As the older adults of Ontario go through the phases of aging, some might experience functional deficiency and loss of independence in Activities of Daily Living (ADL). With rehabilitation and facilitation of essential health services, older adults will have tremendous opportunities in the pursuit of self-sufficiency and functional independence. The current study focused on detailing a quick-paced rehabilitation program provided to older adults in northeastern Ontario. The program of interest was the Assess-Restore program provided by the St. Joseph’s Continuing Care Centre (SJCCC) in Sudbury, Ontario. The study involved a retrospective chart review of 144 patients treated in the past four years, which facilitated the examination of patient charts, as well as the extraction and analysis of their functional status and capabilities prior to admission (PTA) and at discharge. Data were extracted from the Resident Assessment Instrument-Minimum Data Set Version 2.0 (RAI-MDS), which is part of the “PointClickCare” system. Although the study did not find significant changes in the level of functionality and self-sufficiency, it succeeded in effectively promoting functional restoration allowing the majority of patients to return to a level of independence in the community and avert subsequent need for residential care rather than risk further functional deterioration.

Children transform different spaces into their own special places by interacting with the physical and social environment (Hart, 1979; Rasmussen, 2004; Sobel, 1993/2002). Special place research has focused largely on children’s place–making in neighbourhoods, including the process of finding and constructing forts, playhouses and dens in outdoor environments (Benson, 2009; Hart, 1979; Kylin, 2003; Sobel, 1993/2002). The significant presence of schools in children’s everyday lives (Rasmussen, 2004), however, has encouraged some researchers to investigate what environmental conditions foster learning (Derr, 2006; Maxwell, 2006; O’Dell, 2011; Upitis, 2007), as well as how children use and experience social and physical aspects of these places (Einarsdottir, 2005; Peterson, 2009; Rathunde, 2003). Although researchers recognize that learning environments have the potential to enhance learning by the presence of specific design elements, little is known about what constitutes places that elementary students characterize as special, and to which they become attached. Some schools, including Montessori, claim to offer a uniquely prepared learning environment that enhances students’ development, though empirical studies that involve Montessori elementary programs predominantly use academic standardized test scores to compare them to other programs (Baines & Snortum, 1973; Lopata, Wallace, & Finn, 2005). The purpose of this study was to explore places at school that students characterized as special and to describe what aspects made them special. This study used photo elicitation interviews, walking tours, and focus groups to explore 11 Grade 2 students’ special places in two Ontario learning environments: a privately funded, not-for-profit Montessori school and a publicly funded school. Results demonstrated that Grade 2 students in both schools identified special places, both indoors and outdoors, for developing a sense of placeness; engaging in types of play; fostering and engaging in friendships; and having solititude and tranquility. Further analysis revealed two underlying themes: places were special because they afforded students opportunities to be interdependent or independent. Future research is necessary to determine the long-term significance of students’ special places in different learning environments. / Thesis (Master, Education) -- Queen's University, 2012-05-30 19:43:33.982

The fact that it took so long, in spite of successive waves of invaders and spirited yet sporadic resistance, to fashion a united national front, points out an anomaly in Algerian society: a divided identity. It took a cruel French occupation, the incompetence of colonial authorities, and the infiltration of European nationalist ideology to fashion a united front, but it was only a front, for immediately after independence, the unity was shown to be a temporary one. / The Berber majority found itself excluded, both culturally and politically, from the new Algerian state. Strangers in their own land, Berbers were faced with a new, more insidious colonialism: Arabization.

Denna studie syftar till att undersöka äldre människors upplevelser av åldrande och vad samtal kan ha för betydelse för dem. Studien avser att skapa en ökad förståelse för vilka faktorer som kan påverka upplevelsen av åldrandet och vilken funktion samtal kan ha när det gäller äldre människors livskvalitet. Då gruppen äldre i Sverige fortsätter att öka behövs mer kunskap om hur samhället skall bemöta de utmaningar som följer och kunna främja äldres livskvalitet. Av denna anledning har studien hög relevans för socialt arbete och utvecklingen inom äldreomsorgen både som praktik och forskningsfält. Studien utgår från en kvalitativ ansats där empirin har insamlats genom semistrukturerade intervjuer. Materialet har sedan analyserats och bearbetats i en kvalitativ innehållsanalys, där likheter och olikheter urskilts för att sedan delas in i kategorier och teman. De teoretiska utgångspunkterna i studien är teorin om gerotranscendens och det interaktionistiska perspektivet. Den forskning som studien tar avstamp ifrån handlar om äldre människors upplevelser av åldrande, betydelsen av samtal, reflektion, självständighet och förändringar. I studiens resultatredovisning och analys återfinns de intervjuade personernas berättelser indelade i tre teman; Åldrande & identitet, Förändringar och Samtal & reflektion. Åldrande & identitet inbegriper synen på den egna åldern, identitet, meningsfullhet samt farhågorna inför att åldras. Under Förändringar behandlas de förändringar som åldrandet kan medföra vad gäller den äldre själv, personer i den äldres omgivning samt inställningen till att ta emot hjälp. Det sista temat Samtal & reflektion innefattar vilka de äldre pratar med, vad de reflekterar över och vilken funktion samtal fyller. I resultatet framkommer det bland annat att samtal spelar en viktig roll både när det gäller att hantera förändringar och för den äldres upplevelse av livskvalitet. Även inställningen till åldrandet tycks ha en avgörande betydelse.

This paper discusses the history of auditor independence in the United States and the regulation of the public accounting profession over time. Special emphasis is put on the increasing importance that regulators have placed on the perception of auditor independence and on its effectiveness. Next, I analyze the efficacy of the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 and provide several reasons for its shortcomings. Finally, I provide two distinct suggestions aimed at improving the current audit landscape.

No description available.

A main problem in machine learning is to predict the response variables of a test set given the training data and its corresponding response variables. A predictive model can perform satisfactorily only if the training data is an appropriate representative of the test data. This intuition is re???ected in the assumption that the training data and the test data are drawn from the same underlying distribution. However, the assumption may not be correct in many applications for various reasons. For example, gathering training data from the test population might not be easily possible, due to its expense or rareness. Or, factors like time, place, weather, etc can cause the difference in the distributions. I propose a method based on kernel distribution embedding and Hilbert Schmidt Independence Criteria (HSIC) to address this problem. The proposed method explores a new representation of the data in a new feature space with two properties: (i) the distributions of the training and the test data sets are as close as possible in the new feature space, (ii) the important structural information of the data is preserved. The algorithm can reduce the dimensionality of the data while it preserves the aforementioned properties and therefore it can be seen as a dimensionality reduction method as well. Our method has a closed-form solution and the experimental results on various data sets show that it works well in practice.

No description available.

In the past decade, public scrutiny surrounding rising levels of executive compensation has led to more stringent independence requirements for compensation committees. However, there is little research studying the effects of compensation committees on executive pay from the time these new requirements were implemented. My paper studies the effects of compensation committee chair personal ties to the CEO, economic interests, and group committee characteristics on both the level and structure of CEO compensation. My findings suggest that certain committee chair personal ties to the CEO are associated with both a higher level of CEO compensation and a higher percentage of CEO salary compensation. I also find that the more compensation committee chairs are paid, the less likely they are to create CEO pay plans with strong incentive provisions, but the more likely they are to increase the level of total CEO compensation. The higher the committee chair’s ownership percentage is in the company, the less likely they are to create low-risk CEO pay plans, and the more likely they are to increase the level of total CEO compensation.

Standard local search algorithms for combinatorial optimization problems repeatedly apply small changes to a current solution to improve the problem's given objective function. In contrast, non-oblivious local search algorithms are guided by an auxiliary potential function, which is distinct from the problem's objective. In this thesis, we compare the standard and non-oblivious approaches for a variety of problems, and derive new, improved non-oblivious local search algorithms for several problems in the area of constrained linear and monotone submodular maximization. First, we give a new, randomized approximation algorithm for maximizing a monotone submodular function subject to a matroid constraint. Our algorithm's approximation ratio matches both the known hardness of approximation bounds for the problem and the performance of the recent ``continuous greedy'' algorithm. Unlike the continuous greedy algorithm, our algorithm is straightforward and combinatorial. In the case that the monotone submodular function is a coverage function, we can obtain a further simplified, deterministic algorithm with improved running time. Moving beyond the case of single matroid constraints, we then consider general classes of set systems that capture problems that can be approximated well. While previous such classes have focused primarily on greedy algorithms, we give a new class that captures problems amenable to optimization by local search algorithms. We show that several combinatorial optimization problems can be placed in this class, and give a non-oblivious local search algorithm that delivers improved approximations for a variety of specific problems. In contrast, we show that standard local search algorithms give no improvement over known approximation results for these problems, even when allowed to search larger neighborhoods than their non-oblivious counterparts. Finally, we expand on these results by considering standard local search algorithms for constraint satisfaction problems. We develop conditions under which the approximation ratio of standard local search remains limited even for super-polynomial or exponential local neighborhoods. In the special case of MaxCut, we further show that a variety of techniques including random or greedy initialization, large neighborhoods, and best-improvement pivot rules cannot improve the approximation performance of standard local search.