Rehabilitation of edentulous patients with Implant-supported Complete Fixed Dental Prosthesis (ICFDP) is a well-documented treatment option. This dissertation assessed the relation between the rate of biological/mechanical complications and the type of metal framework alloy, length of cantilever extension. The results showed that long-term clinical outcomes of ICFDP were favorable. While 30% of patients experienced biological complications, 66.6% of the prostheses needed to be repaired during follow-up period. The risk of prosthesis failure and mechanical complications was significantly higher in silver-palladium frameworks as compared with palladium-silver or type IV gold alloys. The length of cantilever was not correlated with the amount of marginal bone loss. The rate of marginal bone loss around anterior implants was higher than that of posterior implants associated with cantilever segments. The treatment improved the patients’ quality of life and 96% of patients would undergo the same treatment again if required.

Understanding recent decades of coral community change has been hindered by a shortage of long-term monitoring and a lack of tools that provide a lasting record of benthic reef communities. To increase our understanding of Caribbean coral reef dynamics, this dissertation research developed and used innovative technologies involving landscape mosaic images and 3D reef models, to analyze a novel 40 year dataset of coral community health from Andros Island, Bahamas. Historical data from Andros Island (1968-2000) were provided as part of a Cooperative Research and Development Agreement (CRADA) between the University of Miami and the Naval Undersea Warfare Center Division Newport. Long-term monitoring at Andros Island revealed that reef decline was a-typical over recent decades. Coral mortality and disease increased significantly between 1970 and 2000, whereas macroalgal cover did not. To complement studies of coral mortality and disease, the resilience and resistance of individual coral species at Andros were measured from 1972 to 2008. Of the 24 species studied, only three (Siderastrea siderea, Montastraea cavernosa, and Porites astreoides) were resistant to recent disturbance histories, whereas Porites porites was resilient. Further studies using 3D models explored relationships between coral population dynamics and spatial patterns of coral species. Results indicated that the arrangement of dominant coral species and the processes of recruitment, growth, and mortality were non-random over time. In summary, the application of mosaic images and 3D reef models to a previously un-published long-term coral health dataset led to improved understanding of factors controlling past reef communities.

Background: There is little information on how the quality of oral health services in long-term care (LTC) facilities is conceptualized or assessed. Objectives: This study aims to develop a model for assessing the quality of oral healthcare services in LTC facilities. Methods: This study is divided into four main steps. Firstly, I examined literature for existing concepts relating to program evaluation and quality assessment in healthcare to build a theoretical framework appropriate to dental geriatrics. Secondly, I explored as an ethnographic case study a comprehensive oral healthcare program within a single administrative group of 5 LTC facilities in a large metropolis by interviewing 33 participants, including residents and their families, nursing staff, administrators and dental personnel. I also examined policy documents and made site visits to identify other attributes influencing the quality of the program. Thirdly, I drafted the assessment model combining a theoretical framework with empirical information from the case study. And lastly, I tested the feasibility and usability of the model in another dental geriatric program in northern British Columbia. I applied the assessment model by conducting 15 interviews with participants in the program, made site-visits to the 5 facilities, and reviewed documents on the development and operation of the program. Results: A combination of theory-based evaluation and quality assurance provided six sequential and iterative steps for quality assessment of oral health services in LTC. The empirical information supported the theoretical framework that a program of oral healthcare in a LTC context should be assessed for quality from multiple perspectives; it should be comprehensive; and it should include the three main attributes of quality - capacity, performance, and outcomes. Participants revealed 20 quality indicators along with suggested program objectives which encompass eight quality dimensions such as effectiveness, efficiency, and patient-centered. Conclusion: The model provides a unique system for assessing the quality of dental services in LTC facilities that seems to meet the needs of dental and non-dental personnel in LTC.

This thesis explores the importance of caravan parks as a provider of long term housing in rural areas. Previous research on caravan parks in the Australian housing system focused on the metropolitan and coastal regions, with little analysis given over to parks in rural areas. There is a similar dearth of research on rural housing in Australia. In previous housing studies rural housing has been discussed as a residual of that in the capital cities. In many instances, rural areas are absorbed into broader metropolitan/non-metropolitan constructs. This is despite the complexity and range of housing issues in rural places. This research has brought these two fields together, particularly to determine whether the problems in the rural housing market are a factor for people living in caravan parks. Previous studies on caravan parks have demonstrated that caravan park residents have socio-economic characteristics that would make it difficult for them to access housing. They have low incomes, a reliance on government benefits and higher mobility rates compared to the general population. Caravan park residents have a greater propensity to poverty. Thus for these residents, caravan parks offer housing that is affordable and accessible. In many instances it is housing of last resort, or housing used in times of crisis. Previous research into rural housing has found that rural areas have greater incidences of after housing poverty as a result of lower incomes. There are also problems of housing accessibility, particularly for specific groups, such as the aged, youth, and the disabled. Rural areas also are encountering the migration of 'urban refugees'. This group has high levels of need which creates a further strain on a market. The Shires of Chinchilla and Murilla in Queensland were selected as case studies because they they have a stable caravan park industry and they are rural without being remote. Interviews were undertaken with a variety of individuals representing a range of organisations. This included a large sample of long-term caravan park residents. The residents who participated in the research were, similarly to the general profile of park residents, disadvantaged. They also had low incomes with a reliance on government benefits. The majority of the residents had located to the case study region from the South-East of the State. It was also found that the majority of residents migrated to the area and immediately moved into a caravan park. Interestingly, there were no family households in the park, and very few young people. Also, caravan parks were not utilised as crisis accommodation. This is attributed to the discriminatory practices of the park operators as a form of 'risk management'. This research found that caravan parks play an important role in the housing system of rural areas. Specifically, they are not a residual form of the dominant tenures, but are a separate component of the housing market. Many residents did not consider the broader housing market, and immediately moved into the park. Residents did not explicitly consider their housing choice within the context of the broader market. While housing related issues did arise, the majority of residents individualised their experiences; that is, their housing experience is related to their own individual situation and not because of any problems in the market.

[Abstract]:Background:Baddeley and Hitch’s (1974) multi-component model of working memory (WM) has provided the basis for exploration into the nature of remembering and manipulating information over a short period of time. This model arguesthat the passive short-term storage system is not involved in the more dynamic working memory tasks and has formed the basis of much research on clinical populations known to have deficits in WM. However, other models argue that short-term memory and working memory rely on common storagefacilities. The aim of this thesis was to explore whether there is justification for the continued separation of WM into fractionated components.Schizophrenia (SZ) is associated with a wide range of cognitive deficits, including working memory problems. There is also some evidence to suggest that psychotic symptoms exist on a continuum and cognitive deficits similar to those found in SZ have been reported in people endorsing “psychotic-like” symptoms without a formal diagnosis of schizophrenia. It was hypothesizedthat the pattern of errors made by the SZ group would help to delineate the nature of deficit shown on WM tasks.Methods:General MethodsIn order to explore the structure of WM and performance of groups hypothesized to be impaired on WM tasks, a range of span and non-span tasks were administered. Forty-two (42) control subjects were recruited for the study. Based on their scores on the Schizotypal Personality Questionnaire (SPQ - Raine, 1991), this group was divided into low scoring (NCL = 27 ) and high scoring (NCH = 15) groups. Thirty (30) people with a DSM-IV diagnosis of schizophrenia were also recruited.Experiment 1Experiment one investigated the performance of these groups on simple, complex and delayed span tasks. A simple four-word recall task, with and without interference was used to examine accuracy, error types and anyrelationship to symptomatology.Experiment 2Experiment two set out to investigate the contributions to span performance. All subjects were administered measures of articulation speed, lexical access ability, and a range of STM, WM and LTM tasks.Experiment 3This experiment used a cued-recall paradigm to explore proactive interference effects by manipulating phonological and semantic representations over briefperiods. The task consisted of trials where the subject studied a series of one or two blocks of four words.Results:Experiment 1The results of this experiment replicated previous findings (Tehan, Hendry & Kocinski, 2001) of similar patterns of performance across the three tasks withperformance decrements increasing with task difficulty. The SZ group showed significant deficits even on the simple four-word span task. Patterns of errors were similar across the groups once overall levels of performance were taken into account. SZ subjects made more movement (order) errors than the other two groups and movement errors were associated with disorganised symptoms. The association between disorganised symptomsand loss of items from the end of the list were suggestive of impaired maintenance of item information. The high schizotypy control group performed below that of the low schizotypy controls, but only a few of the differences were significant.Experiment 2For both groups articulation and lexical access formed two of the composites. For the control group, all memory tasks contributed to form one single factor. For the SZ group three separate memory composites were needed. Usingregression analyses previous findings (Tehan & Lalor, 2000; Tehan, Fogarty & Ryan, 2004) were replicated for the control group with both lexical access and to a lesser degree, rehearsal speed contributing to memory performance.Rehearsal speed was a more important predictor for recall of familiar materials (such as letters and digits) in the SZ group. The reverse was true for simple word span, with lexical access making a significant impact and rehearsal speed having little impact. For more complex memory tasks,neither articulation rate nor access to lexical memory contributed to the performance of the SZ group. Once again poorer performance for the SZ group was associated with disorganised symptoms.Experiment 3The findings from this experiment revealed that even on the simple one block trials, the SZ subjects had difficulty accurately recalling the target word with acategory cue, even in the absence of distractor activity. The SZ group made more omissions and significantly more intrusion errors than the control groups. Intrusion errors were associated with disorganised symptoms on thePositive and Negative Symptom Scale (PANSS). Despite their poorer overall performance, the SZ group did not have significantly more block-1 intrusions than the control groups suggesting that the interference effects for semantic and phonemic information were the same.Conclusions:This thesis presented evidence which is somewhat supportive of a common storage approach to WM. It calls into question the need to fractionate WMinto components. The multi-component model of WM is often used to investigate performance of SZ subjects, a population know to have WM deficits. Errors across a range of STM, WM and LTM tasks were examined in a SZ group and their performance was compared to two groups of controls: agroup with high scores on a measure of psychometric schizotypy and one with low scores. Implications regarding the purported source of deficits in WM are discussed.

Thesis ( Ph.D.) -- McMaster University, 1997. / Includes bibliographical references. Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph.D.)--McMaster University, 2003. / Advisor: Ron Racine. Includes bibliographical references (leaves [121]-135). Also available via World Wide Web.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, 1993. / Vita. Abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 318-332). Also available via the Internet.

Thesis (Ph. D.)--University of Oregon, 2008. / Typescript. Includes vita and abstract. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 152-163). Also available online in Scholars' Bank; and in ProQuest, free to University of Oregon users.

Thesis (Ed.D.)--Teachers College, Columbia University. / Includes tables. Typescript. Sponsor: R. Louise McManus. Dissertation Committee: Dwayne Huebner, Frances R. Kreuter. Type C project. Includes bibliographical references (leaves 84-106).