The midlife quest for meaning as revealed in critical reflective journals of midlevel community college academic administrators participating in a continuing professional education program: A phenomenological analysis

The purpose of the study was to discover the phenomenology of a particular cohort of midlife professionals who explored their professional life through an inquiry of critical reflective practice. Propelled by career advancement, the complexity of the workplace, and their inner drive to find meaning at the mid-point of their lives, the midlevel North American community college academic administrators enrolled in a year-long continuing professional education program. During the practicum phrase, they recorded their impressions of their own quest for meaning through critical reflective practice. Reflective passages, extracted from the unstructured journals of a cohort of 13 self-selected participants, were analyzed and interpreted using the phenomenological research model. The theoretical framework was the existential-phenomenological view of situated freedom. Therefore, the phenomenon was first explored by delving into midlife development theories and the search for meaning in midlife. Second, the cohort was situated within the context of late 20\rm\sp{th} century higher education organizational structure and culture. The study found a pattern of reflective learning among those who lived the same phenomenon. Having achieved mastery as teachers in first adulthood, they sought meaning in the transformation to second adulthood by channeling their need for generativity into the facilitation of productive change at their community college. Since their primary source of information was the solitary process of critical reflective practice, they perceived of their limited success as unique, resulting in a heightened sense of personal responsibility for progress. A community of peers, who share the same experience, would have enabled these advanced professionals to view the phenomenon of the midlevel change agent not as symptomatic of personal deficiencies but as indicative of systemic dynamics. For midlife professionals to achieve their goals, solo introspective self-examination and peer community need to be supplemented with increased knowledge of organizational dynamics, consensual agreement with superiors on role of the midlevel change agent, and a balance between elements of personal and professional life. Both institutions and continuing professional education programs would contribute to increasing the productivity of dedicated midlevel administrators by treating them as holistic people with unrealized potential.* ftn*Originally published in DAI Vol. 58, No. 8. Reprinted here with corrected author name

L'influsso dell'inglese sulla sintassi dell'italiano : uno studio sulle dislocazioni nella prosa giornalistica online in italiano originale, tradotto e a contatto con l’inglese

Il presente lavoro rappresenta un importante contributo in ambito della linguistica del contatto, in quanto studia gli effetti del contatto linguistico, per la precisione l’influsso dell’inglese sulle dislocazioni sintattiche in italiano (a sinistra: La torta, l’ha mangiata Mara, e a destra: L’ha mangiata Mara, la torta), a partire da testi in lingua originale. Il corpus di ricerca utilizzato proviene in parte dal corpus ICOCP, che prende nome dall’omonimo progetto di ricerca (Italian Constituent Order in a Contrastive Perspective-ICOCP) - all’interno del quale s’iscrive questa tesi dottorale - finanziato dal Fondo Nazionale Svizzero per la Ricerca Scientifica (progetto FNS ICOCP, PP00P1_133716/1) e diretto dalla professoressa Anna-Maria De Cesare all’Università di Basilea dal 2011 al 2015. L’obiettivo di questo lavoro è duplice. In primo luogo ci si propone di sondare fenomeni di interferenza a livello sintattico in italiano, legati al contatto linguistico con l’inglese; in secondo luogo si mira a fornire una descrizione dell’uso delle dislocazioni sintattiche nella lingua italiana, sia dal punto di vista formale che funzionale, basandosi sulla prosa giornalistica online, tipologia testuale ancora poco considerata nello studio di queste strutture. Per raggiungere tali obiettivi si esamina il fenomeno della dislocazione in tre varietà di italiano: italiano originale, italiano tradotto e italiano a contatto con l’inglese (italiano del Canada), a partire dall’uso concomitante di testi in lingua originale (corpora comparabili) e in lingua tradotta. Per lo studio delle dislocazioni si applica una griglia di analisi multilivello (frequenza, forma, proprietà informative e aspetti testuali), che consente di indagare in maniera approfondita il comportamento della struttura e di osservarne possibili differenze imputabili all’influsso dell’inglese. Le ipotesi di ricerca, relative a tutti i livelli di analisi, sono state formulate sulla base del modello teorico di Johanson, il cui concetto centrale è costituito dal processo di copia da un codice all’altro. Le unità linguistiche, chiamate copie, sono copiate da un codice modello straniero e inserite in un codice di base. In generale si ipotizza che l’uso limitato o addirittura bandito delle dislocazioni sintattiche inglesi nello scritto influenzi in “negativo” la manifestazione della struttura in italiano, portando a una restrizione dell’impiego della struttura a tutti i livelli di analisi. Dall’osservazione complessiva della dislocazione sintattica nei testi in italiano a contatto con l’inglese non si possono trarre conclusioni schiaccianti sul ruolo giocato dall’influsso dell’inglese sulla sintassi dell’italiano, tuttavia alcune ipotesi sono state confermate. Questo dato, solamente parziale, suggerisce che altri fattori vanno tenuti in considerazione nell'interpretazione dei risultati, come il contatto culturale, inteso nei termini di Weinreich, le varietà diatopiche prese in esame e la dimensione dei corpora utilizzati

Sentence adverbials: Defining the research object and outlining the research results

The aim of this contribution – functioning as preface to the special issue of Linguistik online entitled Formal and functional perspectives on sentence adverbials in the Romance languagesand beyond – is to give a general overview of its research object and agenda. We start by providing a morpho-syntactic definition of the category of adverbials and then present a functional classification of these expressions, paying particular attention to the category of sentence adverbials. After having clarified the research object of this special issue, we present the content of the ten contributions collected, by identifying the lines of analysis which they address

A highly selective, orally active inhibitor of Janus kinase 2, CEP-33779, ablates disease in two mouse models of rheumatoid arthritis

INTRODUCTION: Janus kinase 2 (JAK2) is involved in the downstream activation of signal transducer and activator of transcription 3 (STAT3) and STAT5 and is responsible for transducing signals for several proinflammatory cytokines involved in the pathogenesis of rheumatoid arthritis (RA), including interleukin (IL)-6, interferon γ (IFNγ) and IL-12. In this paper, we describe the efficacy profile of CEP-33779, a highly selective, orally active, small-molecule inhibitor of JAK2 evaluated in two mouse models of RA. METHODS: Collagen antibody-induced arthritis (CAIA) and collagen type II (CII)-induced arthritis (CIA) were established before the oral administration of a small-molecule JAK2 inhibitor, CEP-33779, twice daily at 10 mg/kg, 30 mg/kg, 55 mg/kg or 100 mg/kg over a period of 4 to 8 weeks. RESULTS: Pharmacodynamic inhibition of JAK2 reduced mean paw edema and clinical scores in both CIA and CAIA models of arthritis. Reduction in paw cytokines (IL-12, IFNγ and tumor necrosis factor α) and serum cytokines (IL-12 and IL-2) correlated with reduced spleen CII-specific T helper 1 cell frequencies as measured by ex vivo IFNγ enzyme-linked immunosorbent spot assay. Both models demonstrated histological evidence of disease amelioration upon treatment (for example, reduced matrix erosion, subchondral osteolysis, pannus formation and synovial inflammation) and reduced paw phosphorylated STAT3 levels. No changes in body weight or serum anti-CII autoantibody titers were observed in either RA model. CONCLUSIONS: This study demonstrates the utility of using a potent and highly selective, orally bioavailable JAK2 inhibitor for the treatment of RA. Using a selective inhibitor of JAK2 rather than pan-JAK inhibitors avoids the potential complication of immunosuppression while targeting critical signaling pathways involved in autoimmune disease progression

Combined Grey Matter VBM and White Matter TBSS Analysis in Young First Episode Psychosis Patients With and Without Cannabis Consumption

Cannabis consumption is temporally associated with the development of first episode psychosis (FEP). Whether or not the chronic use of this substance induces structural brain changes that may be responsible for the cognitive and psychological disturbances in this disorder is still matter of debate. To address this issue, we compared the magnetic resonance imaging (MRI)-assessed grey (GM) and white matter (WM) changes in young FEP patients between users versus non-users of cannabis. This prospective study included 50 consecutive FEP subjects: 33 users (22.7±4.1years, 4 women) and 17 non-users (23.9±4.2years, 10 women). Users were further divided into 15 heavy (23.3±4.5years, 2 women) and 18 light users (22.2±3.8years, 2 women) according to their lifetime cannabis use. Voxel-based-morphometry (VBM) analysis of GM and tract-based-spatial-statistics (TBSS) analysis of WM were performed. Age and gender were used as non-explanatory co-regressors. There were no supra-threshold differences between user and non-user groups for both GM and WM parameters. This was also the case when only heavy users were compared to non-users. Multivariate models controlling for age and gender confirmed these findings. We found no evidence for cannabis consumption related alterations in GM or WM in FEP subjects. Due to the strict correction for multiple comparisons and sample size, we cannot formally exclude subtle morphometric changes associated with cannabis consumption. However, even if present, such potential alterations would be of low magnitud

Sport and Society

Despite its economic and cultural centrality, sport is a relatively neglected and undertheorized area of sociological research. In this review, we examine sports\u27 articulation with stratification issues, especially race, class, and gender. In addition, we look at how the media and processes of globalization have affected sports.We suggest that sports and cultural sociologists need to attend more closely to how leisure products and practices are produced and distributed and how they intersect with educational, political, and cultural institutions. We propose the work of Bourdieu andthe new institutionalism to undergird future research