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The effect that compressed air massage (CAM) has on skeletal muscle has been ascertained by the morphological and morphometric evaluation of healthy vervet monkey and rabbit skeletal muscle. How CAM may influence the process of healing following a contusion injury is not known. To determine how CAM or other physiotherapeutic modalities may influence healing, it is necessary to create a minor injury that is both reproducible and quantifiable at the termination of a pre-determined healing period. An earlier study described changes in the morphology of skeletal muscle following a reproducible contusion injury. This study extended that work in that it attempted to quantify the ‘severity’ of such an injury. A 201 g, elongated oval-shaped weight was dropped seven times through a 1 m tube onto the left vastus lateralis muscle of four New Zealand white rabbits. Biopsies were obtained 6 days after injury from the left healing juxta-bone and sub-dermal muscle and uninjured (control) right vastus lateralis of each animal. The tissue was fixed in formal saline, embedded in wax, cut and stained with haematoxylin and phosphotungstic haematoxylin. The muscle was examined by light microscopy and quantification of the severity of injury made using a modified, ‘in-house’ morphological index and by the comparative morphometric measurement of the cross-sectioned epimysium and myofibres in injured and control muscle. The results showed that a single contusion causes multiple, quantifiable degrees of injury from skin to bone – observations of particular importance to others wishing to investigate contusion injury in human or animal models.

Maternal mental health and early mother–infant attachment are critical for infant development, yet mothers of infants hospitalized in the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) face unique stressors that may compromise both. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships among maternal depression, anxiety, stress, perinatal posttraumatic stress, and mother–infant attachment following NICU hospitalization. A quantitative correlational design was used with a sample of 71 mothers whose infants had been discharged from the NICU. Maternal depression, anxiety, and stress were measured using the Depression Anxiety Stress Scales–21 (DASS-21), perinatal posttraumatic stress was assessed with the Perinatal Posttraumatic Stress Questionnaire–II (PPQ-II), mother–infant attachment was measured with the Maternal Postnatal Attachment Scale (MPAS), and maternal distress was assessed with the Parental Stress Index– Short Form (PSI-4-SF). Results indicated that maternal depression, anxiety, and stress were each significantly negatively correlated with mother–infant attachment. Maternal depression, anxiety, and stress were significantly positively correlated with perinatal posttraumatic stress. Perinatal posttraumatic stress was moderately negatively correlated with mother–infant attachment, and mother–infant attachment was moderately negatively correlated with maternal distress. These findings suggest that maternal psychological distress, including perinatal posttraumatic stress, is closely associated with decreased, poorer quality mother–infant attachment following NICU hospitalization. Results underscore the importance of routine mental health screening for mothers of NICU infants, including assessment for depression, anxiety, stress, and perinatal posttraumatic stress, as well as the implementation of trauma-informed support and parent–infant bonding interventions. Addressing maternal mental health may mitigate risks for disrupted attachment and promote better developmental outcomes for infants.

This dissertation examines the phenomenon of memory sanction erasures against high official in pre-Amarna Eighteenth Dynasty Theban tombs. Memory sanctions are defined as the intentional erasure of the owners’ names, titles, and images on the decorated surfaces of their monuments. Over the course of the Eighteenth Dynasty, from the reign of Hatshepsut through the early years of Amenhotep IV, at least 21 officials fell victim to memory sanction erasures as attested from their decorated tomb chapels preserved in the Theban necropolis.The first goal of this dissertation is to systematically record each erasure currently present in the 21 tombs with strong evidence of a memory sanction campaign against the tomb owner based on their Theban tomb. As a result, one main conclusion to be drawn from this study is that memory sanction campaigns were incredibly complex and nuanced in their variety of techniques and made all the more difficult to ascertain due to issues of preservation and destruction of these tombs since antiquity. The Theban tomb chapels of memory sanctioned officials exhibit a range of erasure styles and degrees of thoroughness in their execution. This category of intentional damage encompasses a wide number of trends, concerning the erasure of family and colleagues, the treatment of inscriptions, and the impact on certain scene types.

The effect that compressed air massage (CAM) has on skeletal muscle has been ascertained by the morphological and morphometric evaluation of healthy vervet monkey and rabbit skeletal muscle. How CAM may influence the process of healing following a contusion injury is not known. To determine how CAM or other physiotherapeutic modalities may influence healing, it is necessary to create a minor injury that is both reproducible and quantifiable at the termination of a pre-determined healing period. An earlier study described changes in the morphology of skeletal muscle following a reproducible contusion injury. This study extended that work in that it attempted to quantify the 'severity' of such an injury. A 201 g, elongated oval-shaped weight was dropped seven times through a 1 m tube onto the left vastus lateralis muscle of four New Zealand white rabbits. Biopsies were obtained 6 days after injury from the left healing juxta-bone and sub-dermal muscle and uninjured (control) right vastus lateralis of each animal. The tissue was fixed in formal saline, embedded in wax, cut and stained with haematoxylin and phosphotungstic haematoxylin. The muscle was examined by light microscopy and quantification of the severity of injury made using a modified, 'in-house' morphological index and by the comparative morphometric measurement of the cross-sectioned epimysium and myofibres in injured and control muscle. The results showed that a single contusion causes multiple, quantifiable degrees of injury from skin to bone - observations of particular importance to others wishing to investigate contusion injury in human or animal models.

This study reports our experience in developing a simple, minor injury. After reviewing the literature, a ‘drop-mass’ method was selected where a 201 g, elongated oval-shaped weight was dropped up to 15 times through a 1 m tube onto the left vastus lateralis of New Zealand white rabbits. To determine the extent of injury and degree of healing, biopsies were obtained six days after injury from the healing vastus lateralis of each animal. The tissue was fixed in formal saline, embedded in wax, cut and stained with haematoxylin and eosin (HE) and phosphotungstic acid haematoxylin (PTAH) and examined by light microscopy (LM). The ‘optimal’ injury was created after seven drops, where quite severe, mild and moderately severe trauma was caused to muscle in the juxta-bone, mid and sub-dermal regions respectively. In each region, the muscle exhibited features of healing six days after injury. The ‘drop-mass’ technique appears to cause a contusion within a single muscle of at least three degrees of severity. This previously unreported observation is of particular importance to other researchers wishing to investigate contusion injury in other animal models.

This study reports our experience in developing a simple, minor injury. After reviewing the literature, a 'drop-mass' method was selected where a 201 g, elongated oval-shaped weight was dropped up to 15 times through a 1 m tube onto the left vastus lateralis of New Zealand white rabbits. To determine the extent of injury and degree of healing, biopsies were obtained six days after injury from the healing vastus lateralis of each animal. The tissue was fixed in formal saline, embedded in wax, cut and stained with haematoxylin and eosin (H&E) and phosphotungstic acid haematoxylin (PTAH) and examined by light microscopy (LM). The 'optimal' injury was created after seven drops, where quite severe, mild and moderately severe trauma was caused to muscle in the juxta-bone, mid and sub-dermal regions respectively. In each region, the muscle exhibited features of healing six days after injury. The 'drop-mass' technique appears to cause a contusion within a single muscle of at least three degrees of severity. This previously unreported observation is of particular importance to other researchers wishing to investigate contusion injury in other animal models.

In the 1989 case of City of Richmond versus J. A. Croson Co., the Supreme Court struggled with the constitutionality of affirmative action. However, the Croson decision did little to resolve the conflicting mandates of the Fourteenth Amendment to the US Constitution. The decision recognized the continued need to redress past specific discrimination, implying that the Fourteenth Amendment occasionally may dispel disparate treatment. The highly restrictive test adopted by the Court to establish the existence of such discrimination signals an effective intolerance of such programs. It is suggested that the US Congress should correct the internal contradiction within the Court's opinion and alleviate the potential impairment of remedial action caused by the Croson decision. The federal legislative answer proposed would replace the Court's overly narrow test for determining whether race-based belief is appropriate with a congressional test that seeks to recognize and respond to the lingering effects of past discrimination.

Residents of a census tract that received drinking water from a well contaminated with solvents were previously shown to experience a spontaneous abortion rate over twice that occurring in an unexposed census tract. In addition, the rate of birth defects in the exposed tract was three times that in the unexposed tract. Surprisingly, increased tapwater consumption was associated with higher rates of spontaneous abortions in both the exposed and the unexposed tracts. Subsequent studies in this area have investigated the relation between spontaneous abortions and consumption of tapwater in more detail. In this report, data from the original study have been re-analyzed using methods comparable with those used in more recent studies. These results confirm the association between spontaneous abortions and reported cold tapwater consumption that was seen in the original study. The observed effect was not due to maternal risk factors, nor was it a function of consumption of bottled water. After controlling for bottled water, the odds ratio for consumption of tapwater was 3.4 (95% confidence interval = 0.6-19.4).