American Culture: A Sociological Perspectives

The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western origin but is influenced by a multicultural ethos that includes African, Native American, Asian, Pacific Island, and Latin American people and their cultures. American culture encompasses the customs and traditions of the United States. The United States is sometimes described as a "melting pot" in which different cultures have contributed their own distinct "flavors" to American culture. The United States of America is a North American nation that is the world\u27s most dominant economic and military power. Likewise, its cultural imprint spans the world, led in large part by its popular culture expressed in music, movies and television. The culture of the United States of America is primarily of Western culture (European) origin and form but is influenced by a multicultural ethos that includes African, Native American, Asian, Polynesian, and Latin American people and their cultures. The American way of life or simply the American way is the unique lifestyle of the people of the United States of America. It refers to a nationalist ethos that adheres to the principle of life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness

Finding qualitative research: an evaluation of search strategies

BACKGROUND: Qualitative research makes an important contribution to our understanding of health and healthcare. However, qualitative evidence can be difficult to search for and identify, and the effectiveness of different types of search strategies is unknown. METHODS: Three search strategies for qualitative research in the example area of support for breast-feeding were evaluated using six electronic bibliographic databases. The strategies were based on using thesaurus terms, free-text terms and broad-based terms. These strategies were combined with recognised search terms for support for breast-feeding previously used in a Cochrane review. For each strategy, we evaluated the recall (potentially relevant records found) and precision (actually relevant records found). RESULTS: A total yield of 7420 potentially relevant records was retrieved by the three strategies combined. Of these, 262 were judged relevant. Using one strategy alone would miss relevant records. The broad-based strategy had the highest recall and the thesaurus strategy the highest precision. Precision was generally poor: 96% of records initially identified as potentially relevant were deemed irrelevant. Searching for qualitative research involves trade-offs between recall and precision. CONCLUSIONS: These findings confirm that strategies that attempt to maximise the number of potentially relevant records found are likely to result in a large number of false positives. The findings also suggest that a range of search terms is required to optimise searching for qualitative evidence. This underlines the problems of current methods for indexing qualitative research in bibliographic databases and indicates where improvements need to be made

Fluoroketone inhibition of Ca(2+)-independent phospholipase A2 through binding pocket association defined by hydrogen/deuterium exchange and molecular dynamics.

The mechanism of inhibition of group VIA Ca(2+)-independent phospholipase A(2) (iPLA(2)) by fluoroketone (FK) ligands is examined by a combination of deuterium exchange mass spectrometry (DXMS) and molecular dynamics (MD). Models for iPLA(2) were built by homology with the known structure of patatin and equilibrated by extensive MD simulations. Empty pockets were identified during the simulations and studied for their ability to accommodate FK inhibitors. Ligand docking techniques showed that the potent inhibitor 1,1,1,3-tetrafluoro-7-phenylheptan-2-one (PHFK) forms favorable interactions inside an active-site pocket, where it blocks the entrance of phospholipid substrates. The polar fluoroketone headgroup is stabilized by hydrogen bonds with residues Gly486, Gly487, and Ser519. The nonpolar aliphatic chain and aromatic group are stabilized by hydrophobic contacts with Met544, Val548, Phe549, Leu560, and Ala640. The binding mode is supported by DXMS experiments showing an important decrease of deuteration in the contact regions in the presence of the inhibitor. The discovery of the precise binding mode of FK ligands to the iPLA(2) should greatly improve our ability to design new inhibitors with higher potency and selectivity

Turbulent buoyant convection from a maintained source of buoyancy in a narrow vertical tank

We describe new experiments to examine the buoyancy-induced mixing which results from the injection of a small constant volume flux of fluid of density at the top of a long narrow vertical tank with square cross-section which is filled with fluid of density . The injected fluid vigorously mixes with the less dense fluid which initially occupies the tank, such that a dense mixed region of turbulent fluid propagates downwards during the initial mixing phase of the experiment. For an ideal source of constant buoyancy flux , we show that the height of the mixed region grows as and that the horizontally averaged reduced gravity at the top of tank increases as , where is the width of the tank. Once the mixed region reaches the bottom of the tank, the turbulent mixing continues in an intermediate mixing phase, and we demonstrate that the reduced gravity at each height increases approximately linearly with time. This suggests that the buoyancy flux is uniformly distributed over the full height of the tank. The overall density gradient between the top and bottom of the mixed region is hence time-independent for both the mixing phases before and after the mixed region has reached the bottom of the tank. Our results are consistent with previous models developed for the mixing of an unstable density gradient in a confined geometry, based on Prandtl’s mixing length theory, which suggest that the turbulent diffusion coefficient and the magnitude of the local turbulent flux are given by the nonlinear relations and , respectively. The constant relates the width of the tank to the characteristic mixing length of the turbulent eddies. Since the mixed region is characterized by a time-independent overall density gradient, we also tested the predictions based on a linear model in which the turbulent diffusion coefficient is approximated by a constant . We solve the corresponding nonlinear and linear turbulent diffusion equations for both mixing phases, and show a good agreement with experimental profiles measured by a dye attenuation technique, in particular for the solutions based on the nonlinear model

Family involvement for children with disruptive behaviors: The role of parenting stress and motivational beliefs

Children with disruptive behaviors are at risk for adverse outcomes. Family involvement is a significant predictor of positive child behavior outcomes; however, little research has investigated parent psychological variables that influence family involvement for children with disruptive behaviors. This study investigated the role of parental motivational beliefs (i.e., role construction and efficacy) as a potential mechanism by which parenting stress impacts family involvement for families of children with disruptive behaviors. Results indicated that parent role construction mediated the relation between parenting stress and all aspects of family involvement examined (i.e., home-based involvement, school-based involvement, and home–school communication). Parent efficacy mediated the relation between parenting stress and home-based involvement only. Parents of children with disruptive behaviors reporting stress may experience negative beliefs about their role and efficacy to support their child’s education, which may thereby negatively influence their actual involvement. Therefore, parent motivational beliefs may serve as an important point for intervention to support involvement of families of children with disruptive behavior

The association between alcohol outlet accessibility and adverse birth outcomes: A retrospective cohort study

BACKGROUND:Alcohol outlet accessibility is positively associated with alcohol consumption, although this relationship has not been thoroughly examined in pregnant women. The present study examines the relationship between proximity and density of alcohol outlets and risk for low birth weight (LBW: \u3c2,500 grams) and preterm birth (PTB: \u3c37 weeks gestational age), and is the first Canadian study to investigate this association. METHODS:Maternal accessibility to alcohol outlets was specified using a gravity-type measure of accessibility, which provides the amount of accessibility that a given household has to liquor stores within 30-minutes of their home. All singleton newborns without congenital anomalies that were born between February 2009 and February 2014 at London Health Sciences Centre in London, Ontario, were included in this cohort. RESULTS:The sample consisted of 25,734 live births, of which 5.8% were LBW and 7.6% were PTB. Only 2.0% of women reported alcohol use during pregnancy. Alcohol outlet gravity was positively correlated with the percentage of mothers living in poverty (rs = 0.33, p \u3c 0.001) and in single-parent families (rs = 0.39, p \u3c 0.001), and who self-identify as visible minorities (rs = 0.45, p \u3c 0.001). Alcohol outlet gravity increased the odds that mothers drank alcohol during pregnancy (OR 1.05; 95% CI: 1.02, 1.07), although the association was weak. Furthermore, alcohol outlet gravity did not increase the likelihood of a LBW or PTB infant. CONCLUSIONS:Women with high accessibility to alcohol outlets are more likely to consume alcohol during pregnancy, but greater alcohol outlet accessibility does not translate into poor birth outcomes

Pilot Clinical Trial of Indocyanine Green Fluorescence-Augmented Colonoscopy in High Risk Patients

White light colonoscopy is the current gold standard for early detection and treatment of colorectal cancer, but emerging data suggest that this approach is inherently limited. Even the most experienced colonoscopists, under optimal conditions, miss at least 15–25% of adenomas. There is an unmet clinical need for an adjunctive modality to white light colonoscopy with improved lesion detection and characterization. Optical molecular imaging with exogenously administered organic fluorochromes is a burgeoning imaging modality poised to advance the capabilities of colonoscopy. In this proof-of-principle clinical trial, we investigated the ability of a custom-designed fluorescent colonoscope and indocyanine green, a clinically approved fluorescent blood pool imaging agent, to visualize polyps in high risk patients with polyposis syndromes or known distal colonic masses. We demonstrate (1) the successful performance of real-time, wide-field fluorescence endoscopy using off-the-shelf equipment, (2) the ability of this system to identify polyps as small as 1 mm, and (3) the potential for fluorescence imaging signal intensity to differentiate between neoplastic and benign polyps

The Oxford Common File Layout: A common approach to digital preservation

The Oxford Common File Layout describes a shared approach to filesystem layouts for institutional and preservation repositories, providing recommendations for how digital repository systems should structure and store files on disk or in object stores. The authors represent institutions where digital preservation practices have been established and proven over time or where significant work has been done to flesh out digital preservation practices. A community of practitioners is surfacing and is assessing successful preservation approaches designed to address a spectrum of use cases. With this context as a background, the Oxford Common File Layout (OCFL) will be described as the culmination of over two decades of experience with existing standards and practices

Cosmic cookery : making a stereoscopic 3D animated movie.

This paper describes our experience making a short stereoscopic movie visualizing the development of structure in the universe during the 13.7 billion years from the Big Bang to the present day. Aimed at a general audience for the Royal Society's 2005 Summer Science Exhibition, the movie illustrates how the latest cosmological theories based on dark matter and dark energy are capable of producing structures as complex as spiral galaxies and allows the viewer to directly compare observations from the real universe with theoretical results. 3D is an inherent feature of the cosmology data sets and stereoscopic visualization provides a natural way to present the images to the viewer, in addition to allowing researchers to visualize these vast, complex data sets. The presentation of the movie used passive, linearly polarized projection onto a 2m wide screen but it was also required to playback on a Sharp RD3D display and in anaglyph projection at venues without dedicated stereoscopic display equipment. Additionally lenticular prints were made from key images in the movie. We discuss the following technical challenges during the stereoscopic production process; 1) Controlling the depth presentation, 2) Editing the stereoscopic sequences, 3) Generating compressed movies in display speci¯c formats. We conclude that the generation of high quality stereoscopic movie content using desktop tools and equipment is feasible. This does require careful quality control and manual intervention but we believe these overheads are worthwhile when presenting inherently 3D data as the result is signi¯cantly increased impact and better understanding of complex 3D scenes

Assessing sampling of the fossil record in a geographically and stratigraphically constrained dataset: the Chalk Group of Hampshire, southern UK

Taphonomic, geological and sampling processes have been cited as biasing richness measurements in the fossil record, and sampling proxies have been widely used to assess this. However, the link between sampling and taxonomic richness is poorly understood, and there has been much debate on the equivalence and relevance of proxies. We approach this question by combining both historical and novel data: a historical fossil occurrence dataset with uniquely high spatial resolution from the Upper Cretaceous Chalk Group of Hampshire, UK, and a newly compiled 3D geological model that maps subsurface extent. The geological model provides rock volumes, and these are compared with exposure and outcrop area, sampling proxies that have often been conflated in previous studies. The extent to which exposure area (true rock availability) has changed over research time is also tested. We find a trend of low Cenomanian to high Turonian to Campanian raw richness, which correlates with, and is possibly driven by, the number of specimens found. After sampling standardization, an unexpected mid-Turonian peak diversity is recovered, and sampling-standardized genus richness is best predicted by rock volume, suggesting a species–area (or ‘genus–area’) effect. Additionally, total exposure area has changed over time, but relative exposure remains the same. Supplementary materials: A locality list, abundance matrix and all correlation and modelling results are available at https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.c.3592208