<p>Wireless Sensor Networks have to be very flexible and self-organizing, providing an ease way to be deployed. This feature is required due to a wide variety of possible applications and deployment scenarios in which they can be used. They can support different kinds of tools and applications in distinct areas, such as in agriculture, military, health care, home or factory automation, among other. </p><p> An assisted living system supported by a WSN is presented in this work. The main feature of this system is to locate and track inhabitant’s behaviour. The system has been implemented using Mica2 Motes, which were placed in different rooms in a house. In order to make the use of the WSN easier, this project investigated and used a middleware called TinyDB, which represents a key technology to improve the usability of WSN.</p>

Wireless Sensor Networks have to be very flexible and self-organizing, providing an ease way to be deployed. This feature is required due to a wide variety of possible applications and deployment scenarios in which they can be used. They can support different kinds of tools and applications in distinct areas, such as in agriculture, military, health care, home or factory automation, among other. An assisted living system supported by a WSN is presented in this work. The main feature of this system is to locate and track inhabitant’s behaviour. The system has been implemented using Mica2 Motes, which were placed in different rooms in a house. In order to make the use of the WSN easier, this project investigated and used a middleware called TinyDB, which represents a key technology to improve the usability of WSN.

The purpose of this study was to investigate the hiring practices of physicians’ offices as they relate to medical assistants and to gain insight into their hiring preferences. Knowing how physicians and medical office managers view the profession of medical assisting may help medical assisting professionals improve the standing of the profession and provide a consistent foundation for education programs. I surveyed 15 physicians’ practices in eight states across the country to obtain a cross-country perspective and found that many practices hire credentialed or non-credentialed individuals for clinical positions for various reasons. The reasons were minimally due to the lack of credentialed applicants and more due to personal preferences, financial decisions, and governmental regulations. This study contributes to medical assisting program directors, medical assisting professional organizations, and credentialing agencies in promoting medical assisting.

HarpinPss, a proteinaceous elicitor from Pseudomonas syringae pv. syringae, is a glycine-rich, cysteine-lacking, heat-stable protein. It can elicit the hypersensitive response (HR) when delivered to the surface of plant cells. HRAP (hypersensitive response assisting protein) is an amphipathic protein purified from sweet pepper and could intensify harpinPss¡Vmediated HR in sweet pepper. In the previous research, harpinPss was present as monomer, dimer, trimer, tetramer, and ocatamer forms in neutral pH buffer. Only monomer and dimer forms of harpinPss induced hypersensitive response in nonhost plants. HRAP could cause multimeric forms of harpinPss dissociation into monomer forms. The interaction between HRAP and harpinPss is an important issue. HRAP contained three positively charged regions, a typical signal peptide and a cAMP-dependent phosphorylation site. In this study, these regions of HRAP would be truncated and identified whether these truncated HRAP fragments could promote harpinPss dissociation. Different combinations of truncated HRAP and harpinPss were used to identify the protein-interaction regions between two proteins. HarpinPss triggers HR via interaction with cAMP phosphorated region of HRAP and MAPK pathway transduction. When cAMP region of HRAP was truncated, harpinPss still triggers HR via polymerization and anchor on lipid bilayers to form an ion-conducting pore.

Submitted in fulfilment of the requirements of the Degree of Master of Technology: Quality, Durban University of Technology, 2014. / There has been a call from society for both the provision of a quality education and for a quality “student” who can contribute to the economy and citizenry of South Africa. It therefore makes sense for any educational structure to develop and adopt, strategies and systems in order to meet these new calls, and to provide technologically relevant education that will meet the demands of modern society. This has led to a renewed need for consistency, conformity and quality within higher education. Concerns about students’ capabilities have been raised, and have led to questions about the accountability of higher education institutions. A quality management system framework may ensure that these higher education structures are able to deliver a quality education to their external and internal customers. This research investigated the current quality management systems used in dental assisting both locally and world-wide, and then developed a quality management system framework to suit South African conditions. An action research study, using data gathered from a purposive census sample, and data obtained by means of a mixed-method approach, was conducted in two phases. A preliminary study (Part A) was conducted amongst the four South African dental assisting education programme providers and deficiencies in the quality management systems of these programmes were identified. The preliminary work (Part B) in this study consisted of a comparative analysis of the quality management systems of a convenience sample of dental assisting education providers in twenty countries. Both good practices and deficiencies in practices were identified. A further review of the literature identified possible solutions to improve the quality of the dental assisting education programmes, and was used as the foundation for the development of the Dental Assisting Higher Education – Quality Management Framework (DAHE-QMF). The results of the preliminary study - the comparative analysis and the literature review - revealed that the development and implementation of a quality management system framework for dental assisting in South Africa could lead to an improvement of the standards of training, and thus the competence of the student. The framework will be presented to the four programme leaders at the four Universities of Technology that offer dental assisting education for their consideration of partial/total adaptation of the framework.

Name of the dissertation is:``View of sexually transmitted diseases in case of assisting professions``. I decided to deal with sexually transmitted diseases because the number of these diseases is relatively high and numbers of newly ill people keep increasing. This opinion is confirmed by the fact that, for example, number of HIV positive individuals in the Czech Republic slightly exceeded 100 in the year 1990 whereas the number HIV positive individuals was 1,344 in the year 2009, i.e. 19 years later. Considering also the fact that this disease is an incurable one and treatment of this disease is demanding on the ill people from thein mental as well as physical aspekt and considering also the total effect for society, it is very important indeed to pay attention on this issue. Theoretical part divides sexually transmitted diseases according the often used division in classic generál diseases. They include inguinal granuloma, gonorrhoea, soft chancre, syphilis and venereal lymphogranuloma. Another diseases which include HIV/AIDS, hepatitis, genital herpes, infections caused by the virus Human papillom, scabies or pubic louses were dealt with only marginally. The last chapter is focused on assisting professions. The goal of the work was to look at the issue from the point of view of assisting professions staff. To find out whether they are interested in the issue, what is their awareness, etc. This goal has been met. Conversations, for example, revealed that employees who are in everyday contact with people who live risky way of living (drug addicts, homeless people, etc.) are better aware of issue concering sexually transmitted diseases than respondents who work with children or seniors. None of the respondents underwent any additional training in this issue. The selected methodology was represented by quality research and the selected method was represented by partially controlled interview with six selected representatives from assisting professions. The overall knowledge will be used not only to find out but also the to complete or correct information on the issue for employees in assisting professions. Information on the issue can be further disseminated among clients via these professionals within primary prevention.

This study aims to create an understanding of how assisting nurses within the Elderly care perceive their fundamental conditions for learning during their job execution. More specifically the ambition of the study is, based upon the activity theorys´ stance, to reveal further knowledge of how these employees perceive their opportunities and barriers for learning in their everyday work. Two questions was formed in order to investigate this purpose further; “What obstacles do assisting nurses within the Elderly care perceive hinders them from learning in their everyday work ? and “What supporting functions do assisting nurses within the Elderly care perceive support their learning in everyday work?”. The study is based on a qualitative method, using eight semi-structured interviews with assisting nurses working at six different senior care departments at three retirement homes. By the use of the activity theory the collected empirical data has been interpreted and analyzed. The results showed that assisting nurses learning conditions is shaped as result of various interacting and multidimensional variables, which parallelly can act as hinders as well as supporting functions for learning. Based upon the results given we argue that the most important variables can be summarized as communication and close work with colleagues. These variables may contribute to further learnings, as long as the college in question possesses the relevant communicative tools, education and experience. Under these conditions the colleague can act as an supporting function to the assisting nurses´further learning. However if the colleague does not possess the relevant education, experience or communicative tools the learning becomes inhibited and acts as a barrier for further learning. Based upon the results given it also became clear that these conditions were related to and seems to be a result of all the activities within the activity system - the workplace.

Orientador: Francisco das Chagas Marques / Tese (doutorado) - Universidade Estadual de Campinas, Instituto de Fisica "Gleb Wataghin" / Made available in DSpace on 2018-08-14T18:36:55Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 Barbieri_PauloFernando_D.pdf: 3626831 bytes, checksum: 0f15b74219acbe9e82e54ae2ce3d1ed4 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2009 / Resumo: Esta tese mostra um estudo realizado sobre implantação de xenônio (Xe) em uma matriz amorfa de silício (a-Si) utilizando a técnica de Deposição Assistida com Feixe de Íons (IBAD). Para esta finalidade, um feixe de íons de Xe com energia de 1500 eV, obtido de um canhão tipo Kaufman, foi utilizado para a realização de sputtering de um alvo de silício, produzindo um filme de a-Si em um substrato colocado a 15 cm de distância via deposição. Ao mesmo tempo outro feixe de íons de Xe, obtido por um segundo canhão de energia variável (0 a 300 eV), implantava átomos na rede do a-Si que estava em formação. Foi possível implantar concentrações de xenônio de até 5% com energia da ordem de 50 eV. Esta energia de implantação é de várias ordens de grandeza menor do que a energia utilizada no processo convencional de implantação que utiliza valores de energia de ordem de milhares de eV. Para investigar o Xe dentro da matriz amorfa de Si foram utilizadas técnicas de excitações atômicas XAS (X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy), XPS (X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy) e XAES (X-Ray Auger Excited Spectroscopy) e também simulações teóricas para XAS. Os resultados experimentais de XAS indicam que os átomos de Xe são implantados majoritariamente de forma dispersa pela matriz, isolados dentro de defeitos estruturais. Medidas de XPS mostram que os níveis eletrônicos de caroço dos átomos de xenônio são alterados em função do sítio de aprisionamento, que por sua vez, estão relacionados com a energia de implantação. Um estudo utilizando uma combinação de XPS e XAES permitiu identificar e separar as contribuições relativas às alterações eletrônicas observadas nos átomos de Xe devido a inserção deles dentro do a-Si. A análise destes resultados, XPS/XAES, forneceu indícios sobre os tamanhos das cavidades hospedeiras dos átomos de Xe. Simulações teóricas de XAS foram bastante satisfatórias e corroboram com as observações realizadas por XPS/XAES e indicam timidamente formações de aglomerados para alguns casos, ou seja, minoritariamente. Dependendo da energia de implantação, a dinâmica de crescimento do filme é alterada possibilitando estruturas diferentes na matriz. Foi também constatado que o aumento da densidade do a-Si por efeito de compactação pode ser mascarado pela introdução de elementos com massas relativamente grandes, como por exemplo, Xe / Abstract: A study of xenon (Xe) implantation in amorphous silicon (a-Si) by Ion Beam Assisted Deposition (IBAD) technique is investigated in this thesis. A Xe ion beam with energy of 1500 eV, obtained from a Kaufman gun, was used for sputtering a Si target, depositing an a-Si film on the substrate holder placed 15 cm apart. Simultaneously, another Xe beam with variable energy (0 ¿ 300 eV), was used to bombard the a-Si for the implantation of Xe atoms. It was obtained Xenon concentration up to 5%, using energy as low as 50 eV, which is orders of magnitude smaller than those usually used by conventional implantation, that requires thousands of eV. For the investigation of the Xe atoms in the a-Si matrix, XAS (X-Ray Absorption Spectroscopy), XPS (X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy) and XAES (X-Ray Auger Excited Spectroscopy) techniques and theoretical simulations of XAS were used. The experimental results of XAS showed that Xe atoms are dispersed in the a-Si matrix as isolated element majoritively into structural defects. XPS measurement shows that the electronic core levels of the Xe atoms are shifted as function of the trapping site, which in turn, are related to the energy implantation. The use of XPS and XAES allowed the identification and the separation of the contribution to the shift in the binding energy due to the relaxation energy. The analysis of this results, XPS/XAES, provided indications as to size of the cavity containing the trapped Xe. XAS theoretical simulations gave satisfactory results and corroborate with XPS/XAES observations and tentativelly indicated small clusters, for a minority of cases. Depending on the implantation energy, the growth dynamics of the films is changed, allowing different structures in the matrix. It was also verified that the increase in the density of the film by the packing effect is obscured by the introduction of heavier elements, for example, Xe / Doutorado / Física da Matéria Condensada / Doutor em Ciências

The goal of the study was to explore the needs of widowed parents in assisting their children in the grieving process. The researcher chose this specific research topic for a number reasons, primarily based on her own observations and contact of her external world as the researcher had either come into direct contact with, or become aware of families in her community where one of the parents in families with children in early and/or middle childhood had passed away. Loosing a parent through death is a very traumatic experience for a child. How the child reacts to and deals with this trauma in the long-term, is greatly influenced by how the remaining parent reacts to and deals with the death him or herself, as well how he or she assists the child in the grieving process. Secondly, the research topic fits within the social work context as bereaved families may turn to the social work profession for guidance and assistance in understanding and resolving their loss. Therefore, the researcher was of the opinion that it would be of value to gain knowledge of the specific needs of the widowed parents in helping their children during the grieving process in order to offer these families more direct, focused and valuable assistance. The researcher made use of a qualitative approach in order to explore and gain an understanding of the needs of widowed parents' experiences in assisting their children in the grieving process. The researcher used applied research for her study, as it was hoped that the information gained would provide further knowledge to help the social work profession in assisting widowed parents and their children in the grieving process. Seven respondents were identified and chosen primarily through a non-probability sampling technique of purposive sampling. As the initial number of respondents were limited, the researcher also made use of the snowball sampling technique to further increase her sample. Data for the study was gathered by means of semi-structured one-to-one interviews, with the use of an interview schedule in order to gain a detailed picture of the widowed parents' perceptions and experiences of helping their children come to terms with the death of their parents. In studying the literature the researcher focused on two main aspects. Firstly, the children's grieving process, including their understanding of death, reaction to the death of a parent, as well as the actual grieving process of parentally bereaved children. Secondly, the researcher focused on the needs of widowed parents in assisting their children in the grieving process, including the important role they play in this process, their own emotions, challenges they are faced with in this process, the impact the death has on the family's functioning in relation to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and finally the availability and use of support systems for widowed parents. The findings of the study showed that all the respondents were aware of the impact the death had on their children, especially as most of the deaths were sudden and unexpected. Many needs were experienced, including telling the children about the death, loneliness, and perhaps the most difficult of all, finding a balance between expressing their own grief so that their children felt free to grieve but at the same time not falling apart completely, thereby overwhelming their children. Overall the researcher found that it appeared more important to the widowed parents that their children's needs be taken care of above their own. In concluding the study the researcher was of the opinion that grieving the loss of a loved one involves much more than just a process of steps. It encompasses a wide range of tasks, emotions, thoughts and behaviours. Therefore, in terms of helping to meet the needs of widowed parents in assisting their children in the grieving process, one cannot just make assumptions and based on this follow a set formula. Families, with children in early and middle childhood, who have lost a parent through death, find themselves in a very vulnerable and fragile state. The way they deal with the loss and the support they are given both informal and formal, can have a very significant impact on the future functioning of the remaining family members both individually and as a whole. Therefore, it is imperative that those assisting the family through the loss have knowledge of their needs so that they can assist them in a way that can bring about healing and restoration. / Dissertation (MSD (Play Therapy))--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Social Work and Criminology / MSD / unrestricted

Bakgrund: En del sjuksköterskor som arbetar inom palliativa vård möter dagligen lidande och sorg hos patienter som de vårdar. Trots en utsatthet för andras lidande kan dessa sjuksköterskor hitta kraft för att fortsätta vårda. I tidigare forskning framkommer compassion fatigue som en risk vid vårdandet av extrema situationer medan compassion satisfaction är mindre beforskat och sällan som ensamt fenomen. Syftet var att beskriva vad som ger sjuksköterskan en upplevelse av compassion satisfaction i vårdandet av patienter inom palliativ vård. Metod; En induktiv manifest kvalitativ innehållsanalys utifrån sju intervjuer . Resultat; Två kategorier framkom i analysen:  inre och yttre resurser inverkan. Dessa har underkategorier som är (1) Att vara patienter behjälpliga, (2) Att ha självförtroende, (3) Ett optimistiskt förhållningssätt, (1) Att visas uppskattning, (2) Att få stöd från organisationen och (3) Att ha meningsfulla möten. Slutsatsen är att dessa olika upplevelser samverkar och tillsammans bidrar till upplevelsen av compassion satisfaction. Huvudsakligen kan sjuksköterskan påverkas av den positiva relationen som finns till patienter och bygger på den empatin som finns mellan sjuksköterskan, patienter, närstående och kollegor. Även organisatoriskt stöd i form av tid är viktigt för att kunna uppleva compassion satisfaction. / The Background: Nurses who work with palliative care can face pain and suffering from their patients on a daily basis. Despite that exposure for others pain these nurses still finds the strength to keep on with their work. Earlier research shows compassion fatigue as a risk when caring for patients in extreme situations while compassion satisfaction is a less researched phenomenon and seldom by itself. The aim was to describe what gives nurses the experience of compassion satisfaction in care for palliative patients. The method used was an inductive qualitative content analysis where data came from interviews. The result is presented in two categories; impact of internal recourses and impact of external recourses. These have three subcategories each; (1) to help the patients, (2) to have confidence, (3) an optimistic attitude, (1) to be shown appreciation, (2) to have support from the organization, and (3) having meaningful meetings. The conclusion is that these various factors work together to contribute to the experience of compassion satisfaction. Some nurses are mainly influenced by the positive relationship that exist between them and the patients. These relationships are based on empathy that exists between the nurse, the patients, relatives to the patients and colleagues. Organizational support in the form of time is also important in order to experience compassion satisfaction.