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Relevant Context (relevant + context)
Selected AbstractsSocial Influence in Personally Relevant Contexts: The Respect Attributed to the Source as a Factor Increasing Smokers' Intention to Quit Smoking,JOURNAL OF APPLIED SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY, Issue 9 2003Federica Invernizzi The study examined the effects of the status of the source in personally relevant persuasion contexts. Smokers (N= 117) with either weak or strong identity as smokers were exposed to an anti-smoking message, targeting either the tobacco industry or smokers, and attributed either to a health institute or a neighborhood association. The main dependent variable was the change in intention to quit smoking. As expected, the neighborhood association was considered more respectful of the freedom of choice of the target than was the health institute. In high personal relevance conditions (i.e., participants with strong identities as smokers and message explicitly targeting smokers), smokers strengthened their intention to quit smoking when the source was the neighborhood association, but decreased it when the source was the health institute. Implications for health campaign implementation are discussed. [source] Cardiac cell therapy: overexpression of connexin43 in skeletal myoblasts and prevention of ventricular arrhythmiasJOURNAL OF CELLULAR AND MOLECULAR MEDICINE, Issue 9b 2009Sarah Fernandes Abstract Cell-based therapies have great potential for the treatment of cardiovascular diseases. Recently, using a transgenic mouse model Roell et al. reported that cardiac engraftment of connexin43 (Cx43)-overexpressing myoblasts in vivo prevents post-infarct arrhythmia, a common cause of death in patients following heart attack. We carried out a similar study but in a clinically relevant context via transplantation of autologous connexin43-overexpressing myoblasts in infarcted rats. Seven days after coronary ligation, rats were randomized into three groups: a control group injected with myoblasts, a null group injected with myoblasts transduced with an empty lentivirus vector (null) and a Cx43 group injected with myoblasts transduced with a lentivirus vector encoding connexin43. In contrast to Roell's report, arrhythmia occurrence was not statistically different between groups (58%, 64% and 48% for the control (n= 12), null (n= 14) and Cx43 (n= 23) groups, respectively, P= 0.92). Using ex vivo intramural monophasic action potential recordings synchronous electrical activity was observed between connexin43-overexpressing myoblasts and host cardiomyocytes, whereas such synchrony did not occur in the null-transduced group. This suggests that ex vivo connexin43 gene transfer and expression in myoblasts improved intercellular electrical coupling between myoblasts and cardiomyocytes. However, in our model such electrical coupling was not sufficient to decrease arrhythmia induction. Therefore, we would suggest a note of caution on the use of combined Cx43 gene and cell therapy to prevent post-infarct arrhythmias in heart failure patients. [source] Co-Culture of Mouse Epidermal Cells for Studies of PigmentationPIGMENT CELL & MELANOMA RESEARCH, Issue 2 2003Tae-Jin Yoon Interactions between melanocytes and keratinocytes in the skin suggest bi-directional interchanges between these two cell types. Thus, melanocytes cultured alone may not accurately reflect the physiology of the skin and the effects of physiological regulators in vivo, because they do not consider possible interactions with keratinocytes. As more and more pigment genes are identified and cloned, the characterization of their functions becomes more of a challenge, particularly with respect to their roles in the processing and transport of melanosomes and their transfer to keratinocytes. Immortalized melanocytes mutant at these loci are now being routinely generated from mice, but interestingly, successful co-culture of murine melanocytes and keratinocytes is very difficult compared with their human counterparts. Thus, we have now optimized co-culture conditions for murine melanocytes and keratinocytes so that pigmentation and the effects of specific mutations can be studied in a more physiologically relevant context. [source] Confrontations with Radical Evil: the ambiguity of myth and the inadequacy of representationART HISTORY, Issue 3 2001Steven Zucker The unprecedented violence at the end of World War II prompted a number of Abstract Expressionists to abandon mythology as a means to explore contemporary evil. Myth, as used by these American artists, was essentially a synthesis of psychoanalytic theory, and cultural and physical anthropology, offering a structure with which contemporary events could be expressed without resorting to the illustrative documentation of the Regionalists or the Surrealists. The critical literature that treats the early New York School dismisses myth as a preparatory phase which was replaced by the purer forms of the painters' signature abstraction by 1946 and 1947. Absent is an evaluation of the motives which led these artists actively to repudiate myth as a means to explore evil. An examination of this rejection of the last traces of narrative must also take into account the function and limitations of myth in early postwar American art. An assessment of these limitations is undertaken by intrepreting the work of Jackson Pollock, Mark Rothko, David Smith and other Abstract Expressionists in the context of Hannah Arendt's coeval political philosophy and especially her early conception of radical evil. Additionally, the writings of Theodore Adorno, Pär Lagerkvist, Herman Melville, Barnett Newman, Friedrich Nietzsche and Richard Wagner offer a relevant context within which to analyse the dynamics that transformed the American use of the archaic from a celebration of the irrational into a condemnation of its moral ambiguity. Myth was not simply shed to make way for the breakthrough abstractions of the artists but was rejected because of its ideological dangers. In the postwar era, myth had become untenable. [source] Content Differences for Abstract and Concrete ConceptsCOGNITIVE SCIENCE - A MULTIDISCIPLINARY JOURNAL, Issue 5 2005Katja Katja Wiemer-Hastings Abstract Concept properties are an integral part of theories of conceptual representation and processing. To date, little is known about conceptual properties of abstract concepts, such as idea. This experiment systematically compared the content of 18 abstract and 18 concrete concepts, using a feature generation task. Thirty-one participants listed characteristics of the concepts (i.e., item properties) or their relevant context (i.e., context properties). Abstract concepts had significantly fewer intrinsic item properties and more properties expressing subjective experiences than concrete concepts. Situation components generated for abstract and concrete concepts differed in kind, but not in number. Abstract concepts were predominantly related to social aspects of situations. Properties were significantly less specific for abstract than for concrete concepts. Thus, abstractness emerged as a function of several, both qualitative and quantitative, factors. [source] Students' perceptions of relationships between some educational variables in the out-patient settingMEDICAL EDUCATION, Issue 8 2002D H J M Dolmans Background Medical education uses the cognitive apprenticeship model of student learning extensively. Students rotate among different hospitals and out- patient clinics where they are exposed to a range of professionally relevant contexts. Here they learn to think and act in different domains under the supervision of experts. Previous research has shown that these learning situations involve little teaching. Students see a narrow range of patient problems and feedback is limited. The aim of this study is to investigate relationships among some educational variables in the out-patient clinic. Method This paper provides a theoretical model that specifies the factors influencing the effectiveness of student rotations at out-patient clinics. The model makes distinctions between input variables, such as organizational quality, number of students contemporaneously involved and available space, and process variables, such as patient mix and supervision, and the output variable of the effectiveness of rotations in out-patient clinics. Results The model was tested against empirical data from evaluative surveys and showed a reasonable fit. The model offers suggestions for improving the learning environment of clinical rotations. Discussion The strength of this study lies in its process evaluation perspective which investigates interactions between intervening variables rather than the influence of particular variables in isolation from other variables. [source] | |||||||||||||