A qualitative study investigating users’ perspective of bariatric surgery online health communities in facilitating social support

Objective: To fulfil a need for greater access to social support postoperatively, adults who have undergone bariatric surgery have turned to Online Health Communities (OHCs). Prior research has signposted the potential “functional” dimensions of social support found via OHCs. However, the “structural” dimensions experienced on OHC have yet to be explored. This study aimed to explore users’ experience of the “functional” and “structural” dimensions of social support facilitated within bariatric surgery OHCs. Methods: Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 13 adults who were waitlisted or had undergone bariatric surgery. Data were analysed with both deductive and inductive methodologies utilised. Deductive analysis was mapped to social support theories thus themes reflect “informational”, “emotional”, “belonging”, and “tangible” social support. Results: There were five subthemes generated under the theme of “informational” social support, two under “emotional” and “tangible” social support, and one under “belonging” social support. Participants believed that the “informal” structural support in their life was insufficient and a contributing factor to turning to OHCs. For some participants, “formal” structural social support was facilitated via OHCs; however, most were seeking different types of support than what they can receive from their medical support team. The inductive analysis generated two themes including “access to reliable social support 24/7” and “satisfied with the support available on OHCs”, highlighting key advantages and value of OHCs. Conclusions: There seems to be value for OHCs in bariatric surgery for social support. However, fundamentally the shared experiences and “belonging” social support seem to be a linchpin for the success of OHCs

Performance Rights in Sound Recordings: the Impact of the Performance Rights Act on Radio, Records, and Performing Artists

The original works of copyright holders included tangible creations, as music written on a page, thereby, extending copyright protection to songwriters and music publishers. Until 1995, absent from U.S. copyright law was protection for copyright owners of intangible sound recordings. the Performance Rights Act (PRA) seeks to amend the US copyright law in order to grant copyright holders of sound recordings the right to performance royalties from terrestrial broadcast radio. If passed, the legislation would be unprecedented in the United States. the PRA has implications for broadcast radio, record labels, and performing artists. This study includes historical and legal perspective of previous attempts at legislation of this nature and predicts outcomes of current legislation

An investigation into the chemopreventive properties of an indigenous herb, Amaranthus lividus, using cancerous cell lines.

Thesis (M.Med.)-University of KwaZulu-Natal, 2005.Chemoprevention may be defined as the inhibition, delay or reversal of carcinogenesis by dietary compounds or their derivatives. "Imifino" is a collective name for many wild plants used predominantly by rural people as herbs in cooking. Many of these herbs possess medicinal properties. As the rural population is at higher risk of exposure to dietary carcinogens, such as mycotoxins, this pilot study was undertaken to determine whether the Amaranthus lividus plant held potential for use in chemopreventive strategies. The plant leaves were extracted to obtain individual solvent fractions. Cytotoxic profiling of the fractions using the SNO oesophageal adenocarcinoma cell line and normal human lymphocytes was achieved using the methylthiazol tetrazolium salt bioreduction assay. The SNO cell line, the A549 lung adenocarcinoma cell line and normal human lymphocytes were utilised for the evaluation of the anti-mycotoxigenic potential of the plant fractions in combination with two important dietary carcinogens, aflatoxin B1 and fumonisin B1. A specific biomarker assay (the induction of reduced glutathione) was employed using the SNO cell line. Flow cytometry was also conducted to determine the apoptotic properties of the acetone fraction on normal human lymphocytes. The results of the anti-mycotoxigenic study showed that certain fractions did have protective effects against both of the carcinogens tested. In addition, these effects were noted in the two cancerous cell lines, which were of different tissue origin. None of the fractions tested were toxic towards the normal human lymphocytes. The glutathione assay indicated that certain acetone fraction dilutions were inducive to reduced glutathione production. This plant is a promising candidate for further investigation concerning chemoprevention and the rural community could be educated on the possible benefits of this herb

The Ontario Universities’ Teaching Evaluation Toolkit: Feasibility Study

This feasibility study (the first of three phases) sought to develop a framework for improvement-oriented formative and summative assessment of teaching in Ontario. It is intended to inform future developments in teaching evaluation in the Province, and to offer a well-contextualized understanding of what the goals of teaching evaluation ought to be, what the challenges are, and the kinds of initiatives and infrastructure that would best promote the evolution of a data- informed and inquiry-inspiring approach to evaluating and improving teaching. Our institutionally-based project teams identified and examined leading teaching evaluation practices in use internationally, compared to those in use in the Ontario context, and identified a range of aggregate data and technical tool elements to be considered when moving forward.https://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ctlreports/1003/thumbnail.jp

The effect of PETTLEP-based imagery interventions on motor performance.

This series of studies investigated the effectiveness of the PETTLEP model across a variety of tasks. In the first two studies, interventions arising from this model were compared to traditional imagery interventions and physical practice. Study 1 compared a six-week intervention of PETTLEP imagery, traditional imagery, physical practice and an intervention combining PETTLEP imagery and physical practice for strength training. Analysis indicated that the PETTLEP combination group, PETTLEP imagery group and physical practice group improved significantly from pre-test to post-test, whereas the traditional imagery group and control group did not. Study 2 compared the effects of PETTLEP imagery, traditional imagery and physical practice interventions on performance of a computer-game. Results showed that the PETTLEP imagery group and physical practice group improved from pre-test to posttest, whereas the traditional imagery group and control group did not. These two studies indicate that PETTLEP imagery is more beneficial to performance than traditional imagery, and as effective as physical practice. Study 3 and 4 compared differing amounts of PETTLEP imagery on a netball task (over a four week period) and a strength task (over a twenty-two week period). Results indicated that the larger the amount of imagery completed, the larger the apparent performance effect. However, there were exceptions and this should be investigated further with differing doses of imagery, focussing on frequency and volume of imagery. This series of studies has shown PETTLEP imagery to be effective in improving performance on a variety of tasks, including cognitive, motor and strength tasks. It has also shown PETTLEP to be effective over a number of timescales, ranging from forty five minutes to twenty two weeks. In the first two studies it was shown to be as effective as physical practice. Therefore, sport psychologists and coaches should follow the guidelines set out in the PETTLEP model to individualise their imagery interventions and increase their functional equivalence. Additionally, the amount of imagery completed and its ratio to physical practice should also be considered in order to have the greatest possible effect on sports performance. Supplied by The British Library - 'The world's knowledge

Shared Modular Course Development: A Feasibility Study

This project evaluated the viability of shared course development (SCD) and identified the necessary baseline mechanisms, principles, policies, and procedures for future joint course development collaborations. Although collaborative course design is still relatively new in Ontario, our institutionally-based project teams identified and researched a number of successful examples from Australia, Canada, Europe, New Zealand, the United Kingdom, and the United States. These successful models demonstrated the transformative possibilities of blended learning, expanded course variety, maintained or enhanced the breadth of course offerings, and reduced institution-specific development costs while maintaining delivery autonomy. They also focused on enhancing student learning and produced momentum for instructional improvement and course re-design among collaborating institutions. This report concludes that there is considerable value to the development of collaborative institutional cultures in and of itself, and that collaborative capacity will become an increasingly important core competency in the more differentiated and change-oriented university sector that is emerginghttps://scholar.uwindsor.ca/ctlreports/1000/thumbnail.jp

Atmospheric phase correction using CARMA-PACS: high angular resolution observations of the FU Orionis star PP 13S*

We present 0".15 resolution observations of the 227 GHz continuum emission from the circumstellar disk around the FU Orionis star PP 13S*. The data were obtained with the Combined Array for Research in Millimeter-wave Astronomy (CARMA) Paired Antenna Calibration System (C-PACS), which measures and corrects the atmospheric delay fluctuations on the longest baselines of the array in order to improve the sensitivity and angular resolution of the observations. A description of the C-PACS technique and the data reduction procedures are presented. C-PACS was applied to CARMA observations of PP 13S*, which led to a factor of 1.6 increase in the observed peak flux of the source, a 36% reduction in the noise of the image, and a 52% decrease in the measured size of the source major axis. The calibrated complex visibilities were fitted with a theoretical disk model to constrain the disk surface density. The total disk mass from the best-fit model corresponds to 0.06 M_⊙, which is larger than the median mass of a disk around a classical T Tauri star. The disk is optically thick at a wavelength of 1.3 mm for orbital radii less than 48 AU. At larger radii, the inferred surface density of the PP 13S* disk is an order of magnitude lower than that needed to develop a gravitational instability

Dual Orientation of the Outer Membrane Lipoprotein P6 of Nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae

The majority of outer membrane (OM) lipoproteins in Gram-negative bacteria are tethered to the membrane via an attached lipid moiety and oriented facing in toward the periplasmic space; a few lipoproteins have been shown to be surface exposed. The outer membrane lipoprotein P6 from the Gram-negative pathogenic bacterium nontypeable Haemophilus influenzae (NTHi) is surface exposed and a leading vaccine candidate for prevention of NTHi infections. However, we recently found that P6 is not a transmembrane protein as previously thought (L. V. Michel, B. Kalmeta, M. McCreary, J. Snyder, P. Craig, M. E. Pichichero, Vaccine 29:1624–1627, 2011). Here we pursued studies to show that P6 has a dual orientation, existing infrequently as surface exposed and predominantly as internally oriented toward the periplasmic space. Flow cytometry using three monoclonal antibodies with specificity for P6 showed surface staining of whole NTHi cells. Confocal microscopy imaging confirmed that antibodies targeted surface-exposed P6 of intact NTHi cells and not internal P6 in membrane-compromised or dead cells. Western blots of two wild-type NTHi strains and a mutant NTHi strain that does not express P6 showed that P6 antibodies do not detect a promiscuous epitope on NTHi. Depletion of targets to nonlipidated P6 significantly decreased bactericidal activity of human serum. Protease digestion of surface-exposed P6 demonstrated that P6 is predominantly internally localized in a manner similar to its homologue Pal in Escherichia coli. We conclude that P6 of NTHi is likely inserted into the OM in two distinct orientations, with the predominant orientation facing in toward the periplasm

Bayesian joint analysis of cluster weak lensing and Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect data

As the quality of the available galaxy cluster data improves, the models fitted to these data might be expected to become increasingly complex. Here we present the Bayesian approach to the problem of cluster data modelling: starting from simple, physically motivated parameterised functions to describe the cluster's gas density, gravitational potential and temperature, we explore the high-dimensional parameter spaces with a Markov-Chain Monte-Carlo sampler, and compute the Bayesian evidence in order to make probabilistic statements about the models tested. In this way sufficiently good data will enable the models to be distinguished, enhancing our astrophysical understanding; in any case the models may be marginalised over in the correct way when estimating global, perhaps cosmological, parameters. In this work we apply this methodology to two sets of simulated interferometric Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect and gravitational weak lensing data, corresponding to current and next-generation telescopes. We calculate the expected precision on the measurement of the cluster gas fraction from such experiments, and investigate the effect of the primordial CMB fluctuations on their accuracy. We find that data from instruments such as AMI, when combined with wide-field ground-based weak lensing data, should allow both cluster model selection and estimation of gas fractions to a precision of better than 30 percent for a given cluster.Comment: 13 pages, 7 figures, submitted to MNRAS; accepted 14/8/03 after minor revisio

The Hubble constant and dark energy from cosmological distance measures

We study how the determination of the Hubble constant from cosmological distance measures is affected by models of dark energy and vice versa. For this purpose, constraints on the Hubble constant and dark energy are investigated using the cosmological observations of cosmic microwave background, baryon acoustic oscillations and type Ia suprenovae. When one investigates dark energy, the Hubble constant is often a nuisance parameter, thus it is usually marginalized over. On the other hand, when one focuses on the Hubble constant, simple dark energy models such as a cosmological constant and a constant equation of state are usually assumed. Since we do not know the nature of dark energy yet, it is interesting to investigate the Hubble constant assuming some types of dark energy and see to what extent the constraint on the Hubble constant is affected by the assumption concerning dark energy. We show that the constraint on the Hubble constant is not affected much by the assumption for dark energy. We furthermore show that this holds true even if we remove the assumption that the universe is flat. We also discuss how the prior on the Hubble constant affects the constraints on dark energy and/or the curvature of the universe.Comment: 45 pages, 15 figure