Psychological and cultural determinants of women's intentions to donate oocytes.

In oocyte donation, oocytes from one woman can be transferred to another for fertility treatment or used for medical research. However, there is an acute shortage of women from the general population donating their oocytes and this has adverse consequences for infertile patients and medical researchers. The aims of this thesis were to explore the psychological determinants of oocyte donation intentions and to investigate the link between oocyte donation intentions and parenthood using components of the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB) among women from different ethnic backgrounds. In doing so, a triangulation approach was adopted and one systematic review and five empirical investigations consisting of quantitative, qualitative and experimental research methodologies were carried out. Results revealed that oocyte donation is best accounted for by a diverse dimension of factors, which include positive attitudes towards oocyte donation, unconventional perceptions of parenthood and demographic variables. Some theoretical components of the TPB were supported; in particular Structural Equation Modelling found positive attitudes towards oocyte donation and subjective norms demonstrated a direct influence on the decision to donate oocytes. However, the role of perceived behavioural control in intentions to donate remains uncertain. Perceptions of the importance of parenthood and genetic ties between parent and child are key in determining [un]willingness to donate oocytes for fertility treatment. In addition, findings from this thesis suggest that it may be possible to modify intentions towards oocyte donation using the Framing Effect among White women, but not Women from South East Asia. The results of this thesis have some important implications for research and clinical practice, particularly in its potential to tailor clinical service provision regarding the recruitment of oocyte donors

In situ detection of airbourne fibres by light scattering

Imperial Users onl

Disciplining the Sex Ratio:Exploring the Governmentality of Female Feticide in India

The ‘girl child’ has attracted a considerable amount of attention in India as an object of policy addressing gender discrimination. This article examines the field of campaigns seeking to address female foeticide and positions the public discourse on the ‘girl child’ and sex selective abortion in India within a broad cultural backdrop of son preference. The article argues that anti-female foeticide campaigns exist within a disciplinary domain of female foeticide which both generates a discourse of saving the ‘girl child’ and also shows attempts to utilise both incentives and punitive measures in carving out a female foeticide carceral space

Port Rupture(s) and Cross-Racial Kinships in Dionne Brand and Lee Maracle

This paper examines Lee Maracle’s Talking to the Diaspora and Dionne Brand’s A Map to the Door of No Returnfor their respective responses to the Komagata Maru in 1914 and to the Chinese migrants denied entry in 1999. These literary moments are points of departure to examine the Indigenous, Black and Asian kinships that arise within and beyond the colonial policing of encounters. Indeed, Maracle and Brand reconceptualize migrant entry as entry into geographies of kinship rather than into the divisive geography of the port under the nation-state regime. The very site of Asian exclusion that constitutes a Canadian identity, the port, becomes a geographic modality through which racialized collectivities emerge from the possibilities of borderless entrywaysEste documento analiza en los libros "Talking to the Diaspora" de Lee Maracle, y "A Map to the Door of No Return" (Un mapa para la puerta de no retorno) de Dionne Brand, por sus respectivas respuestas al incidente Komagata Maru que ocurrió en 1914, y a los migrantes chinos a los que se les negaba la entrada en 1999. Estos momentos literarios son puntos de partida para examinar los parentescos nativos, afroamericanos y asiáticos que aparecen dentro de, y más allá, de la regulación colonial de encuentros. De hecho, Maracle y Brand vuelven a conceptualizar la entrada de migrantes como una que se adentra en la geografía de los parentescos, en vez de en la brecha geográfica del puerto bajo régimen nacional. La mismísima zona de exclusión asiática que constituye la identidad canadiense, el puerto, se convierte en un modo geográfico, mediante el cual los colectivos racializados aparecen de las posibilidades de entrada sin fronteras

Novel detection and removal of hazardous biocide residues historically applied to herbaria

This research is concerned with the detection and removal of hazardous biocide residues from historic applications to herbarium collections. There are two main aims: • To develop a rapid, cost-effective and non-destructive screening method for identifying toxic residues on herbarium sheets; and • To establish the most suitable decontamination method for the removal of naphthalene from herbarium collections, maintaining the integrity of the specimen. The research outlines how the presence of fluorescent marks on specimen sheets throughout the herbarium, at Amgueddfa Cymru- National Museum Wales (AC-NMW), is indicative of mercury(II) chloride contamination. Compelling evidence is given to support the hypothesis that the observed fluorescence is due to the reduction of Hg(II) to Hg(I) during the oxidative degradation of cellulose, occurring as part of the natural ageing process. The rate of fluorescence development is shown to be increased by the presence of naphthalene, and is estimated to take at least 30 years to develop. From the results obtained, it is evident that a hand-held UV-A lamp can provide a rapid and effective method of identifying samples within a collection that are contaminated with mercury, thus providing a rapid and economical means to prioritise which collections require immediate re-mounting. Furthermore, this method will enforce the implementation of safe, standard procedures to protect personnel and visitors when handling the collections, plus enable the removal of a large amount of hazardous chemical from the herbarium environment. It is also demonstrated, through decontamination tests, that the air-drying of contaminated specimen sheets is a more efficient method of removing naphthalene, than either freeze-drying or oven-drying. It is also the most cost-effective, and the least damaging to the specimen. It is shown that the efficacy of the decontamination is dependent upon the paper type. Thin, unfinished, papers are more efficient at losing naphthalene than the heavier, finished and coated papers, as their porous structure allows the naphthalene to remain more mobile. These results provide important information about which specimen sheets are more likely to be successfully decontaminated by the air-drying procedure and can inform the selection and prioritisation process

Porous cooling of a pile

In this investigation the problem of a limiting case of steady state one dimensional solid-fluid Newtonian heat transfer is examined in which an incompressible non-heat generating coolant fluid is flowing through a heat generating porous plate. The effect of grain size on the Newtonian heat transfer in the porous plate with various kinds of internal heat generations is determined analytically. The temperature difference between the solid and the coolant fluid through the porous plate is determined. All the previous studies assume that in the porous plate, coolant fluid temperature and solid temperatures are approximately equal. This analysis eliminates this simplifying assumption. The cases of uniform, linear, exponential, sinusoidal and any single valued function internal heat generation are studied. The axial temperature distributions in the coolant fluid and the solid porous plate are derived in terms of internal heat generation, porosity of the porous medium, initial temperature of the coolant fluid, size of the spheres forming the porous plate, coolant mass flow rate and the specific heat of the coolant fluid. This analysis aims at better understanding of heat transfer phenomena in porous materials which are increasingly and usefully used in many important fields of science and engineering --Abstract, page ii