The impacts of emerging adults' social media use have been shown as generally negative, especially in decreasing their self-esteem and self-concept and increasing anxiety, depression, and more. Although there is research on social media's impact on various communities of adolescents and young adults, limited research has focused on this effect for young adults with mental health diagnoses or served under IDEA's emotional disturbance eligibility criteria. Additionally, no research has studied this topic during the COVID-19 pandemic. Therefore, the purpose of the current study is to examine how various types of social media use impact young adults' self-esteem, including those who are psychologically vulnerable. Participants included 119 individuals, 18 to 19-years of age, with and without mental health diagnoses or Emotional Disturbance special education eligibility recruited utilizing social media pages and social media hashtags. Participating individuals answered demographic and social media use questions and completed the Rosenberg Self-Esteem Scale to provide information about self-esteem. Additionally, participants responded to questions regarding what role they feel social media use has had on their mental health, including contribution to or exacerbating their symptoms. Univariate statistics were run to control demographic factors and determine the percentage of participants who believe social media has negatively affected their mental health. Multiple regression analyzed if time spent on social media or specific social media platform or activities were predictive of participant self-esteem. Limitations and implications are discussed.

[pt] Esta tese é o resultado de uma pesquisa de inspiração etnográfica sobre o refúgio como prática de injustiça epistêmica, analisado por meio do universo brasileiro da elegibilidade e dos processos de produção de significados sociais. A concepção de injustiça epistêmica está relacionada a duas importantes práticas epistêmicas: produzir e compartilhar o conhecimento com outros por meio do testemunho e fazer sentido das próprias experiências sociais. A tese busca, assim, examinar a produção e a transmissão do conhecimento nos processos burocráticos da elegibilidade, isto é, na determinação do status de refugiado, e as formas de representação midiática em torno da figura do refúgio e seus sujeitos. Para tanto, a análise contou com uma pluralidade metodológica composta por trabalho de campo por meio da realização de entrevistas e abordagem com corpus através do uso de softwares específicos. A partir disso, a tese analisa o espaço das práticas epistêmicas que atravessam a categoria do refugiado e podem contribuir para a produção de injustiças, afetando a vida de solicitantes de refúgio e refugiados no Brasil. / [en] This thesis is the result of a research on asylum as epistemic injustice, analyzed through the Brazilian eligibility process and the practices of media representation in the country. The concept of epistemic injustice is intimately related to two crucial epistemic practices: conveying knowledge to others and making sense of our own social experiences. Hence, the two main aims of the research are the analysis of knowledge production in the bureaucratic process of eligibility (or refugee status determination process, RSD) and the investigation on how the Brazilian mainstream media represents refugees. To this end, the pluralistic research methods used consist of interview-based fieldwork and corpus linguistics with the help of specific software. The thesis therefore analyzes the space of epistemic practices that have an impact on the refugee category and may contribute to the production of injustices, affecting the lives of asylum seekers and refugees in Brazil.

Entre la naissance du ministère de la Santé en 1947 et l’année 1987, l’Irlande est-elle parvenue à prendre le train de la santé et du bien-être pour son peuple ? Certes, on consacrait année après année des sommes d’argent de plus en plus importantes au budget de la Santé et les résultats furent incontestables si l’on se focalise sur les différents indicateurs de Santé. Ainsi l’Irlande est-elle rapidement venue à bout de la tuberculose, par exemple...La notion même de système de santé a changé au cours de la période. Elle s’attachait jadis au fait de soigner les malades, et a progressivement mis l’accent sur la prévention, considérant le patient comme une personne à part entière avec toute une série de facettes sociales.Pour autant, la Santé pour le peuple implique également l’accès au système et l’égalité de traitement pour tous, ce qui n’a pas toujours été le cas – le grief classique fait au système de Santé irlandais étant que c’est un système à deux vitesses, puisque les détenteurs d’une carte médicale (de gratuité des soins) sont en fait victimes de discrimination : le système permet à ceux qui ne jouissent pas d’un accès gratuit de bénéficier en fait d’un service de meilleure qualité, ainsi que de listes d’attente moins longues.Afin d’analyser la manière dont fonctionnait le système de santé en 1987, quarante ans après sa naissance, cette thèse tente de décoder l’empreinte qu’a laissé l’Histoire sur ses infrastructures (les hôpitaux, par exemple) ainsi que sur ses structures administratives.L’étape suivante consiste à étudier l’évolution du système, qui fut lente et entravée par diverses forces luttant contre le changement (comme la Hiérarchie catholique ou les docteurs).Notre étude souligne enfin l’impact de l’entrée de l’Irlande dans la Communauté Economique Européenne (CEE) et son attitude dans le grand débat des années quatre-vingts autour de la crise de l’Etat-Providence qui résultait de l’éthique économique conservatrice qui occupait le devant de la scène à l’époque. / Between the birth of the Ministry of Health in 1947 and 1987, has Ireland managed to jump on the bandwagon of health and welfare for its people? True enough, more and more money was poured into healthcare year after year and the results were indisputable if one focuses on the various health indicators. Ireland quickly managed to get rid of tuberculosis, for instance...The very notion of healthcare changed a lot during the period. It used to focus on curing the sick, and gradually gave more and more importance to prevention, regarding the patient as a full-fledged person with a whole series of social facets.Still, healthcare for the people also implies eligibility and equality of treatment for all, which has not always been the case – the classic reproach against the Irish healthcare system being that it is a two-tier system, the holders of a medical card being in fact discriminated against by a system which allows those who do not benefit from free access to it to actually enjoy a better service together with shorter waiting lists.In order to analyse the way the Irish system functioned in 1987, forty years after its birth, this PhD attempts at deciphering the imprint History had left on its infrastructures (hospitals, for instance) and on its administrative structures.The next step consists in studying the evolution of the system, which was slow and hindered by various forces fighting against change (like the catholic Hierarchy or the doctors).Finally, our study highlights the impact of Ireland’s EEC membership and the country’s stance in the great debate of the eighties over the notion of welfare crisis, stemming from the economic conservative ethos that prevailed at the time.

失業保險法制於消極面係為保障失業勞工所得中斷之風險，積極面為促使勞工儘速重回職場，然而，請領失業給付不可能毫無限制，否則將無法面對道德風險之挑戰，失業保險制度於財務運作上亦將發生困難，因此，失業保險法制給付資格為一核心議題。 美國失業保險制度於一九三五年由社會安全法(SSA)與聯邦失業稅法(FUTA)共同建構，由聯邦建立基準，再由各州自行訂定州法實際運作，無論是美國聯邦或威斯康辛州之給付資格相關規定經過歷年修正現已十分完備，尤其自願離職之正當理由與合適性工作之要件皆有明文之標準作為認定依據。 於我國就業保險法給付資格相關規定，針對非自願性離職僅有就保法第十一條明文列舉之情狀，而無考量申請者個人因素之空間，是否過於嚴格，尚待討論。而合適性工作之認定亦僅考慮薪資及工作地點之距離，是否能夠通過期待可能原則之檢驗則不無疑慮。又我國就業保險法至今已十餘年，惟卻鮮少針對給付資格相關規定進行檢討，本文欲藉由ILO相關研究與美國法制之引介提供我國就業保險法給付資格相關規定未來修正之參考。

No description available.

In this study, we consider the Operational Fixed Job Scheduling Problem on identical parallel machines. The problem is to select a subset of jobs for processing among a set of available jobs with fixed arrival times and deadlines, so as to maximize the total weight. We analyze the problem under three environments: Working time constraints, Spread time constraints, and Machine dependent job weights. We show that machine eligibility constraints appear as a special case of the last environment. We settle the complexity status of all problems, and show that they are NP-hard in the strong sense and have several polynomially solvable special structures. For all problems, we propose branch and bound algorithms that employ powerful reduction mechanisms and efficient lower and upper bounds. The results of our computational runs reveal that, the algorithms return optimal solutions for problem instances with up to 100 jobs in reasonable solution times.

The thesis consists of an introduction and two papers. In the introduction a brief historical survey of empirical investigations into the effectiveness of medicinal interventions is given. Also, the main ideas of the EBM (evidence-based medicine) movement are presented. Both included papers can be viewed as investigations into the reasonableness of EBM and its hierarchies of evidence. Paper I: Typically, in a clinical trial patients with specified symptoms are given either of two or more predetermined treatments. Health endpoints in these groups are then compared using statistical methods. Concerns have been raised, not least from adherents of so-called alternative medicine, that clinical trials do not offer reliable evidence for some types of treatment, in particular for highly individualized treatments, for example traditional homeopathy. It is argued that such concerns are unfounded. There are two minimal conditions related to the nature of the treatments that must be fulfilled for evaluability in a clinical trial, namely (1) the proper distinction of the two treatment groups and (2) the elimination of confounding variables or variations. These are delineated, and a few misunderstandings are corrected. It is concluded that the conditions do not preclude the testing of alternative medicine, whether individualized or not. Paper II: Traditionally, mechanistic reasoning has been assigned a negligible role in standard EBM literature, although some recent authors have argued for an upgrading. Even so, mechanistic reasoning that has received attention has almost exclusively been positive -- both in an epistemic sense of claiming that there is a mechanistic chain and in a health-related sense of there being claimed benefits for the patient. Negative mechanistic reasoning has been neglected, both in the epistemic and in the health-related sense. I distinguish three main types of negative mechanistic reasoning and subsume them under a new definition of mechanistic reasoning in the context of assessing medical interventions. Although this definition is wider than a previous suggestion in the literature, there are still other instances of reasoning that concern mechanisms but do not (and should not) count as mechanistic reasoning. One of the three distinguished types, which is negative only in the health-related sense, has a corresponding positive counterpart, whereas the other two, which are epistemically negative, do not have such counterparts, at least not that are particularly interesting as evidence. Accounting for negative mechanistic reasoning in EBM is therefore partly different from accounting for positive mechanistic reasoning. Each negative type corresponds to a range of evidential strengths, and it is argued that there are differences with respect to the typical strengths. The variety of negative mechanistic reasoning should be acknowledged in EBM, and presents a serious challenge to proponents of so-called medical hierarchies of evidence. / <p>QC 20150413</p>

No description available.

Clinical research based on data from patient or study data management systems plays an important role in transferring basic findings into the daily practices of physicians. To support study recruitment, diagnostic processes, and risk factor evaluation, search queries for such management systems can be used. Typically, the query syntax as well as the underlying data structure vary greatly between different data management systems. This makes it difficult for domain experts (e.g., clinicians) to build and execute search queries. In this work, the Core Ontology of Phenotypes is used as a general model for phenotypic knowledge. This knowledge is required to create search queries that determine and classify individuals (e.g., patients or study participants) whose morphology, function, behaviour, or biochemical and physiological properties meet specific phenotype classes. A specific model describing a set of particular phenotype classes is called a Phenotype Specification Ontology. Such an ontology can be automatically converted to search queries on data management systems. The methods described have already been used successfully in several projects. Using ontologies to model phenotypic knowledge on patient or study data management systems is a viable approach. It allows clinicians to model from a domain perspective without knowing the actual data structure or query language.

The recent emergence and rapid advancement of Cloud Computing (CC) infrastructure and services have made outsourcing Information Technology (IT) and digital services to Cloud Providers (CPs) attractive. Cloud offerings enable reduction in IT resources (hardware, software, services, support, and staffing), and provide flexibility and agility in resource allocation, data and resource delivery, fault-tolerance, and scalability. However, the current standards and guidelines adopted by many CPs are tailored to address functionality (such as availability, speed, and utilization) and design requirements (such as integration), rather than protection against cyber-attacks and associated security issues. In order to achieve sustainable trust for cloud services with minimal risks and impact on cloud customers, appropriate cloud information security models are required. The research described in this dissertation details the processes adopted for the development and implementation of an integrated information security cloud based approach to cloud service models. This involves detailed investigation into the inherent information security deficiencies identified in the existing cloud service models, service agreements, and compliance issues. The research conducted was a multidisciplinary in nature, with detailed investigations on factors such as people, technology, security, privacy, and compliance involved in cloud risk assessment to ensure all aspects are addressed in holistic and well-structured models. The primary research objectives for this dissertation are investigated through a series of scientific papers centered on these key research disciplines. The assessment of information security, privacy, and compliance implementations in a cloud environment is described in Chapters two, three, four, and five. Paper 1 (CCIPS: A Cooperative Intrusion Detection and Prevention Framework for Cloud Services) outlines a framework for detecting and preventing known and zero-day threats targeting cloud computing networks. This framework forms the basis for implementing enhanced threat detection and prevention via behavioral and anomaly data analysis. Paper 2 (A Trusted CCIPS Framework) extends the work of cooperative intrusion detection and prevention to enable trusted delivery of cloud services. The trusted CCIPS model details and justifies the multi-layer approach to enhance the performance and efficiency of detecting and preventing cloud threats. Paper 3 (SOCaaS: Security Operations Center as a Service for Cloud Computing Environments) describes the need for a trusted third party to perform real-time monitoring of cloud services to ensure compliance with security requirements by suggesting a security operations center system architecture. Paper 4 (SecSLA: A Proactive and Secure Service Level Agreement Framework for Cloud Services) identifies the necessary cloud security and privacy controls that need to be addressed in the contractual agreements, i.e. service level agreements (SLAs), between CPs and their customers. Papers five, six, seven, and eight (Chapters 6 – 9) focus on addressing and reducing the risk issues resulting from poor assessment to the adoption of cloud services and the factors that influence such as migration. The investigation of cloud-specific information security risk management and migration readiness frameworks, detailed in Paper 5 (An Effective Risk Management Framework for Cloud Computing Services) and Paper 6 (Information Security, Privacy, and Compliance Readiness Model) was achieved through extensive consideration of all possible factors obtained from different studies. An analysis of the results indicates that several key factors, including risk tolerance, can significantly influence the migration decision to cloud technology. An additional issue found during this research in assessing the readiness of an organization to move to the cloud is the necessity to ensure that the cloud service provider is actually with information security, privacy, and compliance (ISPC) requirements. This investigation is extended in Paper 7 (A Practical Life Cycle Approach for Cloud based Information Security) to include the six phases of creating proactive cloud information security systems beginning with initial design, through the development, implementation, operations and maintenance. The inherent difficulty in identifying ISPC compliant cloud technology is resolved by employing a tracking method, namely the eligibility and verification system presented in Paper 8 (Cloud Services Information Security and Privacy Eligibility and Verification System). Finally, Paper 9 (A Case Study of Migration to a Compliant Cloud Technology) describes the actual implementation of the proposed frameworks and models to help the decision making process faced by the Saudi financial agency in migrating their IT services to the cloud. Together these models and frameworks suggest that the threats and risks associated with cloud services are continuously changing and more importantly, increasing in complexity and sophistication. They contribute to making stronger cloud based information security, privacy, and compliance technological frameworks. The outcomes obtained significantly contribute to best practices in ensuring information security controls are addressed, monitoring, enforced, and compliant with relevant regulations. / Graduate / 0984 / 0790 / fahd333@gmail.com