‘Everything in Motion, Motion in Everything’: The experience and process of negotiating development transitions

This study seeks to understand how people experience and negotiate estrangement from nuclear family members during adulthood. The central research aim was to arrive at a theoretical account of how people psychologically experience and manage estrangement within the meaningful context of their lives. To date, this is a research area of psychological experience that has been largely unaccounted for, either statistically or through qualitative investigation. From in-depth qualitative interview data, this study used grounded theory analysis (Strauss and Corbin, 1990 Corbin and Strauss, 2008) to explore how adults experience and negotiate the process of family estrangement over time. The sample in this study consisted of 15 participants aged between 19 and 64 years old. Participants self-identified as having been estranged from a parent, child or sibling for at least one year during adulthood. Some were still estranged, while others were reconciled with previously estranged family members. The findings suggest that family estrangement is experienced as a complex process of personal transition and continual adjusting, which involves the negotiation of emotional and ideological distance from family relationships. Distance must be negotiated intrapersonally, interpersonally, socially and symbolically, and the findings throw light upon each of these domains. The phenomenon of family estrangement is a broad one, but it is hoped that this study arrives at a balanced, integrative and informative account of its central concerns. Further to this study, recommendations are made for further academic investigation and the practice of counselling psychology

The Sound of Silence? : a comparative study of the barriers to communication skills development in accounting and engineering students

Employers often consider graduates to be unprepared for employment and lacking in vocational skills. A common demand from them is that the curriculum should include ‘communication skills’, as specific skills in their own right and also because of the central role that such skills can play in developing other desirable attributes. Current thinking in communication has indicated a split between communication apprehension and communication development. There are indications that techniques designed to develop communication skills will not resolve communication apprehension and that, if an individual has a high level of communication apprehension, these techniques will not result in improved communication performance. This paper compares and contrasts the levels and profiles of communication apprehension exhibited by accounting and engineering students. The implications of the findings are then discussed and the need for further research in the area of vocational choice is identified

Lines pinning lines

A line g is a transversal to a family F of convex polytopes in 3-dimensional space if it intersects every member of F. If, in addition, g is an isolated point of the space of line transversals to F, we say that F is a pinning of g. We show that any minimal pinning of a line by convex polytopes such that no face of a polytope is coplanar with the line has size at most eight. If, in addition, the polytopes are disjoint, then it has size at most six. We completely characterize configurations of disjoint polytopes that form minimal pinnings of a line.Comment: 27 pages, 10 figure

Galois theory and Lubin-Tate cochains on classifying spaces

We consider brave new cochain extensions F(BG +,R) → F(EG +,R), where R is either a Lubin-Tate spectrum E n or the related 2-periodic Morava K-theory K n , and G is a finite group. When R is an Eilenberg-Mac Lane spectrum, in some good cases such an extension is a G-Galois extension in the sense of John Rognes, but not always faithful. We prove that for E n and K n these extensions are always faithful in the K n local category. However, for a cyclic p-group C p r, the cochain extension F(BC p r +,E n ) → F(EC p r +, E n ) is not a Galois extension because it ramifies. As a consequence, it follows that the E n -theory Eilenberg-Moore spectral sequence for G and BG does not always converge to its expected target

What influences healthcare professionals' treatment preferences for older women with operable breast cancer?: an application of the discrete choice experiment

Introduction Primary endocrine therapy (PET) is used variably in the UK as an alternative to surgery for older women with operable breast cancer. Guidelines state that only patients with “significant comorbidity” or “reduced life expectancy” should be treated this way and age should not be a factor. Methods A Discrete Choice Experiment (DCE) was used to determine the impact of key variables (patient age, comorbidity, cognition, functional status, cancer stage, cancer biology) on healthcare professionals' (HCP) treatment preferences for operable breast cancer among older women. Multinomial logistic regression was used to identify associations. Results 40% (258/641) of questionnaires were returned. Five variables (age, co-morbidity, cognition, functional status and cancer size) independently demonstrated a significant association with treatment preference (p < 0.05). Functional status was omitted from the multivariable model due to collinearity, with all other variables correlating with a preference for operative treatment over no preference (p < 0.05). Only co-morbidity, cognition and cancer size correlated with a preference for PET over no preference (p < 0.05). Conclusion The majority of respondents selected treatment in accordance with current guidelines, however in some scenarios, opinion was divided, and age did appear to be an independent factor that HCPs considered when making a treatment decision in this population

Global Spread of Vancomycin-resistant Enterococcus faecium from Distinct Nosocomial Genetic Complex

Vancomycin-resistant enterococci (VRE) have caused hospital outbreaks worldwide, and the vancomycin-resistance gene (vanA) has crossed genus boundaries to methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus. Spread of VRE, therefore, represents an immediate threat for patient care and creates a reservoir of mobile resistance genes for other, more virulent pathogens. Evolutionary genetics, population structure, and geographic distribution of 411 VRE and vancomycin-susceptible Enterococcus faecium isolates, recovered from human and nonhuman sources and community and hospital reservoirs in 5 continents, identified a genetic lineage of E. faecium (complex-17) that has spread globally. This lineage is characterized by 1) ampicillin resistance, 2) a pathogenicity island, and 3) an association with hospital outbreaks. Complex-17 is an example of cumulative evolutionary processes that improved the relative fitness of bacteria in hospital environments. Preventing further spread of this epidemic E. faecium subpopulation is critical, and efforts should focus on the early disclosure of ampicillin-resistant complex-17 strains

Hsp70 oligomerization is mediated by an interaction between the interdomain linker and the substrate-binding domain

Oligomerization in the heat shock protein (Hsp) 70 family has been extensively documented both in vitro and in vivo, although the mechanism, the identity of the specific protein regions involved and the physiological relevance of this process are still unclear. We have studied the oligomeric properties of a series of human Hsp70 variants by means of nanoelectrospray ionization mass spectrometry, optical spectroscopy and quantitative size exclusion chromatography. Our results show that Hsp70 oligomerization takes place through a specific interaction between the interdomain linker of one molecule and the substrate-binding domain of a different molecule, generating dimers and higher-order oligomers. We have found that substrate binding shifts the oligomerization equilibrium towards the accumulation of functional monomeric protein, probably by sequestering the helical lid sub-domain needed to stabilize the chaperone: substrate complex. Taken together, these findings suggest a possible role of chaperone oligomerization as a mechanism for regulating the availability of the active monomeric form of the chaperone and for the control of substrate binding and release