Scholars have characterized as “extreme” the intersection of work and family in military service (MacDermid Wadsworth & Southwell, 2011) and periods of deployment involve further stress for partners of military members (e.g. Not having enough personal time, having too many responsibilities at home, changing marital roles, and parenting hassles) that may make managing both work and family life more difficult (Chandra et al., 2011). Research with partners of deployed service members has focused primarily on mental health (Donoho et al., 2018; Mansfield et al., 2010) as well as parenting and household responsibilities (Chandra et al., 2011), but less is known about partners’ employment related outcomes. In the current study, both role strain and role enhancement processes were tested over time in a sample of employed partners of deployed Army National Guard Members (GMs) and a comparison group composed of partners of non-deploying GMs. In accordance with theories of work-family conflict (Greenhaus & Beutell, 1985) and resource drain theory (Rothbard, 2001), a model utilizing two waves of data was tested; household challenges experienced by at-home partners were hypothesized to be related to more negative family-to-work spillover, and ultimately associated with less job engagement and more depressive symptoms. In addition theories of work-family facilitation (Grzywacz & Butler, 2005) and work-family enrichment (Greenhaus & Powell, 2006) were utilized to test whether family strengths (e.g. effective family functioning and military spouse role satisfaction) in the face of deployment were associated with positive FTW spillover, and ultimately with more job engagement and fewer depressive symptoms. Results revealed that household challenges were related to more negative family-to-work spillover, more depressive symptoms, and less job engagement. Effective family functioning was related to more positive FTW spillover, which was related to more job engagement. Results were consistent across the deploying and non-deploying group with the following exception: in the deploying group only, negative FTW spillover was associated with more depressive symptoms. The current study has implications for the field of work and family research, employers, and military family service providers. First, the current study provided evidence of cross-domain work-family conflict and work-family enrichment in a sample of partners of National Guard members. Second, the study highlighted numerous consequences for employees facing significant household challenges. The role of household challenges in employees’ lives may have implications for how employers should structure workplace culture and the employee supports they offer. Finally, only partners of deployed GMs experienced more depressive symptoms associated with negative FTW conflict. Military family service providers may use that information to better serve partners of deploying service members who are at risk of mental health concerns during deployment.

Thesis advisor: Callista Roy / The purpose of this secondary analysis was to understand the coping and adaptation processes of reservist soldiers and one family member throughout the first year following deployment to Iraq. A directed content analysis based on the Roy (2009, 2011) conceptualization of coping and adaptation was accomplished on 75 interviews from 20 Army Reserve and family participants. Research questions were; which contextual stimuli affected the coping capacity for dealing with focal stimuli; military deployment and reintegration. Second, whether resourceful and focused coping at Wave 1 positively influenced the adaptation level at 52 weeks. Third, whether physical and fixed coping at Wave 1 negatively affected the adaptation level at 52 weeks. Fourth, whether coping capacity varied during the reintegration year. Findings confirmed primary study outcomes (MacDermid, 2006) where participants described individualized reintegration. Informants' depictions were different from the previously published, "New Emotional Cycles of Deployment." Contextual stimuli were complicating or protective and exerted substantial influence on managing the deployment and reintegration. Cognitive-emotional processing the meaning and repercussions of the deployment is part of the reintegration process. Resourceful and focused coping positively affected the adaptation level at 52 weeks. Insufficient reports of physical and fixed coping precluded determining its effect. Coping efforts were a discrete measure of coping extrapolated from narratives, and were found to fluctuate throughout the year. When demands intensified, participants accelerated their coping efforts as predicted by the Roy adaptation model (2009). Coping strategies were effective or ineffective. Concepts of transcendence, transformation, and hope were understood in new ways within the Roy model. Transcendence in individuals and groups was further explicated. Spirit was another concept from Roy's work that was observed in the participants. Implications for policy, theory, nursing practice, education and research are discussed. Keywords: adaptation, adaptation level, coping, coping efforts, Roy adaptation model, spirit, transcendence, transformation, hope, military deployment, post-deployment, reintegration, Reservist, military family, deployment cycle, directed content analysis / Thesis (PhD) — Boston College, 2012. / Submitted to: Boston College. Connell School of Nursing. / Discipline: Nursing.

Few studies about elevated blood pressure in the U.S. military exist in which researchers examined exposure to combat and its association with elevated blood pressure. The purpose of this quantitative research was to describe the extent of association between those who were exposed to combat deployment, were 40 or older, and were overweight or obese and had elevated blood pressure for U.S. military personnel who deployed to an area of declared combat between 2012 and 2017. The conceptual basis of this research was best represented by the determinants of health model. Chi-square correlation revealed that being older (equal to or greater than 40 years; p = .018) and being overweight/obese (body mass index [BMI] equal to or greater than 25; p = .000) both have statistically significant relationships with elevated blood pressure (either systolic blood pressure equal to or greater than 120 mm/hg or diastolic blood pressure equal to or greater than 80 mm/hg) among military personnel, while combat deployment does not (deployment > 30 days; p =. 487). However, only being overweight/obese remained significant even when controlling for exposure to combat deployment and being older. Binary logistic regression revealed that elevated blood pressure/hypertension is greater than three times more likely to occur in the presence of the overweight/obese predictor (BMI equal to or greater than 25; p =. 000) variable. The findings of this research could be used to proactively enforce medically derived appropriate medical fitness standards such as maintenance of normal BMI during deployments. Social adaptations could be instrumental in improving wellness among deployed military personnel.

The National Response Plan (NRP) was developed to provide support during national disasters. The U.S. Public Health Service (USPHS) Corps is 1 of the 7 uniform services and contributes to the mission of the (NRP). The USPHS Commissioned Corps (CC) Officers may be deployed for national disasters at any time and they must be ready to deploy. The purpose of this phenomenological qualitative study was to explore the lived experiences of USPHS CC Nurse Officers who have deployed in response to disasters in the United States. This study addressed the gap in literature related to the deployment perception of USPHS Nurse Officers and may lead to an increase in deployment readiness. The lifeworld theory was used to guide the study that addressed the question of how nurse officers of the USPHS CC described their clinical nursing experience while deployed. Selection criteria used to recruit the 10 participants included USPHS Nurse Officers in non-clinical billets that have deployed in support of hurricane responses in 2017. In-depth interviews were conducted, and data were organized and analyzed using NVivo analysis software. The themes that emerged from the data included characteristics of nurse officers, clinical preparedness, training needs, challenges, and lessons learned. USPHS Nurse Officers perceived other nurse officers as resourceful, skillful educators, felt comfortable and prepared during the deployment, recommended additional training to benefit future Corps deployments, and identified physical and emotional challenges they experienced. These findings may assist in promoting positive social change within nursing practice of the USPHS Nurse Officers as it may enhance and improve readiness training, and USPHS policies for deployment readiness.

The intent and direction of this thesis is to recognize personal and social concerns that influence soldiers’ reintegration process. The missing element in current literature is capturing the soldiers’ lived experiences, ideas, perspective and knowledge of what it truly means to be a soldier and having to reintegrate back into the civilian life after being submerged the military culture for an extended period of time. One of the vital concerns to the soldiers is how civilians, specifically the community, politicians, scholars and mental health providers, are not necessary fully aware nor do they recognize the influential impacts of the experiences and environment the military culture has over the soldiers. Soldiers may suffer from depression, anxiety, isolation, alienation, lack of belonging and perceived burdensomeness upon returning home. Previous research often from the civilian point of view expects soldiers to face personal and social concerns, but this research does not allow soldiers to speak for themselves – from their military perspective and lived-experiences. The mission of this thesis, with the support of members of the US Army, is to help bridge the disconnect in communication and the lack of understanding between the two cultures, military and civilian, in order to work together to find a more improved solution on helping soldiers reintegrate processes. The main objective of the mission is to increase our awareness and understanding on who a soldier is, who they develop into and who they become throughout their military career, and how this influences their reintegration journey.

<p>As the email system is widely used as a communication channel, and often is crucial for the performance of organizations, it is important that users can trust the content of what is being delivered to them. A standard called <em>DomainKeys Identified Mail</em> (DKIM) has been developed by the IETF to solve the problem with authentication and integrity, by using digital signatures. This master's thesis goal is to evaluate the solution where an implementation of DKIM is extended with DNSSEC validation. DNSSEC is a solution which secures, among other, the mapping between IP addresses and domain names. The implementation of DKIM is deployed and evaluated with function testing, domain testing, threat analysis, and interoperability testing.DKIM does not need any new public-key infrastructure, thus inflicting less cost on the deployment compared with other cryptographic solutions such as S/MIME and PGP. We recommended to use DKIM together with DNSSEC to secure the transportation of the DKIM public key. The upcoming standard ADSP can inform the recipient of whether a domain is signing its email or not and thereby a possibility to detect any unauthorized signature removal. A further problem is that mailing lists often manipulate the email, thus breaking the signature. We therefore recommend to send email directly to the recipient or active DKIM signing on the mailing lists.</p>

Even if software handover is a critical process in the lifecycle of a software system, there is still very little research   done within its domain. In this paper, we evaluate the taxonomy of handover activities as defined in EM3: Handover Process Model. We do it in an industrial setting in a context where a software system is handed over from a vendor conducting system development, evolution and maintenance to an acquirer using the system and conducting front-end support. Our results show that the taxonomy is realistic in the context studied. However, it misses some important deployment and training activities. / © 2010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.QC 20120223

Handing over a software system from development to maintenance is still an under-researched domain. The software community has a hazy insight into its constellation and inherent activities. In this paper, we have evaluated a preliminary version of a taxonomy of handover activities within one Swedish software company. The evaluation is conducted in an in-house handover context only. Despite this, our results provide evidence of its enormous complexity, variability and strong dependency on many other software engineering processes. / © 2010 IEEE. Personal use of this material is permitted. Permission from IEEE must be obtained for all other uses, in any current or future media, including reprinting/republishing this material for advertising or promotional purposes, creating new collective works, for resale or redistribution to servers or lists, or reuse of any copyrighted component of this work in other works.QC 20120223

In this thesis we have looked at the possibility of using a rover for deployment oflunar interferometers on the far side of the Moon. This project was made togetherwith two other groups from the mechanical engineering program at HalmstadUniversity. The project was divided into three units and we had the mainresponsibility for the design of the chassis.The goal of this project is to create a better understanding of the origin of the universeand how it still to this day keeps changing. This is believed to be achievable by usinglunar interferometers that will collect data in form of cosmic microwaves from outerspace. The lunar interferometers will be placed at the far side of the Moon since thisis the only site in solar system that is shielded from human-generated interference.The work was completed in collaboration with JPL and NASA, which are worldleading designers and manufacturers of space-related products.

Current theories of auditory attention are largely based upon studies examining either the presentation of a single auditory stimulus or requiring the identification and labeling of stimuli presented sequentially. Whether or not these theories apply in more complex ecologically-valid environments where multiple sound sources are simultaneously active is still unknown. This study examined the pattern of neuromagnetic responses elicited when participants had to perform a search in an auditory language-based `scene` for a stimulus matching an imperative target held in working memory. The analysis of source waveforms revealed left lateralized patterns of activity that distinguished target present from target absent trials. Similar source waveform amplitudes were found when the target was presented in the left or right hemispace. The results suggest that auditory search for speech sounds engage a left lateralized process in the superior temporal gyrus.