Urban Community Gardening: Motivation for Participation and the Impact on Fruit and Vegetable Intake

This was a collaborative project between two DIT students and Dublin Community Growers, investigating the relationship between involvement in community gardening and eating fruit and vegetables.https://arrow.tudublin.ie/civpostbk/1026/thumbnail.jp

Single-Mindedness and Self-Reflectiveness: Laboratory Studies

Rechtschaffen (1978) has suggested that dreams are categorically single-minded and isolated. The phenomenon of lucid dreaming, however, suggests that his conclusion is overstated. Furthermore, the empirical status of Rechtschaffen’s claim is uncertain. The data on which his claim is based are personal and impressionistic. We view single-mindedness and lucidity as related along a continuum of self-reflectiveness, as suggested by Rossi (1972) and as operationalized in a scale of self-reflectiveness we derived from his work. In order to examine his assertion we conducted two laboratory experimental studies to examine the distribution of self-reflectiveness and singlemindedness in the dream reports of high and low frequency dream recallers awakened from Stages REM, 2 and 4. Self-reflectiveness of dream reports was quantified using the nine-step scale presented below

Single-Mindedness and Self-Reflectiveness: Laboratory Studies

Rechtschaffen (1978) has suggested that dreams are categorically single-minded and isolated. The phenomenon of lucid dreaming, however, suggests that his conclusion is overstated. Furthermore, the empirical status of Rechtschaffen’s claim is uncertain. The data on which his claim is based are personal and impressionistic. We view single-mindedness and lucidity as related along a continuum of self-reflectiveness, as suggested by Rossi (1972) and as operationalized in a scale of self-reflectiveness we derived from his work. In order to examine his assertion we conducted two laboratory experimental studies to examine the distribution of self-reflectiveness and single-mindedness in the dream reports of high and low frequency dream recallers awakened from stages REM, 2 and 4 Self-reflectiveness of dream reports was quantified using the 9-step scale presented below

Dream Psychology: Operating in the Dark

The questions I want to address today concern the scientific significance of lucid dreaming, especially for our understanding of the function of dreaming. There is an emerging consensus that scientific dream psychology has not lived up to the potential which motivated much of the research following the discovery of REM sleep in 1953 (see Antrobus, 1978). For example, Foulkes (1976; 1982; 1983a; 1983b) has claimed that the three foundation disciplines of dream psychology, specifically psychoanalysis, psychophysiology and evolutionary biology, in fact have contributed very little to our scientific understanding of dreaming. Similarly, Fiss (1983) has argued that we desperately need a clinically relevant theory of dreaming. One important reason for this apparent lack of fruitfulness is the exclusion of lucid dreaming from the central concerns of dream psychology. Ogilvie (1982) has aptly observed that until recently lucid dreaming has been consigned to the “wasteland of parapsychology”. This exclusion of lucid dreaming from scientific dream psychology finally has been rendered untenable by the dramatic demonstration by a number of researchers that lucid dreaming is a scientifically real phenomenon (Covello, 1984; Dane, 1984; Fenwick, Schatzman, Worsley & Adam, 1984: Hearne, 1981, 1983; LaBerge, 1980a, 1980b, 1981; LaBerge, Nagel, Dement & Zarcone, 1980; Ogilvie, Hunt, Tyson, Lucescu & Jeakins, 1982; Tholey, 1983; Tyson, Ogilvie & Hunt, 1984). ‘Scientifically real’ in this context means that researchers such as LaBerge were able to show, among other things, that prearranged signaling was possible from lucid dreaming during stage REM sleep without the intervention of an electrographic transition to the waking state. In effect, the dreamer was simultaneously awake and asleep. The significance of this finding has yet to be fully appreciated within dream psychology in particular or cognitive psychology more generally

Genome-wide analysis identifies 12 loci influencing human reproductive behavior.

The genetic architecture of human reproductive behavior-age at first birth (AFB) and number of children ever born (NEB)-has a strong relationship with fitness, human development, infertility and risk of neuropsychiatric disorders. However, very few genetic loci have been identified, and the underlying mechanisms of AFB and NEB are poorly understood. We report a large genome-wide association study of both sexes including 251,151 individuals for AFB and 343,072 individuals for NEB. We identified 12 independent loci that are significantly associated with AFB and/or NEB in a SNP-based genome-wide association study and 4 additional loci associated in a gene-based effort. These loci harbor genes that are likely to have a role, either directly or by affecting non-local gene expression, in human reproduction and infertility, thereby increasing understanding of these complex traits

Формирование эмоциональной культуры как компонента инновационной культуры студентов

Homozygosity has long been associated with rare, often devastating, Mendelian disorders1 and Darwin was one of the first to recognise that inbreeding reduces evolutionary fitness2. However, the effect of the more distant parental relatedness common in modern human populations is less well understood. Genomic data now allow us to investigate the effects of homozygosity on traits of public health importance by observing contiguous homozygous segments (runs of homozygosity, ROH), which are inferred to be homozygous along their complete length. Given the low levels of genome-wide homozygosity prevalent in most human populations, information is required on very large numbers of people to provide sufficient power3,4. Here we use ROH to study 16 health-related quantitative traits in 354,224 individuals from 102 cohorts and find statistically significant associations between summed runs of homozygosity (SROH) and four complex traits: height, forced expiratory lung volume in 1 second (FEV1), general cognitive ability (g) and educational attainment (nominal p<1 × 10−300, 2.1 × 10−6, 2.5 × 10−10, 1.8 × 10−10). In each case increased homozygosity was associated with decreased trait value, equivalent to the offspring of first cousins being 1.2 cm shorter and having 10 months less education. Similar effect sizes were found across four continental groups and populations with different degrees of genome-wide homozygosity, providing convincing evidence for the first time that homozygosity, rather than confounding, directly contributes to phenotypic variance. Contrary to earlier reports in substantially smaller samples5,6, no evidence was seen of an influence of genome-wide homozygosity on blood pressure and low density lipoprotein (LDL) cholesterol, or ten other cardio-metabolic traits. Since directional dominance is predicted for traits under directional evolutionary selection7, this study provides evidence that increased stature and cognitive function have been positively selected in human evolution, whereas many important risk factors for late-onset complex diseases may not have been