The overarching theme of this thesis is the prevention of progressive-type disability. Unlike catastrophic disability, progressive disability is gradual and more common in older adults. Because progressive disability can take years to develop, it is often conceptualized as a continuum, from less to more disabled. Disability prevention, by definition, is designed to identify people who are as yet nondisabled but at high risk for future functional decline by identifying an early functional state associated with increased risk of subsequent disability (Fried & Guralnik, 1997). This thesis sought to address two challenges associated with identifying an early functional state of disability. The first challenge relates to instrument calibration. Traditional instruments (based on self-report) used for assessing disability, scales of activities of daily living (ADL) and instrumental activities of daily living (IADL), were originally developed to describe levels of functional status in institutionalized older adults. Thus, these instruments poorly discriminate, as well as underestimate disability in the early stages of development. Poor discrimination refers to tasks or activities (i.e., scale items) that prove unresponsive to changes in a particular person’s ability level. Performance measures on the other hand, such as walk time or grip strength, have proven to be quite responsive to early declines in functional status. Despite the popularity of performance measures used to assess health status in epidemiology or gerontological research, evidence suggests that they measure a somewhat different construct than self-reported activities of daily living. ADLs have a long history of use in the medical community, yet it has been proposed that the relative standing of ADLs, in relation to communitydwelling older adults, could be enhanced by improving construct validities that are at least equivalent to those of physical performance measures. Item response theory (IRT) methodology can be used to improve the structure of ADL scales so that they are more sensitive in detecting the early stages of functional decline within relatively high functioning older adults; a stage that has been shown to be more responsive to clinical interventions aimed at prevention of overt disability or frailty. IRT can improve ADL scales in multiple ways: by confirming an underlying uni-dimensional continuum of disability, establishing interval level measurement or item hierarchies, and increasing scale precision. As part of this thesis I conducted a systematic review of functional status scales, applied to community-dwelling older adults, which employed IRT procedures. The review was useful in that it draws attention to areas of functional assessment that can be improved upon, most notably, the topic of establishing interval level data and construct under-representation. Using data from the Cardiovascular Health Study, I was able to show that a common hierarchy of functional decline was observed for a diverse set of conditions and diseases that are prevalent among community-dwelling older adults. Such an indicator could be used to identify hierarchical declines relating to severity in diverse patient populations. Improvements in validity of functional status scales can also lead to the use of ADL-IADLs as potential determinates of disability, rather than simply acting as outcome measures of disability. Again using data from the Cardiovascular Health Study, I examined the predictive power of IADL (mobility-type) items on later disability. Self reported difficulty in 2 or 3 of the most difficult IADL items increased the odds of being disabled eight years later by a factor of 3.5. The odds of being disabled fell to 1.9 for those reporting difficulty with one item. The second challenge of this thesis relates to defining determinants of functional decline that manifest themselves at the earliest stages of the disablement process. As previously stated physical performance measures have been shown to be sensitive to early stages of functional decline. However, can other measures, potentially spanning multiple domains, be used to identify those at high risk for future disability? In particular I was interested in whether psychosocial and cognitive variables could be used to detect changes in functional status at the preclinical stages of the disablement process. With regard to the Cardiovascular Health Study, I was able to show that, for subjects within the normal range of cognitive functioning, performance in the lowest quartile of the Digit Symbol Substitution Test resulted in a 2.2 increase in the odds of being disabled. Performance on this measure, as well as selfreported mobility noted above, could detect decrements in functional status as much as 8 years prior. With the use of the Lothian Birth Cohort sample I explicitly investigated the psychosocial domain. I found that the level of depressive symptoms increased the odds of being disabled by 56%. Again, these symptoms were assessed as much as eight years prior to self-reported disability. The general findings of this thesis indicate that refinements in ADL-IADL measures can aid in the detection of disability at the pre-clinical level, and that cognitive function and intra-individual factors play a pivotal role in speeding up or slowing down the disablement process.

I–HOPE is an instrument that can be used to examine person–environment fit in the home. The instrument is developed in the United States and involves forty-four activity cards that are to be sorted by the client to address the activities that are problematic in his/her everyday life. The purpose of this study was to examine if the activity cards would fit in a Swedish context, and if other activities needed to be added, to match every day activities of people, 65 years and older, living in ordinary homes in Sweden. A survey was distributed to twenty-one participants age 65 and older. This survey was conducted in a project with Luleå University of Technology and the University of Gothenburg, that aims to adapt I-HOPE to be applicable in Sweden. Results show that nineteen of the forty-four activity cards were identified by all the participants. Further, eighteen more cards were identified by the majority of the participants. The seven activity cards that were not identified, or were done in a different way than what the picture showed, contained multiple activities that were categorized into one, compared to the ones that were identified. Additionally, the participants identified two more activities, that they felt, the instrument lacked. These results conclude that I-HOPE contains some valid activities, but needs to be adapted further, to fit a Swedish context, and to work as an occupational instrument for elders, ageing in place.

This thesis explores the experiences of individuals living in a family where a member is dying or has a life-threatening illness. It focuses in particular upon how families are actively produced in the everyday `doing' of day-to-day family life (Morgan, 1996) in circumstances of severe ill-health and when facing death. Using an ethnographic approach combining informal, in-depth interviews with 9 families and participant observation on a hospice ward, the research provides insight into how families experience themselves as family in the `here-and-now' of their daily lives. It will be argued that in both popular culture and theoretical work there is a pervasive tendency to associate death with crisis and that the more ordinary, everyday and mundane aspects of dying experiences are less well understood. Therefore, the analysis of family lives presented here moves away from the more familiar model of emotional crisis and rupture in relation to severe ill-health and dying, to ask new questions about the `everydayness' of people's feelings and experiences during this time. A more nuanced picture of living with life-threatening illness and dying is provided as the data chapters explore the everyday and mundane in relation to families' experiences. Analysing empirical data about various aspects of dayto- day life - including eating practices, spatial dynamics and material objects - the thesis shows how ill-health and dying are not discrete ontological experiences existing outside and separate from everyday life. Rather, in paying attention to the `doing' of being a family day-to-day, this research brings more squarely into view, the everyday as a lived experience (Felski, 1999) within which families come to `know' their experiences of illness and dying.

The overall aim of the present thesis was three-fold. The first was to study occupational performance in individuals with severe mental disorders and their experiences of occupational therapy, the second to study experienced burden of family caregivers and the third to test the validity and the homogeneity of assessment tools in this area. The samples consisted of individuals with severe mental disorders participating in organised occupations (n= 112), occupational therapy records (n=64), occupational therapists working in mental health care (n=7) and family caregivers of individuals with severe mental disorders (n=256). Data were collected by questionnaires, structured and narrative interviews, observations and occupational therapy records. Individuals with severe mental disorders reported problems related to leisure and work activities and the occupational therapists recorded problems concerning how to organise and structure occupational performance. Individuals functioning on a high cognitive level experienced problems related to work and productive activities. Participation in occupational therapy strengthened their confidence in their own ability. The “Experience of Occupational Performance Questionnaire” (EOPQ) was developed from data on the experiences of women participating in occupational therapy. A principal component analysis gave seven factors with acceptable homogeneity. There is a need for assessment tools to evaluate occupational therapy. The EOPQ represents an attempt to fulfil this need. Family caregivers experienced limitations of daily activities as a burden. The ability to perform daily activities was studied from three perspectives, the individuals’, the occupational therapists’, and the experienced burden of the family caregivers. These perspectives are complementary and thus necessary for planning and implementation of individually adapted occupational therapy as well as for the evaluation of outcomes.

It was a literature review of various newspapers between June and October of 2012 published in the city of Lima, taking only the news related to health sciences. The journal can be a primary source of dissemination of research results, and later, the health care professional to find out more about the study in which you are interested. The publication of such news should be supervised by a health care professional to prevent the dissemination of information that may be confusing. Also, these results may encourage professionals and students from health to develop projects to study these results in our country. / Se hizo una revisión de diversos diarios entre los meses de junio y octubre del 2012 publicados en la ciudad de Lima, tomándose solo las noticias relacionadas a temas de ciencias de la salud. El diario puede ser una primera fuente de difusión de resultados de investigaciones, para posteriormente, el profesional de la salud pueda indagar más sobre el estudio en el cual está interesado. La publicación de este tipo de noticias debería estar supervisada por un profesional de la salud para evitar la difusión de información que pueda ser confusa. Asimismo, estos resultados pueden incentivar a los profesionales y estudiantes de la salud a elaborar proyectos para estudiar dichos resultados en nuestro país.

At present, Richmond, Virginia only has bus transit services provided by the Greater Richmond Transit Company (GRTC) and primarily concentrated within the boundary of Richmond City. GRTC is impacted by both supply-side and demand-side factors, notably socioeconomic characteristics of bus riders, bus ridership is unevenly distributed across different bus stops. This thesis will conduct statistical and geographical analysis on the impacts of socioeconomic characteristics on bus-stop daily boarding in Richmond City. The statistical analysis includes both correlation analysis and regression analysis, assuming one dependent variable (bus-stop daily boarding) and fourteen independent variables (most of which describe socioeconomic characteristics of bus riders) at aggregated census block group levels. The research concentrates on local bus routes and the block groups with local bus stops in Richmond. This empirical study aims to identify the significant factors impacting bus ridership and assess the bus service situation for affected block groups (under-served or over-served). The study outcomes, such as the number of bus lines as the most important factor impacting ridership, will have important implications for Richmond’s local transit planning and decision-making.

We identify some of the factors affecting the extent of commonality in liquidity and differences between different stock exchanges around the world. With a comprehensive approach, our investigation centers on presenting evidence on the existence of commonality in liquidity, effect of using different measures of market variables on the level of commonality, factors that change the likelihood of stocks having commonality and factors explaining the different levels of commonality across markets. For the individual stock liquidity, we employ most common and reliable liquidity measures including quoted bid and ask spread, proportional spread, effective spread, proportional effective spread and percentage spread. For the market liquidity, we calculate the equal weighted and value weighted averages of the individual stock liquidity measures. Our base model of commonality of liquidity is an extension of Chordia, Roll, and Subrahmanyam (2000). Our data includes 36,457 common stocks in 46 stock exchanges in 33 countries. Our data period begins on January 2000 and covers until the end of December 2007. Our results show that 14.38% of all stocks in the world have commonality in liquidity with their markets when equally weighted market variables are used. This percentage drops to 9.76% with using value weighted market variables. After controlling for commonality in certain days of the week, we find that commonality is, in most part, uniformly distributed across days-of-the-week, almost for all countries. We also find that market factors including average spread, average price, average return, average risk, average size, legal system (common vs. civil law) and distribution of mean company size affect the likelihood of companies having commonality within their exchanges. In terms of the different levels across countries, we find that average percentage spread, level of risk, distribution of mean company size and legal system all have significant effects. Our results contribute to the literature analyzing factors that affect the level of commonality and types of companies that are likely to have commonality. Our study also has practical implications for portfolio diversification by providing evidence for possible reasons for common liquidity movements in the markets which may eventually lead to market liquidity crunches.

Magister Artium - MA / This study explores the lives of Kanana residents, an informal settlement in Gugulethu Township on the outskirts of Cape Town, South Africa. It pays particular attention to their everyday lives to dispel negative and simplistic representations of informal settlement residents when they collectively take part in protests. Although there are extensive reasons for the protests in the informal settlements, the media and the South African government have reduced these protests to portraying them as demands for “service delivery”, and furthermore as criminally induced protests. I point out that this problem is partly due to scholarly work that does not engage these misleading representations and illustrate the lives of shack residents in the ordinary, when they are not protesting. Thus the focus of this thesis is life beyond protests. I argue that the lives of shack residents who participate in the protests are complex. As opposed to negative and simplistic representations, this thesis illustrates that one needs to be immersed in the lives of shack residents so as to understand them as identifiable human beings who make meaning of their lives. I explore their lives in the shack settlement further and argue that these human beings live their ordinary harmonious lives centred on the practice of greeting. To highlight the complexity of life of protesting informal settlement residents this thesis makes a point that there exist unsettling realities in the shack settlement; unsettling realities that make residents feel to be less of human beings. Kanana residents, therefore, draw from these perpetual unsettling realities to organise and protest. This thesis is based on ethnographic research, which was conducted between September 2015 and February 2016. During fieldwork, I observed and interacted in informal conversations with Kanana residents. With the main co-producers of this work, I carried out their life histories and further in-depth interviews.

O presente trabalho analisa e discute a crise de mobilidade cotidiana nas duas últimas décadas, em São Paulo, tendo em vista o agravamento gradativo das condições de circulação viária na metrópole paulistana. Considerando o espaço como produto, condição e meio de reprodução das relações sociais, defendemos a tese de que a atual crise da mobilidade cotidiana advém de um conjunto de medidas que foram formuladas e implantadas através de políticas econômicas de orientação neoliberal, com destaque para os novos meios de financiamento à produção do espaço urbano e à reorganização produtiva da indústria automobilística nacional, bem como para as estratégias voltadas ao incentivo do consumo de bens duráveis, viabilizado pela ampliação das linhas de crédito para a aquisição de bens duráveis, principalmente carros. A esses elementos associam-se outros, tais como: a extensão e a densidade da ocupação urbana, a baixa qualidade dos sistemas de transportes coletivos e o traçado da infraestrutura viária. A apreciação conjunta desses elementos constitui o quadro a partir do qual realizamos nossa análise / This dissertation analyzes and discusses the crisis of daily mobility in the past two decades in São Paulo, caused by the gradual worsening of the conditions of road circulation in the metropolis. Regarding space as a product, a condition and a means of the reproduction of social relations, we put forth the hypothesis that the current crisis of mobility is the outcome of a number of actions that were formulated and implemented as part of neoliberal economic policymaking. Among such actions are the new sources of credit for the production of urban space, the restructuring of the domestic automobile industry and the strategies that encourage the purchase of durable goods (especially cars) made possible by the expansion of consumer credit. Other elements combine with these three basic causes, such as the low quality of public transit systems and the road layout. By taking account of all these elements together, we build the framework upon which we carry out our analysis

Dois experimentos foram conduzidos com o intuito de avaliar os efeitos da suplementação com diferentes aditivos, sobre o consumo e ganho de peso, em bovinos mantidos em pastagem durante o período das águas. No experimento I, 48 novilhas Nelore, com 266 kg de peso vivo médio inicial, foram distribuídas no delineamento experimental inteiramente casualizado, em quatro tratamentos, sendo cada animal considerado uma unidade experimental. Os tratamentos foram arranjados em esquema fatorial 2 x 2, com dois tipos de suplemento (suplemento mineral e mineral protéico energético) e dois níveis de monensina (0 e 1200 ppm em suplemento mineral, 0 e 60 ppm em mineral protéico energético). No experimento II, foram utilizados 60 bezerros Nelore, com peso vivo médio inicial de 300 kg. Os animais foram distribuídos em um delineamento inteiramente casualizado em quatro tratamentos com 15 animais cada. Os animais foram submetidos aos tratamentos: com suplemento mineral (controle), suplemento mineral com virginiamicina (1333 ppm), suplemento mineral com salinomicina (1111 ppm) e suplemento mineral com monensina (1000 ppm). Em ambos os experimentos, os animais foram alocados em quatro piquetes de Brachiaria decubens, com 6,7 hectares cada, e eram rotacionados semanalmente. As análises estatísticas foram feitas utilizando o programa estatístico SAS. No experimento I, o consumo do suplemento mineral protéico energético, com e sem monensina, foi maior em relação aos demais tratamentos (P<0,05) e a monensina não provocou uma queda siginificativa no consumo dos suplementos. Os animais que receberam o suplemento mineral protéico energético ganharam mais peso do que os animais que receberam o suplemento mineral (P<0,05), não havendo influencia da monensina sobre o ganho de peso. No experimento II, a monensina promoveu uma redução no consumo em relação ao grupo controle (P<0,06). O suplemento com virginiamicina não afetou o consumo aos 56 dias, mas os suplementos com salinomicina e monensina reduziram o consumo em relação ao controle (P<0,05). Não houve diferença siginificativa no consumo entre os tratamentos aos 28 dias e aos 84 dias, porém houve uma redução no consumo de todos os suplementos. O ganho de peso diário entre os animais que consumiram os aditivos não apresentaram diferenças significativas, mas os tratamentos com virginiamicina e salinomicina proporcionaram ganhos maiores do que o tratamento controle. A virginiamicina e a salinomicina ocasionaram um aumento no ganho de peso, e a salinomicina e a monensina reduziram o consumo. / Two experiments were conducted to evaluate the effects of the supplementation with different feed additives on feed intake and average daily gain for grazing Nellore bovines during the rainy season. On the experiment I, 48 Nellore heifers (266 kg BW) were distributed in four treatments, and each animal was considered one experimental unit. The treatments were organized in a factorial 2x2, two types of supplements (mineral supplement and mineral protein-energy supplement) and two levels of monensin (0 and 1200 ppm in the mineral supplement, 0 and 60 ppm in the mineral protein- energy supplement). In the study II, 60 Nellore calves of 300 kg (BW) were distributed in 4 treatments of 15 animals each. Treatments consisted of the inclusion of: mineral supplement (control treatment), mineral supplement with virginiamycin (1333ppm), mineral supplement with salinomycin (1111 ppm) e mineral supplement with monensin (1000ppm). In both studies, animals were allocated in four rotational stocking areas (6,7 hectares each area) of Brachiariadecubens. Statistical analyses were conducted using the software SAS. In the experiment I, the consumption of the mineral proteic supplement, with and without monensin, was higher compared to the others treatments (P<0.05) and the monensin did not cause any significant decrease on the supplement intake. Animals who received protein mineral supplement had higher average daily gain than animals who received mineral supplement (P<0.05) and there was no effect of monensin on the weight gain. In the experiment II, the inclusion of monensin reduced the consumption compared to the control treatment (P<0.06). The supplement with virginiamycin did not affect the consumption on the day 56, however the supplements with salinomycin and monesin reduced the consumption compared to the control treatment (P<0.05). The average daily gain was statically different among treatments on the days 28 and 84, however there was a reduction on consumption of all treatments. The average daily gain among animals supplemented with different feed additives did not differ statically, but the treatments with the inclusion of virginiamycin and salinomycin had higher gains than the control treatment. The virginiamycin anda salinomycin caused increase weight gain and the salinomycin and monensin reduced the consume.