No description available.

No description available.

<p><bold>Background</bold>: Family caregivers for a parent with dementia often experience negative emotional consequences. These caregivers may also be at risk for compassion fatigue, a concept that was introduced to the health care community as feelings of anger, inefficacy, apathy, and depression resulting from a caregiver's inability to cope with devastating stress. Compassion fatigue was first observed in nurses and later in other caring professionals such as social workers and psychologists and the definition was adapted to focus on prolonged exposure to suffering as one of the primary causes.</p><p>Although compassion fatigue has not been studied in family caregivers providing care at home, their experiences, particularly those of adult daughter caregivers for parents with dementia, appear to create a foundation for developing compassion fatigue. For this reason, it was important to investigate compassion fatigue in this growing population of caregivers and this dissertation explored compassion fatigue in daughter caregivers for parents with dementia. The dissertation aims were to 1) identify common themes across the literature on compassion fatigue and to apply these themes and the existing model of compassion fatigue to informal caregivers for family members with dementia, 2) analyze secondary data from Project ASSIST to substantiate a need for further study of compassion fatigue in adult daughter caregivers of a parent with dementia, 3) explore the feasibility of studying compassion fatigue in family caregivers, and 4) explore compassion fatigue and the contributing factors and potential outcomes of compassion fatigue in adult daughter caregivers for parents with dementia.</p><p><bold>Methods</bold>: The dissertation consisted of three studies. The first study, a review of the literature addressed aim 1 of the dissertation as I applied the established model of compassion fatigue to family caregivers. The second study, a secondary analysis pilot study addressed aim 2 and aim 3 of the dissertation study. The third study of the dissertation was a qualitative study exploring the concept of compassion fatigue in daughter caregivers for parents with dementia. </p><p><bold>Conclusions</bold>: The literature review found evidence to support the components of the established model of compassion fatigue and findings suggested additional work was needed on the concept of compassion fatigue in family caregivers. Findings from the secondary analysis provided support for more in-depth exploration of the concept of compassion fatigue in family caregivers. Findings from the larger qualitative study provided support for many of the factors related to compassion fatigue, but also suggested revisions to the established model of compassion fatigue were needed. A revised model was created based upon the findings from this dissertation.</p><p>The revised model incorporates the contributing factors and moderators of compassion fatigue found in family caregivers and the model also proposes revised characteristics and outcomes of compassion fatigue. Findings from this dissertation also suggest new areas for research, specifically with all dementia caregivers and caregivers who do not utilize formal or informal support. Additional value from this dissertation derives from the detailed explanation of previous relationship quality, empathy, and caregiving experience. This dissertation is one of a few qualitative studies on compassion fatigue to provide this level of detail and serves to anchor future research on compassion fatigue in all family caregivers.</p> / Dissertation

AM60B magnesium alloy is being increasingly used in auto industry in applications that usually involve various formats of cyclic loading scenarios. Therefore, the fatigue response of this alloy is investigated in this thesis. Our investigation is focused on characterization of the influence of compressive stress cycles within a given cyclic loading scenario on alloy’s crack propagation response. In the first part of this dissertation, fatigue crack growth rate (FCGR) of AM60B alloy subject to cyclic loadings with various stress ratios (both positive and negative) is investigated and a modified model is proposed to predict the FCGR under a wide range of stress ratios. Subsequently, using the modified model, the experimental results of the crack propagation tests are condensed into a single line in a logarithmic scale and the integrity of a proposed FCGR model is investigated. The investigation is continued by studying the influence of compressive stress cycle (CSC) on FCGR. Constant and random amplitude loadings with several magnitudes of CSCs are applied, leading to considerable acceleration in FCGR. The stress distribution ahead of the crack tip is also studied using the finite element method. The tensile residual stress and plastic zone are characterized upon the removal of the CSCs. The acceleration in the crack propagation is shown to be governed by the tensile zone ahead of the crack tip. Furthermore, application of an overload within an otherwise constant amplitude loading (CAL) has been known to retard the crack propagation, thus increase the fatigue life. This retardation would be a function of the affected zone and retardation magnitude. It is shown in this thesis that the affected zone would be influenced by the “sensitivity” of the material to overload. Moreover, it is also demonstrated that the nature of baseline CAL loading would also affect the retardation response and dimension of the affected zone. Therefore, modification to the Wheeler model is proposed, thereby enabling the model to account for material’s sensitivity and nature of the baseline loading. The integrity of the proposed model is verified by the experimental results obtained in this project, as well as those reported by other investigators for other alloys.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.

No description available.