Browsing by Subject "interaction"

Aims. The aim of this dissertation was to find out and understand how children view different ways of touching: how they name them, what meanings and situations they associate with different ways of touching, and with whom they see different ways of contact as possible. I examined touch as part of social interaction. The aim has been to understand how touch is used and interpreted differently in different situations. Examining contact from the perspective of children is especially important for teaching. Teachers, school staff, and caregivers of children can take advantage of available research information when working with children. In addition, it helps to pay more attention to touches with children and important features associated with them, such as different individual ways of interpreting and dealing with touch. Previous research has shown that touch is an important means of interaction and can communicate a wide variety of things (Wiio, 1994). Through touch, the teacher can, among other things, help students with school assignments, facilitate concentration, comfort (Tainio et al., 2019), enhance learning, relieve stress, calm down (Owen & Gillentine, 2011), encourage and motivate (Guéguen, 2004) the students. Methods. The material of the study consisted of 30 student interviews collected by Koskettava koulu -project. There were 16 interviews, which two of them were individual interviews and the remaining 14 were paired interviews. In the interviews, students were shown 6 different images, each with different ways of touching. Pupils answered the interviewer's questions about touching and were also free to share their own thoughts about the images and the ways of touches. This dissertation is a qualitative study and I used content analysis and thematic methods as methods. Results and conclusions. Various themes emerged from the students' interviews, the largest themes were: 1. Touch in teacher and school activities, 2. Touch in emotional communication, interaction and expression, 3. Touch with close people, 4. Touch in hobbies and doing things together, and 5. Ritual touch and norms and limits of touch. Pupils often viewed the touch used by the teacher from a positive perspective, and many aspects of helping, encouraging, guiding, and comforting were associated with the touch. The teacher was considered to use touch as part of teaching and interaction with students. The teacher’s touch was often interpreted as positive and benevolent, although in some cases the teacher’s touch could also interfere the student’s concentration. Pupils were positive about touch from the teachers they personally liked. A teacher was considered to touch children when he or she liked his or her students or when the student was succeed at something. Touch was interpreted mainly in school, spare time, and home contexts. Touch contacts were mostly with close people. Touch contacts with strangers were generally viewed with suspicion.

The literature review related to faba bean proteins, the mechanism of protein oxidation and detection methods for protein oxidation as well as the relationship between lipid and protein oxidation. Native faba bean, faba bean treated by oven and microwave, as well as soy protein isolate were used as materials. The materials differed in their lipoxygenase activity. Oil-in-water emulsions were made of 10% purified (removal of antioxidants) rapeseed oil and 3% water soluble proteins that were extracted from flour samples. The emulsions were prepared by homogenizing using microfludizer. Oxidation took place in the oven at 37 °C in the dark with constant stirring by magnet stirrers. Sampling for measurements was carried out on day 0, 1, 4 and 7 from each replicate. Oxidative stability of was monitored by following lipid oxidation as formation of conjugated dienes and hexanal, and by following protein oxidation by measuring loss of tryptophan, formation of carbonyls and dityrosine through fluorescence detections both in the lipid phase and in the continuous phase. In this study, the degree of protein oxidation was generally consistent with corresponding lipid oxidation. Generally, the degree of protein oxidation in lipid phase of emulsions was higher than that in continuous phase, although the protein content was far less in the lipid phase. Both results implied co-oxidative relationship between lipid and protein oxidation. In addition, the results showed that thermal treatment or microwave irradiation can not only result in retarding or decreasing lipid oxidation by lowing lipoxygenase (LOX) activity, but also affect protein oxidation via lipid oxidation and the conformational changes of proteins.

This study is meant to examine the variety of opinions of educators (kindergarten teachers,childminders) about one group of children in day care. The goal is to find if educators that work with one group of children see the same three (3) children alike. This study collects the opinions of one team of kindergarten educators together to compare them with each other. Research questions are 1. How do the members of the team describe the children of the group? and 2. How do these opinions about children differ or support each other? Results are formed out of individual interviews answers, which are observed from human’s individuality’s perspective, considering characteristics such as temperament and personality. Categories of temperament and development of personality are presented in this study’s theory for their influence to educators’ findings and opinions about children. In this study both the children’s and educator’s individuality is emphasized, and it also brings different perspectives to the material. Earlier studies have shown that human’s individuality affects to interactions development and its maintenance. There is also research that shows how teachers opinion of a child affects how teacher evaluates the child, and therefore also child’s identity. This study emphasizes the importance of professional attitude. One kindergarten group in metropolitan area took part in this study. There are three educators working in that group; two kindergarten teachers and one childminder. Research material was collected with individual interviews alone with each team member (3). Children to this study were picked coincidentally, and according to these children the educators answered to 12 same questions. In coincidence all three children were boys. In addition to these ready-made questions interviewees were asked to exemplify some of their answers with examples of situations. The interviews were recorded and transcribed, after which they were categorized and analyzed. In results the team turned out to be quite similar according to their answers and opinions about the children were alike. A couple of the answers were different but any great contrasts weren’t found for example between educators or between a particular child and educator. One child separated educator’s opinions more than two other children. By all appearances the team is close, cooperative and familiar with the children.

Temporal lobe epilepsy (TLE), a condition defined by unprovoked and recurrent seizures originating from the temporal lobe, is among the most ubiquitous of the various forms of epilepsy. Despite being chronic and highly prevalent, the available treatment options concerning the same remains a critical issue. Since the current therapeutic condition of epilepsy requires more development, renewed focus studying its molecular mechanisms and therapies is imminent. One of the longstanding theories trying to decode the molecular perturbations in TLE has been deficits in GABAergic inhibition resulting in abnormal neuronal activation. K+ - Cl- co-transporter (KCC2) activity is vital for maintaining a hyperpolarizing GABA response. The past decades have intimately and causally linked the prognosis of the seizures observed in TLE with deficits in KCC2 functioning. However, the precise mechanisms relevant to the disruption of KCC2 activity are still blurry. Here we show how KCC2 de-stabilization/localization in the neuronal bilayer is a characteristic of epileptic animal tissue. With the help of co-immunoprecipitation assays, western blot, and mass spectrometry, we found that in normal healthy brain tissue, GM1 ganglioside present in the membrane has specific and direct interactions with the KCC2 cotransporter. However, in the pilocarpine model of TLE, the interaction of this complex was significantly disturbed, primarily in the hippocampus and to some extent in the cortex. Our results act as an extension to previous research which stated that the structural association of the KCC2 clusters with neuronal lipid rafts is crucial for the functionality of the KCC2 cotransporter. Having learned about the unique nature of the pathophysiology of TLE, it is imminent to note that additional research in the direction of studying its biochemical pathways is required. The findings of this experimental study support the claim that KCC2 and GM1 as a complex are closely associated in the epileptic conditions and hence, this research paves the way to further explore the role of KCC2 and GM1 as a consequential complex in the pathophysiology of TLE.

Objectives. Differences in people and the reasons behind them have been a subject of interest through-out history and, among others, the concept of temperament has been used in an attempt to explain them. According to theoretical literature, temperament is biologically-based, at least partly inherited behaviour-al and reactional tendency, which appears early and is relatively stable through life. Temperament ex-plains the individuality in people and serves as a biological foundation for personality, which develops through the joint influence of temperament and environment. Temperament is composed of different temperament traits, the number of which is debated by different temperament theorists. Temperament is in constant interaction with environment, including at school, where temperament has been suggested to contribute to an unequal treatment of children. The objectives of the present study were to discover how temperament is being defined within school context, what kind of effect temperament has on children’s educational experience, and how it should be taken into account in connection to children’s educational experience. The aim is to analyse current theoretical and empirical literature and advance temperament-related knowledge and understanding in the field of education. Methodology. The present study was executed as a descriptive literature review. The material was com-prised of international and Finnish theoretical literature as well as numerous research articles, published in prestigious, peer-reviewed international journals. The material included research conducted specifical-ly in the Finnish school context as well. Results and conclusions. In research conducted in school context, temperament was defined based on the theoretical literature with small variations mostly in temperament traits. According to research, chil-dren’s temperaments were directly and indirectly linked to children’s school adjustment, social relation-ships with teachers and peers, and academic achievement, including school grades. Reviewed studies suggested more temperament-related education for teachers and rethinking of assessment practices. Temperaments’ different kinds of effects on children’s school experiences put them in unequal posi-tions at school. Some children, based on their innate attributes, have more negative relationships with teachers and peers, and worse grades, which, in turn, are connected to different kinds of educational opportunities in the future. Temperament-related education for teachers and more equal assessment practices might improve educational experience of children with all kinds of temperament.

Previous results concerning the association between high blood pressure and work-related stress have been inconsistent, although both high blood pressure and work-related stress independently have adverse effects on health. The aim of this study was to investigate whether the personality trait conscientiousness reduces the adverse effects of work-related stress on blood pressure. Work-related stress was measured by Siegrist's Effort-Reward Imbalance model (ERI-model). The hypotheses were: 1) High effort-reward imbalance is associated with high systolic and high diastolic blood pressure and 2) Conscientiousness reduces the adverse effects of effort-reward imbalance on systolic and diastolic blood pressure. The study sample was from The Cardiovascular Risk in Young Finns study and the data for the present study was collected in 2011 and 2012. The subjects (n = 998) were both women (n = 568) and men (n = 430) who worked full-time and did not take medication to reduce blood pressure. The mean age of the subjects was 43 years. Hierarchical linear regression was used for the statistical analyses. Effort-reward imbalance was not directly associated with blood pressure. However, conscientiousness did moderate the association between effort-reward imbalance and systolic blood pressure. Individuals high in conscientiousness had lower systolic blood pressure than individuals low in conscientiousness when effort-reward imbalance was high. Conscientiousness also moderated the association between effort and systolic and diastolic blood pressure, although the effect on the diastolic blood pressure was only moderately significant (p = .051). Conscientiousness did not moderate the association between reward and blood pressure, but higher reward was independently associated with lower diastolic blood pressure. Conscientiousness seems to reduce the adverse effect of both effort-reward imbalance and effort on systolic blood pressure. The results from the present study suggest that personality traits can affect the associations between work-related stress and blood pressure.