The results of a statistical study of hard x-ray solar flares are presented in this dissertation. Two methods of analysis were used, the Diffusion Entropy (DE) method coupled with an analysis of the data distributions and the Rescaled Range (R/S) Method, sometimes referred to as "Hurst's method". Chapter one provides an introduction to hard x-ray flares within the context of the solar environment and a summary of the statistical paradigms solar astronomers currently work under. Chapter two presents the theory behind the DE and R/S methods. Chapter three presents the results of the two analysis methodologies: most notably important evidence of the conflicting results of the R/S and DE methods, evidence of a Levy statistical signature for the underlying dynamics of the hard x-ray flaring process and a possible separate memory signature for the waiting times. In addition, the stationary and nonstationary characteristics of the waiting times and peak intensities, are revealed. Chapter four provides a concise summary and discussion of the results.

This study was an investigation of the relationship between rapid automatized naming (RAN) and reading in a sample of deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) students who use American Sign Language (ASL). Thirty DHH students, 10 to 18 years old, were given a series of assessments including measures of RAN, reading decoding, reading fluency, reading comprehension, expressive vocabulary, receptive vocabulary, and visual-motor integration. Significant correlations were found between RAN colors and reading decoding; RAN colors and reading comprehension; and RAN colors, numbers, and letters and reading fluency. A significant difference was found between symbolic (letters, numbers) and non-symbolic (objects, colors) RAN in this sample, with better performance noted on tasks of symbolic RAN. Hierarchical regression models were created for each type of RAN. Each model as a whole was significant. The proposed model for RAN objects accounted for 26.6% of the variance in RAN performance. The model for RAN colors accounted for 54.1% of the variance in RAN performance. The proposed model for RAN numbers accounted for 53% of the variance in RAN. The model for RAN letters accounted for 32.6% of the variance in RAN. Across all models, reading fluency and vocabulary were unique and statistically significant contributors in the model predicting RAN. Visual-motor integration performance was not a unique contributor to the model.

The term 'hard to reach' first appeared in the Health Visiting Review (Lowe 2007). This review claimed that the health visiting service was able and experienced in reaching the 'hard to reach'. Yet there was a dearth of health visiting literature on what this concept meant and how it was interpreted in practice. A wide literature review was undertaken which examined government child health policies on reducing health inequalities and how the targeting of services to meet the needs of 'vulnerable', 'disadvantaged' or 'hard to reach' families had developed. The literature review identified how the concept of risk in relation to child health promotion had been defined and redefined since the 1970s. The latest shift involved the identification of 'new social risks' and the promotion of early intervention to prevent social exclusion and health inequalities. At the time of the study's inception, health visiting was a service both in decline and under threat. In contrast, the development of new early intervention programmes such as Sure Start (National Evaluation of Sure Start 2005), On Track (Doherty et al. 2003) and intensive home visiting (Barlow et al. 2005) also led to the critical examination of the concept of 'hard to reach'. In response to the lack of information on the concept of 'hard to reach' in health visiting, I set out to examine critically how Health Visitors (HVs) working in a disadvantaged area conceptualised and operationalised the concept of 'hard to reach'. This qualitative ethnographic case study (Yin 2003), by using research methods of focus groups, participant observation of a Well-Baby Clinic and interviews, gathered perceptions and experiences of HVs and service users. Thematic analysis was guided by Gee's (2005) method of critical discourse analysis and revealed how the term was contested by HV practitioners. It was considered a broad term that in practice could be applied widely and negatively as a label for non-engaging service users; yet themes emerged which also demonstrated how HVs related to and constructed the concept in their day-to-day practices of client engagement. The findings were categorised and a typology was developed in relation to the reach of health visiting within a predominantly deficit model of health. The typology consists of four types, all of which relate to the 'reach' of the health visiting service at the interpersonal level. The first type, the 'easy to reach' client, highlights the diversity of clients: not all clients living within a disadvantaged area were 'hard to reach'. This category also identifies how some clients living within this disadvantaged area developed relationships with HVs. Including the type 'easy to reach' within the typology acknowledges the diversity of clients living within an area of disadvantage, and also the facilitators in HV/Client relationships. The second type identified was the 'emotionally hard to reach' client, and identifies characteristics of clients who had a tentative relationship with the health visiting service. Working with 'emotionally hard to reach' clients involved negotiation and the building of trust at each encounter. The third type, 'physically hard to reach', developed following the identification of a range of barriers that reduced access to vulnerable clients. The fourth type, 'hard to reach services', arose from the findings - and this type relates to barriers created by the organisation of the health visiting service in a disadvantaged area. The typology highlights the importance of both clients' and HVs' engagement in the development of working relationships. It recognises the organisational structures and discourses that act as barriers and facilitators to client engagement. It recommends that health visiting should take the opportunity offered in the Health Visitor Implementation Plan (DH 2011) to develop a health visiting service underpinned with a strengths-based model of public health.

This study explores Saudi educators’ (teachers’ and administrators’) perceptions of and attitudes to Deaf and hard of hearing (DHH) inclusion in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia in two phases. Data were collected in sequential quantitative and qualitative phases. A questionnaire was first administered to 120 teachers and administrators in direct contact with DHH students, giving a broad picture of the themes under investigation in phase 1. Attitudes were examined in terms of three components: their beliefs, emotions and behaviour. This phase investigated the influence on educators’ beliefs and attitudes of these factors: type of D/deafness, length of experience, teachers’ qualifications, stage/grade of education, type of school and in-service training. In phase 2, understanding of educators’ attitudes was deepened by conducting semi-structured interviews with a purposeful sample of five teachers and six administrators of diverse experience, covering five themes: the DHH concept, the inclusion concept, the inclusion process and requirements, barriers to DHH inclusion and changes needed to promote it. The first phase revealed positive attitudes towards hard of hearing inclusion but not with regard to Deaf students, a distinction confirmed by the qualitative findings. The Al-Amal Institute for the Deaf was considered the best educational alternative for Deaf students. Relatively negative attitudes towards Deaf inclusion were related to various factors, especially lack of professional training and expertise in cued sign language, inadequate resources in mainstream schools and poor preparation for receiving DHH students. Participants considered integration to be a matter of equal (part-time) access to the nearest possible local school, but not inclusion as an issue of school restructuring, full participation and active social and academic engagement. Regarding barriers and change, participants were more concerned about the lack of professional training, overreliance on individual donations rather than the local authority to fund and support teaching aids, the absence of strict procedures regarding student referral and teacher transfer from general to DHH education. It was felt that there should be more rigorous diagnosis and differentiation of the national curriculum in order for mainstream schools to be more DHH-friendly. I have discussed the contributions, implications, strengths and limitations of the study. It was concluded that the progressive perspective of inclusion in terms of school restructuring, respect, welcoming, participation and belonging is a far-reaching objective in the Saudi context.

The EU has experienced several terrorist attacks by Islamic fundamentalists since 2004 on its territory. Terrorism is threatening the fundamental rights that EU is based upon and has become not only a question of security but also a question of internal and external border security. This study seeks to examine the measures taken to fight terrorism by the EU and to see how terrorism has affected the security-, foreign-, and defence policies. The study is a theory consuming qualitative case study with both a descriptive and explanatory approach. The theoretical framework that the study is based on are theories about normative power, soft power and hard power but also the discussion about the external and internal security problem. The EU have taken several measures and policies in the fight against terrorism. The measures and policies are all influenced by the three theories in some way. The result of the study shows that EU has went from using only soft instruments and normative ways in the fight against terrorism towards harder instruments even if they still are using soft instruments in a harder way.

As sensor data becomes more and more available, there is an increasing interest in assimilating real time sensor data into spatial temporal simulations to achieve more accurate simulation or prediction results. Particle Filters (PFs), also known as Sequential Monte Carlo methods, hold great promise in this area as they use Bayesian inference and stochastic sampling techniques to recursively estimate the states of dynamic systems from some given observations. However, PFs face major challenges to work effectively for complex spatial temporal simulations due to the high dimensional state space of the simulation models, which typically cover large areas and have a large number of spatially dependent state variables. As the state space dimension increases, the number of particles must increase exponentially in order to converge to the true system state. The purpose of this dissertation work is to develop localized particle filtering to support PFs-based data assimilation for large-scale spatial temporal simulations. We develop a spatially dependent particle-filtering framework that breaks the system state and observation data into sub-regions and then carries out localized particle filtering based on these spatial regions. The developed framework exploits the spatial locality property of system state and observation data, and employs the divide-and-conquer principle to reduce state dimension and data complexity. Within this framework, we propose a two-level automated spatial partitioning method to provide optimized and balanced spatial partitions with less boundary sensors. We also consider different types of data to effectively support data assimilation for spatial temporal simulations. These data include both hard data, which are measurements from physical devices, and soft data, which are information from messages, reports, and social network. The developed framework and methods are applied to large-scale wildfire spread simulations and achieved improved results. Furthermore, we compare the proposed framework to existing particle filtering based data assimilation frameworks and evaluate the performance for each of them.

The blood fluke Schistosoma mansoni and the hard tick Ixodes ricinus produce an aspartic protease cathepsin D which initiates degradation of hemoglobin, their key nutrient. First, in the presented work, the protocol for refolding and activation of the zymogen of cathepsin D from I. ricinus (IrCatD) was developed and optimized. In acidic pH the propeptide of IrCatD zymogen was removed by an auto-activation mechanism. Further, a kinetic assay with fluorogenic substrates was employed to study functional properties of IrCatD including pH optimum, substrate and inhibition specificities. Second, two isoforms of cathepsin D from S. mansoni (SmCatD) were produced using recombinant expression in E. coli. These recombinant proteases were isolated from inclusion bodies using affinity chromatography under denaturating conditions, and protocol for their refolding was developed and optimized. The studied aspartic proteases are pharmacological targets: inhibitors of SmCatD represent potential chemotherapeutics for the treatment of schistosomiasis, and IrCatD is a candidate antigen for the development of novel anti-tick vaccines.

This master's thesis attempts to present the literary conception of a modern pulsing German metropolis at the end of the 1920s and the beginning of the 1930s in three significant novels of that time: Döblin's Berlin Alexanderplatz. Die Geschichte vom Franz Biberkopf (1929), Kästner's Fabian. Die Geschichte eines Moralisten (1931) and Keun's Das kunstseidene Mädchen (1932). Attention is paid, on the one hand, to the picture of a babbling city, the presence of technology, new means of transport and advertising in the streets. Most importantly, however, the thesis gives an insight into the social situation of that time, i.e. the issues of everyday life in a metropolis which can be summarized, in the words of the personae, under the term "hard times" - unemployment, criminality or the politicisation of inhabitants in the years before the Nazi seizure of power. In addition, the thesis covers likewise the situation of the new social stratum of employees, the fates of women and an outline of cultural, entertainment and media industry in Berlin. Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)

The diploma thesis is focused on helping children of immigrants with their integration into educational systems and even to their life in new country. The aim of my research is to link the theoretical and practical aspects of the issue of helping immigrant children in their difficult situation. The theoretical part covers the theoretical interpretation of difficult life situations in relation to the children of immigrants as a target group and their role in the future new home. It analyzes the problems of population migration, the emergence of ethnic minorities and the impact of those issues on the lives of children of immigrants. The thesis emphasizes the need of learning the language of the new home country as quickly as possible and also introduces programs of the Czech Republic and other European countries in the field of education of immigrant children. The empirical part consists of testimonies of immigrants' children gathered through field research and through interviews using a questionnaire. The practical outcome of this diploma thesis is to use the results in the creation of a project aimed at helping immigrant children.

This thesis deals with the transformation of the thematic structure of Události, the main news segment of the Czech Television. Apart from the changes in the thematic structure, it deals with formal transformations at the basic level. For the purpose of this work, a research sample, which included one week of broadcasting in 1994, 2005 and 2011, was selected. A total of 27 news segments, which contained 341 reportages, were analyzed in the three research periods. A subsequent comparison of data provided answers to the following questions: How did the ratio of foreign and domestic topics changed? How did the ratio of hard and soft news change within a single news segment? What was the thematic structure like in the three research periods? Was there a change in the thematic structure? How did the duration of the news segment Události change? How did the number of reportages change within a single news segment? How did the duration of actual reportages change? Powered by TCPDF (www.tcpdf.org)