Most Popular Books by Marie O

The lively and revealing letters of a woman who, with thousands of others, volunteered for service in World War I Europe, taking on jobs that freed men for the trenches.

Structural chemistry is a fundamental branch of chemistry that explores the three-dimensional arrangement of atoms and molecules. It plays a crucial role in understanding the principles that govern matter's fundamental building blocks. This field of study is essential in unraveling the properties and behaviors of substances, spanning from inorganic compounds to complex organic molecules. Structural chemistry finds applications in various scientific disciplines, including material science, pharmaceuticals, and nanotechnology, making it a cornerstone of scientific research. The book "Structural Chemistry" is an informative resource that delves deep into the world of molecular architecture. It comprehensively discusses vital topics such as intermolecular forces, phase transitions, and the underlying symmetry inherent in molecular structures. Additionally, the book discusses the intricacies of chemical bonding, encompassing concepts from both inorganic and organic chemistry.. With its accessible and informative style, this book serves as an invaluable resource for individuals at all levels of expertise, helping them grasp the nuances of molecular arrangement and its diverse applications in various scientific domains.

The present study explored gender differences in psychosis and the potential role of psychosocial variables in these differences. A sample of 51 men and women with psychosis completed a questionnaire about clinical variables (age of onset, age of first contact with services, age of first hospitalisation, number of hospitalisations, symptoms, and time taken until symptom disclosure), psychosocial variables (childhood trauma, coping responses with past adverse events, dissociative responses to past adverse events, abuse-related variables, relationship history, substance use, reactions to symptom disclosure and coping with symptoms) and causal explanations. The aims of the study were to explore sex differences in age of onset, symptoms and psychosocial variables in men and women with psychosis and explore the relevance of psychosocial variables to age of onset and symptomatology. Participants were recruited from first-episode psychosis teams, community mental health teams and Hearing Voices support groups within the Auckland region. Analyses of the total sample revealed significant associations between psychosocial variables and age of onset. Specifically, coping responses with past adverse events were found to predict age of symptom onset. The experience of childhood trauma, coping responses with past adverse events and aspects of substance use were found to relate to differing symptom types across the total sample. In their causal explanations of psychosis, participants tended to identify multiple factors relevant to the development of psychosis. Rather than differing explanations based on gender, there were many similarities in the explanatory models of men and women with psychosis. There were no significant gender differences in relation to age of onset and for many of the symptom types. Females were found to experience more negative symptoms than males. Some differences were present for some forms of childhood trauma, aspects of coping and substance use across genders. Data was also analysed separately for men and women. A major finding was that there was little similarity in terms of the psychosocial variables which were relevant for each sex. This suggests that differing pathways to symptom development and the experience of psychosis may exist for men and women. This study highlighted the relevance of psychosocial factors in psychosis, including the role of childhood trauma and the importance of adopting integrated bio-psycho-social approaches within both research and clinical domains.

Since the publication of Lewis (1969), philosophers have used signaling games to better understand the development of language and information transfer. Increasingly, these games have proved to be a powerful conceptual tool in a number of fields. Part of the reason these games have proved so powerful, and so broadly applicable, is the highly simplified nature of the model. It pairs down signaling scenarios to the barest relevant aspects, thus allowing researchers to understand phenomena that are usually too complex to pull apart. Because the model is so highly simplified, one research avenue that has been successful in the past involves the introduction of aspects to the game intended to better model real world signaling. One simplification of the Lewis signaling game regards its treatment of payoff. In real world signaling situations sometimes actions will be appropriate in multiple states of the world, or appropriate to varying degrees in different states. Here I explore a modified signaling game-the sim-max game introduced by Jager (2007)--that is a model of such situations. Actors in the sim-max game receive perfect payoffs for choosing the correct act for a state, but they also receive payoffs for choosing an act that is nearly appropriate. This is done by building a similarity structure over the state space of the sim-max game and assuming that acts will be somewhat appropriate for states that are similar to the ideal state for that act. In this way, payoffs can vary gradually over various state-act combinations. In this dissertation, I use this modified game, and a related decision problem, to address several topics of interest to philosophers and biologists. In chapter 2, I discuss the evolution of linguistic vagueness. In chapter 3 I address how learning generalization can evolve. And in chapter 4 I discuss the ways evolutionary models can inform the connection between perceptual categories and real world structure.

The purpose of this qualitative study was to analyze the language of readers for two text audiences, leveled readers written for native speakers of English and graded readers written for non-native speakers of English, for the purpose of selecting reading materials for English learners. Ten texts of different genres (non-fiction, fiction, myth/legend, and biography) were analyzed in order to compare the language of the texts at the word level and the sentence level. The texts were selected based on Lexile numbers and range, and then the books' total word counts and type counts were calculated and documented. The words of each text were then categorized according to word tiers. Tier one words were those labeled on the Fry 3,000 word list. Tier two words were academic words, tier three words were specialized words, and other words were words not categorized on the other three tiers. Tier one words were classified more specifically by location on the Fry 3,000 Instant Words list. At the sentence level, text sentences were analyzed using a text charting system and then categorized as simple, compound, or complex sentences. The analysis showed that the text length and the number of types were much greater in the non-native speaker texts than in texts for native English speakers. In word categorization, the two sets of texts were nearly identical. At the sentence level, the texts were similar for simple sentence composition, but the non-native speaker texts contained more compound sentences, and the native speaker texts contained more complex sentences.

Background: The prevalence of dementia, a progressive and incurable condition that affects memory and daily function, is increasing worldwide. The perspective of people with dementia can be captured to better understand which factors impact quality of life for this particular population. Such factors can then be used to guide future research to improve quality of life for people with dementia, even as troubling symptoms like memory loss progress. Purpose: The purpose of this dissertation is to identify factors that influence quality of life from the perspective of people with dementia. Methods: The dissertation consists of four related and sequential papers: (1) a conceptual paper to assess the extent to which the perspective of people with dementia has been included to assess and conceptualize quality of life in the quantitative dementia-specific literature, (2) a systematic literature review and metasynthesis of qualitative evidence to identify factors that influence quality of life according to people with dementia, (3) a methods paper describing how metasyntheses findings were applied to design a quantitative study, and (4) a cross-sectional, quantitative, correlational study to test the association between perceived conflict and sadness (a proposed influencing factor and outcome of poor quality of life, respectively). Findings and Conclusions: Two important limitations of previous research to understand quality of life from the perspective of people with dementia were identified. First, existing quantitative literature was inconsistent with a subjective definition of quality of life because researchers neglected to conceptualize quality of life from the perspective of people with dementia. Second, the body of existing qualitative research had not been considered collectively, nor had it informed quantitative research. In this dissertation, these limitations were addressed by applying knowledge from the body of qualitative research as a whole to design a quantitative study that was consistent with a subjective definition of quality of life. The findings demonstrated that people with dementia could contribute meaningfully to advance knowledge about factors that impact quality of life in this population. The four factors that influenced quality of life from the perspective of people with dementia included Relationships, Sense of Place, Wellness Perspective, and Agency in Life Today. Further exploration of the Relationships factor generated evidence in support of the proposed association between conflict and sadness, and highlighted that conflict with family and friends may have a particularly negative impact on people with moderate and severe dementia living in long-term care. The factors identified in this dissertation were each complex, but potentially modifiable and useful to generate further research questions and hypotheses that reflect the priorities of people with dementia. Given these four factors, the roles and responsibilities of health care providers may need to be re-considered in order to optimize quality of life for people with dementia.

Background Cancer-Related Fatigue (CRF) and Chronic Fatigue Syndrome (CFS) are common, yet their pathophysiology is poorly understood. Aetiology may be central or peripheral and originate anywhere from the brain to muscle fibre. Studies have shown a dissociation between brain and muscle signals during voluntary muscle fatigue1,2,3. This suggests weakened corticomuscular coherence.Objective: To objectively evaluate the effect of muscle fatigue on corticomuscular coherence by determining EEG-EMG coherence during a fatiguing motor task. We hypothesize that corticomuscular coherence in u03b2eta-band frequency would decrease significantly with fatigue in CRF and CFS compared to healthy controls (HC). Methods12 newly diagnosed, pre-treatment, non-small cell lung cancer CRF, 12 CFS and 12 HC were enrolled. Participants completed a (subjective) Brief Fatigue Inventory (BFI) and performed a sustained isometric forearm contraction (Flexor Carpi Ulnaris (FCU) & Flexor Carpi Radialis (FCR) muscles) at 30% maximal level (MVC) until failure. Endurance Time (ET) was noted. Task evaluated in two stages; mild & severe fatigue. EEG-EMG u03b2-band frequency (associated with voluntary motor activity) coherence and power spectrum in each stage was computed. ResultsCRF and CFS had weaker MVC and earlier perceived exhaustion than HC (Table 1). EMG power (but not EEG) increased while coherence at lower u03b2eta-band (15-25 Hz) significantly decreased in severe fatigue compared to mild fatigue (Figure 2).ConclusionsCRF was associated with weakened corticomuscular coherence in a sustained submaximal motor activity at lower u03b2eta-band frequencies. This suggests central neural mechanisms contribute to both CRF (and CFS) with associated performance impairment. Interventions to improve coherence may reduce fatigue.REFERENCES1 Yang, Q., Fang, Y., Sun, C. K. et al.,