Eleutherodactylus amplinympha

Number of Pages: 4Integrative BiologyGeological Science

A study of the services to unmarried mothers at the Industrial School for Girls at Lancaster, Massachusetts

Thesis (M.S.)--Boston Universit

Quest religious orientation among church leaders in Australia: A function of psychological predisposition or openness to mystical experience?

Quest religious orientation among church leaders signifies a style of leadership committed to religious explorations more than to religious certainties. This study sets out to explore the extent to which quest religious orientation among religious leaders is a function of psychological predisposition (conceptualized in terms of psychological type theory) or a function of distinctive forms of religious experience (conceptualized in terms of Happold’s model of mysticism) among a sample of 1,265 church leaders who participated in the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey. The data demonstrated that higher levels of mystical orientation were associated with psychological predisposition, involving extraversion, intuition, feeling and perceiving. After controlling for sex, age, education, denominational groups and psychological type, higher levels of mystical orientation were also associated with higher levels of quest religious orientation. Mystical orientation partly mediated the effect of intuition on question orientation, but psychological preferences (for intuition and for perceiving) and mystical orientation seemed independently to promote quest religious orientation. Thus, church leaders committed to religious explorations rather than to religious certainties seemed to have been shaped both by psychological predisposition and by distinctive forms of religious experience

A Pathway for Collisional Planetesimal Growth in the Ice-Dominant Regions of Protoplanetary Disks

We present a semi-analytic model for the growth, drift, desorption, and fragmentation of millimeter- to meter-sized particles in protoplanetary disks. Fragmentation occurs where particle collision velocities exceed critical fragmentation velocities. Using this criterion, we produce fragmentation regions in disk orbital radius-particle size phase space for particles with a range of material properties, structures, and compositions (including SiO$_2$, Mg$_2$SiO$_4$, H$_2$O, CO$_2$, and CO). For reasonable disk conditions, compact aggregate H$_2$O, CO$_2$, and CO ice particles do not reach destructive relative velocities and are thus not likely to undergo collisional fragmentation. Uncoated silicate particles are more susceptible to collisional destruction and are expected to fragment in the inner disk, consistent with previous work. We then calculate the growth, drift, and sublimation of small particles, initially located in the outer disk. We find that ice-coated particles can avoid fragmentation as they grow and drift inward under a substantial range of disk conditions as long as the particles are aggregates composed of 0.1 $\mu$m-sized monomers. Such particles may undergo runaway growth in disk regions abundant in H$_2$O or CO$_2$ ice depending on the assumed disk temperature structure. These results indicate that icy collisional growth to planetesimally-relevant sizes may happen efficiently throughout a disk's lifetime, and is particularly robust at early times when the disk's dust-to-gas ratio is comparable to that of the interstellar medium.Comment: 26 pages, 14 figures, accepted to Ap

Assessing peer and parental influence on the religious attitudes and attendance of young churchgoers : exploring the Australian National Church Life Survey

Drawing on data from the 2011 Australian National Church Life Survey, this study was designed to assess peer and parental influence on frequency of church attendance, attitude toward church, and attitude toward Christianity among a sample of 6,256 young churchgoers between the ages of 8 and 14 years, attending a range of denominations, including Catholic, Anglican, Uniting, Pentecostal, and other Protestant Churches. The data indicated the power of parental example on frequency of church attendance. Frequent attendance among young churchgoers occurred when both parents attend as well. Parental influence worked differently on shaping attitude toward church. The most positive attitude was found among young churchgoers who had the opportunity to talk about God with their parents and who did not feel that their parents made them go to church. Young churchgoers responded to parental encouragement better than to parental pressure. Although peer influence within the church did not make much contribution to frequency of attendance, it made a contribution to shaping positive attitude toward church

Modelling variable dropout in randomised controlled trials with longitudinal outcomes: application to the MAGNETIC study

Background Clinical trials with longitudinally measured outcomes are often plagued by missing data due to patients withdrawing or dropping out from the trial before completing the measurement schedule. The reasons for dropout are sometimes clearly known and recorded during the trial, but in many instances these reasons are unknown or unclear. Often such reasons for dropout are non-ignorable. However, the standard methods for analysing longitudinal outcome data assume that missingness is non-informative and ignore the reasons for dropout, which could result in a biased comparison between the treatment groups. Methods In this article, as a post hoc analysis, we explore the impact of informative dropout due to competing reasons on the evaluation of treatment effect in the MAGNETIC trial, the largest randomised placebo-controlled study to date comparing the addition of nebulised magnesium sulphate to standard treatment in acute severe asthma in children. We jointly model longitudinal outcome and informative dropout process to incorporate the information regarding the reasons for dropout by treatment group. Results The effect of nebulised magnesium sulphate compared with standard treatment is evaluated more accurately using a joint longitudinal-competing risk model by taking account of such complexities. The corresponding estimates indicate that the rate of dropout due to good prognosis is about twice as high in the magnesium group compared with standard treatment. Conclusions We emphasise the importance of identifying reasons for dropout and undertaking an appropriate statistical analysis accounting for such dropout. The joint modelling approach accounting for competing reasons for dropout is proposed as a general approach for evaluating the sensitivity of conclusions to assumptions regarding missing data in clinical trials with longitudinal outcomes

Training Medical Professionals in Japan and the US: Changing Medical Education Curricula

It would be safe to assume that the reader of this thesis has at one point played the role of a patient and visited the doctor for a particular illness. As a patient who navigates the healthcare system, he or she is not unfamiliar with present issues in the healthcare system of his or her country. In fact, patients navigating healthcare systems in other nations, particularly Japan, are experiencing the same types of situations and encounters as patients in the United States. This is happening at a time when medical education, for the first time in a century, is actively making changes to its curricula. When defined by licensure, the practice of professional medical care has only existed in Japan and the United States for approximately one hundred and thirty years. This thesis and its argument will reinforce the importance in comparing biomedicine in Japan and the US,1 not because they are the same system, but because the same symptoms continue to present within these differing systems, much like a recurring illness. After a brief introduction to current topics in healthcare for these two nations, this thesis will reveal the origins of biomedicine as a professional practice in Japan and the United States that is less than two hundred years old. There is some evidence to suggest that during this change, the licensure and professional status of physicians at the end of the nineteenth century has had lasting effects on healthcare today, specifically by creating an abstracted concept of what it means to be a professional. Medical training of physicians has perpetuated a doctrine governed by “professionalism,” a sense of appropriate manner, a qualitative measure that has since been quantified. Even so, since the concession of physicians as licensed professionals and the standardization of medical education, only now are medical schools adjusting curricula for future physicians. Now that medical education is changing, this thesis will caution against the use of subjective definitions of professionalism when teaching future physicians and will propose four suggestions for changing curricula. Ultimately, this thesis will explore the “professionalism” of professionals in healthcare and compare medical education curricula in Japan and the US through preliminary research in Japan and unstructured interviews with physicians in the US. The main objective of this thesis is to address the conundrum of professionals being unaware of their own “professionalism.”Bachelor of Art

A simple label-free method reveals bacterial growth dynamics and antibiotic action in real-time

Funding: The authors gratefully acknowledge the financial support of Scottish Enterprise, NESTA Longitude Prize and the University of St Andrews.Understanding the response of bacteria to environmental stress is hampered by the relative insensitivity of methods to detect growth. This means studies of antibiotic resistance and other physiological methods often take 24 h or longer. We developed and tested a scattered light and detection system (SLIC) to address this challenge, establishing the limit of detection, and time to positive detection of the growth of small inocula. We compared the light-scattering of bacteria grown in varying high and low nutrient liquid medium and the growth dynamics of two closely related organisms. Scattering data was modelled using Gompertz and Broken Stick equations. Bacteria were also exposed meropenem, gentamicin and cefoxitin at a range of concentrations and light scattering of the liquid culture was captured in real-time. We established the limit of detection for SLIC to be between 10 and 100 cfu mL−1 in a volume of 1–2 mL. Quantitative measurement of the different nutrient effects on bacteria were obtained in less than four hours and it was possible to distinguish differences in the growth dynamics of Klebsiella pneumoniae 1705 possessing the BlaKPC betalactamase vs. strain 1706 very rapidly. There was a dose dependent difference in the speed of action of each antibiotic tested at supra-MIC concentrations. The lethal effect of gentamicin and lytic effect of meropenem, and slow bactericidal effect of cefoxitin were demonstrated in real time. Significantly, strains that were sensitive to antibiotics could be identified in seconds. This research demonstrates the critical importance of improving the sensitivity of bacterial detection. This results in more rapid assessment of susceptibility and the ability to capture a wealth of data on the growth dynamics of bacteria. The rapid rate at which killing occurs at supra-MIC concentrations, an important finding that needs to be incorporated into pharmacokinetic and pharmacodynamic models. Importantly, enhanced sensitivity of bacterial detection opens the possibility of susceptibility results being reportable clinically in a few minutes, as we have demonstrated.Publisher PDFPeer reviewe