The defense and relief of disaster concern both the safety of people¡¦s lives and properties, so the international communities appreciate them nowadays. The administrative approaches and methods are not the same because of the differences of the international communities¡¦ situation and their environment. Some are in the charge of the authorities concerned and some are in the charge of grassroots, however, their goals are conformed by using all resources of the government and the private, in order to protect people¡¦s safety and to reduce the loss of properties through warning and relieving. Our government has noticed the importance of fire fighting relieving system since the so-called ¡§Ba-chang Stream Event.¡¨ Later, the following administrative system, including ¡§The national search center of the Administrative Yuan,¡¨ ¡§The public office of fire fighting and disaster relief,¡¨ and ¡§International search system of the R.O.C.,¡¨ are set. Their roles and responsibilities are made into laws, so the administrative systems are unclogged. However, the relieving armed forces are not centralized, which shows the space of conformity and reduction. In the near future, our relief system should go to ¡§A-R(administration & relief) two-step system¡¨ The national search center are in charge of conformity; the fire station is in charge of land relief, and the sea cruise is for the sea relief. Thus, the relief systems are simplified. Owing to the shortage of equipments, we can combine the air police, CAA, the armed forces and international search system with the aircrafts and ships, in order to make to system perfect and conformable. After the goal is fulfilled, we will make it standardization and more professional. In consideration of the threats of the P.R.C., the mobilization cannot be abrogated at wars. Also there hasn¡¦t any wars for years, the opportunities in normal times are bigger than at wars, so the armed forces relief cruise should change their roles by following the administrative Yuan¡¦s orders. At the same time, the mobilization and people¡¦s defense system should be combined, with a view to relieving the preparation and accommodation in normal times, and the job leaves to the damage protection and rescues.

Whether the execution of ¡§the ROC Armed Forces Streamlining Program¡¨ is smooth or not, heavily depends on member¡¦s cognition on the transformation, organization commitment, and working morale as well. However, there are few papers discuss about the relations among the above elements. The objective of this thesis is to study the relation among the transformation cognition, organization commitment, and morale of the high level command under the process of the organization transformation through questionnaire and analysis. The following conclusions are: 1. Under the prerequisite of employee participation, understanding, and guarantee the rights and interests, the employees will be willing to stay in the service. 2. The higher the degree of recognition and evaluation of employees on the transformation objective, the higher the concern on the organization¡¦s future development, pursue of the objective, the devotion and values on their jobs from the employees. 3. To promote the commitment of the employees to the organization would motivate the employees, and treat their works as the center of their lives, and therefore pursue better achievements. 4. For those senior high-ranking officers who own higher educational backgrounds and employees with long service years tend to have higher degree of recognition on transformation. 5. For those employees who are senior, own high educational backgrounds, and with long service years tend to have higher overall organizational commitment and stronger willing to stay in their positions. 6. For those 25 to 34 years old, with military appointments, married, high educational background, as the directors or deputy directors, higher-ranking officers and longer service years tend to have better recognition of organization, devotion and group spirits. According to the above results, four suggestions are addressed: 1. To respect the participation of employees, and to guarantee the employees¡¦ rights and interests. 2. To encourage the employees to attend courses or training during off-hours in order to build up multiple specialties. 3. To understand the employees¡¦ characteristics and specialties in order to adopt the strategy of differentiate management. 4. To enhance to recognition of the employees on the attainment of transformation benefits and to draft a complete set of measures.

Thesis (M.S. in Information Systems and Operations)--Naval Postgraduate School, March 2003. / Thesis advisor(s): Steven J. Iatrou, Karen Guttieri. Includes bibliographical references (p. 67-68). Also available online.

The trade in human beings, or Trafficking in Persons (TiP) is global and affecting every country. In the last years, increasing attention has been paid to TiP for the purpose of sexual exploitation. This led to a growing need to tackle this phenomenon. Only recently, the relationship between TiP and armed conflict has been acknowledged but remains under-studied. Cameron and Newman (2008) have outlined a framework in which structural factors linked to proximate factors could have explanatory value on the relationship between armed conflict and TiP. This thesis analyzes two cases of armed conflict, Bosnia and Herzegovina and Sierra Leone, attempting to explain the increase in TiP of women and girls for the purpose of sexual exploitation by applying this theoretical framework. In this qualitative research a comparative method is used in applying the framework to two case studies, aiming to identify the explanatory value of Cameron and Newman’s (2008) framework. It is found that the general explanatory value of the framework is high and the proximate factors can be classified as: a fully explanatory proximate factor, case dependent proximate factors, and conflict-phase proximate factors. In addition, this thesis is identifying some elements that could influence TiP of women and girls for the purpose of sexual exploitation during conflict and post-conflict that could be of added value to this framework, namely: the implementation of government strategies, corruption of non-government officials, economic deterioration as a consequence of migration, and involvement of peacekeepers and members of the international community in TiP of women and girls for the purpose of sexual exploitation.

This paper examines newspaper portrayals produced by the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the Los Angeles Times of women in the military from Sept. 11, 2001, to Sept. 11, 2009. The purpose was to identify how the three nationally recognized U.S. newspapers depict women’s expanding combat roles on contemporary battlefields that lack definitive front lines. Because the news media are the primary vehicle to update the general public on military matters, how the news media portray military women can play a role in shaping audience perceptions of military women. In turn, this relationship can influence the public debate on issues pertaining to women in the military. For my research method, I employed a longitudinal, qualitative content analysis of news articles that revealed three distinctively themed portrayals of U.S. servicewomen. The thematic findings include: "Tip of the Spear," a largely laudatory category portraying the "new" or "first" generation of servicewomen filling historically uncommon (particularly direct ground combat) roles for women; the "Combat Debate," with coverage listing arguments for and against military women’s expansion into "direct ground combat;" and the "Sexual Assault" category that exposed women as continued victims of sexual assault across the U.S. Armed Forces. The portrayals of women in the "Tip of the Spear," and to a lesser extent in the "Combat Debate," reveal how these three particular newspapers are applying a new formula to represent military women. Rather than portraying military women in stereotypical support roles—or castigating them for transgressing gender norms—the stories from these papers cast the servicewomen performing traditional masculine military activities in a positive light. However, following objective reporting protocol, the reports in the "Combat Debate" category also covered conventional patriarchal concerns to include protecting women from harm, particularly military mothers. Overall, these two categories comprised the greater part of the coverage of military women among the reports in this study, with only a handful of reports covering women as victims. I propose that the many positive portrayals that describe women fulfilling nontraditional masculine roles and activities demonstrate a revised blueprint in how the news media report on military women. Furthermore, while these research results cannot be applied universally outside this study’s sample, I contend that these types of images representing today’s servicewomen on contemporary battlefields increase public acceptance of women in the military and their expanding military assignments.

Introduction: Medication errors are a major cause of illness and hospitalization of patients throughout the world. This study examines the situation regarding medication errors in the Armed Forces Hospital, Kuwait since no literature exists of any such studies for this country. Several types of potential errors were studied by physicians, nurses and pharmacists. Their attitudes to the commission of errors and possible consequences were surveyed using questionnaires. Additionally, patient medical records were reviewed for possible errors arising from such actions such as the co-administration of interacting drugs. Methods: This study included direct observations of physicians during the prescribing process, pharmacists while they dispensed medications and nurses as they distributed and administered drugs to patients. Data were collected and compiled on Microsoft Excel spreadsheet and analyses were performed using SPSS. Where applicable, results were reported as counts and/ or percentages of error rates. Nurses, pharmacists and physicians survey questionnaires: From the 200 staff sent questionnaires a total of 149 respondents comprising nurses (52.3%), physicians (32.2%) and pharmacists (16.1%) returned the questionnaires a total response rate of 74.5%. All responses were analyzed and compared item-by-item to see if there were any significant differences between the three groups for each questionnaire item. All three groups were most in agreement about their perception of hospital administration as making patient safety a top priority with regard to communicating with staff and taking action when medication errors were reported (all means 3.0 and p > 0.05). Pharmacists were most assured of administration support when an error was reported whereas nurses were least likely to see the administration as being supportive ( p < 0.001), and were more afraid of the negative consequences associated with reporting of medication errors (p = 0.026). Although nurses were generally less likely to perceive themselves as being able to communicate freely regarding reporting of errors compared to pharmacists there was no significant difference between the two groups. Both however were significantly different from physicians (p< 0.001). Physicians had the most favorable response to perceiving new technology as helping to create a safer environment for patients and to the full utilization of such technologies within the institution in order to help prevent medical errors. Scenario response - Responses to two scenarios outlining possible consequences, should a staff member commit a medication error, tended to be very similar among the three groups and followed the same general trend in which the later the error was discovered and the more grievous the patient harm, the more severe would be the consequences to the staff member. Interestingly, physicians saw themselves as less likely to suffer consequences and nurses saw themselves as more likely to suffer consequences should they have committed a medication error. All three groups were more likely to see themselves as facing dismissal from their job if the patient were to die. RESULTS OF ALL THREE OBSERVATIONS: Result of Nursing observations: For 1124 doses studied, 194 resulted in some form of error. The error rate was 17.2% and the accuracy was 82.8%. The commonest errors in a descending order were: wrong time, wrong drug, omission, wrong strength/ dose, wrong route, wrong instruction and wrong technique. No wrong drug form was actually administered in the observational period. These were the total number of errors observed for the entire month period of the study. IV Result of Pharmacist observations: A total of 2472 doses were observed during the one month period. Observations were done for 3 hours per day each day that the study was carried out. The study showed that there were 118 errors detected which were in the following categories respectively: 52 no instructions, 28 wrong drug/unordered, 21 wrong strength/dose, ignored/omission 13, shortage of medication 3 and expired date 1. Result of Prescribers in Chart review for drug-drug interactions: The analysis of the drug-drug interactions showed that out of a total of 1000 prescriptions, 124 had drug-drug interactions. None were found to fall into the highest severity rating i.e. 4 (contraindicated). Only twenty-one interactions were rated 3 (major), 87 interactions were rated moderate and 15 interactions were rated minor according the modified Micromedex scale. Patient education: All health care such as physician, pharmacist, and nurses have a responsibility to educate patient about their medication use and their health conditions to protecting them from any error can occur by wrong using drugs. Conclusion This study has contributed to the field of medication errors by providing data for a Middle Eastern country for the very first time. The views and opinions of the nurses, pharmacists and physicians should be considered to enhance the systems to minimize any errors in the future.

This study explores the power of ethnonationalist conflict-generated diasporas (CGD) as external actors in homeland conflict by exploring the nature of their political engagement on a transnational level using Internet Communication technologies (ICTs), with Rwanda as a case study. Virtual ethnography was chosen as the research methodology to explore the online activities of Rwandan CGD using social media (social networking sites) to form virtual transnational networks for political purposes. Diasporic online formations and activities were mapped in order to gain increased insights into ways that CGD use social media to engage in homeland conflict, and the effect their engagement has on the conflict cycle in the home country. Results of the study revealed that Rwandan CGDs demonstrate attitudes and motivations to act in ways that are consistent with other case studies of CGD, including exhibiting an enduring commitment and loyalty to co-ethnics, a romanticized conceptualization of homeland and a myth of return home. The results also revealed Rwandan CGDs' strong propensity to use social media to engage in homeland conflict on a political level through the development of a large and dense transnational network used for a range of political purposes, including the dissemination of genocide denial and propaganda consistent with the pre-genocide propaganda campaign. Implications for peace-building and conflict analysis are discussed.

No description available.

Many of the recent armed conflicts have taken place in cities of the Developing World. In the resulting emergency situations, water supply and sanitation are among the most essential services to restore. They form part of the urban services available to the city dwellers that are commonly managed by local water sector institutions. This is, in principle, acknowledged by aid agencies but partnerships between them and water sector institutions do not always happen because of concerns such as: independence vis-a-vis the local government; possible corruption arid inefficiency problems; and political obstacles. Moreover, agencies prefer short-term structural rehabilitation to long-term institutional development, for which they do not always feel sufficiently qualified and experienced. This study tackles the problem by determining how these partnerships influence the performance of aid operations, in particular in terms of efficiency I effectiveness in the case of emergency response and of sustainability and coverage in the case of rehabilitation. It is based on a number of case studies selected in: Kabul (Afghanistan); Jaffna (Sri Lanka); Monrovia (Liberia); Beni (Democratic Republic of Congo); Port-au Prince and Port-de-Paix (Haiti), and Grozny (Chechnya in the Russian Federation). For emergency operations, findings show that partnerships tend to take place when the type or level of technology involved and/or security conditions do not allow the aid agency to work independently from water utilities. Partnerships do not necessarily influence efficiency I effectiveness in the short term but are beneficial because they prepare for rehabilitation. In terms of rehabilitation, findings suggest that current practice maintains a separation between large-scale rehabilitation projects and community-based projects focusing on specific neighbourhoods. This has a detrimental effect on sustainability and fails to address the needs of the most vulnerable populations. The study recommends a more coordinated approach that involves a reform of funding patterns, in order to reconcile sustainability and universal service.

No description available.