Introdução: O Senso de Coerência (SOC) é um recurso individual para o enfrentamento de estressores que torna os sujeitos mais competentes para manter e melhorar sua saúde. O SOC está relacionado à qualidade de vida, sendo considerado um importante preditor da saúde. Existe relação entre forte SOC e adoção de comportamentos saudáveis, percepção positiva da qualidade de vida relacionada à saúde bucal, menor ocorrência de cárie dentária, perda dentária e melhor condição periodontal. Objetivo: Investigar a relação entre SOC, impacto da saúde bucal na qualidade de vida (OIDP) e condição bucal clínica, em indivíduos de 50 a 74 anos, em Porto Alegre/RS. Materiais e Métodos: Trata-se de um estudo transversal com uma amostra de 720 sujeitos, selecionados por processo de amostragem aleatória proporcional em múltiplos-estágios. Os instrumentos utilizados foram a escala SOC (SOC-13), o questionário OIDP, uma ficha de exame clínico e um questionário de avaliação socioeconômica e uso dos serviços odontológicos, adaptados do Projeto SB- Brasil 2003. As análises bivariada e multivariada foram realizadas por meio de Regressão de Poisson, com ajuste para variância robusta, utilizando o software Stata 9.0 Resultados: Na análise ajustada, SOC mais alto associou-se à ausência de impacto da saúde bucal na qualidade de vida (RP=1,31; IC95%=1,09-1,56; p=0,003), baixo escore de OIDP (RP=1,42; IC95%=1,18-1,71; p=0,000) e ausência de impacto no desempenho sorrir (RP=1,29; IC95%=1,05-1,59; p=0,014). SOC mais alto também se associou aos desfechos clínicos estudados: ausência de necessidade de prótese (RP=1,34; IC95%=1,04-1,68; p=0,015) e maior número de dentes presentes (RP=1,05; IC95%=1,01-1,11; p=0,033), após ajuste para co-fatores. Conclusão: Os achados deste estudo demonstraram que o constructo SOC associa-se positivamente à qualidade de vida relacionada à saúde bucal, suportando a hipótese de que os indivíduos com SOC mais elevado apresentam menor impacto da saúde bucal no desempenho de atividades diárias do que aqueles com SOC mais baixo. Os resultados também sugerem que indivíduos com SOC mais alto apresentam melhor condição bucal do que aqueles com SOC mais baixo, tendo maior número de dentes presentes e menor necessidade de prótese. / Introduction: Sense of Coherence (SOC) is a resource for coping with stressors that can make individuals more able to maintain and improve their health condition. It is related to quality of life and considered a predictor of health. There is a strong relationship between SOC and adopting healthy behaviors, positive perceptions of quality of life related to oral health, lower incidence of dental caries, tooth loss and improved periodontal condition. Objective: To investigate the relationship between SOC, Oral Impacts on Daily Performances (OIDP) and oral health clinical condition in individuals aged between 50 to 74 years in Porto Alegre/RS. Materials and Methods: This is a cross-sectional population based study with a sample of 720 subjects, who were selected through stratified random sampling process in multiplestages. Data were collected through the SOC scale (SOC -13), the questionnaire OIDP, socioeconomic and use of dental services questionnaire, adapted from the Brazilian Oral Health Survey SB-Brazil 2003, and clinical examinations. Bivariate and multivariate analyses were performed by Poisson regression with robust variance adjustment using Stata 9.0 software. Results: In adjusted analysis, strong SOC was associated with absence of oral impact (PR=1.31; CI95%=1.09-1.56; p=0.003), low score of OIDP (PR=1.42; CI95%=1.18-1.71; p=0.000) and no impact on the performance smile (PR=1.29; CI95%=1.08-1.59; p= 0.014). Strong SOC was also associated with clinical outcomes, no need for prosthesis (PR=1.34; CI95%=1.04- 1.68; p=0.015) and greater number of teeth (PR=1.05; CI95%=1.01-1.11; p=0.033) after adjustment for co-factors. Conclusion: Our findings showed that the SOC construct was positively associated with quality of life related to oral health, supporting the hypothesis that individuals with strong SOC have a lower impact of oral health in the development of daily activities than those with weak SOC. The results also suggest that individuals with strong SOC have better oral health than those with a weak SOC, with higher number of teeth and less need for prosthesis.

It is widely assumed in both popular and scholarly imaginaries that Travellers, due to their 'nomadic mind-set' and non-sedentary uses of land, do not have a sense of place. This thesis presents an ethnographic account of an extra-legal camp in Southeast London, to argue that its Traveller inhabitants do have a sense of place, which is founded in the camp's environment and experientially significant sites throughout the city. The main suggestion is that the camp, its inhabitants, and their activities, along with significant parts of the city, are co-constitutionally involved in making a Travellers' sense of place. However, this is not self-contained or produced by them alone, as their place-making activities are embroiled in the political, economic and legal environment of the city. This includes the threat and implementation of eviction by a local council, the re-development of the camp's environs, and other manifestations of the spatial-temporalities of late-liberal urban regeneration. The thesis makes this argument through focusing on the ways that place is made, sensed, and lived by the camp's Traveller inhabitants. It builds on practice-based approaches to place, centred on the notion of dwelling, but also critically departs from previous uses of this notion by demonstrating that 'dwelling' can occur in an intensely politicised and insalubrious environment. Therefore, I consider dwelling in the context of the power asymmetries of place and urban precarity, as well as how it is crucial to making a home-in-the-world. Depicting a family fiercely and desperately striving to hold onto place in the time-space of the late-liberal city, a situation that affords them little promise of a future, the thesis destabilises established understandings and analysis of Travellers' experience, in a contemporary context. Chapter one considers how men's skilled activity, building materials and machinery are involved in creative acts of correspondence, which coalesce to make the camp a liveable place for its inhabitants. The central suggestion is that, through making and inhabiting the camp, it also comes to make and inhabit those involved in such activities. However, the family's ability to structure their own world, by building themselves a place to live, is contingent on a range of socio-political constraints that subject them to infrastructural violence. Chapter two turns from the camp's built environment to examine women's caregiving and home-making practices. It considers women's haptic involvements with their caravans, suggesting that these activities are not simply practices of creative homemaking but, due to the central role they play in raising families, they position women as world-formers. It also examines the ways that women's caregiving activities are intensified by the camp's insalubrious environmental conditions, and how these are involved in the unmaking of the family's matriarch. Chapter three considers the relationship between men's economic activity and the city. It draws correspondences between men's economic transactions with non-Travellers, and hunting, suggesting that each practice consists of the skilled capacity to procure resources from particular environments. Chapters four and five turn from Travellers' own place-making activities, to examine how a sense of place is produced from, and fractured by, the threat of eviction. In the first of these, I consider the role that state-administered documents, definitions and imaginaries play in shaping the spatial parameters of place for the Cashes. In the second I examine the ways that eviction, and the broader spatial-temporalities of late-liberal urban redevelopment, coalesce in the camp to produce a sense of place and time that is charged with affect and uncertainty.

Le découpage phrastique – par le point final – dépourvu de structure verbale dans le roman de La Nausée a suscité notre intérêt pour le phénomène des ruptures typographiques. Pour rendre compte de leur prédicativité, la logique syntaxique s’est avérée insuffisante. Nous avons donc envisagé le principe de l’énonciation qui a donné à ces découpages sans verbe un fondement énonciatif et sémantique. Ce travail aurait ainsi tenté de résoudre la problématique de la prédication sans verbe en s’appuyant sur l’analyse du texte et également sur des recherches historiques. / Our interest in the phenomenon of typographical disconnection was sparked by the use of final periods to organize propositions without verbal structure in the novel Nausea. Logical syntax was inadequate to accunt for their predicative value. We found that the principle of enunciation gives these sentenses a semantic and enunciative basic. This work has tried to solve the problem of verbless predication based on text analysis as well as on historical research.

O modo como educadores, comunicadores e profissionais ou pesquisadores ad-vindos das mais variadas áreas do conhecimento concebem a Educomunicação nascida no espaço da pesquisa na Universidade de São Paulo é essencial para a legitimação desta nova área da ciência. São agentes que inter-relacionam os campos da comunicação e da educação, agem intervindo em espaços da educação formal, não-formal e informal, transformam sujeitos que estão em fase cognitiva e alteram realidades em uma sociedade permanentemente impactada pela tecnologia. A práxis de tais educomunicadores, quando analisada, mostra que este conhecimento constituído é, ao mesmo tempo, saber popular e saber científico. Ou seja, a Educomunicação anterior à fase de sua legitimação continua a ocorrer sem que seus fundamentos sejam atribuídos a parâmetros e paradigmas. Surgem, daí, outras nomenclaturas para o mesmo processo que reúne senso comum e saber científico. O ponto de referência para isso são as pesquisas desenvolvidas a partir do Núcleo de Comunicação e Educação da Escola de Comunicações e Artes da USP que reuniram, em dissertações e teses, conteúdo teórico basilar para que o conceito de Educomunicação fosse constituído, no final dos anos 1990, como campo científico emergente. Nos anos que se seguiram essas reflexões iniciadas na pesquisa empírica passaram a fazer parte de projetos desenvolvidos em quase todos os Estados brasileiros. Pesquisadores da inter-relação comunicação/educação relacionavam, assim, suas práticas à Educomunicação conceituada pela ECA/USP, transformavam tais experiências em relato científico e apresentavam o resultado em papers inscritos nos congressos nacionais anuais da Intercom. Esse movimento de adesão ao conceito provoca situações em que (1) as mais variadas experiências de produção midiática em escolas são atribuídas à Educomunicação e (2) práticas que correspondem aos preceitos do novo campo da Educomunicação conceituado pela USP são denominadas de outras maneiras por seus autores, como, por exemplo, comunicação/educação, mídia-educação, mídia educativa, educomídia, entre outros pseudônimos. O posto, contudo, de campo científico legitimado, com regras e tensões internas, próprias, é da Educomunicação, que em 2011 dá nome a dois cur-sos de graduação, na USP e na Universidade Federal de Campina Grande/PB. São conclusões de uma investigação científica edificada nos métodos qualitativos e quantitativos, resultado do debruçar sobre os bancos de dados (a) do Programa de Pós-graduação da ECA/USP, onde estão as dissertações e teses que focaram o objeto da inter-relação comunicação/educação, e (b) da Intercom, cujos congressos nacionais anuais reuniram o que foi produzido e atribuído à Educomunicação e outras nomenclaturas que concebem igual objeto. Isso tudo compreendido no espaço-tempo de duas décadas, desde os ensaios do conceito, suas críticas internas e externas, até o espetáculo da reprodução. / The way how educators, communicators, and professionals and researchers of the most varied fields of knowledge understand Educommunication brought up in the field of research at Universidade de São Paulo is essential for the legitimacy of that new field of science. They are agents who interrelate the fields of communication and education, they act intervening in spaces of formal, non-formal and informal education, transforming subjects who are in cognitive phase and change realities in a society permanently impacted by technology. When analyzed, the praxis of such educommunicators, shows that such knowledge is at the same time composed of popular knowledge and scientific know how. That is, the Educommunication previous to its legitimacy phase continues to be carried out without attributing its principles to parameters and paradigms. Thus, from that condition other terminologies arise for the same process which combines common sense and scientific know how. The reference points for that are the researches developed at Núcleo de Comunicação e Educação of Escola de Comunicações e Artes at USP which collects dissertations and theses, comprising basic theoretical content so that the Educommunication concept was developed at the end of the 1990s, as an emerging scientific field. Some years later such reflections, starting from empiric researches, became part of the projects developed in almost all the Brazilian states. Researchers into the communica-tion/education interrelationship reported their practices to the Educommunication ap-praised by ECA/USP, they changed such experiences into scientific report and presented their results in papers produced for intercom annual national congresses. Such an adherence movement to the concept brings about situations in which (a) the most varied experiences in media production in schools are assigned to Educommunication and (b) practices corresponding to the precepts of the new field of Educommunication appraised by USP are called otherwise by authors as, for example, communication/education, media-education, educative media, educomedia, among other pseudonyms. However, the condition of legitimized scientific field, with its own rules and internal tensions, is the one called Educommunication, which in 2011 assigns names to two graduate courses, at USP and at Universidade Federal de Campina Grande/PB. These are some conclusions drawn from scientific research based on qualitative and quantitative methods, resulted from databank enquiry into (1) Graduate Study Program at ECA/USP, in which one collects dissertations and theses focusing on the subject of the communication/education interrelationship, and (2) intercom, whose annual national congresses have collected what has been produced, and assigned to Educommunication and other similar terminologies which deal with the same subject. All that comprised into the space-time of two decades, from essays on the concept, its internal and external criticism to the reproduction show.

As small unmanned aerial systems (UAS) are introduced into the national airspace, measures must be introduced to ensure that they do not interfere with manned aviation and other UAS. Radar provides an attractive solution because of its inherent range accuracy and because it works in diverse weather and lighting conditions. Traditional radar systems, however, are large and high power and do not meet the size, weight and power (SWaP) constraints imposed by UAS, and fully integrated automotive solution do not provide the necessary range. This thesis proposes a compact radar system that meets both the SWaP and range requirements for UAS and can act as a standalone sensor for a sense and avoid system (SAA). The system meets the field of view requirements motivated by the UAS sensing problem (120deg x 30deg) and tracks targets in range and azimuthal angle using a four element phased array receiver. The phased array receiver implements real time correlation and beamforming using a field programmable gate array (FPGA) and can track multiple targets simultaneously. Excluding antennas, the radar transceiver and signal processing platform weighs approximately 120g and is approximately the size of a whiteboard eraser (2.25in x 4in x 1in), which meets the payload requirements of many small (<25kg) UAS. To our knowledge, this is the first real time phased array radar that meets the sensing and SWaP requirements for small UAS.Our testing was done with the radar system on the ground, aimed at airborne UAS targets. Using antennas with a gain of 12 dB, and 800 milliwatts of transmitted power, the system detects UAS targets with a radar cross section of less than 0.1 square meters up to 150 meters away. The ground based system demonstrates radar detectability of extremely small UAS targets, and is scalable to further ranges by increasing antenna gain or adding additional elements. Based on our success in detecting airborne UAS, we conclude that radar remains a feasible option for a UAS collision avoidance sensor.

A certain community within the southern region of Texas has consistently been linked to escalating poverty, high crime rates, low educational achievement, and poor physical and mental health. For the purpose of this research, this community will be referred to as Community X. Although some researchers have found that sense of community and supportive social networks are associated with healthy mental and physical functioning, others have suggested that in a debilitated community social networks can facilitate psychological distress and a strong sense of community is difficult to develop. Guided by Bronfenbrenner's ecological model, the purpose of this quantitative correlational study was to examine the combination of 3 Social Network Index (SNI) scores and 4 Sense of Community Index 2 (SCI-2) scores that affect Kessler Psychological Distress Scale (K10) scores. For the 106 Community X resident participants, as the SNI number of embedded networks increased, K10 scores tended to increase, indicating higher levels of psychological distress (consistent with the negative effect research). In a cluster analysis, two clusters emerged in which one cluster (n = 67) had positive z-score means on all SNI indices and all SCI-2 subscales, while the other cluster (n = 39) had all negative z-score means. The cluster with all positive scores had lower K10 psychological distress scores (consistent with the positive effect research), but the difference was not statistically significant. The mixed results indicated that comparative research is needed to control for communities of varying ecological distress to better relate psychological distress to sense of community and the valence of social networks to facilitate positive social change health policies and interventions that are ecological-distress sensitive.

Natural Language Processing (NLP) is the field of study that focuses on the interactions between human language and computers. By “natural language” we mean a language that is used for everyday communication by humans. Different from programming languages, natural languages are hard to be defined with accurate rules. NLP is developing rapidly and it has been widely used in different industries. Technologies based on NLP are becoming increasingly widespread, for example, Siri or Alexa are intelligent personal assistants using NLP build in an algorithm to communicate with people. “Natural Language Processing Based Generator of Testing Instruments” is a stand-alone program that generates “plausible” multiple-choice selections by analyzing word sense disambiguation and calculating semantic similarity between two natural language entities. The core is Word Sense Disambiguation (WSD), WSD is identifying which sense of a word is used in a sentence when the word has multiple meanings. WSD is considered as an AI-hard problem. The project presents several algorithms to resolve WSD problem and compute semantic similarity, along with experimental results demonstrating their effectiveness.

Although Latina/os are the largest minority group in California and enrolling in higher education in record-breaking numbers (Zarate & Burciaga, 2010), the graduation rate of this group is very low (Kewal-Ramani, Gilbertson, Fox, & Provasnik, 2007). A phenomenological approach was used in this study to explore the lived experiences of Latina/o students at a for-profit college in the Inland Empire. Students from different major fields of study described how they explored and sought college information, how they experienced both community and for-profit colleges, and described their levels of sense of belonging in both community and for-profit colleges. Students shared their experiences reflective of the serpentine pathway of college-conocimiento (Acevedo-Gil, 2017) and the influence of a sense of belonging (Hurtado & Carter, 1997; Hurtado & Ponjuan, 2005; Maestas, Vaquera, & Zehr, 2007) on their persistence in higher education. Findings indicate that Latina/o students have limited college choices, weigh criteria to choose a for-profit college after departing from community colleges to “transfer across,” and feel that they belong in the for-profit institution for reasons that included either feeling cultural congruity with other students, or simply experienced college community support from faculty/ staff. Recommendations include: instructors be assigned as mentors who are personable and exhibit genuine caring; for-profit colleges should be as financially accessible as community colleges for all students; and the personalization available in for-profit colleges should be implemented into the community colleges.

Enhancing Quality of Life: The Effects of Positive Cognitions by Claudine Antoniette Gerald M.S., Walden University, 2009 B.S., Florida Atlantic University, 2002 Dissertation Submitted in Partial Fulfillment of the Requirements for the Degree of Doctor of Philosophy General Psychology Walden University August 2015 The purpose of this study was to test the nature of the relationship among cognitive factors to determine quality of life in a sample of 180 adult internet users. Theories of the positive psychology paradigm, salutogenesis, dynamic equilibrium model, family systems, and family resilience theories were the bases for examining the relative significance of the cognitive factors, positive illusions, optimism, perception of control, meaning in life, resilience, and sense of coherence to the development of quality of life. Factor analysis revealed the order of significance of these variables from the most influential to least influential: sense of coherence, meaning in life, positive illusions, perception of control, resilience, and optimism. Stepwise multiple regression analysis indicated that positive illusions have a negative influence on quality of life β = -0.198, t = -2.36, F = 5.58, p = 0.02. Standard multiple regression analysis indicated that these cognitive factors do not significantly contribute to quality of life when grouped together. These findings corroborate current research that cognitive factors do not work alone in enhancing quality of life and there must be a balance along factors on other levels, such as psychological, physiological, behavioral, and sociocultural to enhance quality of life. Social change may be influenced by this study's unique and exclusive emphasis on the effects of cognitive factors, demonstrating the relative significance of these cognitive factors, individually and combined, for the promotion of quality of life. This study has filled two research gaps because positive cognitions had not been studied together and the association between positive illusions and the known quality of life promoting cognitive factors needed clarification.

From 2012 to 2015, students' academic performance at a community college in North Carolina fell below North Carolina Community College System baseline benchmarks despite the institution's adoption of several student success initiatives. Building from the established correlation between student academic achievement and academic engagement and the importance of noncognitive competencies in moderating student academic engagement, this qualitative case study investigated the academic experiences of 7 students who were members of the Paying It Forward mentoring program to determine the types of support and resources that students needed to develop and hone intrinsic motivation, sense of belonging, and self-efficacy-the noncognitivenoncognitive competencies proven to most directly moderate academic engagement. The guiding frameworks included a student-engagement framework developed by the Chicago Consortium on School Research, the learner-centered curriculum framework, and the generalized internal/external model. The research questions focused on specific factors that facilitated students' development of intrinsic motivation, sense of belonging, and academic confidence. The findings identified relationships between student academic performance and academic engagement as moderated by these noncognitivenoncognitive competencies and supported previous research concerning the invaluable role of faculty in developing students' sense of belonging. A resulting professional development project may enable faculty to systematically bolster students' academic engagement and performance by directly supporting mastery of these noncognitivenoncognitive competencies. This project may contribute to social change through increased graduation and transfer rates, which would create opportunities for enhanced social capital.