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Design thinking ability is vital for engineers who are tasked with solving society's toughest sustainable development challenges. Prior research identified that the percentage of design thinkers among freshmen engineering students is greater than the percentage among the general population. However, engineering education's lack of attention to fostering creative ability may cause the design thinking ability of senior engineering students to suffer. The research addressed in this thesis compares the design thinking ability of engineering students across age groups, and compares design thinking ability between the design disciplines of engineering and architecture. To draw design thinking comparisons between these groups, a survey with a nine item design thinking instrument was distributed nationally to freshmen engineering students (n= 2,158), senior engineering students (n= 1,893), and senior architecture students (n= 336). The survey instrument was validated by conducting confirmatory factor analysis on the senior engineering and senior architecture samples' data. The Analysis of Variance (ANOVA) test was utilized to statistically compare scores across sample groups. Both the freshmen engineering students (2.80) and senior architecture students (3.30) scored significantly higher on the design thinking scale than senior engineering students (2.59). These results have important implications for engineering educators as engineering education may contribute to a decrease in design thinking among senior engineering students. A lower design thinking score among seniors was consistent across all engineering sub-disciplines and should be of concern to engineering educators, since design thinking skills are critical for the development of engineering solutions to grand societal challenges. / Master of Science / Design thinking is a way of thinking about the design process which places the user at the center of the design. Thinking about design in this way is a vital ability for engineers and other design professionals to develop because it enables them to solve “wicked” problems like sustainable development challenges. Wicked problems are those which are difficult to solve due to the number of conflicting components involved. Prior research has found that design thinkers are more prevalent among engineering students in their first year of study than among students in other majors. However, engineering education does not attribute much attention to the development of creative ability which could cause the design thinking ability of engineering students in their final year of study to be worse than the ability of those in their first year, as well as worse than the ability of students who study other design disciplines like architecture. This study compared the design thinking abilities of engineering students in their final year of study to engineering students in their first year and to architecture students in their final year. The goal of making these comparisons was to explore if engineering education helps or hinders the development of design thinking. A survey with nine questions related to design thinking was distributed nationwide. The data from the survey was collected and statistically analyzed. The results showed that the design thinking ability of engineering students in their final year was significantly lower than the ability of first year engineering students and significantly lower than the ability of final year architecture students. A decrease in design thinking ability between freshmen and senior year must be addressed by engineering educators. The National Academy of Engineers and industry leaders are calling for the development of engineers who are design thinkers, and the results of this paper suggest that some changes may need to occur within the engineering education curriculum to accommodate this need.

京都大学 / 0048 / 新制・課程博士 / 博士(社会健康医学) / 甲第20626号 / 社医博第84号 / 社新制||医||9(附属図書館) / 京都大学大学院医学研究科社会健康医学系専攻 / (主査)教授 佐藤 俊哉, 教授 木村 剛, 教授 川村 孝 / 学位規則第4条第1項該当 / Doctor of Public Health / Kyoto University / DFAM

Background; It is important from a public health perspective to gain a greater understanding of young people's daily lives, their living conditions and lifestyles to promote for a healthy future.  Today is online gaming a large part of young people's daily lives, however, online games especially MMORPGs (Massively multiplayer online role-playing game) are more prominent in the case of a problematic gaming. Previous research has shown negative health consequences and implications such as truancy and poorer school performance among some of the players. Aim; The study aimed to investigate gaming among young people and the relationship between gaming, well-being in the school, truancy and health.  Method; The study has a deductive quantitative approach with a cross-sectional design and populationbased data from the Liv och hälsa ung 2012 was used.  Results and Conclusion; The study showed that the majority of young people never to rarely play, however when it comes to boys it is more common as 1149 out of a total of 2080 played two to seven days per week. Further investigations revealed links between truancy and gaming, among those who truant has increased odds to play in comparison than those who do not truant. No significant correlation was found regarding health and games where the game was the dependent variable in the logistic regression / Bakgrund; Det är viktigt ur ett folkhälsoperspektiv att få en ökad förståelse kring ungdomars vardag, deras livsvillkor och levnadsvanor för att främja för en hälsosam framtid.  Idag är dataspelandet online en stor del av ungdomars vardag, dock är online spel framförallt datarollspel såsom Massively multiplayer online role-playing game (MMORPG) mer framträdande när det gäller ett problematiskt spelande. Tidigare forskning har påvisat negativa hälsokonsekvenser och följder så som skolk och sämre skolprestation hos vissa av spelarna. Syfte; Studien syftade till att undersöka spelande bland ungdomar i Västmanland och sambandet mellan spelande, trivsel i skolan, skolk samt hälsa.  Metod; Studien har en deduktiv kvantitativ ansats med en tvärsnittsdesign och populationsbaserad data från Liv och hälsa ung studien 2012 användes.  Resultat och Slutsats; Studien påvisade att majoriteten av ungdomarna aldrig till sällan spelar, dock är killarna mer utmärkande då det kommer till spelande och 1149 av totalt 2080 uppger att de spelar cirka två till sju dagar per vecka. Vidare framkom samband mellan skolk och spel, då de som skolkar har ökade odds för att spela i jämförelse än de som inte skolkar. Inga signifikanta samband framkom gällande hälsa och spel där spel utgjorde den beroende variabeln i logistisk regression.

ABSTRACT Background: The Rwandan government has set family planning (FP) as one of the goals and strategies to improve the health of the population. However, unmet needs for modern contraceptive methods are still a problem, as is the variance of modern contraceptive use among the five regions of Rwanda.   Aim: This study aimed at assessing key factors that contribute to the variance of modern contraceptive use between five regions of Rwanda. Methods: This study was a secondary analysis of the Rwanda Demographic health survey, 2010. A total of 492 clusters (urban/rural), composed by 12,792 households were selected in the survey; 13,790 women of reproductive age were systematically selected from selected households and interviewed about maternal and reproductive health issues. 6834 married women or living with their partners at the time of the survey were selected for this study. Results: Socio-economic and demographic characteristics of women, access to family planning (FP) information and women’s empowerment were associated with the variance of modern contraceptive use between the regions. Women’s empowerment was positively associated with modern contraceptive use in all regions. Access to information was associated with modern contraceptive use in all regions except in the North region (AOR: 1.24, 95%CI: O.8- 1.92). Conclusion: This study highlights that the variance of modern contraceptive use was associated to the way in which FP factors are associated with modern contraceptive use vary between regions and how different FP factors occur among regions. Further researches are needed to investigate potential factors on supply side that influence such variance.

In recent years, an increasing amount of research has been conducted on the topic of personal spiritual practices, such as prayer. Fewer studies have been conducted on reasons for changes in the frequency of such practices within the church. Those that have addressed church behavior have most often measured attendance and membership. It is the goal of this study to conceptualize potential causes for changes in personal prayer practice at one church. A yearlong marketing campaign was used to help increase church attenders’ frequency of the personal spiritual practice of prayer. Two cross-sectional studies were conducted one-year apart and revealed a significant increase in prayer. Possible reasons for this change, limitations and suggestions for further research will be discussed.

En studie gjord av den internationella mäklarfirman Knight Frank placerar den svenska bostadsmarknaden på en fjärde plats i rankingen över världens hetaste bostadsmarknader. Många kommuner i Sverige har upplevt en kraftig prisutveckling på bostäder de senaste åren och det är därför viktigt att studera den svenska bostadsmarknaden och dess priser. Syftet med denna studie är således att undersöka vilka faktorer det är som påverkar prisutvecklingen på småhus i Sveriges kommuner. Studien är en tvärsnittsstudie över 288 kommuner där förändringen i bostadspriserna studeras under åren 1996 till 2015. Studien har utförts med hjälp av en statistisk metod i form av en regressionsanalys som har delats upp i två perioder: 1996 till 2005 och 2006 till 2015. Den beroende variabeln är prisutvecklingen på bostäder och de förklarande variablerna är utbudet av bostäder, förvärvsinkomst, arbetslöshet, befolkning och kommunalskatt. Regressionsanalysen visar att befolkningsökningen är den variabel som är signifikant med prisutvecklingen under den första perioden och alla förklarande variabler utom kommunalskatten ärsignifikanta under den andra perioden. Genom den deskriptiva statistiken kan vi även se ett samband mellan utbud av bostäder per invånare och prisutvecklingen på bostäder. / According to a study by the international real estate firm Knight Frank, the Swedish housing market is in a fourth place in the rankings of the world's hottest housing markets. Many municipalities in Sweden have experienced a strong price trend in housing during recent years. Therefore, it is important to study the Swedish housing market and its prices. The purpose of the study is to examine which factors affect the increase in house prices in Sweden's municipalities. We have made a cross-sectional study of 288 municipalities and studying the change in housing prices from year 1996 to 2015. The study was conducted using a statistical method in form of a regression analysis that has been divided into two time periods: 1996 to 2005 and 2006 to 2015. The dependent variable is the change in housing prices and the explanatory variables are the supply of housing, professional income, unemployment rate, population rate and municipal taxes. The regression analysis show that population growth is the variable that is significant to the price trend during the first period. All the explanatory variables except municipal taxes is significant during the second period. Through the descriptive statistics, we can also see a connection between supply of housing per capita and increases in house prices.

Title: Patient perspective of medication information desired Student: Kalaitzidis Panagiotis Tutor: Jiri Vlcek Department of Social and Clinical Pharmacy, Charles University in Prague, Faculty of Pharmacy in Hradec Králové Background: Even from the decade of 1970, patients wanted more information about drugs and did not want to be so depended on the information the physician provided them. Today patients are more than ever informed about their disease and the available and appropriate treatment, due to the high volume of information that can be acquired through the Internet. The traditional role of pharmacists was the provision of medicines to the population. However, nowadays, this role has been changed so as to include other tasks, such as management of prescribed medicines, and promotion of health, since pharmacists can serve as a source of expertise knowledge to the customers. Due to the fact that there is no relevant research for the case of Greek patients, this pilot research could help to fill this gap, by trying to find out what kind of information patients want to know about medicines in several pharmacies in Greece. Aim: The aim of this research is to examine what kind of information patients want related to medicines. More precisely, this research will try to identify the type of...

As modalidades terapêuticas para o câncer de mama têm promovido avanços no seu tratamento, levando ao aumento da sobrevida das mulheres. Contudo, com o aumento do tempo de vida, há também o risco do aumento de comorbidades relacionadas à idade, ao tratamento e à doença, sendo as principais: a obesidade, hipertensão arterial sistêmica (HAS) e diabetes mellitus (DM). Assim, realizou-se o presente estudo com o objetivo de identificar a prevalência de obesidade, HAS e níveis glicêmicos alterados entre mulheres com câncer de mama que frequentam um núcleo de reabilitação e avaliar a distribuição destas comorbidades em relação à idade, tempo de diagnóstico do câncer de mama, circunferência da cintura, hormonioterapia, tratamento quimioterápico e hábitos de vida. Trata-se de um estudo observacional, descritivo e transversal, no qual foram incluídas 67 mulheres com câncer de mama. Para a coleta de dados utilizou-se um instrumento com variáveis sociodemográficas e clínicas, além das avaliações antropométricas, pregas cutâneas, bioimpedância, pressão arterial sistêmica e coletado sangue para glicemia de jejum, no período de setembro a novembro de 2015. Foi realizada análise descritiva, resultando em tabelas de frequência para variáveis qualitativas; para identificar a relação entre as variáveis qualitativas ordinais ou nominais foi empregado o teste exato de Fischer e para estudar a relação entre as medidas contínuas e categóricas da pesquisa foram empregadas técnicas de estatística não paramétrica com o teste de Mann-Whitney (MW) e Kruskal-Wallis (KW). Em relação à obesidade, encontrou-se que 34,3% das participantes eram pré-obesas e 29,9% apresentavam índice de massa corpórea (IMC) com parâmetros de obesidade leve a grave; 53,7% eram hipertensas e 20,9% diabéticas. Encontrou-se associação entre idade e HAS; circunferência da cintura e HAS; níveis glicêmicos e circunferência da cintura; IMC e circunferência da cintura; idade e DM; e idade e circunferência da cintura. Os resultados encontrados mostram alta prevalência de obesidade, hipertensão arterial e níveis glicêmicos alterados nas mulheres participantes, assim como possibilitaram identificar os fatores associados às comorbidades, sendo estes a idade, hábitos de vida e tratamentos realizados para o câncer de mama / The therapeutic modalities for breast cancer have promoted advances in its treatment leading to increased survival of women. However, with the increase in longevity, there is also the risk of comorbidities related to age, to treatment and to the disease, the main ones being: obesity, systemic arterial hypertension (SAH) and diabetes mellitus (DM). Thus, the objective of the present study was to indentify the prevalence of obesity, SAH and altered glucose levels among women with breast câncer who attend a rehabilitation center and to evaluate the distribution of such comorbidities in relation to age, time of breast cancer diagnosis, waist circumference, hormone therapy, chemotherapy treatment and life habits. This is an observational, descriptive and transversal study, which included 67 women with breast cancer. An instrument with sociodemographic and clinical variables was used for the collection of data, in addition to anthropometric evaluations, skin folds, bioimpedance, systemic arterial pressure and blood collected for fasting blood glucose test, from September to November, 2015. A descriptive analysis was perfomed resulting in frequency tables for qualitative variables; the Fischer exact test was employed to identify the relationship between the ordinal or nominal qualitative variables, whereas non-parametric statistical techniques with the Mann-Whitney (MW) and Kruskal-Wallis (KW) test were employed to study the relationship between continuous and categorical measures of the survey. In relation to obesity, 34.3% of participants were found to be pre-obese, 29.9% had a body mass índex (BMI) with mild to severe obesity parameters, 53.7% were hypertensive and 20.9% had diabetes. Association was found between age and SAH; waist circumference and SAH; blood glucose levels and waist circunference; BMI and waist circunference; age and DM; and age and waist circunference. The findings show high prevalence of obesity, high blood pressure and altered glucose levels in the participating women, and allow for identification of the factors associated with comorbidities, namely age, life habits and breast cancer treatments

In 2001, a population-based cross-sectional study was conducted to compare levels of total polychlorinated biphenyls (PCBs) in residents of Calcasieu Parish and Lafayette Parish, Louisiana. A demographic, lifestyle, and food consumption questionnaire was collected for each participant. Overall, weighted geometric means and medians of total serum PCB concentrations in residents of Calcasieu and Lafayette Parishes were similar among all risk subgroups. However, 15-29 year olds had higher total serum PCB weighted geometric means in Calcasieu (64.4 ppb) than did this age group in Lafayette (46.6 ppb) (p=0.0059); conversely, in the 60 and older age group, geometric means of 293.7 ppb and 392.5 ppb were observed for Calcasieu and Lafayette, respectively (p=0.0059). In general, total PCB serum levels in Calcasieu and in Lafayette Parish, Louisiana residents were similar to each other and to levels observed in the U.S. general population in this time period.