<p>Floods are common natural disaster occurring in most parts of the world. This results in damage to human life and deterioration of environment. There have been immense uses of technology to mitigate measures of flood disaster i.e. structurally and non-structurally. Undoubtedly, structural measures are very expensive and time consuming which involves physical work like construction of dams, reservoirs, bridges, channel improvement, river diversion and other embankments to keep floods away from people. Whereas non-structural measures is concerned with planning like flood forecasting and warning, flood plain zoning, relief and rehabilitation for reducing the risk of flood damage to keep people away from floods. Thus, non-structural measures involve analysis, planning providing spatial information on maps with high accuracy in less time. Non-structural measures can help decision maker to plan an effective emergency response towards flood disaster. A one of the good way to plan non-structural measures is to analyze impact of flood in the flood prone areas. The thesis tries to analyze impact of flood on environment along the demarcated flood prone areas of Lake Roxen and Lake Glan in Östergötland County, Sweden. The thesis also proposes how to use current flood information during flood emergency utilizing geographical information system. This provides spatial information for area in the flood zone for assessment regarding flood vulnerability.</p><p>Using map overlay analysis in GIS software (ArcGIS); flood prone areas and topographic data along Lake Roxen and Lake Glan were digitized from PDF maps. Thus, the thesis work is an effort to analyze impact of flood when areas along Lake Roxen and Lake Glan are flooded. ESRI® GIS software Arc Map 9 and Arc View 3.3 is used for data preparation, integrating, analyzing, and spatial data with attribute table information. Finally, to show GIS can be an effective tool for development of flood emergency system as a part of disaster preparedness by the decision makers.</p>

Funding of services to residents in publicly funded long-term care (LTC) facilities has historically rested upon a list of physical needs. However, more than 60% of residents in nursing homes have dementia; a condition in which physical needs are only a part of the overall clinical picture. Since past funding formulas focused primarily on the physical characteristics of residents, the Ontario government has adopted the RUG (Resource Utilization Groups)-III (34 Group) for use in LTC facilities which follows the adoption of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) 2.0 assessment instrument. Some still question whether the newer formula adequately reflects the care needs of residents with dementia despite its validation in many countries. The purpose of this study was to determine the comprehensiveness of the RUG-III (34 Group) in addressing the needs of residents with dementia living in LTC. First, a critical systematic review of the literature was conducted to determine the needs of residents with dementia. Numerous electronic databases were searched for articles published between January 2000 and September 2010, and later cross-referenced. Second, needs identified from the literature were matched to the items of the RUG-III which are selected variables of the MDS 2.0. Third, the priority of the items in the RUG-III was analysed in accordance with the importance of the identified needs. The documented needs were taken from 68 studies and classified into 19 main categories. The needs most supported by the literature were the management of behavioural problems, social needs, the need for daily individualized activities/care and emotional needs/personhood. Among the needs identified, activities of daily living (ADLs), cognitive needs and general overall physical health met the most RUG-III items. These needs were found to be well represented within the system. Other needs of importance such as social needs are not thoroughly considered in the grouping methodology though matched to MDS variables. The fact that these needs are not well addressed in the RUG-III poses concerns. Future research is needed to validate the significance of these needs. Considerations should be made as to the adequacy of the funding system and the allocation of funding.

El colectivo enfermero español no redacta de forma generalizada ningún Informe de Cuidados de Enfermería al Alta (ICEA) tras la atención hospitalaria del paciente que permita la continuidad de los cuidados. Desde que el Ministerio de Sanidad, Política Social e Igualdad presentara el Plan de Calidad para el Sistema Nacional de Salud (2006) donde se enmarcó el proyecto Historia Clínica Digital, diferentes grupos de trabajo han definido los Informes del Conjunto Mínimo de Datos, entre los que se incluye el Informe de Cuidados de Enfermería. Tomando una muestra aleatoria de enfermeras de los hospitales correspondientes a las nueve áreas de salud de la Región de Murcia, se analizan las capacidades científicas, las capacidades tecnológicas, el nivel de conocimientos y el acceso a la formación continuada que tienen sobre el contenido del ICEA. Los datos muestran que es necesaria una importante consolidación teórica y metodológica de las enfermeras hospitalarias más veteranas de la Región de Murcia, en diagnósticos NANDA, intervenciones recogidas en las NIC y medición de resultados enfermeros (NOC) que les permita redactar el ICEA. / The Spanish nursing profession does not write any report widely to Alta Care Nurse after the patient's hospital care will allow for continuity of care. Since the Ministry of Health, Social Affairs and Equal submit the Quality Plan for the National Health System (2006) which framed the Medical Records project, various working groups have defined the reports of the Minimum Data Set, among which are included, the Nursing Care Report. We taking a random sample of nurses from hospitals for the nine health areas in the region of Murcia, discusses the scientific, technological capabilities, the level of knowledge and access to ongoing training with the nurses on the content of the discharge nurse. These data show that consolidation needs major theoretical and methodological most senior hospital nurses in the region of Murcia, in matters of NANDA diagnoses, interventions included in the NIC and measurement of nursing outcomes (NOC) to allow them to draft the Report of High Nursing.

Floods are common natural disaster occurring in most parts of the world. This results in damage to human life and deterioration of environment. There have been immense uses of technology to mitigate measures of flood disaster i.e. structurally and non-structurally. Undoubtedly, structural measures are very expensive and time consuming which involves physical work like construction of dams, reservoirs, bridges, channel improvement, river diversion and other embankments to keep floods away from people. Whereas non-structural measures is concerned with planning like flood forecasting and warning, flood plain zoning, relief and rehabilitation for reducing the risk of flood damage to keep people away from floods. Thus, non-structural measures involve analysis, planning providing spatial information on maps with high accuracy in less time. Non-structural measures can help decision maker to plan an effective emergency response towards flood disaster. A one of the good way to plan non-structural measures is to analyze impact of flood in the flood prone areas. The thesis tries to analyze impact of flood on environment along the demarcated flood prone areas of Lake Roxen and Lake Glan in Östergötland County, Sweden. The thesis also proposes how to use current flood information during flood emergency utilizing geographical information system. This provides spatial information for area in the flood zone for assessment regarding flood vulnerability. Using map overlay analysis in GIS software (ArcGIS); flood prone areas and topographic data along Lake Roxen and Lake Glan were digitized from PDF maps. Thus, the thesis work is an effort to analyze impact of flood when areas along Lake Roxen and Lake Glan are flooded. ESRI® GIS software Arc Map 9 and Arc View 3.3 is used for data preparation, integrating, analyzing, and spatial data with attribute table information. Finally, to show GIS can be an effective tool for development of flood emergency system as a part of disaster preparedness by the decision makers.

The UK government’s Carbon Plan-2011 aims for 80% carbon emission reduction by 2050, and the 2009 UK National Renewable Energy Action Plan has set a target of delivering 15% of total energy demand by renewable energy sources by 2020. Ground Source Heat Pump (GSHP) systems can play a critical role in reaching these goals within the building sector. Achieving such benefits relies on proper design, integration, installation, commissioning, and operation of these systems. This work seeks to provide evidence to improve the practices in design, installation and operations of large GSHP systems. This evidence has been based on collection and analysis of data from an operational large-scale GSHP system providing heating and cooling to a university building. The data set is of significance in that it is collected from a large-scale system incorporating fifty-six borehole heat exchangers and four heat pumps. The data has been collected at high frequency since the start of operation and for a period of three years. The borehole heat exchanger data is intended to form a reference data set for use by other workers in model validation studies. The ground thermal properties at the site have been estimated using a novel combination of numerical model and parameter estimation methods. The utility of the reference data set has been demonstrated through application in a validation study of a numerical borehole heat exchanger model. The system heat balances and power consumption data have firstly been analysed to derive a range of performance metrics such as Seasonal Performance Factors. Analysis has been carried out at the system and individual heat pump level. Annual performance has been found satisfactory overall. A series of analyses have been carried out to investigate the roles of circulating pump energy, control system operation and dynamic behaviour. Monitoring data from one of the heat pumps has also been analysed in further detail to make comparisons with manufacturer’s steady-state performance data and with consideration to variations in fluid properties. Some modest degradation from stated performance has been identified. The most significant operational factors accounting for degradation of overall system performance have been excessive pump energy demands and short cycling behaviour. Some faults in operation of the system during the monitoring period have also been identified. A series of recommendations are made as to ways to improve the design and operation of large-scale GSHP systems based on this evidence. These recommendations are chiefly concerned with better design for part-load operation, reduction in pump energy demands and more robust control systems.

Funding of services to residents in publicly funded long-term care (LTC) facilities has historically rested upon a list of physical needs. However, more than 60% of residents in nursing homes have dementia; a condition in which physical needs are only a part of the overall clinical picture. Since past funding formulas focused primarily on the physical characteristics of residents, the Ontario government has adopted the RUG (Resource Utilization Groups)-III (34 Group) for use in LTC facilities which follows the adoption of the Minimum Data Set (MDS) 2.0 assessment instrument. Some still question whether the newer formula adequately reflects the care needs of residents with dementia despite its validation in many countries. The purpose of this study was to determine the comprehensiveness of the RUG-III (34 Group) in addressing the needs of residents with dementia living in LTC. First, a critical systematic review of the literature was conducted to determine the needs of residents with dementia. Numerous electronic databases were searched for articles published between January 2000 and September 2010, and later cross-referenced. Second, needs identified from the literature were matched to the items of the RUG-III which are selected variables of the MDS 2.0. Third, the priority of the items in the RUG-III was analysed in accordance with the importance of the identified needs. The documented needs were taken from 68 studies and classified into 19 main categories. The needs most supported by the literature were the management of behavioural problems, social needs, the need for daily individualized activities/care and emotional needs/personhood. Among the needs identified, activities of daily living (ADLs), cognitive needs and general overall physical health met the most RUG-III items. These needs were found to be well represented within the system. Other needs of importance such as social needs are not thoroughly considered in the grouping methodology though matched to MDS variables. The fact that these needs are not well addressed in the RUG-III poses concerns. Future research is needed to validate the significance of these needs. Considerations should be made as to the adequacy of the funding system and the allocation of funding.

In the United States (US), substance use, misuse, and substance use disorders are significant public health problems. Additionally, the difference between needing substance use treatment (SUT) and receiving treatment is becoming more pronounced. Therefore, the aims of this dissertation include, 1) to synthesize evidence of barriers and facilitators to integrating SUT into mainstream health care (MHC) after the Affordable Care Act was nationally implemented in 2014, 2) to examine the rate of treatment completion and dropout, along with its associated factors, among youth who received Medication-Assisted Opioid Therapy (MAT), 3) to determine the relationship between prior treatment episodes and length of stay (LOS) among adults in residential rehabilitation facilities (RRF) and explore other predictors of LOS and, 4) to determine whether experiencing multiple treatment episodes and being in certain age groups was associated with longer wait period to enter SUT. The literature synthesis involved data from five databases and was informed by PRISMA. Quantitative analysis (aims 2-4) included log-binomial, Poisson, and logistic regression models using the Treatment Episode Data Set-Admissions and Discharges. Andersen’s Behavioral Model for Health Services was the conceptual framework used to inform aims 2-4. For aim 1, several patient, provider, and program/system-level barriers and facilitators were identified, which highlights the need to use a comprehensive approach to improve SUT adoption in MHC. For aim 2, among youth who received MAT, 43.9% completed treatment and 56.1% dropped out. Factors positively associated with treatment completion included MAT use, males, self-help group participation, admission to detoxification and residential/rehabilitation settings, and being in the Midwest/Western US; while minority races (excluding Blacks/African Americans) and being in the South resulted in lower likelihood. For aim 3, the average LOS in RRF was 16.4 days, and having ≥ 1 prior SUT episode (PSUTE) was associated with slightly higher LOS. Some predictors associated with lower LOS included age (18-34 years), males, being employed, private insurance, and being in the Northeast. For aim 4, a longer wait period was identified among clients 25-49 years and those with ≥5 PSUTEs. These factors should be considered to improve SUT use, and future studies should corroborate these findings.

Given a full-range simply-invariant shift-invariant subspace <i>M</i> of the vector-valued <i>L²</i> space on the unit circle, the classical Beurling-Lax-Halmos (BLH) theorem obtains a unitary operator-valued function <i>W</i> so that <i>M</i> may be represented as the image of of the Hardy space <i>H²</i> on the disc under multiplication by <i>W</i>. The work of Ball-Helton later extended this result to find a single function representing a so-called dual shift-invariant pair of subspaces <i>(M,M^Ã)</i> which together form a direct-sum decomposition of <i>L²</i>. In the case where the pair <i>(M,M^Ã)</i> are finite-dimensional perturbations of the Hardy space <i>H²</i> and its orthogonal complement, Ball-Gohberg-Rodman obtained a transfer function realization for the representing function <i>W</i>; this realization was parameterized in terms of zero-pole data computed from the pair <i>(M,M^Ã)</i>. Later work by Ball-Raney extended this analysis to the case of nonrational functions <i>W</i> where the zero-pole data is taken in an infinite-dimensional operator theoretic sense. The current work obtains analogues of these various results for arbitrary dual shift-invariant pairs <i>(M,M^Ã)</i> of the <i>L²</i> spaces on the real line; here, shift-invariance refers to invariance under the translation group. These new results rely on recent advances in the understanding of continuous-time infinite-dimensional input-state-output linear systems which have been codified in the book by Staffans. / Ph. D.

This is an Action Research (AR) study with the senior phase Technology teachers at selected schools of Limpopo Province. The study was motivated by the fact that Technology Education is a foreign concept to many teachers and a new learning area in school curriculum both nationally and internationally. This was exacerbated by the many educational changes that took place in South Africa in the last 18 years. These changes include the overhauling of curriculum, which was the strategic and symbolic change since the first democratic election of 1994, but followed by its review. Thus, a new curriculum known as Curriculum 2005 (reviewed twice already) was developed in which Technology was introduced as a new subject. These changes drastically affected Technology Education and teachers’ coping demands on both the subject content and pedagogy escalated. In this study, AR, a strategy for a systematic, objective investigation with Technology teachers’ who are un- and under- qualified to teach Technology was considered. The study aimed at establishing intervention strategies to empower and emancipate senior phase Technology teachers in Mankweng Circuit from the said challenges above. Thus, the study sought to address the question: How could action research intervention be used to improve the teaching of senior phase Technology teachers who are un- and/or under-qualified? The intervention strategies were implemented through the AR cycles in spiral activities of planning, implementation and observation, action and reflection, whose principles were operationalized to develop participants from the situations that they face in their Technology teaching contexts. The study was designed from both critical theory perspective and participatory paradigm. The following instruments were used as a means to gather data: observations, interviews, questionnaires, field notes, video recording of lesson plans and logs of meetings. The study managed to come up with guidelines to develop and kick start AR with teachers. From the ii findings an AR model was developed to emancipate the un- and under-qualified Technology teachers. Themes from the challenges and AR were used to draft a six weeks plan to empower incapacitated Technology teachers. This investigation was shaped by the initial reflection or preliminary study conducted with the participants called reconnaissance study which revealed specific challenges that Technology teachers encountered daily in their classes. These challenges were turned into the themes, which together with the findings from the preliminary study and interview reflection per cycle were used to design the intervention strategies for the next main cycle. The findings of the study from both the preliminary investigation (presented in Chapter Two) and main AR (presented in Chapter Five) reveal an improvement in the teachers’ understanding and implementation of Technology – they were emancipated to a greater extent from the challenges prior to the AR intervention and post the AR intervention. It is true that coming together as AR co-researchers was the beginning of Technology teaching practice problem identification; keeping together was progressive in Technology teaching; but working together remains our success in Technology teaching then, now and in the future – post doctoral studies. / Curriculum and Instructional Studies / D. Ed. (Curriculum Studies)

Nous proposons une approche spectrale permettant d'aborder des problèmes d'interpolation à noyaux dont la résolution numérique n'est pas directement envisageable. Un tel cas de figure se produit en particulier lorsque le nombre de données est infini. Nous considérons dans un premier temps le cadre de l'interpolation optimale dans les sous-espaces hilbertiens. Pour un problème donné, un opérateur intégral est défini à partir du noyau sous-jacent et d'une paramétrisation de l'ensemble des données basée sur un espace mesuré. La décomposition spectrale de l'opérateur est utilisée afin d'obtenir une formule de représentation pour l'interpolateur optimal et son approximation est alors rendu possible par troncature du spectre. Le choix de la mesure induit une fonction d'importance sur l'ensemble des données qui se traduit, en cas d'approximation, par une plus ou moins grande précision dans le rendu des données. Nous montrons à titre d'exemple comment cette approche peut être utilisée afin de rendre compte de contraintes de type "conditions aux limites" dans les modèles d'interpolation à noyaux. Le problème du conditionnement des processus gaussiens est également étudié dans ce contexte. Nous abordons enfin dans la dernière partie de notre manuscrit la notion de noyaux conditionnellement positifs. Nous proposons la définition générale de noyaux symétriques conditionnellement positifs relatifs à une espace de référence donné et développons la théorie des sous-espaces semi-hilbertiens leur étant associés. Nous étudions finalement la théorie de l'interpolation optimale dans cette classe d'espaces. / We propose a spectral approach for the resolution of kernel-based interpolation problems of which numerical solution can not be directly computed. Such a situation occurs in particular when the number of data is infinite. We first consider optimal interpolation in Hilbert subspaces. For a given problem, an integral operator is defined from the underlying kernel and a parameterization of the data set based on a measurable space. The spectral decomposition of the operator is used in order to obtain a representation formula for the optimal interpolator and spectral truncation allows its approximation. The choice of the measure on the parameters space introduces a hierarchy onto the data set which allows a tunable precision of the approximation. As an example, we show how this methodology can be used in order to enforce boundary conditions in kernel-based interpolation models. The Gaussian processes conditioning problem is also studied in this context. The last part of this thesis is devoted to the notion of conditionally positive kernels. We propose a general definition of symmetric conditionally positive kernels relative to a given space and exposed the associated theory of semi-Hilbert subspaces. We finally study the optimal interpolation problem in such spaces.