National and Gender Measurement Invariance of the Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale (U-MICS) : A 10-Nation Study With University Students

The purpose of this study was to examine the psychometric properties of the Utrecht-Management of Identity Commitments Scale (U-MICS), a self-report measure aimed at assessing identity processes of commitment, in-depth exploration, and reconsideration of commitment. We tested its factor structure in university students from a large array of cultural contexts, including 10 nations located in Europe (i.e., Italy, the Netherlands, Poland, Portugal, Romania, and Switzerland), Middle East (i.e., Turkey), and Asia (i.e., China, Japan, and Taiwan). Furthermore, we tested national and gender measurement invariance. Participants were 6,118 (63.2% females) university students aged from 18 to 25 years (Mage = 20.91 years). Results indicated that the three-factor structure of the U-MICS fitted well in the total sample, in each national group, and in gender groups. Furthermore, national and gender measurement invariance were established. Thus, the U-MICS can be fruitfully applied to study identity in university students from various Western and non-Western contexts.

Die Konstruktion einer medizinischen Disziplin und ihre Herausforderungen: die Orthopädie in der Schweiz im 19. und 20. Jahrhundert [The construction of a medical discipline and its challenges: Orthopedics in Switzerland during the 19th and 20th centuries].

(ENGLISH VERSION BELOW) Dieser Beitrag fügt sich in eine post-doktorale Forschung über die Geschichte der Orthopädie ein, die unter dem Mandat des Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV) geleitet wird und teilerweise auf die Archiv der Schweizerischen Gesellschaft für Orthopädie (aktuelle Swiss Orthopaedics) beruht. Die Autorin untersucht die Herausforderungen, welche die Geschichte der Orthopädie in der Schweiz prägten und berücksichtigt dabei die Anpassungsstrategien einer medizinischen und technischen Disziplin in einer sich wandelnden Gesellschaft. Zusammenfassung der Beitrag und Informationen auf der Website der Zeitschrift: http://econtent.hogrefe.com/toc/tum/72/7 This article is inspired by a post-doctorale research about the history of orthopedics, mandated by the Centre Hospitalier Universitaire Vaudois (CHUV), and partly supported by the Archiv of the Swiss Society of Orthopedics (nowadays Swiss Orthopaedics). By examining the implications that have shaped the history of orthopedics in Switzerland, the author seeks to shed light on the strategies that were implemented in adopting a medical and technical discipline within a transforming society. Summary of the article and information on the journal's website: http://econtent.hogrefe.com/toc/tum/72/7

Construction of an index of information from clinical practice in Radiology and Imaging Diagnosis based on text mining and thesaurus

Objective To construct a Portuguese language index of information on the practice of diagnostic radiology in order to improve the standardization of the medical language and terminology. Materials and Methods A total of 61,461 definitive reports were collected from the database of the Radiology Information System at Hospital das Clínicas – Faculdade de Medicina de Ribeirão Preto (RIS/HCFMRP) as follows: 30,000 chest x-ray reports; 27,000 mammography reports; and 4,461 thyroid ultrasonography reports. The text mining technique was applied for the selection of terms, and the ANSI/NISO Z39.19-2005 standard was utilized to construct the index based on a thesaurus structure. The system was created in *html. Results The text mining resulted in a set of 358,236 (n = 100%) words. Out of this total, 76,347 (n = 21%) terms were selected to form the index. Such terms refer to anatomical pathology description, imaging techniques, equipment, type of study and some other composite terms. The index system was developed with 78,538 *html web pages. Conclusion The utilization of text mining on a radiological reports database has allowed the construction of a lexical system in Portuguese language consistent with the clinical practice in Radiology.

Brief report : Academic amotivation in light of the dark side of identity formation

The study intended to determine motivational profiles of first-year undergraduates and aimed their characterization in terms of identity processes. First, a cluster analysis revealed five motivational profiles: combined (i.e., high quantity of motivation, low amotivation); intrinsic (i.e., high intrinsic, low introjected and external regulation, low amotivation); "demotivated" (i.e., very low quantity of motivation and amotivation); extrinsic (i.e., high extrinsic and identified regulation and low intrinsic and amotivation); and "amotivated" (i.e., low intrinsic and identified, very high amotivation). Second, using Lebart's (2000) methodology, the most characteristic identity processes were listed for each motivational cluster. Demotivated and amotivated profiles were refined in terms of adaptive and maladaptive forms of exploration. Notably, exploration in breadth and in depth were underrepresented in demotivated students compared to the total sample; commitment and ruminative exploration were under and overrepresented respectively in amotivated students. Educational and clinical implications are proposedand future research is suggested.

Towards the Construction of a Multi-agent Approach for Discovering the Meaning of Natural Language Collaborative Conversations

Peer-reviewed

The experience of identity transformation process for people living with tetraplegia and paraplegia = El proceso de reconstrucción de la identidad de las personas afectadas de una paraplejia o tetraplejia

A spinal cord injury (SCI) is perceived as a source of biographical disruption, not only at a physical level but also in terms of people’s life stories, their motivation and their self-esteem. The aim of this study is to explore the factors that people with spinal cord injuries perceive as contributing to rebuilding their sense of self. Two focus groups were established from the SCIcommunity, one of which was made up of 14 people with paraplegia and the other of 9 people with tetraplegia. In addition, four individual interviews were conducted with the participants. The results of content analysis show that the two most prominent factors in the process of identity renegotiation are the partial transformation of the subject’s identity followed by a coming to terms with that new identity. To rebuild self-worth, the importance of finding a balance between change and continuity was identified. Renegotiation of identity after a spinal cord injury is a complex phenomenon that greatly influences the SCI individual’s quality of life perceptions. Reaching a balance between the changes experienced due to the injury and finding a sense of continuity can be either facilitated or obstructed by the economic, political, legal, architectural, and social context

Finnair’s “New Silk Road” in the New Millennium: An Analysis of the Construction of Asia and of the Company

During the past century, an increasingly diverse world provided us with opportunities for intercultural communication; especially the growth of commerce at all levels from domestic to international has made the combination of the theories of intercultural communication and international business necessary. As one of the main beneficiaries in international business in recent years, companies in airline industries have developed their international market. For instance, Finnair has developed its Asian strategy which responds to the increasing market demand for flights from Europe to Asia in the new millennium. Therefore, the company manages marketing communication in a global environment and becomes a suitable case for studying the theories of intercultural communication in the context of international marketing. Finnair implemented a large number of international advertisements to promote its Asian routes, where Asia has been constructed as a number of exotic destinations. Meanwhile, the company itself as a provider of these destinations has also been constructed contrastively. Thus, this thesis aims at research how Finnair constructs Asia and the company itself in the new millennium, and how these constructions compare with the theories of intercultural communication. This research applied the theories of international marketing, intercultural communication and culture. In order to analyze the collected corpora as Finnair’s international advertisements and its annual reports in the new millennium, the methods of content analysis and discourse analysis have been used in this research. As a result, Finnair has purposefully applied the essentialist approach to intercultural communication and constructed Asia as an exotic “Other” due to the company’s market orientation. Meanwhile, Finnair has also constructed the company itself two identities based on the same approach: as an international airline provider between Europe and Asia, as well as a part of Finnish society. The combination of intercultural communication and international marketing theories, together with the combination of the methods of content analysis and discourse analysis ensure the originality of this paper.

Scaling up stepwise feature introduction to construction of large software systems

Developing software is a difficult and error-prone activity. Furthermore, the complexity of modern computer applications is significant. Hence,an organised approach to software construction is crucial. Stepwise Feature Introduction – created by R.-J. Back – is a development paradigm, in which software is constructed by adding functionality in small increments. The resulting code has an organised, layered structure and can be easily reused. Moreover, the interaction with the users of the software and the correctness concerns are essential elements of the development process, contributing to high quality and functionality of the final product. The paradigm of Stepwise Feature Introduction has been successfully applied in an academic environment, to a number of small-scale developments. The thesis examines the paradigm and its suitability to construction of large and complex software systems by focusing on the development of two software systems of significant complexity. Throughout the thesis we propose a number of improvements and modifications that should be applied to the paradigm when developing or reengineering large and complex software systems. The discussion in the thesis covers various aspects of software development that relate to Stepwise Feature Introduction. More specifically, we evaluate the paradigm based on the common practices of object-oriented programming and design and agile development methodologies. We also outline the strategy to testing systems built with the paradigm of Stepwise Feature Introduction.

Construction of occluded recombinant baculoviruses containing the full-length cry1Ab and cry1Ac genes from Bacillus thuringiensis

The administration of baculoviruses to insects for bioassay purposes is carried out, in most cases, by contamination of food surfaces with a known amount of occlusion bodies (OBs). Since per os infection is the natural route of infection, occluded recombinant viruses containing crystal protein genes (cry1Ab and cry1Ac) from Bacillus thuringiensis were constructed for comparison with the baculovirus prototype Autographa californica nucleopolyhedrovirus (AcNPV). The transfer vector pAcUW2B was used for construction of occluded recombinant viruses. The transfer vector containing the crystal protein genes was cotransfected with linearized DNA from a non-occluded recombinant virus. The isolation of recombinant viruses was greatly facilitated by the reduction of background "wild type" virus and the increased proportion of recombinant viruses. Since the recombinant viruses containing full-length and truncated forms of the crystal protein genes did not seem to improve the pathogenicity of the recombinant viruses when compared with the wild type AcNPV, and in order to compare expression levels of the full-length crystal proteins produced by non-occluded and occluded recombinant viruses the full-length cry1Ab and cry1Ac genes were chosen for construction of occluded recombinant viruses. The recombinant viruses containing full-length and truncated forms of the crystal protein genes did not seem to improve its pathogenicity but the size of the larvae infected with the recombinant viruses was significantly smaller than that of larvae infected with the wild type virus.

Construction of a recombinant adenovirus co-expressing truncated human prostate-specific membrane antigen and mouse 4-1BBL genes and its effect on dendritic cells

Our aim was to construct a recombinant adenovirus co-expressing truncated human prostate-specific membrane antigen (tPSMA) and mouse 4-1BBL genes and to determine its effect on dendritic cells (DCs) generated from bone marrow suspensions harvested from C57BL/6 mice for which the effect of 4-1BBL on DCs is not clear, especially during DCs processing tumor-associated antigen. Replication deficient adenovirus AdMaxTM Expression System was used to construct recombinant adenovirus Ad-tPSMA-internal ribosome entry site-mouse 4-1BBL (Ad-tPSMA-IRES-m4-1BBL) and Ad-enhanced green fluorescent protein. Day 7 proliferating DC aggregates generated from C57BL/6 mice were collected as immature DCs and further mature DCs were obtained by lipopolysaccharide activated immature DCs. After DCs were exposed to the recombinant adenovirus with 250 multiplicity of infection, the expression of tPSMA and m4-1BBL proteins were detected by Western blot, and the apoptosis and phenotype of DCs were analyzed by flow cytometry. Cytokines (IL-6 and IL-12) in the supernatant were detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). Proliferation of T cells was detected by allogeneic mixed lymphocyte reactions. The tPSMA and m4-1BBL proteins were expressed correctly. The apoptosis rate of DCs transfected with Ad-tPSMA-IRES-m4-1BBL was 14.6%, lower than that of control DCs. The expression of co-stimulatory molecules [CD80 (81.6 ± 5.4%) and CD86 (80.13 ± 2.81%)] up-regulated in Ad-tPSMA-IRES-m4-1BBL-pulsed DCs, and the level of IL-6 (3960.2 ± 50.54 pg/mL) and IL-12 (249.57 ± 12.51 pg/mL) production in Ad-tPSMA-IRES-m4-1BBL-transduced DCs were significantly higher (P < 0.05) than those in control DCs. Ad-tPSMA-IRES-m4-1BBL induced higher T-cell proliferation (OD450 = 0.614 ± 0.018), indicating that this recombinant adenovirus can effectively enhance the activity of DCs.