This paper examines factors associated with awareness of the EU energy labels of household appliances and the factors associated with the choice of appliance energy class using a dataset of 2136 households in Bulgaria, Czech Republic, Hungary, and Romania. The results for five major appliances indicate that household knowledge of energy use increases label awareness, while households with a large share of elderly decrease label awareness. Factors that influence awareness of energy labels have a limited impact on appliance energy class choice. Significant country differences also exist. Romania shows higher household propensities to be aware of the energy class of appliances than Czech Republic, while Bulgaria shows lower propensities of label awareness compared to the benchmark of Czech Republic.

Magister Public Health - MPH / Cleft lip and/or palate deformity is the most common facial birth defect with an incidence of 1 in 600 for every live birth worldwide. Despite the availability of specialised cleft care in Nigeria, many cleft patients are not aware that CL±Ps can be repaired and, thus, present late for treatment. As a result, there is a high incidence of unoperated CL±P in the country which has a grim negative health impact on the population. Furthermore, it was noted that the family caregivers including parents and other members of the extended family are crucial in getting early care for these children with CL±P. Therefore, understanding the perception of CL±P, attitude and experience with cleft services would go a long way in reducing the problem of late presentation and under-utilisation of these services. Therefore, the aim of the study was to explore the care givers’ perception and experience in accessing cleft services at Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital, Sokoto, Nigeria. In this study, we employed an exploratory qualitative methodology that gave deep insights and provided clear understanding of the perceptions by caregivers of children with CL±P on the aetiology of cleft, family reactions and their experience in accessing cleft services at our hospital. Data analysis was done following verbatim transcription using thematic analysis. Ethics statement: Before commencement of the study, ethical approval was obtained from the Institutional Review Boards of the University of Western Cape and the Usmanu Danfodiyo University Teaching Hospital Health Research and Ethics Committee. Informed consent was sought from each prospective participant and the signed form appropriately documented.

School has an important role in contributing to digitalization, where digital tools can increase students' knowledge development. The aim of this study is to study how popular-historical podcasts can be used in history teaching at upper secondary level. Furthermore, the starting point for the study is to investigate how the content of podcasts can promote a historical awareness. The popular-historical podcasts is analyzed with the help of Ernesto Laclau and Chantal Mouffe's discourse theory and Jürn Rüsen's theory of history awareness. In order to be able to fulfil the analysis and to understand the content, the study takes inspiration from a qualitative discourse analyzis. The results of the study show that the content of the podcasts in various ways promotes Rüsen's historical awareness and can contribute to promoting a historical awareness. They affect content as actors, causal relationships, connections to present and future, and different historical views. The results also show differences in the podcasts discourses where the P3 history is more easily understood and has a clearer story while the history podium's language is more difficult. Consequently, there is a struggle between how different characters can be determined. History awareness is affected in a clearer and broader way in the History podium and can therefore be considered to affect history awareness to a greater extent while P3 history promotes it in a more understandable way. The conclusion is that the podcasts can be used to promote history awareness and be used as digital teaching material.

ABSTRACT This study mainly sets to explore how English second language students grade 12 learners at Randfontein Secondary School develop critical literacy awareness (CLA) by reading ‘bumper’ stickers found in mini-bus taxis commonly known as taxis. Data used in this project was mainly collected through interviews with research participants namely; students, taxi drivers, bumper sticker manufacturers and taxi commuters. The teacher/researcher required students to collect literary texts from their environment for use in their critical literacy class. This research project mainly employs Fairclough’s Critical Discourse Analysis model as an analytical model, which holds that CDA should include the socio-cultural contexts in which texts are produced and read. Data was analysed by all the students in class, especially the six students who were selected for the focus group. The researcher (myself) analysed the students’ reading of texts so as to establish the extent to which they were developing critical literacy awareness. The research found that my students resisted bumper stickers as a discourse that differed from their own ideological positions. Data in this study reveals that the students approached the bumper stickers from a position of estrangement because they were reading from an urban social context that differs from the taxi drivers’ rural social context. This study showed that getting students to be researcher themselves can be a very fruitful and developmental learning experience.

Thesis advisor: Dennis Hale / Thesis advisor: Gerald Easter / Intellectuals' different self-understandings contribute to their development of different views on the people in society. And such different attitudes remarkably affect their ways of engaging their people in the specific cultural contexts. In the process of interactions, people's characters were established in their specific environments. Admittedly, intellectuals acted as intermediary between the core values/beliefs and the people. Fundamentally and ultimately it is our conceptions of God and our thinking of messages from Heaven that determines not only intellectual's self-awareness and their views on the people, but also people's actual self-understanding. I am trying to demonstrate that those lacking of sense of self-understanding were so tough to develop public awareness and take initiatives in civic participation, just like people in traditional Confucian society in ancient China. People of colonial New England were directed to cultivate their personal relationships with God and so also their sense of the self, which is compact with their active civic society. / Thesis (MA) — Boston College, 2013. / Submitted to: Boston College. Graduate School of Arts and Sciences. / Discipline: Political Science.

Thesis advisor: Usha Tummala-Narra / Immigrants in the United States experience a unique array of mental health stressors related to their experiences of migration and acculturation. For immigrants who are also persons of color, additional obstacles and stressors may compound their experiences. Previous research indicates that while psychologists who work with this population may endorse multicultural competence, they may not actually carry out culturally sensitive practices. Additionally, much of the present literature on therapy with minority clients focuses on aspirational goals. However, analyses of the ways in which these tenets are applied to clinical work are few and far between. What are the barriers to implementing these practices? What resources support clinicians who are working with diverse immigrant populations? The present qualitative study focused on the experience of clinicians who work with minority immigrant clients. Thirteen White psychologists responded to open-ended questions regarding their clinical experience with this population. Interview questions explored positive and negative clinical experiences, issues of power, and the ways in which the therapeutic relationship impacted clinicians' views of themselves. Results of the study indicate that internal and external systemic factors influenced clinicians' expectations for therapy as well as the manner in which they approached problematic relational outcomes. Analyses further highlighted the role of power and systemic influences on the therapeutic relationship. Participating psychologists painted a clear picture of the importance of collaborative, empathic relationships, which further highlights the consequences of neglecting to address underlying tensions. A clear and consistent theme of deeply personal commitment to their work transcended individual interviews. Implications for researchers, clinicians, and training institutions were addressed. / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Lynch School of Education. / Discipline: Counseling, Developmental, and Educational Psychology.

Robot swarms are often considered suitable for tasks that are large-scale and long-term. Large-scale missions force the robots to spread spatially. In these type of tasks, actively maintaining connectivity allows the swarm to coordinate. Similarly, long-term nature of the task requires robots to work for a long time. This is affected by the limited energy level of the robot. However current studies normally focus only on connectivity or energy awareness. Therefore, in this work, we propose an approach to tackle the problem of maintaining global connectivity (swarm-level property) considering finite battery life (individual property). We are specifically focusing on growing the communication network and keeping it alive for a long period. We construct a logical tree over the connectivity graph. The logical tree is constructed by using a subset of robots from the swarm. The tree is grown by adding robots as necessary. The tree is also periodically reconfigured to cope with dynamic robot motion. This enables the swarm to grow the tree efficiently. In addition, robots exchange their roles based on their available energy levels. This allows robots with low energy levels to navigate to dedicated charging stations for recharging thus allowing the swarm to maintain the communication network. We evaluate our approach in a wide set of experiments with a realistic robot simulator named ARGoS.

The Indian economy has grown over the last 10 years with new jobs created in the ITES sector, Biomedical, Automotive engineering, Apparel manufacturing and Civil engineering. The growth is strongly led by Information Technology Enabled Services (ITES); this is supported by the education sector with increase in the number of students enrolling for higher education and large numbers of students graduating every year thus creating a large pool of technical and managerial manpower. The working class people segment has grown since the economic growth and it has benefited middle class and upper middle class people. Due to the increase in the number of working people and substantial raise in income, spending power has increased over the years, and particularly the young Indians in the age of 15 – 25 like to shop more. The Government of India has laid down strict rules to protect the environment and avoiding child labor but there is no legality followed by companies in providing an ethical environment in means of working time and salary. The increase in food, energy and real estate costs makes people’s lives more difficult at this time. Are we going to follow the western countries and repeat the same mistake leading to a standstill? As resources are getting to near exhaustion, now is the time to think and ask ourselves question of what we are doing and justify ensuring that we buy only for our needs. This study focuses on the consumer behavior of young Indians in the age of 15 – 25 to understand and know their perception towards spending and to show a new path for the society and the industry for a sustainable environment. / Program: Master programme in Applied Textile Management

This dissertation examines sound, and its embodied articulation through music and movement, as I consider pivotal ways in which race has been constructed through the history of blackface minstrelsy in the United States. I contend that the racialized sounds developed out of early blackface performance have both persisted and shifted throughout the history of American popular music, even after the disappearance of the blackface mask. I have neologized the concept of Blacksound to denote the racially coded sonic scripts that have developed out of the history of blackface performance. Blacksound refers to the histories and movements of the African American bodies, both real and imagined, on which its performance is based. The concept also suggests the scripting, manipulation, and absorption of these sonic performances by both black and non-black bodies as vehicles for imagining and self-expression, understood in relation to how ideals of citizenship vis-a-vis whiteness developed along the emerging color line throughout the long nineteenth century. Because Blacksound emerges out of the contexts of chattel slavery and minstrelsy, its commodified nature is always central to understanding how it sonically functions within the construction of identity in U.S. history. I examine how the masked receding of the sonic and corporeal tropes of blackface into Blacksound became the basis of contemporary popular sound and central to constructions of civic and racial identity in the United States. This approach is primarily developed through a comparative analysis of sheet music, imagery, and primary and secondary accounts of blackface performance rituals throughout the long nineteenth century.

Anesthesia is a health care specialty fraught with high workload demands, stressful work environments, increased production pressure, work areas with many distractions, an increasing use of advanced technology, and the constant need to prioritize work actions. Effective clinical judgment in this dynamic environment necessitates that the provider demonstrate the ability to project what may occur secondary to actual or potential condition changes. These key elements operationalize situation awareness (SA). High level SA is an important characteristic for the successful development of student registered nurse anesthetists (SRNAs). With Endsley’s “Theory of Situation Awareness” as the foundation, the goal of this study was to adapt and validate the “Situation Awareness Global Assessment Technique” (SAGAT), to quantify SRNAs' SA during a specific simulated anesthesia event. With IRB approval, purposeful sampling identified a group of CRNA, nurse educator subjects and an exploratory sequential mixed methods design utilized. Delphi methods during qualitative data collection and validation used a seven-member sample. Content analysis resulted in items for the adapted SAGAT. Quantitative methods utilized data collected from a second 40-member sample yielding item content validity and scale content validity indices (S-CVI/Ave. 0.92). Additionally, exploratory factor analysis provided further reliability with a Cronbach’s alpha of 0.937. Findings revealed that a SAGAT specific to the anesthesia domain and the SRNA subgroup was amenable to adaptation and validation, providing positive implications in SRNA education and training. Additionally, results support the further adaptation, validation, and use of this instrument in other anesthetic content areas, as well as other health care domains.