14 research outputs found

    Behavioral and neuroanatomical substrates contributing to motivation in the postpartum female rat:

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    The experiments described in this dissertation characterize the unique motivational state of the postpartum female rat. To effectively protect and care for offspring (pups), postpartum females must be strongly motivated to seek out and interact with pups. A combination of place preference studies, behavioral observations, and neurobiological interventions were used to explore females’ motivational state across the postpartum period.To challenge postpartum females’ maternal motivation, Chapter 1 presented females with a choice between chambers paired with pups and highly salient cocaine. While most late postpartum females preferred cocaine, many early postpartum females retained striking preference for the pup-paired chamber. To explore whether cocaine’s incentive value changed across the postpartum period, Chapter 2 examined females’ preference for cocaine- versus saline-paired chambers. Across a broad range of drug administration parameters, postpartum females consistently expressed similar, strong preference for the cocaine-paired chamber. Surprisingly, cocaine preference was stronger in postpartum females than virgin females or males. Females’ locomotor response to pup, cocaine, and saline stimuli predicted their preference for those stimuli. Chapter 3 revealed that the length of pup exposure and nature of female-pup interactions can even affect the motivational state of females that have not given birth. Virgin females were exposed to young pups for various lengths of time and then tested for pup-paired chamber preference. Striking pup-paired chamber preference emerged even in virgin females only briefly exposed to pups, matching the preference expressed by strongly motivated postpartum females. Experiments in Chapter 4 revealed that the ventral tegmental area (VTA), a brain region critical to motivated behavior, drives the incentive value of pup but not cocaine stimuli. Postpartum and virgin females were tested for their preference for pup- or cocaine-paired chambers, respectively, after transient VTA inactivation. Pup preference was abolished by VTA inactivation and restored after recovery. Cocaine preference remained intact despite VTA function.Maternal motivation is resilient to challenge during early postpartum and is at least partially driven by exposure to pups. As the choice of other salient stimuli (e.g., cocaine) during postpartum may jeopardize maternal motivation, females’ motivation to interact proactively with pups is critical to the offsprings’ survival and viability.Ph.D.Includes bibliographical references (p. 203-218)by Katharine M. Sei

    Interview with Paul Levy

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    Paul Levy (born 26 February 1941 in Lexington, Kentucky) holds joint US / UK nationality and is an award winning author and journalist. He lives in Oxfordshire with his wife, Penelope Marcus, and has two daughters. Levy attended University of Chicago; University College London; Harvard University; and Nuffield College, Oxford. He was awarded his PhD in 1979. Levy was Food and Wine editor for The Observer from 1980 to 1991 and then Senior Contributor, Culture, The Wall Street Journal (1991-2015). He has contributed widely on food in the media including Gourmet (London Letter) (1990s); Travel + Leisure (1995-2014); wine writer, The Mail on Sunday (1993-2013); New York Times (1980-2012); frequent broadcaster BBC radio and television; Daily Telegraph (2010-); Independent (1990-); Spectator (2015-); New York Review of Books (2016-); TLS (1974-). Paul is co-literary executor with Michael Holroyd of Lytton Strachey\u27s estate, trustee of the Strachey Trust, Jane Grigson Trust, and co-chair with Claudia Roden of the Oxford Symposium on Food and Cookery. With Ann Barr (and synchronically Gael Greene), he coined the word foodie . He has won many British and American food writing and journalism prizes, including two commendations in the national British Press Awards, in 1985 and 1987. Paul blogs on culture at www.ArtsJournal.com/plainenglish.https://arrow.tudublin.ie/oxfor/1007/thumbnail.jp

    Art, Biography, Sexuality: Patrick Procktor and Keith Vaughan

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    This critical review forms a reflection on the research published within the following publications: Patrick Procktor: Art and Life (Unicorn Press, 2010) Keith Vaughan: The Mature Oils 1946-1977, (Sansom & Co., 2012) The research is on two artists, Patrick Procktor (1936-2003), and Keith Vaughan (1912-1977). The monograph on Procktor – previously one of the least documented of the generation of artists who came to prominence in London in the Sixties – positions him in a history of art from which he had been notably absent. The research on Vaughan asserts a new reading of his work, one that is both deeper and more nuanced in its analysis of the ways in which personal experience and sexuality are encoded autobiographically within his work. Crucially, in both artists biography and work are symbiotically linked; the research therefore examines the links between life and art. Revisionary in intent, the work examines trajectories of experience of gay British (or rather, English) artists in the twentieth century, artists who sought to express themselves and forge careers within the constraints of a heteronormative society, albeit one in which attitudes to sexuality were undergoing change. As gay men, both were constrained by the social mores of their times, and each used painting as a means to affirm personal and sexual identities. A key research interest is in the ways in which sexuality and persona are reflected in critical responses to the artist’s work: in Vaughan, Procktor and other gay male artists of the period. The writing on both Procktor and Vaughan examines the relationship between their personal and professional/artistic lives, framed within a broader socio-political and art historical context. It asserts the place of biography as a means to understand and form new readings of the work. The work adds substantially to the literature and wider discourse on post-war British painting and social history

    Why We Don\u27t Cook Anymore

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    Ken Albala is Professor of History at the University of the Pacific. He is the author or editor of 14 books on food including Eating Right in the Renaissance, Food in Early Modern Europe, Cooking in Europe 1250-1650, The Banquet: Dining in the Great Courts of Late Renaissance Europe, Beans: A History (winner of the 2008 International Association of Culinary Professionals Jane Grigson Award), and Pancake. He has also co-edited two works, The Business of Food and Human Cuisine, and two other edited collections are forthcoming this fall: Food and Faith and A Cultural History of Food: The Renaissance. Albala was also editor of three food series for Greenwood Press with 30 volumes in print and his 4-volume Food Cultures of the World Encyclopedia was just published this summer. Albala is also co-editor of the journal Food Culture and Society and general editor of the new series AltaMira Studies in Food and Gastronomy, for which he has written a textbook entitled Three World Cuisines: Italy, China, Mexico which will appear in the spring of 2012. He is currently researching a history of theological controversies surrounding fasting in the Reformation Era, and has co-authored a cookbook for Penguin /Perigee entitled The Lost Art of Real Cooking, the sequel of which will appear next year and is entitled The Lost Arts of Hearth and Home. In the spirit of ideas worth spreading, TEDx is a program of local, self-organized events that bring people together to share a TED-like experience. At a TEDx event, TEDTalks video and live speakers combine to spark deep discussion and connection in a small group. These local, self-organized events are branded TEDx, where x = independently organized TED event. The TED Conference provides general guidance for the TEDx program, but individual TEDx events are self-organized.

    Robert Buchanan 1841-1901: an assessment of his career.

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    PhDRobert Buchanan was widely regarded during his lifetime as a poet of distinction, a capable and powerful novelist, and a critic of some perception, yet his name is now associated only with one regrettable episode, while those of lesser men and women continue to be remembered for work inferior to his. A man possessing large reserves of energy, and pressed to write for a living at an early age, he produced much work that deserves the oblivion it has found; but his early verse, expressing his profound compassion for the sufferings of the unfortunate in the simplest language, some of his ballads, and not a little of his later more vatic verse, is still worthy of study. As a novelist his work is provocative and readable, but too often descends to the level of the sentimental melodrama which earned him, for a while, a very good income from the stage. As a critic he was not profound, but was quick to detect and praise expression of his own sympathy for humanity that came to represent for him art's highest aspiration; Dickens, Browning and Whitman were his heroes, and for the last two he did sterling work in helping them to gain widespread recognition. As a polemist he rushed into several arenas, for some of which his talents were not especially suited; but he publicly supported C. S. Parnell and Oscar Wilde when few found the courage to do so. An interesting man of impressive variety and undoubted talent has found an undeserved neglect, and a full-scale critical biography of Robert Buchanan is long overdue

    Evolution of silicon microstrip detector currents during proton irradiation at the CERN PS

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    Prototype ATLAS silicon microstrip detectors have been irradiated to the dose predicted for 10 years of LHC operation with protons at the CERN PS whilst cooled to the ATLAS design operating temperature. The detector currents were monitored during irradiation, which allows the predictions of bulk radiation damage parameterizations to be tested. Values for the damage constant α and the rate of acceptor creation β have been calculated and are in agreement with those previously published for the irradiation of silicon diodes

    Resilient places? The healthcare gardens and the Maggie's Centres

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    This thesis takes as its focus the Maggie’s Cancer Centres exploring for the first time the impact of their designed gardens. This research is situated within the immediate context of Maggie’s ambitions as an organisation and looks closely at their design process. It is also set within the wider debates about the effects of green space on health and the historical context of the restorative garden. By exploring both historical and contemporary examples, it argues that a healthcare garden may be a space for transformation. Using four different Maggie’s gardens as case studies, the research seeks to investigate the role of these outdoor spaces and their impact on users. Through ethnographic and sensory methods, each garden is considered and mapped. It looks at the design brief and the intentions of the designers’, but the core work is an exploration of the experiences of staff and visitors. The focus is on the everyday use of these gardens as well as the design historiography. The experiences of gardens within healthcare are examined in order to expose the ways in which gardens, people, health and care are entwined. Through the qualitative research process this thesis develops a new hypothesis as to how healthcare gardens may operate – offering a new definition for them as “resilient places”. Careful analysis of the data reveals the specific networks and affordances presented by these gardens. The thesis argues, based on the evidence of users, that healthcare gardens can uniquely embrace certain “essences” where essence is defined as conveying a quality or attribute. These garden essences are identified as thresholds, sensory richness, the density of time and homeliness. The thesis also argues that a healthcare garden can provide specific and unique opportunities for care and this, in turn, can enhance the healing ethos of an organisation such as Maggie’s
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