The thesis summarizes current state of art for the most recent research capabilities of innovation activities analysis. Its main goal is to assess the factors influencing pace and volume of technological innovativeness throughout the European industry and services sectors considering time span 2002-2008 using country-level Community Innovation Surveys and R&D data. It also attempts to evaluate trends in innovation policy instruments targeted to close the gap between Europe and world innovation leaders such as USA. Complex literature overview, basic empirical and extended instruments' analyses lead to recommendations of optimal governments' policy approaches towards different groups of countries divided by level of innovative performance.

Aim PRECIS (PRagmatic Explanatory Continuum Indicator Summaries 2009) is a tool with a simple wheel format that trialists can use when designing their trials to improve the applicability of results but users highlighted problems. The aim of the study was to produce an improved and validated version of PRECIS, called PRECIS-2 and test this tool out with trial teams designing primary care trials. Methods Brainstorming and a 2-round Delphi survey of authors who cited PRECIS plus user-testing of candidate PRECIS-2 models was followed by validity and reliability testing of the most promising PRECIS-2 candidate using a sample of 15 trials rated by 19 different trialists. The validated PRECIS-2 tool was then used to consider the risk of bias (internal validity) and estimates of treatment effect of a matched set of explanatory (ideal conditions) and pragmatic (real world) trials. The PRECIS-2 website was also created with a database of pragmatic trials and a toolkit for trial groups. This was tested out at the Pragmatic Clinical Trials Unit (PCTU) in London with trial teams designing primary care trials. Results Forty-two people responded to the Delphi and highlighted scoring, domain choice, and tool format as issues. An expert panel of 14 in Toronto provided the basis for a PRECIS-2 model that was then user tested by 19 other methodologists and trialists. After 13 iterations, a PRECIS-2 model with 9 domains (i.e. Eligibility, Recruitment, Setting, Organisation, Flexibility Delivery, Flexibility Adherence, Follow up, Primary Outcome, Primary Analysis) was tested for validity and reliability. Inter-rater reliability was generally good, with eight of nine domains having an ICC over 0.65. Discriminant validity was reasonable for all domains, though with wide confidence intervals. Matching trials taking pragmatic (‘real world’) and explanatory (‘ideal world’) approaches was challenging but we found no indication that a pragmatic approach compromises internal validity. We were unable to extract sufficient information for a planned analysis of estimates of treatment effect. At the PCTU, the tool highlighted differences in opinion with trial team members and demonstrated convergence of opinion following discussion. There was acknowledgment that scoring of PRECIS-2 domains assisted trials teams in considering the intended audience and creation of trials relevant to practice. Useful feedback was obtained to improve the PRECIS-2 tool software for users. Conclusions PRECIS was improved by the addition of scoring and additional domains after consultation with over 80 international trialists. We have a validated PRECIS-2, in the visually appealing wheel format with 9 spokes, which is being made available through an increasingly accessed website. Work at the PCTU improved the usability of the PRECIS-2 website and demonstrated that the tool increases transparency in trial design and assists trialists in considering applicability of trial results. More matching work on the impact of design approaches on effect size is needed, and further data to support the risk of bias results would be valuable.

Este trabalho investiga os efeitos da OCPC07 na legibilidade e no tamanho das notas explicativas divulgadas por empresas de capital aberto. Como objetivo complementar, buscou-se entender qual o conjunto de características das empresas determinam o grau de legibilidade e o comprimento de suas notas explicativas. Foi coletada uma amostra de 163 empresas de capital aberto com dados para os anos de 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 e 2017. Como proxy para medir a complexidade dos textos foram utilizados o Flesch Index e o logaritmo natural número de palavras dos textos presentes nas notas explicativas. Para testar os efeitos da OCPC07 nos aspectos formais das divulgações de Instrumentos Financeiros e Gestão de Riscos foi realizado um teste de média para verificar se a diferença entre as médias das proxies de complexidade é significativa nos períodos pré e pós-divulgação da norma. Para encontrar os fatores que influenciam o tamanho e a legibilidade das notas explicativas utilizou-se uma técnica exploratória (Análise de Correspondência) e uma técnica confirmatória (Dados em Painel) com o objetivo de medir a relação entre as proxies de complexidade e os possíveis influenciadores. Os resultados encontrados mostram que a legibilidade das notas explicativas não mudou desde 2013 até 2017. A diferença de médias do Flesch Index mostrou-se não significativa. Por outro lado, o tamanho das notas explicativas diminuiu no período estudado de modo que a diferença de médias do número de palavras mostrou-se significativa. O teste de associação mostrou que empresas com melhor performance estão associadas a notas explicativas mais legíveis, porém mais longas. A técnica de dados em painel mostrou relação estatisticamente significante e positiva entre o setor de atuação da empresa e legibilidade das notas explicativas. O porte da empresa, o fato de serem auditadas por grandes firmas, emitirem ou não ADR e a performance no período também apresentaram relação estatisticamente significativa e positiva com o tamanho das notas explicativas divulgadas. Este trabalho contribui para a literatura nacional ao demonstrar que os esforços por parte de órgãos reguladores e agentes de mercado em busca de melhor qualidade nas divulgações contábil-financeiras estão surtindo algum efeito na elaboração das notas explicativas. / This paper investigates the effects of OCPC07 on the readability and length of explanatory notes issued by publicly traded companies. As a complementary objective, we sought to understand which set of characteristics of the companies determine the degree of legibility and the length of its explanatory notes. A sample of 163 publicly traded companies with data for the years 2013, 2014, 2015, 2016 and 2017 was collected. As a proxy for measuring the complexity of the texts were used the Flesch Index and the natural logarithm number of words in the texts of explanatory notes. To test the effects of OCPC07 on Financial Instruments and Risk Management on formal aspects of disclosures, a mean test was performed to verify if the difference between the means of the complexity proxies is significant in the pre- and post-disclosure periods of the guidance. To find the factors that impact the readability and length of the explanatory notes, an exploratory technique (Correspondence Analysis) and a confirmatory technique (Panel Data) were used to measure the relationship between complexity proxies and possible determinants factors. The results show that the readability of the explanatory notes did not change from 2013 to 2017. The difference in means of the Flesch Index was not significant. On the other hand, the size of the explanatory notes decreased during the studied period, so that the mean difference in the number of words was significant. The association test showed that companies with better performance are associated with more legible but longer explanatory notes. The panel data technique showed a statistically significant and positive relationship between the company\'s sector of activity and readability of the explanatory notes. The size of the company, the fact that large firms audited them, whether or not they issued ADR and the performance in the period also showed a statistically significant and positive relationship with the size of the explanatory notes disclosed. This work contributes to the national literature by demonstrating that efforts by regulatory agencies and market agents seeking better quality in accounting and financial disclosures are having some effect in the preparation of explanatory notes.

Among Filipinos of lower SES 1/500 babies are born yearly with an orofacial cleft. This is one of the highest birth prevalence of orofacial clefting in the world. The main purpose of this study was to obtain contextual information prior to planning for community based health interventions in the Philippines regarding orofacial clefting. A descriptive ethnography was used to describe working class Filipinos' (including healthcare workers') current beliefs about the causes, prevention, and treatment of orofacial clefting, and vitamin taking practices during pregnancy. Modifications of Kleinman's explanatory models were made to include questions about people's general and personal beliefs about cause and prevention of cleft. Innovative methods were developed and used in field research and included an oral back translation method and double translation process. Filipinos reported the following explanations for cause of cleft inheritance, falls, cravings, environmental exposures, and God's will. Beliefs about prevention of cleft included limiting their number of children, being careful not to fall, and avoiding environmental exposures. Filipinos seek surgical repair as treatment for their cleft. Iron was the supplement women reported taking most often during pregnancy. Female participants reported that feeling better, cost of multivitamin, side effects, and bad smell and taste were reasons why they quit taking micronutrients before they had completed the recommended course. This study is the first to construct a Filipino explanatory model specifically for clefting. In constructing Filipino's explanatory model for clefting we found that people's general causal explanations for cleft were not always congruent with personal causal explanations, and people's causal explanations for cleft were not always congruent with their prevention explanations. Modifying Kleinman's explanatory models to include questions about general and personal explanations for cause of illness and questions about prevention should be used to educe a more complete explanatory model. Results from this research can be used to inform the design of health campaigns and/or possible vitamin trials. These campaigns could include but are not limited to developing information brochures and programs about the cause and prevention of clefting, or developing public health campaigns to promote the use of prenatal vitamins in women of childbearing age.

Despite calls for concerted, two-way engagement and for the development of reciprocal partnerships between institutions of higher education (IHE's) and their communities, IHE's continue to implement a disparate menu of activities that prove largely ineffective at addressing society's most challenging social and environmental problems. A relatively new conception of engagement lays out a framework by which IHE's engage with communities in democratic ways. Democratic engagement values inclusive, reciprocal problem-oriented work that brings together university and community stakeholders as co-generators of knowledge and solutions. The resulting democratically engaged partnerships position diverse members to take on roles as collaborators and problem solvers. They are mutually transformed through the processes of reciprocation, power diffusion, and knowledge generation. <br>How these democratically oriented roles and processes emerge and come to be enacted is unknown. Neither the literature on democratic engagement nor that on community-university partnerships addresses this gap. This dissertation study purposefully selected a case of community-university partnership that has a high degree of democratic engagement. Through interviews, observation, and document review, qualitative evidence was collected of the ways in which the roles and processes of democratically engaged partnerships emerged and were enacted. Atlas.ti 6.2 was used to code and retrieve themes related to democratic and technocratic engagement, stakeholder roles and processes, and the emergence and application of roles and processes. <br>Understanding how democratically oriented roles and processes emerge and are adopted is critical to building democratically engaged partnerships that support systems of democratic engagement. If we do not know how to be democratic within our partnerships, and if we cannot teach others, we will not be able to answer the calls for more purposeful, reciprocal engagement with our communities. / School of Education; / Interdisciplinary Doctoral Program for Education Leaders (IDPEL) / EdD; / Dissertation;

As globalization increases at a blistering pace, more and more business entities continue to get involved in cross-border capital investments. A considerable cost can be applied to these types of transaction for the translation of financial statements prepared under dissimilar accounting guidelines into a comparable form. There exist a multiple number of accounting systems that create these dissimilarities, because accounting is a language of business that has been created by society to provide information as to the economic health of an entity. Similar to any other language, varying types of “accounting language” are used across different regions of the globe to convey this information.

In contemporary philosophy of mind, the issue of consciousness has taken center stage. Broadly speaking, those who deal with consciousness fall into two camps: those who prioritize empirical work and those who favor conceptual investigation. One prominent argument has served to deepen the divide: the argument for the possibility of zombies. In this paper I intend to examine closely this argument, as it’s presented by David Chalmers, and some of the attempts to discredit it. In so doing, I present some of my own arguments against it, as well as the claim that if it’s sound, then materialism is false. Finally, I present a sketch of a new way of thinking about consciousness that would, I argue, guard against the threat—real or merely apparent—of arguments such as the zombie-argument.

Recent research on creativity has put great emphasis on how multiple systems influence an individual¡¦s development in creativity. The main purposes of this study were (a) to understand the current situation of pupils¡¦ explanatory style, domain knowledge, creative life experience, and technological creativity; (b) to investigate the effects of pupils¡¦ grade, explanatory style, domain knowledge, and creative life experience on their technological creativity; and (c) to analyze the predictive power of pupils¡¦ grade, explanatory style, domain knowledge, creative life experience on their ability group membership of technological creativity. The participants included 418 third to sixth graders sampling from six elementary schools in Taipei City. The employed instruments were The Questionnaire of Children¡¦s Explanatory Style, The Questionnaire of Creative Life Experience, The Test of Technological Creativity, and the scores on the final exam of Science and Living Technology Areas. The employed analysis methods were Descriptives, ANOVA, one-way and two-way MANOVA, Canonical Correlation Analysis, and Discriminant Analysis. The main findings in this study were as follows: 1. There were gender differences on the pupils¡¦ performance of explanatory style, creative life experience, and technological creativity; more specifically, the girls outperformed the boys on explanatory style, creative life experience, and technological creativity. 2. There were grade differences on the pupils¡¦ explanatory style. 3. Although no significant interaction effect of grade ´ explanatory style on technological creativity was found, there were significant main effects of grade on the pupils¡¦ technological creativity. 4. Domain knowledge contributed to the pupils¡¦ performance on technological creativity. 5. Creative life experience had significant effects on the pupils¡¦ technological creativity. Among the indices of both sides, ¡§language and performing arts¡¨ had the highest correlation with technological creativity. 6. Grade, explanatory style, domain knowledge, and creative life experience could effectively predict the pupils¡¦ ability group membership of technological creativity, and grade as well as domain knowledge had better predictive power. Finally, some suggestions were proposed for teachers, relative educational institutions, parents, and further studies.

A given qualitative mental experience possesses qualitative aspects, or qualia, that identify and distinguish it from other qualitative mental states. While some philosophers explained the mental phenomena by positing nonphysical kinds of entities, some others propose wholly physical explanations. Even if those physicalistic explanations of the mental shed some light on the issue of body-mind relation, Joseph Levine claims that there still exists an explanatory gap between a qualitative mental state and the physical state supposedly responsible for it, since there is no explanation of how and why a certain kind of physical state gives rise to a specific kind of quale.This thesis is an exploration of this problem and evaluation of some of the views that interpret the gap as either ontological or epistemological in order to find out whether the gap is compatible with physicalism or not. The focus is on the Phenomenal Concept Strategy that proposes a physicalistic account for the existence of the gap that is based on the character of phenomenal concepts. I examine whether this strategy is satisfactory or not and propose a possible physicalist account to the special character of phenomenal concepts.

Hispanics are the largest minority group in the United States. They are disproportionately affected by diabetes and are twice as likely to develop diabetes then are non-Hispanic white adults. Mexican Americans are the largest subpopulation of Hispanics in the United States and one out of ten has diabetes. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore the experiences of adults of Mexican origin who were newly informed of having elevated glucose levels in the diabetes range. This qualitative inquiry was conducted by means of in-depth semi-structured interviews with eight individuals of Mexican origin who had been recently informed of having hyperglycemic values exceeding the threshold of diabetes. A modified version of Kleinman's explanatory model of illness was used to elicit the EM of high blood sugar of the study participants. Qualitative content analysis was utilized to analyze the data. Domains, categories and subcategories were elicited through the immersion and crystallization of thematic units attained through the in-depth, semi-structured interviews. Three overarching domains emerged describing the experience and perception the participants had of being newly informed of having high blood sugar: 1) EM of High Blood Sugar 2) Response to Being Informed of High Blood Sugar 3) Facilitators and Barriers to Seeking Care. The participants describe a Temporal Order of how they responded to being informed of having high blood sugar. Facilitators, barriers and gaps to seeking care was also discussed. This study provides valuable insight that can influence the development of culturally relevant interventions that may promote behavior changes to reduce blood glucose levels and promote healthy outcomes for this population.