The heritability of conscientiousness facets and their relationship to IQ and academic achievement

The heritability of conscientiousness has been one of the least explored of the NEO PI domains. Here we focus on the facet scales of the conscientiousness domain, estimating both their heritability and their correlations with measures of IQ and academic achievement (Queensland Core Skills Test; QCST) in a sample of adolescent twins and their non-twin siblings. Our findings confirmed positive associations between IQ and the facets of Competence and Dutifulness (ranging 0.11-0.27), with academic achievement showing correlations of 0.27 and 0.15 with these same facets and 0.15 with Deliberation. All conscientiousness facets were influenced by genes (broad sense heritabilities ranging 0.18-0.49) and unique environment, but common environment was judged unimportant. A multivariate genetic analysis including Competence, Dutifulness, IQ (verbal, performance) and QCST scores showed that common variance was primarily explained by a general additive genetic factor (loadings ranging 0.15-0.84). Future multivariate genetic analysis which incorporates Openness to Experience dimensions may improve the interpretation of these findings. (c) 2005 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.

Implementation of Triple P-Positive Parenting Program in Hong Kong: Predictors of programme completion and clinical outcomes

This study examined the effectiveness of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program in a government child health service delivery context with Chinese parents in Hong Kong. Specifically, the study sought to identify pre-intervention variables that might predict programme outcomes such as, level of clinical improvement and programme completion. Participants were 661 parents of pre-school and primary aged children participating in a group version of the Triple P-Positive Parenting Program. There were significant decreases in disruptive child behaviours, levels of parenting stress, general stress and anxiety and an increase in parenting sense of competence. Greater change in reports of child behaviour problems was related to lower levels of family income, new immigrant family status, and higher pre-intervention levels of parenting stress. The present study provides a profile of parents who are most likely to benefit from parent training programmes.

Policy into practice:a study of public policy implementation and the role of learning

Public policy becomes managerial practice through a process of implementation. There is an established literature within Implementation Studies which explains the variables and some of the processes involved in implementation, but less attention has been focused upon how public service managers convert new policy initiatives into practice. The research proposes that managers and their organisations have to go through a process of learning in order to achieve the implementation of public policy. Data was collected over a five year period from four case studies of capital investment appraisal in the British National Health Service. Further data was collected from taped interviews by key actors within the case studies. The findings suggest that managers do learn to implement policy and four factors are important in this learning process. These are; (i) the nature of bureaucratic responsibility; (ii) the motivation of actors towards learning; (iii) the passage of time which allows for the development of competence and (iv) the use of project team structures. The research has demonstrated that the conversion of policy into practice occurs through the operationalisation of solutions to policy problems via job tasks. As such it suggests that in understanding how policy is implemented, technical learning is more important than cultural learning, in this context. In conclusion, a "Model of Learned Implementation" is presented, together with a discussion of some of the implications of the research. These are the possible use of more pilot projects for new policy initiatives and the more systematic diffusion of knowledge about implementation solutions.

The idea of the hybrid texts and translation:contact as conflict

Intercultural communication in the global environment frequently involves recourse to translation. This generates new phenomena which, in turn, raise new questions for translation theory and practice. This issue is concerned with the concept of the hybrid text as one of these phenomena. In this introductory chapter, a hybrid text is defined as: „a text that results from a translation process. It shows features that somehow seem ‘out of place'/‘strange'/‘unusual' for the receiving culture, i.e. the target culture”. It is important, however, to differentiate between the true hybrid, which is the result of positive authorial and/or translatorial decisions, and the inadequate text which exhibits features of translationese, resulting from a lack of competence. Textual, contextual and social features of hybrid texts are postulated (see discussion paper). These are the object of critical reflection in sub-sequent chapters, in relation to different genres. The potential of the hybrid text for translation research is explored.

Competence–Based Support of Interaction between Business Network Members

In a complicated business network finding a supplier can be a very time consuming task. The technology of competence management is aimed to support such kind of tasks. The paper presents an approach to support interaction between business network members based on such technologies as competence management and knowledge management. The conceptual models of the context-driven competence management system and production network member competence profile are described. The usage of the competence management system is illustrated via an example from automotive industry.

A corpus-assisted study of the discourse marker well as an indicator of judges' institutional roles in court cases with litigants in person

In this paper, I concentrate on court cases with litigants in person (lay people who act on their own behalf in legal proceedings without a counsel or solicitor) and discuss the challenges of building a corpus of courtroom discourse where it is crucial to distinguish between speakers due to their distinct institutional roles. The corpus incorporates seven sub-corpora of verbatim transcripts from different court cases with litigants in person and comprises over eleven-million tokens. The focus of this paper is on the interplay between the legal and lay discourse types and how judges project their institutional roles through well-initiated turns directed at litigants in person and counsels. As a versatile discourse marker, well provides a good opportunity to explore how judges have to adapt their roles to ensure lay litigants in person receive the necessary support and that their lack of competence does not impede on the fairness of the proceedings. Given the breadth and importance of the topic of litigation in person, I discuss how the tools and approaches of corpus linguistics can be helpful in this multi-disciplinary area where multiple functions and uses of individual linguistic features need to be explored in depth.

A qualitative study of the impact of an educational intervention on older parents of adults with disabilities engaged in the phenomenon of future-care planning

This phenomenological study describes the impact of an educational intervention on the day-to-day experiences of older parent caregivers of adults with developmental disabilities who were engaged in the process of future-care planning. Qualitative strategies of individual and focus group interviewing were used with a purposive sample of older caregivers. Participants were members of an existing parent support group. Twenty-three caregivers representing 18 families were queried before and after the education program. The disabilities represented were mental retardation, cerebral palsy and autism. Parents whose children live at or away from home were included. The intervention was conducted on five Saturdays over a two month period; the duration of the study was five months. Findings used typical words of the respondents from their individual and focus group interviews to describe feelings, attitudes and experiences in making future-care plans. Data from verbatim transcriptions and researcher's field notes were coded, analyzed, sorted into themes, and subjected to interpretive analysis. Respondents showed a positive change in attitudes and actions after participating in the education program, regardless of their initial stage in care planning. Fears were replaced by hope and determination; hesitation and ineptitude by feelings of competence and confidence; and procrastination and delay by purposeful actions. Other key findings: use of a planning document greatly aided caregivers; barriers to planning were often intrinsic and amenable to education; residential plans were the most difficult aspect of planning; listening to the experiences of other parent caregivers was helpful; and making burial plans for their offspring was one aspect of planning parents wished to do themselves. ^

Towards the formation of a sustainable South Florida: An analysis of conflict resolution and consensus building in the South Florida Everglades Ecosystem Restoration Initiative

This dissertation examines the sociological process of conflict resolution and consensus building in South Florida Everglades Ecosystem Restoration through what I define as a Network Management Coordinative Interstitial Group (NetMIG). The process of conflict resolution can be summarized as the participation of interested and affected parties (stakeholders) in a forum of negotiation. I study the case of the Governor's Commission for a Sustainable South Florida (GCSSF) that was established to reduce social conflict. Such conflict originated from environmental disputes about the Everglades and was manifested in the form of gridlock among regulatory (government) agencies, Indian tribes, as well as agricultural, environmental conservationist and urban development interests. The purpose of the participatory forum is to reduce conflicts of interest and to achieve consensus, with the ultimate goal of restoration of the original Everglades ecosystem, while cultivating the economic and cultural bases of the communities in the area. Further, the forum aim to formulate consensus through envisioning a common sustainable community by providing means to achieve a balance between human and natural systems. ^ Data were gathered using participant observation and document analysis techniques to conduct a theoretically based analysis of the role of the Network Management Coordinative Interstitial Group (NetMIG). I use conflict resolution theory, environmental conflict theory, stakeholder analysis, systems theory, differentiation and social change theory, and strategic management and planning theory. ^ The purpose of this study is to substantiate the role of the Governor's Commission for a Sustainable South Florida (GCSSF) as a consortium of organizations in an effort to resolve conflict rather than an ethnographic study of this organization. Environmental restoration of the Everglades is a vehicle for recognizing the significance of a Network Management Coordinative Interstitial Group (NetMIG), namely the Governor's Commission for a Sustainable South Florida (GCSSF), as a structural mechanism for stakeholder participation in the process of social conflict resolution through the creation of new cultural paradigms for a sustainable community. ^

Foreign Language Education in Colombia: A Qualitative Study of Escuela Nueva

Since 2004 the Colombian Ministry of Education has been implementing the Programa Nacional de Bilingüismo (PNB) with the goal of having bilingual high school graduates in English and Spanish by 2019. However, implementation of the PNB has been criticized by English Language Teaching (ELT) specialists in the country who say, among other things, that the PNB introduced a discourse associated exclusively with bilingualism in English and Spanish. This study analyzed interviews with 15 participants of a public school of the Colombian Escuela Nueva, a successful model of community-based education that has begun a process of internationalization, regarding the participants’ perceptions of foreign language education and the policies of the PNB. Six students, five teachers, and four administrators were each interviewed twice using semi-structured interviews. To offer a critique of the PNB, this study tried to determine to what extent the school implemented the elements of Responsible ELT, a model developed by the researcher incorporating the concepts of hegemony of English, critical language-policy research, and resistance in ELT. Findings included the following: (a) students and teachers saw English as the universal language whereas most administrators saw English imposed due to political and economic reasons; (b) some teachers misinterpreted the 1994 General Law of Education mandating the teaching of a foreign language as a law mandating English; and (c) some teachers and administrators saw the PNB’s adoption of competence standards based on the Common European Framework of Reference for languages as beneficial whereas others saw it as arbitrary. Conclusions derived from this study of this Escuela Nueva school were: (a) most participants found the goal of the PNB unrealistic; (b) most teachers and administrators saw the policies of the PNB as top-down policies without assessment or continuity; and (c) teachers and administrators mentioned a disarticulation between elementary and high school ELT policies that may be discouraging students in public schools from learning English. Thus, this study suggests that the policies of the PNB may be contributing to English becoming a gatekeeper for higher education and employment thereby becoming a tool for sustaining inequality in Colombia.

Is alcohol consumption related to likelihood of reporting chronic widespread pain in people with stable consumption? : Results from UK Biobank

Acknowledgements This research has been conducted using the UK Biobank resource, and was funded by the University of Aberdeen. The authors have no conflicts of interest to declare.

Predictors of functional dependency in Parkinson’s disease

Financial disclosures/conflicts of interest: Dr Macleod was funded by a Clinical Academic Fellowship from the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government and received grant funding from Parkinson’s UK, the Wellcome Trust, University of Aberdeen, and NHS Grampian endowments relating to this research. Dr Counsell received grant funding from Parkinson’s UK, National Institute for Health Research, the Scottish Chief Scientist Office, the BMA Doris Hillier award, RS Macdonald Trust, the BUPA Foundation, NHS Grampian endowments and SPRING relating to this research. We declare we have no conflicts of interest. Financial support: This study was funded by Parkinson’s UK, the Scottish Chief Scientist Office, NHS Grampian endowments, the BMA Doris Hillier award, RS Macdonald Trust, the BUPA Foundation, and SPRING.  

Activation of Serotonin 2C Receptors in Dopamine Neurons Inhibits Binge-like Eating in Mice

This work was supported by the National Institutes of Health (Grant Nos. R01DK093587 and R01DK101379 [to YX], R01DK092605 to [QT], R01DK078056 [to MM]), the Klarman Family Foundation (to YX), the Naman Family Fund for Basic Research (to YX), Curtis Hankamer Basic Research Fund (to YX), American Diabetes Association (Grant Nos. 7-13-JF-61 [to QW] and 1-15-BS-184 [to QT]), American Heart Association postdoctoral fellowship (to PX), Wellcome Trust (Grant No. WT098012 [to LKH]), and Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (Grant No. BB/K001418/1 [to LKH]). The anxiety tests (e.g., open-field test, light-dark test, elevated plus maze test) were performed in the Mouse Neurobehavior Core, Baylor College of Medicine, which was supported by National Institutes of Health Grant No. P30HD024064. PX and YH were involved in experimental design and most of the procedures, data acquisition and analyses, and writing the manuscript. XC assisted in the electrophysiological recordings; LV-T assisted in the histology study; XY, KS, CW, YY, AH, LZ, and GS assisted in surgical procedures and production of study mice. MGM, QW, QT, and LKH were involved in study design and writing the manuscript. YX is the guarantor of this work and, as such, had full access to all the data in the study and takes responsibility for the integrity of the data and the accuracy of the data analysis. The authors report no biomedical financial interests or potential conflicts of interest.

Predictors of functional dependency in Parkinson’s disease

Financial disclosures/conflicts of interest: Dr Macleod was funded by a Clinical Academic Fellowship from the Chief Scientist Office of the Scottish Government and received grant funding from Parkinson’s UK, the Wellcome Trust, University of Aberdeen, and NHS Grampian endowments relating to this research. Dr Counsell received grant funding from Parkinson’s UK, National Institute for Health Research, the Scottish Chief Scientist Office, the BMA Doris Hillier award, RS Macdonald Trust, the BUPA Foundation, NHS Grampian endowments and SPRING relating to this research. We declare we have no conflicts of interest. Financial support: This study was funded by Parkinson’s UK, the Scottish Chief Scientist Office, NHS Grampian endowments, the BMA Doris Hillier award, RS Macdonald Trust, the BUPA Foundation, and SPRING.  

Genetic improvement of feed conversion ratio via indirect selection against lipid deposition in farmed rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss Walbaum)

The research leading to these results has received funding from the European Union's Seventh Framework Programme (KBBE.2013.1.2-10) under grant agreement n° 613611 FISHBOOST. Moreover, the original data collection was supported by the European Union, Project PROGRESS Q5RS-2001-00994. The staff at Tervo station, Ossi Ritola and Tuija Paananen, are highly acknowledged for fish management. A. Ka., A. Ki., S. M., D. H. and K. R. designed research and wrote the paper; A.Ka analyzed the data and had primary responsibility for the final content. All authors have read and approved the manuscript. The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Implementing the Physical Literacy Component of the 2015 Ontario Health and Physical Education Curriculum: Is the Stage Set?

Introduction: Current physical activity levels among children and youth are alarmingly low; a mere 7% of children and youth are meeting the Canadian Physical Activity Guidelines (Colley et al., 2011), which means that the vast majority of this population is at risk of developing major health problems in adulthood (Janssen & Leblanc, 2010). These high inactivity rates may be related to suboptimal experiences in sport and physical activity stemming from a lack of competence and confidence (Lubans, Morgan, Cliff, Barnett, & Okely, 2010). Developing a foundation of physical literacy can encourage and maintain lifelong physical activity, yet this does not always occur naturally as a part of human growth (Hardman, 2011). An ideal setting to foster the growth and development of physical literacy is physical education class. Physical education class can offer all children and youth an equal opportunity to learn and practice the skills needed to be active for life (Hardman, 2011). Elementary school teachers are responsible for delivering the physical education curriculum, and it is important to understand their will and capacity as the implementing agents of physical literacy development curriculum (McLaughlin, 1987). Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the physical literacy component of the 2015 Ontario Health and Physical Education curriculum policy through the eyes of key informants, and to explore the resources available for the implementation of this new policy. Methods: Qualitative interviews were conducted with seven key informants of the curriculum policy development, including two teachers. In tandem with the interviews, a resource inventory and curriculum review were conducted to assess the content and availability of physical literacy resources. All data were analyzed through the lens of Hogwood and Gunn’s (1984) 10 preconditions for policy implementation. Results: Participants discussed how implementation is affected by: accountability, external capacity, internal capacity, awareness and understanding of physical literacy, implementation expertise, and policy climate. Discussion: Participants voiced similar opinions on most issues, and the overall lack of attention given to physical education programs in schools will continue to be a major dilemma when trying to combat such high physical inactivity levels.