the Boldness Inventory, is unrelated to psychological or physiological response to the air breathing challenge. Reasons for the unanticipated pattern of findings are discussed

Antimicrobial resistance in Staphylococcus aureas

Susceptibility of 112 strains of Staphylococcus aureus obtained from Dameron Hospital, Stockton, California was tested with 18 antimicrobials . The MIC method was used with the following antimicrobials : tetracycline, oxacillin, penicillin, ampicillin, vancomycin, cefazolin, erythromycin, clindamycin, gentamycin, rifampin, trimethoprimsulfamethoxazole, chloramphenicol, and cefotaxime . The standard Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method was used to test neomycin, tobramycin, and amikacin . Methicillin, oxacillin, and nafcillin were tested with a modified Kirby-Bauer method, which included the addition of a 4% salt supplement to the media, incubation at 32C, and readings at both 24 and 48 hours. Comparing results of this study with those of Hall (1975), suggested that resistance to the following antibiotics has increased: penicillin, ampicillin, erythromycin, neomycin, gentamycin, methicillin, oxacillin, nafcillin, cefazolin, and clindamycin . Resistance to tetracycline has decreased. No resistance to chloramphenicol or vancomycin was encountered in either study . Of the 112 strains studied, 13 . 4% were susceptible to all antibiotics tested. Twelve patterns of resistance were identified : 0 . 9% were resistant to neomycin only, 1.8% to erythromycin only, 63.9% to both penicillin and ampicillin, and 20 . 0% were multiply- resistant . Nine patterns of multiple-resistance were found, involving a minimum of three antibiotics and a maximum of nine . Three MRSA strains were identified from out-patient isolates; no in-patient isolates were methicillin-resistant . The study suggests that MRSA strains are not a problem at Dameron Hospital, but identification of this group would be more accurate if incubation of the MIC panels is maintained for at least 24 hours at ~35C . It was found that the MIC method of antimicrobial susceptibility testing is more reliable than the Kirby-Bauer disc diffusion method for detection of methicillin-resistance. Problems involved in identification of heteroresistant staphylococci are discussed

Antecedents of academic performance of university students: academic engagement and psychological capital resources

Predicting academic performance is of key importance to the success, wellbeing and prosperity of students, their families, the economy, and the society at large. This study investigates the relationship between academic engagement, psychological capital (PsyCap) and academic performance. Data were collected in two different universities, one in Spain and another in Portugal. Students completed two self-report questionnaires regarding academic engagement and Psychological Capital. Academic performance was assessed through Grade Point Average, provided by the universities at the end of the exam period. The samples consisted of 389 and 243 undergraduate students, respectively. Results showed a positive relationship between academic engagement and PsyCap, on the one hand, and academic performance on the other, in both samples. Results also supported PsyCap as a full mediator in the relationship between academic engagement and academic performance. Exploration of alternative models yielded superior fit for the proposed model. Accordingly, academically engaged students were likely to experience higher levels of PsyCap, which in turn positively impacted their academic performance. The results point to the importance of considering psychological predictors, rather than the prevalent reliance on traditional predictors of academic performance

Iterative Thematic Inquiry: A New Method for Analyzing Qualitative Data

Because themes play such a central role in the presentation of qualitative research results, we propose a new method, Iterative Thematic Inquiry (ITI), that is guided by the development of themes. We begin by describing how ITI uses pragmatism as a theoretical basis for linking beliefs, in the form of preconceptions, to actions, in the form of data collection and analysis. Next, we present the four basic phases that ITI relies on: assessing beliefs; building new beliefs through encounters with data; listing tentative themes; and, evaluating themes through coding. We also review several notable differences between ITI and existing methods for qualitative data analysis, such as thematic analysis, grounded theory, and qualitative content analysis. The use of ITI is then illustrated through its application in a study of exiters from fundamentalist religions. Overall, the two most notable features of ITI are that it begins the development of themes as early as possible, through an assessment of initial preconceptions, and that it relies on writing rather than coding, by using a continual revision of tentative results as the primary procedure for generating a final set of themes

Effect of Time and Sleep on the Transitive Inference Task

Researchers seeking to understand the adaptive value of sleep have done so, in part, by assessing the cognitive effects of sleep on the performance of specific tasks. In this study we follow up on previous work reporting that the passage of time affects performance on the Transitive Inference (TI) task in subjects trained to below-ceiling levels on the premise pairs, and that sleep affected performance in distinctive ways. We discuss the possibility that these changes in performance are due to a shift in strategy from one in which intermediate premise pairs are coordinated as needed to respond to probes, to a strategy which relies on a gradient of preference amongst the stimuli. We argue that, in contrast to how previous work on the effect of delay and sleep on the TI task has been done, changes in performance should be measured within-subject, by testing the same subjects at multiple time points, and present evidence that this approach is valid with this task (as opposed to showing any learning effects with repeated testing.) We find, on average, no change in performance on this task over the course of 2.5 to 3 hours, with or without sleep. In contrast to previous work, we find in many subjects high levels of performance after only 20 minutes, and a pattern of performance that we expected to find only after sleep. We evaluate the use of an innovative technique to assess the preference gradient which has not previously been used with human subjects, and present evidence that the presence of a preference gradient determines how sleep affects changes in performance on this task