Garbage & sewage runoff into the Pacific Ocean at the shoreline along the U.S./Mexico Border region poses serious health and environmental threats. The purpose of this study was to analyze the current beach users’ behavioral factors that may be linked to illness prevalence from Coronado Island to the U.S./Mexico border at Imperial Beach in San Diego County. It is a continuation of a study completed by Wildcoast and Imperial Beach Clinic in 2011. The study tried to answer the following two major questions: How have the number of illnesses reported by users along South San Diego County beaches changed in the last 5 years? What relationships exist between reported illness and beach user behavior, if any? To accomplish this, a 2-page self-reporting survey was administered asking about demographics, beach recreation habits, illness and exposure information, and allowed for comments. Surveys were distributed to beach users along Imperial Beach northward to Coronado Island during May, June, and July of 2014. Quantitative as well as qualitative data were collected. The results show that the majority of respondents did not report suffering from an illness, however, for those who did report an illness, frequency of water entry, seasonality of water entry, entry during beach closures, and primary means of water contact were significantly correlated to illness prevalence.

In Sweden there are approximately 45 000 people that show signs of being dependant on narcotics, and there are approximately 26 000 people who can be defined as heavy users. Heavy users is defined by Centralförbundet för alkohol- och narkotikaupplysning as persons who have injected narcotics of any kind in the last 12 months or persons who have had a daily or practically daily use of narcotics the last four weeks. The aim of this study was to understand why people with a current heavy drug use are not in treatment. Through interviews their perceptions and attitudes towards drug treatment were raised to create understanding as to why they are not in treatment. The information was collected through semi-structured interviews with ten people with a current heavy drug use. The interviews were transcribed and a content analysis was applied. The results indicated that there are mixed thoughts about treatment but also that most participants did want treatment. Even though all participants had experience of treatment not working for them, many were motivated to try something new or try the same treatment again. The conclusion was that the participants are searching for a more individual based treatment since they felt like the treatment that they had been offered did not work for them. / <p>2017-06-01</p>

The Wave Hub facility in Cornwall (South West UK) is a marine renewables test site, predominantly designed for the purpose of trialling wave energy converters prior to commercialisation. Beach water-users such as bathers and surfers are of economic importance to tourism in Cornwall, and during theWave Hub consultation there were concerns among stakeholders that wave energy extraction would reduce the height and quality of coastal waves for sur ng, as well as a ecting sediment transport and beach morphology. This thesis investigates the interaction between wave conditions, beach morphology, and beach water-users, and proposes how a wave climate altered by wave energy extraction is likely to alter these interactions. A multidisciplinary research approach is adopted, involving the collection of qualitative and quantitative social data, the collection of over 5 years of physical wave and beach morphology data, and predictive modelling of the e ects of an attenuated wave climate. Quantitative, structured interview data from 403 water-users, collected at two beaches (Perranporth and Porthtowan) in the lee of Wave Hub, indicate that the population of water-users in the area is predominantly made up of surfers (53%), but bodyboarding and swimming/bathing are also popular activities (29% and 11%, respectively). In-depth semi-structured interviews reveal that water-user perceptions of wave energy extraction and its potential coastal impacts are constructed using intuitive risk perceptions, rather than technical understanding. These risk perceptions are constructed through a weighing of their perception of wave energy devices ('technology') and their perception of the coastal environment ('nature'). To investigate how waves are perceived, nearshore wave buoy measurements collected in 14 m water depth and transformed to breaking height, are compared to concurrent visual observations of mean breaker height and period. On average water-users underestimated signi cant wave height and period by 48% and 17%, respectively. Accounting for variations in wave perception, the wave preferences of di erent water-user groups are determined. Water-users are found to share a common preference towards wave v periods of 9 - 20 s, but di erent water-user groups are found to have di erent ranges of preferred wave height, which is found to govern whether wave energy extraction will decrease or increase the occurrence of preferred waves. Previous research indicates that three-dimensional (3D) beach morphology with crescentic bar and rip features is the primary controller of surf-zone hazard, and also strongly in uences the quality of sur ng waves at the coast. A dataset of 5.5 years of quasi-weekly bar measurements, and quasi-monthly intertidal surveys from Perranporth beach is used to quantify seasonal to inter-annual changes in threedimensionality. Integrated, cumulative uctuations in wave steepness, wave power, and relative tide range that occur over seasonal time scales are shown to be well correlated to seasonal uctuations in beach three-dimensionality. 3D morphology is well related to a disequilibrium term that predicts increases or decreases in threedimensionality by examining the di erence between instantaneous wave conditions and a temporally varying equilibrium condition, based on a weighted average of antecedent waves. This indicates that periods of wave regime change between erosive winter conditions with high steepness waves and accretive summer conditions with low steepness waves are related to the growth of 3D features, and vice versa, while extended periods with similar wave conditions drive the beach towards equilibrium. Using a range of realistic and extreme coastal wave height attenuation scenarios determined from previous Wave Hub modelling studies, it is predicted that none of the scenarios will have a universally positive or negative e ect on the occurrence of wave conditions preferred by water-users. When used to predict beach threedimensionality at Perranporth beach, the attenuated wave climates are found to reduce the variability in three-dimensionality. Even an extreme and unrealistic level of wave energy extraction (100% energy capture) was shown to have an insigni cant e ect on the occurrence of preferred waves, and only under an extraction scenario where the impact was not varied with wave frequency did this level of attenuation have a signi cant e ect on the predicted beach three-dimensionality. The inshore wave attenuation from Wave Hub is therefore likely to have an insigni cant e ect on wave conditions and beach morphology of relevance to beach water-users. A number of observations and recommendations are discussed for the development of a sound and robust methodological approach, which can be used to investigate the e ects of wave energy extraction on beach water-users at future wave farm sites.

Introduction : La sécurité routière sur le réseau interurbain est un problème majeur de santé publique dans les Pays à Revenu Bas et Moyen (PRBM) mais peu d'attention y a été consacrée. Les objectifs de cette thèse étaient d’évaluer le fardeau des traumatismes en relation avec le trafic interurbain, la déclaration des usagers blessés dans des bases de données différentes, d’analyser l’association entre les facteurs situationnels (caractéristiques physiques et circonstances environnementales) et les sites des accidents et la perception de la dangerosité des tronçons accidentogènes dans les PRBM. Méthodes et résultats : Pour répondre à ces objectifs, cinq études spécifiques ont été réalisées dans deux PRBM, le Cameroun et le Pakistan. L’étude I a évalué le nombre de tués par véhicules-km parcourus et les facteurs qui leur étaient associés, en utilisant les rapports de police entre 2004 et 2007 sur l’axe Yaoundé-Douala, Cameroun. Le taux de mortalité était de 73 par 100 millions véhicules km parcourus, un taux 35 fois plus élevé que sur un même type de route en pays à revenu élevé. La mortalité était plus élevée pour les accidents impliquant des usagers vulnérables, les véhicules roulant en sens opposé et ceux dus à une défaillance mécanique, y compris un éclatement de pneu. L’étude II a évalué les différences de déclaration d’accidents faites par les services de police, d’ambulance et des urgences en 2008 sur l’axe Karachi-Hala, Pakistan. La mortalité était de 53 par 109 véhicules-km parcourus ; le taux de mortalité était 13 fois plus élevé sur cet axe par rapport à un même type de route en France. La police a déclaré un mort sur cinq et un blessé grave sur dix. Les usagers de la route vulnérables, y compris les piétons et deux-roues ont été deux fois moins déclarés par la police que par les services d'ambulance ou des urgences. L’étude III a étudié les facteurs situationnels associés aux sites des accidents sur l’axe Yaoundé-Douala par une approche de type cas-témoins. Les facteurs tels que le profil routier plat (rapport de cotes [RC] ajusté =1,52 ; intervalle de confiance à 95 % [IC95 %]=1,15-2,04), les surfaces irrégulières (RC=1,43 ; IC95 %=1,04-1,99), les obstacles à proximité (RC=1,99 ; IC95 %=1,09-3,63) et les intersections à trois (RC=3,11 ; IC95 %=1,15-8,39) ou à quatre directions (RC=3,23 ; IC95 %=1,51-6,92) étaient significativement associés à des sites d’accidents corporels. De plus, la probabilité des accidents augmentait dans des zones urbaines situées dans des régions de plaine (RC=2,23 ; IC95 %=1,97-2,77). L’étude IV a étudié le fardeau des traumatismes dus aux accidents ainsi que les facteurs associés dans des zones en travaux sur l’axe Karachi-Hala en utilisant les méthodes de cohorte historique. Un tiers de la mortalité routière était survenu dans des zones en travaux et le risque de mortalité était quatre fois plus élevé dans ces zones que dans les autres zones. Un accident sur deux a eu lieu entre des véhicules roulant en sens opposé dans ces zones. L’étude V a étudié la perception de la dangerosité des tronçons accidentogènes (au moins 3 accidents sur 3 ans) et non accidentogènes (aucun accident déclaré) sur les deux axes des précédentes études, en montrant leurs vidéos à des conducteurs volontaires pakistanais. Les conducteurs n’ont perçu comme dangereux que la moitié des tronçons accidentogènes. La perception de la dangerosité des tronçons plats et droits était plus faible par rapport aux tronçons en courbes et avec une pente. La perception de la dangerosité en zone urbaine d’un tronçon accidentogène était significativement moins élevée (RC=0,58 ; IC95 %=0,51-0,68) que celle d’un tronçon non accidentogène ayant la même caractéristique (RC=2,04 ; IC95 %=1,51-2,74). La perception de la dangerosité d’un tronçon accidentogène avec panneau de signalisation était significativement plus élevée (RC=2,75 ; IC95 %=2,38-3,16) par rapport à des tronçons non accidentogènes ayant la même caractéristique (RC=0,50 ; IC95 %=0,34-0,72). Conclusion : Cette thèse montre combien des méthodes épidémiologiques simples, mais novatrices, peuvent être utiles pour évaluer le fardeau des traumatismes par accidents et leurs facteurs de risques dans les PRBM. Ces pays sont confrontés à un énorme fardeau de morbidité routière qui est souvent sous-déclarée dans les données de la police. Un système de surveillance fiable et valide est nécessaire dans les PRBM. De plus, la politique de prévention pourrait être améliorée par une meilleure communication d’information entre les autorités routières et policières concernant les facteurs situationnels. De la même façon, les mesures de sécurité dans les zones en travaux devraient être contrôlées par un système dédié. Enfin, la sécurité routière sur les routes interurbaines dans les PRBM pourrait être améliorée en rendant les routes plus « informant », en particulier avec l’application de mesures peu couteuses telles que les panneaux de signalisations sur les tronçons accidentogènes. / Background: Interurban traffic safety is a major public health problem, but has received little attention in Low- and Middle-Income Countries (LMICs). The objectives of this thesis were to assess the burden of injury related to interurban traffic, and reporting of these injuries in different datasets, to analyze situational factors (physical characteristics and environmental circumstances) associated with crash sites, and road hazard perception of high-risk crash sites in LMICs. Methods and results: These objectives were assessed in five specific studies conducted in two LMICs, Cameroon and Pakistan. In study I, traffic fatality per vehicle-km and associated crash factors were assessed using police reports for years 2004 to 2007, on the two-lane Yaoundé-Douala road section in Cameroon. Traffic fatality was 73 per 100 million vehicle-km, a rate 35 times higher than a similar road in a high-income country. Fatality was higher for crashes involving vulnerable road users, crashes between oppositely-moving vehicles, and those due to mechanical failure including tyre burst. In study II, traffic injury reporting to police, ambulance, and Emergency Department (ED) in 2008 was assessed, on the four-lane Karachi-Hala road section in Pakistan. Crash fatality was over 53 per 109 vehicle-km, a rate 13 times higher than a similar road in France. Police reported only one out of five fatalities and one out of ten severe injuries. Vulnerable road users were two times less reported in police data than ambulance or ED data. In study III, situational factors associated with injury crash sites were assessed on the Yaoundé-Douala road section, using case-control methods. Factors such as flat road profiles (adjusted Odds Ratios [OR]=1.52; 95% Confidence Interval [95%CI]=1.15-2.01), irregular surface conditions (OR=1.43; 95%CI=1.04-1.99), nearby road obstacles (OR=1.99; 95%CI=1.09-3.63), and three- (OR=3.11; 95%CI=1.15-8.39) or four-legged (OR=3.23; 95%CI= 1.51-6.92) intersections were significantly associated with injury crash sites. Furthermore, the likelihood of crash increased with built-up areas situated in plain regions (OR=2.33; 95%CI=1.97-2.77). In study IV, traffic injury burden and factors associated with Highway Work Zones (HWZs) crashes were assessed on the Karachi-Hala road section, using historical cohort methods. HWZs accounted for one third of traffic fatalities, and fatality per vehicle-km was four times higher in HWZs than other zones. One out of two HWZ crashes occurred between oppositely moving vehicles. In study V, hazard perception of high-risk (with ≥ 3 crashes in 3 years) and low-risk sites (no crash reported) from the two above road sections was assessed by showing videos to voluntary Pakistani drivers. Drivers were able to identify only half of the high-risk sites as hazardous. Sites with a flat and straight road profile had a lower hazard perception compared to those with curved and slope road profile. High-risk sites situated in built-up areas were perceived less hazardous (OR = 0.58; 95%CI=0.51-0.68) compared to low-risk sites (OR = 2.04; 95%CI=1.51-2.74) with same road situation. Further, high-risk sites with vertical road signs were more likely to be perceived hazardous (OR = 2.75; 95%CI=2.38-3.16) than low-risk sites (OR = 0.50; 95%CI=0.34-0.72) with such signs. Conclusion: This thesis illustrates how innovative yet simple epidemiological methods can be useful in assessing the injury burden and specific risk factors in LMICs. These countries face a high burden of interurban road injuries, mostly under-reported in police data. A reliable and accurate injury surveillance system is needed in these countries. Moreover, prevention policy can be improved by better information transfer between road and police authorities regarding situational factors. Similarly, a monitoring system is required to examine the HWZ safety interventions in these countries. Lastly, interurban road safety can be improved by making roads self-explaining, especially by implementing low-cost interventions such as vertical signs at high-risk sites.

L’émergence de l’internet, au delà de son aspect novateur et de ses prérogatives pratiques, a eu pour conséquence l’apparition d’un nouveau type de délinquance et de nouveaux profils criminels qu’est la cybercriminalité. En effet, si l’utilisation d’internet est aujourd’hui indéniablement entrée dans les moeurs, Internet est également un vecteurs d’activités illicites. Or le cyberespace est un territoire virtuel qui ne connaît aucune frontière physique. La cybercriminalité est donc une matière complexe en ce qu’elle est transnationale, mobile et très technique. Elle semble apparaître comme un fléau moderne pesant sur les libertés individuelles des utilisateurs des réseaux numériques / The emergence of Internet beyond its innovative nature and its prerogatives led to the appearance of a new type of delinquency and new criminal profiles. Indeed if using Internet is now undeniably into the customs, Internet is also a vector of illegal activities. However cyberspace is a virtual land that knows no physical borders. Therefore cybercrime is a complex matter because it is transnational, highly mobile and really technical. It seems to appear as the modern scourge weighing on individual freedoms of users of digital networks.

Magister Bibliothecologiae - MBibl / The purpose of the study was to investigate the impact of reduced hours on public library services in Cape Town through taking the Eersterivier Library, as a case study. The research problem comes from the author's personal experience as a librarian in the City of Cape Town whose library's usage seems to have increased since the reductions in hours in two neighbouring libraries, Melton Rose and Kuils River. The reductions in their hours are due to libraries losing staff and not being replaced. / South Africa

The tourism industry has been identified as the industry with the most potential to create jobs and contribute largely to economic growth. In order to live up to this potential, tourism businesses need to create tourism products for potential tourists which need to be promoted successfully through a number of mediums. The use of the Internet as a medium for promoting and selling tourism products is increasing, however, in order for tourism businesses to successfully promote the tourism product through the Internet, they have to understand the needs and wants of their current and potential target markets. One segment of the tourism market that has come under increasing attention is the mature traveller market. This market is defined as travellers who are 50 years of age and older. Generally, the mature traveller market is viewed as a small homogenous group of old consumers with little or no spending power. However, evidence suggests that this market is comprised of an increasing number of diverse people, who use the Internet and like to spend on tourism products. Therefore, this research will examine differences between Internet users and Internet non-users in the mature traveller market. Specific attention will be paid to investigate differences in demographic, socioeconomic, Internet use and travel-related characteristics. The identification of these characteristics will enable a profile to be d~veloped for each group, which can be used by tourism businesses to effectively promote tourism products over the Internet to the mature market In order to collect data from potential respondents, a questionnaire which was used in a similar study conducted in the US was used. Data was collected using a convenience sample of Internet users and Internet non-users from the Eastern Cape and Gauteng provinces of South Africa. Cronbach alpha and factor analysis were used to assess the reliability and validity of the research instrument and measurement scales. In order to test whether differences did exist between the two groups the Chi-square and t-test statistics were used. Finally in order to examine which factors where influential in differentiating between Internet users and Internet non-users discriminant analysis was employed. The findings in the present study suggest that there are significant differences in demographics, socioeconomic, Internet use and travel-related characteristics between Internet users and Internet non-users in the mature market. By understanding the differences between Internet users and Internet non-users, tourism businesses can identify marketing strategies that appeal to mature travellers who use the Internet and to those do not, by utilising information gathered from Internet users and Internet non-users demographic, socio-economic and travel-related characteristics.

This study will look at a group of people not often researched and neglected by organisations; those who actively choose to stay off the social networking site Facebook. The aim is to find out the reasoning behind why a particular group, that is information science university academics, choose to stay off Facebook. This group represents an intellectual part of society who possesses specific knowledge of what it entails to be a member of Facebook as far as security and personal integrity is concerned.The aim is to find out what reasoning is behind their active choice, whether it is a security issue or merely a choice to do other things with one´s private time. Theories examined deal with how a person's background, values, trust issues and education can influence the choices he or she makes regarding Facebook.The study subjects were asked the same questions during a research interview, with the main question being “why are you not on Facebook”. The results of the interviews were analysed and each person was sorted under one or several categories: Idealists, pragmatists, sceptics and technocrats.Pragmatists were the most represented, typically people who consider Facebook a waste of time and prefer to meet people in real life rather than online.The study showed that all inactives use Internet for emailing and research; some use it to indulge their personal interests. Being part of a professional group that works with media related topics gives this group both an insight on security issues but also underlines an urge to stay offline in their private lives.

No description available.

Parents’ perceptions of their adolescent children’s Internet use significantly influences the parental mediation strategies they choose to use with their children. The motivation for this explorative research study was to understand the impact of psychological and social influences on users of the Internet in South Africa. Both locally and internationally, there is a focus on the use of digital Internet devices to facilitate education. Access of South Africans to the Internet, whether for social or educational use does not exist in a vacuum, exempt from the bidirectional forces of the individual and the environment they use the Internet in, whether it is family or academic. This study firstly focusses on how parents perceive their adolescent children’s Internet use, and secondly, how they parent their children’s use of the Internet. The common topics and themes that emerged from this study allow for the development and provision of professional services that individuals, couples, families, and groups require for the use of, or exposure to the Internet. This study uses an explorative-descriptive qualitative research design with an interpretive paradigm and snowball sampling. The qualitative research design focussed on the concepts of self-reflexivity, context, and thick description while utilizing multivocality of 1) international and South African research on cyber citizenship, including cyberbullying, cyber harassment, and legal consequences, with 2) psychological aspects of the psychosocial developmental challenges of adolescents from the iGeneration including the benefits, risks, and dangers of using the Internet, and 3) qualitative data collected from semi-structured interviews with parents from Generation X who are raising and educating a generation of children on the other side of the Digital Divide. Tracy’s 8 ‘Big-Tent’ criteria for guiding excellence in qualitative research and Tesch’s model of content analysis was used during the content analysis process. Themes and sub-themes that emerged from the analysis of the participants’ narratives included 1) experiences: positive and negative, 2) observations: behavioural changes and gender differences, 3) parenting methods: parental interaction, rules, and limits, 4) concerns: risks, and 5) opinions: personal views. This research study provides a thick description of South African and international literature and combines the literature with the voices of the participants and the researcher to produce discussions based on the findings of this qualitative study. Conclusions, recommendations, and limitations of this study informed future research on cyber citizenship by providing a detailed understanding of the context of South African parents and children, the psychosocial developmental challenges of adolescents and, how educational programmes can be best created to effectively impact on the generations of parents, teachers and children in South Africa.