There were two primary goals in this investigation. The first goal was to determine if inter-individual variability in time to exhaustion at the velocity associated with V02max (Tlim at Vmax) was explained by anaerobic capacity (AC), Vmax, anaerobic threshold (AT), and/or a combination variable in the form [AC • (Vmax - vAT)^-1]. The second goal was to determine if AC could be predicted from Tlim at Vmax, AT, and/or a combination variable in the form [Tlim • (Vmax - vAT)].

This dissertation used an organizational structure framework to examine the current status of hazard mitigation from the perspective of emergency managers from four organizational structure categories. This study addressed three primary research questions: (1) What is the role of the local emergency management office in hazard mitigation and what is the function of other stakeholders as perceived by local emergency managers? (2) What are the challenges to achieving hazard mitigation objectives and what are the strategies used to overcome them? and (3) How do local emergency managers define hazard mitigation success? Thirty North Central Texas emergency managers were recruited for participation in this study, and data was collected through telephone interviews and an internet survey. A mixed methodology was used to triangulate qualitative and quantitative findings. Qualitative analyses consisted of inductive grounded theory, and quantitative data analyses consisted of independent samples t-test analyses, correlation analyses, and Chi-square analyses. Findings indicate that emergency managers from the different emergency management office categories have six self-identified roles in hazard mitigation planning and strategy implementation; have a similar reported level of involvement in different hazard mitigation-related activities; and perceive stakeholders as having four key functions in hazard mitigation planning and strategy implementation. Second, participants describe five obstacles that are categorized as internal organizational challenges and two obstacles that are categorized as outside organizational challenges. The Disinterested Stakeholders Challenge is rated as a more significant obstacle by participants from the Non-Fire emergency management office category. Emergency managers describe the use of four strategies for overcoming hazard mitigation challenges, and the ability to master these strategies has implications for achieving hazard mitigation success. Third, emergency managers define a tangible and intangible category of hazard mitigation success, and each category is comprised of distinct indicators. Lastly, the organizational characteristics of emergency management offices had significant relationships with their reported level of involvement in select hazard mitigation activities; the rating assigned to select hazard mitigation challenges; and the rating assigned to select hazard mitigation success measures. For integrated emergency management offices, their parent agency is found to be an asset for achieving hazard mitigation objectives.

Children, Youth and Families at Risk (CYFAR) is a national program developed by Cooperative Extension’s federal partner, Cooperative State, Research, Education and Extension Service (CSREES). In collaboration with its federal partner and in concert with state extension systems across the nation, UVM Extension conducted an organizational change survey in 1998, 2000, and 2004 with a selected sample of UVM Extension professionals to determine the organization’s capacity to address issues of CYFAR. Findings from these three surveys showed that Extension had not substantively altered its organizational practices in alignment with the goals of the national program. In order to stimulate new strategic planning for the program, this study set about to assess the capacity of staff from UVM Extension to promote organizational learning. Grounded in the literature of organizational learning, this study administered a 43 item survey instrument called the Dimension of the Learning Organization Questionnaire (DLOQ) to Extension employees. As a strategic planning tool, the survey identifies organizational learning opportunities at the individual, team, and organizational level. Following the Total Design Method, the web-based survey was launched September 2006, with a response rate of 68% (n=63). Findings from the new survey continue to indicate limited organizational capacity to meet national goals for CYFAR program. Interestingly, nearly 70% of survey respondents reported participation in programming for children, youth and families at risk, a percentage greater than those formally assigned to CYFAR activities. Regardless of formal assignment, however, CYFAR employees and non-CYFAR employees did not significantly differ in their survey responses across a variety of organizational measures. Prior training to develop organizational capacity in line with national goals appears to be falling short of expectations. Implications for these shortcomings are discussed and used to frame an action plan for development of this program.

This project was a mixed methods study that examined the collaboration dimensions of Homeward's planning process and the factors that motivate organizations to participate. The study examined the collaborative strategy used by an organization called Homeward located in Richmond, Virginia. Homeward is a broker organization (Chaskin, Brown, Venkatesh, & Vidal, 2001) that was created in 1998 to mediate and nurture relationships among partnering organizations in order to facilitate the collaborative process required by the United States Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD) to receive Continuum of Care funding. During the quantitative component of the study, a survey was sent to Homeward's partners (n = 44) to identify partner perceptions of Homeward's leadership, organizational structure, benefits and drawbacks of participation, and relationships with partners. The follow-up survey and focus group in the qualitative component explored themes related to organization affiliation with Homeward, benefits and drawbacks of participation, relationships with partners, challenges that impact the ability of Homeward to facilitate collaboration, and strategies to involve key stakeholders. The findings from both methods have provided an overview of how Homeward's collaborative process is perceived by its partners and have raised issues that may impact Homeward's partner recruitment and retention efforts in the future. Implications for Homeward's model of collaboration include developing an organizational structure that will support the existence of both loosely and tightly coupled systems under the auspices of a single collaborative effort for long-term planning.

3 ABSTRACT Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Department of biophysics and physical chemistry Author: Magdaléna Pleváková Supervisor: Ing. Vladimír Kubíček, CSc. Thesis title: Determination of Lipophilicity of Drugs by HPLC In this thesis a RP-HPLC method for fast and reliable determination of lipophilicity was proposed and tested. Stationary phase was selected by using hydrophobic substraction model. Capacity factors of the chosen substances were initially measured on Zorbax ECLIPSE XDB C18 250x4,6 mm, 5µm column, which exhibits almost identical retention characteristics as the column used for this purpose until now. Then the capacity factors of the same substances were determined by using Zorbax ECLIPSE XDB-C18 50x4,6 mm, 1,8µm column that was selected to reduce retention times significantly. A group of newly synthesised drugs based on structure of pyrazine served as samples for the measurement. The reproducibility of the capacity factor values determined using both columns was compared and the independence of the capacity factor on the mobile phase flow was confirmed. The capacity factors of two homologous series and a group of benzimidazols were consequently determined on Zorbax ECLIPSE XDB-C18 50x4,6 mm, 1,8µm column using various compositions of mobile phases. Several...

This thesis is focused on legal capacity of minors. The main issue is an extent and circumstances under which minors are legally incapacitated to oblige themselves and to influence their own legal relationships. The thesis is divided into four main parts. The first part is focused on general definition of legal capacity and the basic concepts of dealing with limited legal capacity. Second part is dealing with evolution of legal capacity from the foundations set by roman law, it's development on Czech territory to the approval of recent civil code and development in Germany. Third part contains an interpretation of German legislation. I pursue the German legislation first because it is very sophisticated and provides us with plenty of vantage points on different aspects of the Czech legislation. The part dedicated to the German legislation subdivided into two chapters, where the first one focuses on general characteristics of the legislation and the principle of graduated legal capacity of minors and the second part deals with minors without legal capacity and minors with limited legal capacity. In the fourth part the Czech legislation is analyzed. First I focus on consideration of minors' capability to act independently with legal effects, then on evaluation of nature of legal acts, representation...

1 Summary The thesis is focused on a specific area of the private law and concerns with questions of legal capacity of natural persons, specifically with the legal conception of acquiring and restricting legal capacity. The main attention is dedicated to task of civil courts in cases of reduction capacity. The first chapter deals with the basic legal terms crucial for this issue - person, legal personality and legal capacity and their mutual relations. On the grounds of interpretation of article 5 of the Charter of Fundamental Rights and Freedoms, we can say, that in our legal order everyone is a person in legal meaning of the word. It means that everyone has a legal personality as an attribute of person and cannot be deprived of it. Legal personality means to be capable of having legal rights and duties and it is a prerequisite to legal capacity, which determines the ability of person to amend (enter into, transfer, etc.) her rights and duties. The thesis shows that on the constitutional level the legal personality and the capacity are two sides of the same coin, while for the private law the separation of these two attributes is typical. The reason for it is based on fact, that while the legal personality arises purely from the nature of a person, the capacity depends on a physical maturity. This is also...

Each of us has knowledge but it is not complete. When we come together to listen, we learn, we grow in understanding and we can analyze better the course that needs to be taken. One thing I learned over the past several years is that words and their interpretation have power. Grand Bayou community member This dissertation examines the question of change in the non-community people who have interacted or come into contact with the Grand Bayou Participatory Action Research (PAR) project. Who Changes?, a book on institutionalizing participation in development, raises the issu of "where is the change?" in a participatory project (Blackburn1998). Fischer (2000), Forester (1992), and Wildavsky (1979) indicate that a participatory process is beneficial to all stages of planning policy development, and analysis. However, planners, academics, and practitioners who work with high risk communities are often of different cultures, values, and lived experience than those of the community. Despite the best intentions of these professionals, these differences may at times cause a disconnect from or a dismissal of the community's knowledge, values or validity claims as the participatory process transpires. The outside experts often fail to learn from the local communities or use the community's expertise. The Grand Bayou Participatory Action Research (PAR) project, funded in part by a National Science Foundation (NSF) grant, investigated the viability of PAR in a post-disaster recovery project. The NSF report revealed that the community did gain agency and political effectiveness; the study and evaluation, however, did not focus on the outside collaborators and their change. Freirian and Habermasian theories of conscientization and critical hermeneutics would assume that those engaged with the project have changed in some way through their learning experience and that change may be emancipatory. The change builds on a core tenet of PAR in developing relational knowledge while honoring the other. This study used a case study methodology utilizing multiple sources of evidence to explore the answer to this question. A better understanding of the change in outside collaborators in a PAR project can be helpful in developing a more holistic participatory community planning process.

This thesis examines the roles played by Nongovernmental Organizations (NGOs) in addressing the broad issue of poverty and development by focusing on the Latin American and Caribbean (LAC) region. A new and intricate interplay of the profit, public, and non-profit sectors has arisen as the importance of NGOs has grown throughout the Global South. NGOs, now at the heart of economic development in LAC, are actors in what has been called a global civil society and have demonstrated an immense breadth of specified knowledge and adaptability. The main objective of the paper is to explore whether, and to what extent, NGOs can strengthen the capacity of states to effectively and fairly govern, and promote sustainable development. What can NGOs do to improve states in Latin America and the Caribbean? NGOs are placed within the progressive spectrum of development, while uncovering the need for a balanced approach to the complex topic of development. Consequently, NGOs carrying out capacity building objectives can be seen to support the involvement of local actors and communities while serving as interlocutors between the state and civil society. Haiti is used as a case study because it provides a unique and extreme example of the role that NGOs can play in promoting the public sector.

Recent events have thrown the spotlight on infectious disease outbreak response. We developed a data-driven method, EpiGro, which can be applied to cumulative case reports to estimate the order of magnitude of the duration, peak and ultimate size of an ongoing outbreak. It is based on a surprisingly simple mathematical property of many epidemiological data sets, does not require knowledge or estimation of disease transmission parameters, is robust to noise and to small data sets, and runs quickly due to its mathematical simplicity. Using data from historic and ongoing epidemics, we present the model. We also provide modeling considerations that justify this approach and discuss its limitations. In the absence of other information or in conjunction with other models, EpiGro may be useful to public health responders. (C) 2016 The Authors. Published by Elsevier B.V.