Spirometry is the most important tool in diagnosing pulmonary disease and is the most frequently performed pulmonary function test. Since respiratory disease is the single greatest cause for morbidity and mortality on the Navajo Nation, the purpose of this study was to create newage and race-specific pulmonary nomograms for Navajo children. Five hundred fifty-eight healthy children, ages 6-14 years, attending Navajo Nation elementary schools in Arizona, were asked to perform spirometry to develop population-specific and tribe-specific nomograms for forced vitalcapacity (FVC), forced expiratory volume in 1 sec (FEV1), and FEV1 Ratio (FEV1/FVC). Spirometry tests from 284 girls and 274 boys met American Thoracic Society quality control standards. Lung function values, except for FEV1/FVC, all increased with height. The lower limit of the normal range for FEV1/FVC was 80%. The spirometry reference equations from the healthyboys and girls were developed. Height and the natural log of height were significant predictors of FEV1, FVC, and FEF25-75% in the gender-specific models. The resulting population-specific spirometry reference equations should be used when testing Navajo children ages 6-14 years. However, the use of the NHANES III spirometry reference equations for Caucasian children may not result in significant misclassification in clinical settings providing that a maximal effort is given by the Navajo child being tested.

No description available.

This thesis challenges the conventional theory of forced migration by expanding the narrow definition of violence that prevails, not only within international refugee legislation, but also within the academic field of migration. As such, this thesis argues that by limiting the scope of forced migration only to include victims of direct personal violence, manifested in physical harm, we are neglecting the victims of indirect structural violence, that is, the violence of oppression and inequality, where insights and resources are monopolized by a certain group within society, making access unattainable for others. By analyzing personal narratives of six economic migrants from sub-Saharan Africa that has fled their countries to escape structural violence, this thesis aims to shed light on the limitation within the conventional theory of forced migration.

This thesis is about the Lutheran Churches' response to the forced removals which took place between 1968 and 1984 in Western Transvaal. Bills aimed at expropriating land from African people were passed through parliament from 1913 to 1984. These apartheid laws culminated in the fonnation of Bantustans where people of different nationalities among blacks were moved to. Among the Tswanas four villages in the Western Transvaal viz. Matlwang, Ga-Maloka, Botshabelo and Mogopa were moved between 1968 and 1984. The Lutheran Churches which were working in the four villages did not do much to help their members in time great need and distress. The villagers interviewed unanymously agreed that the Lutheran churches were silent during the time of the forced removals. The Lutheran churches in the world have a history of silence with regard to governments' unjust policies towards the people. Theologians and church leaders of the Evangelical Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (ELCSA) and its supporting mission society, the Rermannsburg Mission Society (HMS), the Lutheran Church in Southern Africa (LCSA) and its supporting mission society, the Lutheran Church Mission, agree that the doctrine of the Two Kingdoms was not responsible for the silence of the Lutheran Churches in South Africa. The Lutheran Churches have an opportunity to make up for their past mistakes by initiating and joining existing projects aimed at helping the marginalised communities of South Africa. Among other pressing needs in South Africa besides the preaching of the gospel one can count landlessness, unemployment, homelessness, poverty, hunger, diseases like HIV/AIDS, and counselling of the abused individuals in both in the urban and the rural areas to which those who were forcefully removed are returning. This work is presented to churches in general and to the Lutheran Churches in particular so that they can preach the gospel of Jesus Christ in a wholistic rather than a narrow way. Jesus was concerned about the poor, the captives, the blind, the sinners, the rulers and the oppressed. / Thesis (M.Th.)-University of Natal, Pietermaritzburg, 1999.

The subject of my theses is a special category of heirs so-called forced heirs. This theme describes their substantive position and guaranteed increased protection determined by law which is especially defined by right to share on inheritance to an extent determined by law. Will of testator is hereby limited by right of forced heir in forced share. Irrespective of most European regulations only offspring of testator are counted to the circle of forced heirs in the Czech Republic whereby the difference is between minors who are entitled to at least three quarters of share and majors who are entitled to minimum of one quarter determined by legal inheritance share. This thesis is systematically divided into seven chapters. After general historical background and general terms of inheritance law explained in the second chapter, next chapter is continued by the definition of several institutes which are mutually interlinked and also closely related to the person of forced heir. Fourth chapter is dedicated to right of forced share in which I am focusing on its calculation, offsetting and final payment. I completely describe, by means of legal jurisdiction, disinheritance and incapacity to inherit in the two following chapters. Last chapter includes two institutes which, under influence of NCC (New civil...

This work explores a novel vision model based coding approach to encode medical images at a perceptually lossless quality, within the framework of the JPEG 2000 coding engine. Perceptually lossless encoding offers the best of both worlds, delivering images free of visual distortions and at the same time providing significantly greater compression ratio gains over its information lossless counterparts. This is achieved through a visual pruning function, embedded with an advanced model of the human visual system to accurately identify and to efficiently remove visually irrelevant/insignificant information. In addition, it maintains bit-stream compliance with the JPEG 2000 coding framework and subsequently is compliant with the Digital Communications in Medicine standard (DICOM). Equally, the pruning function is applicable to other Discrete Wavelet Transform based image coders, e.g., The Set Partitioning in Hierarchical Trees. Further significant coding gains are ex ploited through an artificial edge segmentation algorithm and a novel arithmetic pruning algorithm. The coding effectiveness and qualitative consistency of the algorithm is evaluated through a double-blind subjective assessment with 31 medical experts, performed using a novel 2-staged forced choice assessment that was devised for medical experts, offering the benefits of greater robustness and accuracy in measuring subjective responses. The assessment showed that no differences of statistical significance were perceivable between the original images and the images encoded by the proposed coder.

Introduktion: Spirometri är en av de vanligaste undersökningsmetoderna som utförs vid bedömning av lungfunktion. Vid en dynamisk spirometri mäts lungvolymsförändringar över tid vid detektion av obstruktiva lungsjukdom. Syftet med denna studie var att validera en konventionell spirometriutrustning, Jaeger MasterScreen PFT(Carefusion, Hoechburg, Tyskland), med en ny handhållen utrustning, COPD-6 mätare (Vitalograph COPD-6 400, Ennis, Irland), för att undersöka om det fanns statistisk signifikanta skillnader på mätresultatet mellan dessa två utrustningar.  Metod och material: 22 lungfriska testpersoner mellan åldrarna 20–33 år varav 17 kvinnor och 5 män deltog i denna studie som utfördes vid Örebro universitet. De spirometrivariabler som undersöktes för Jaegerutrustningen var den forcerade exspiratoriska volymen under första sekunden (FEV1), den forcerade vitalkapaciteten (FVC) samt hur stor andel av hela lungvolymen som en person kan andas ut på första sekunden (FEV1/FVC). Med COPD-6 mätaren mättes FEV1, den forcerade exspiratoriska volymen under sex sekunder (FEV6), samt kvoten av dessa (FEV1/FEV6). För att undersöka om det förelåg en statistisk signifikant skillnad användes ett parat t-test med signifikansnivån α=0,05. Resultat: Resultatet från denna studie visade att det förelåg en statistik signifikant skillnad mellan Jaeger MasterScreen PFT och COPD-6 mätaren med p <0,05 för samtliga undersökta variabler. Bland-Altmananalysen visade en spridning inom konfidensintervallet hos samtliga variabler. Slutsats: I denna studie påvisades en statisk signifikant skillnad mellan utrustningarna där COPD-6 mätare visade lägre mätresultat än Jaegerutrustningen för variablerna FEV1 samt FEV6 alternative FVC. Dock kan inte resultatet från denna studie vara representativt för en större population då endast ett få observationer gjordes. / Introduction: Spirometry is one of the most common examination methods performed when assessing lung function. In dynamic spirometry, changes in lung volume are measured over time for the detection of obstructive pulmonary disease. The purpose of this study was to validate a conventional spirometry equipment, Jaeger MasterScreen PFT(Carefusion, Hoechburg, Germany), with a new handheld equipment, COPD-6 screener (Vitalograph COPD-6 400, Ennis, Irland), to investigate whether there were statistically significant differences in the measurement result between these two equipments. Method and material: 22 lung-healthy test subjects between the ages of 20–33 years of whom 17 women and 5 men, participated in this study, which was conducted at Örebro University. The spirometry variables examined for Jaeger equipment were the forced expiratory volume during the first second (FEV1), the forced vital capacity (FVC) and the percentage of total lung volume that a person can exhale at the first second (FEV1 / FVC). With the COPD-6 screener FEV1, forced expiratory volume for six seconds (FEV6), and the ratio of these (FEV1 / FEV6) were measured. To investigate whether there was a statistically significant difference, a paired t-test with the significance level α = 0.05 was used. Results: The results from this study showed that there was a statistically significant difference between the Jaeger MasterScreen PFT and the COPD-6 screener with p <0.05 for all variables examined. The Bland-Altman analysis showed a spread within the confidence interval for all variables. Conclusion: In this study, a statically significant difference was demonstrated between the equipments where COPD-6 screener showed lower measurement results than the Jaeger equipments for the variables FEV1 and FEV6 alternative FVC. However, the results from this study cannot be representative of a larger population as only a few observations were made.

The history of international human trafficking law suggests that the trafficking of women for prostitution is a not a new phenomenon. The earliest approach to address the problem was founded on a moral ground but adopted a law enforcement strategy by criminalising the procurement of women for prostitution. Consequently consent at the time was discountenanced in favour of the end purpose for which the women were moved. This approach prevailed over a long period until the adoption of the Protocol to Prevent, Suppress and Punish Trafficking in Persons, Especially Women and Children, Supplementing the United Nations Convention against Transnational Organized Crime (Trafficking Protocol) in 2000. The Trafficking Protocol adopts a three thronged (prevention, protection and prosecution) approach to combating human trafficking. Whilst this is a novel approach the Trafficking Protocol makes consent irrelevant only when the movement of the women is procured through coercion. Accordingly consent or lack of consent became an essential element for distinguishing trafficking from other migratory crimes such as human smuggling. The challenge of applying consent as criterion to differentiate human trafficking from human smuggling particularly becomes problematical when applied to the movement of women for prostitution. This is especially so in the light of feminists’ debate on whether prostitution should be conceptualised as sex work or as violence against women. To establish consent or lack of consent in the context of the Trafficking Protocol is complicated, inexhaustive framing of the consent nullifying elements ignores country specific and cultural practices in recruitment of women for prostitution. This thesis demonstrates the complexity of using consent as a criterion to determine whether Nigerian women moved into Italy are trafficked or voluntary agents. In doing so the thesis highlights the extent to which the interpretation of consent may be influenced by social, cultural and socio-legal issues. This thesis accentuate juju oath ritual and debt bondage as frequently employed to recruit and move Nigerian women into prostitution as consent nullifying elements.

This thesis builds upon the etiology of forced migration studies. It contributes to the field in three specific ways. First, by using a global database that is not limited to OECD countries; second, by observing the last twenty years, which is also the most migrant intense period in human history; third, by operationalizing human rights violations as an independent variable. I conduct statistical analyses using fixed effects least squares, on a pooled cross-sectional time-series data set, consisting of data from 175 countries for the years 1995–2014. My findings contradict two recent studies that have suggested that the reasons behind forced migration have changed since the end of the Cold War. Rather, the results of this study support the conclusion that threats against personal integrity causes people to leave their homes. International violence on the own nations territory as a threat to the personal integrity, civil violence as a threat to the personal integrity and dissident violence as a threat to the personal integrity all have statistical significant effects on refugee populations. I conclude the thesis by suggesting several areas that should be of great interest for further research.

Due to the increased number of the amount of asylum-seekers that have migrated to Sweden lately, the topic has received increased attention. This has contributed to housing shortage and policy reforms for new migrants to arise in order to ensure that everybody gets housing. Asylum seekers often experience more difficult patterns to housing, and for LGBT asylum seekers especially since they are such a marginalised group in our society already. Housing is an important part in the initial settlement stage and good housing enables successful resettlement and that will help with the integration process. The aim of this thesis is to look at LGBT asylum seekers mobility and what constrains and opportunities they face in that process. To answer these questions qualitative method and semi-structured life story interviews have been performed with twelve LGBT asylum seekers. The result of these interviews has been presented around four different concepts that were factors contributing to their mobility. These four concepts that were found in the interviews was forced migration, homophobia, social network and freedom. These findings should be of interest for further studies in order for LGBT asylum seekers mobility patters to become more safe and secure.