Magister Public Health - MPH / Since the advent of the HIV pandemic, efforts have been made to find and implement interventions to reduce the risk of transmission of the infection in various risk groups. Mother to child transmission is responsible for a great majority of childhood HIV infections. Interventions have been developed which reduce considerably the risk of mother to child transmission to babies born to women who are infected. To be able to access these interventions, pregnant women first have to know their status by being tested at antenatal clinics. Initial testing protocols in most countries were based on the opt-in, client-initiated approach. However, in many countries, this did not result in many women getting tested and being able to access interventions. Accordingly, many countries have now adopted the routine opt-out approach as a way of increasing testing rates among women attending antenatal clinics. Ghana has had a PMTCT programme since 2004 initially based on opt-in testing. In 2007, there was a change in this testing regimen to the opt-out approach. The aim of this study was to assess the quality, acceptability and factors influencing the acceptability of the use of routine verbal opt-out strategy for HIV testing during pregnancy for women attending antenatal clinics in the Kassena-Nankana district of northern Ghana. A cross-sectional analytical study design was used in this study. The study was conducted in the Kassena-Nankana district of northern Ghana using a structured questionnaire in face to face exit interviews with pregnant women after they had completed their first antenatal clinic visit. A total of 251 women aged between 15-49 years were interviewed after informed consent had been obtained from them. Data was captured with Epidata and analysed with EpiInfo. Cross-tabulations and logistic regression analyses were done. Of the 251 respondents who were interviewed in this survey, 85% of them were aware of MTCT, 82% knew at least one PMTCT strategy, 92% felt they had experienced good quality counselling that day at the ANC and 81% thought that the opt-out testing was acceptable. The perception of the women in the study about the quality of counselling they were given, their exposure to radio and their ethnicity were significantly associated with their acceptability of opt-out testing for HIV. While majority of the respondents felt that the quality of the counselling they received was good and a majority also felt that the opt-out strategy was acceptable, there were concerns about the quality of counselling provided. Recommendations include the need to improve counselling practices in the antenatal clinics by providing more structured information to the women. The District Health Management Team also needs to provide more information to people in the communities about PMTCT using radio as a medium.

Given the lack of regulation about the protection of collective rights in Peru, the main goal of this investigation is to show what should be some elements of the content of a due collective process. Thus each of its elements is studied taking into account the Peruvian jurisprudence and legislation. / Ante la insuficiente regulación de tutela colectiva de derechos en el Perú, el objetivo de la investigación es plantear el contenido de algunos de los elementos del derecho fundamental al debido proceso colectivo en el Perú. Para ello, se analiza los elementos que se considera relevantes tomando en consideración las características particulares de la tutela colectiva y considerando la jurisprudencia y legislación existentes en el Perú.

Class Actions Abstract This thesis deals with class actions. These are currently (and rightly so) a much-discussed topic. On March 6, 2020, the government submitted a government bill on collective proceedings, which is controversial, primarily due to its inspiration in the American class action lawsuit. The main thorn in the side of the bill's critics is that the government proposal includes the opt-out proceedings, i.e. the type of proceedings that forces the class members to deregister. It is present in the current proposal along with the opt-in proceedings, which are guided by the opposite principle. This thesis examined, in particular, the appropriateness of adopting collective proceedings into the Czech legal order and the potential problems that the proposed arrangement may cause. Regulations on collective redress in the US (which has been an original idea source for the government bill) and the Netherlands (which shares some aspects with the current version of the bill after its January amendment) were also examined. From the methodological point of view, analytical, normative, comparative, and synthetic approaches were mainly used in this thesis. First, an analysis of legislation, literature and case law was performed. The current government bill on collective proceedings was extensively commented...

Under tidig vår 2021 presenterade den svenska regeringen en proposition som skulle innebära ändringar i transplantationslagen. Eftersom det råder organbrist i Sverige är syftet med propositionen att fler donationer ska möjliggöras. Ett av förslagen är ett borttagande av närståendevetot vilket innebär att anhöriga inte längre har rätt att neka donation från en avliden närstående när donationsviljan är okänd, även kallat ett hard opt out-system. Sverige skulle då bli det tredje landet i världen att införa ett sådant donationssystem. Det finns få studier som undersöker effekten av ett borttagande av närståendevetot, framförallt ur ett samhällsekonomiskt perspektiv. Syftet med vår uppsats är att analysera en sådan systemförändring i Sverige genom en CBA. Som komplement till vår CBA genomför vi en enkätstudie för att analysera vissa icke-monetära effekter. Vi vill också undersöka om inställningen till organdonation har förändrats sedan den senaste undersökningen gjordes år 2015. Resultatet visar en mer positiv inställning till organdonation i vår studie jämfört med tidigare. I huvudkalkylen ger de monetärt värderade effekterna av ett borttagande av närståendevetot en nettobesparing på 427 miljoner kronor. Förutsatt att de icke-monetära effekterna inte uppgår till en kostnad på mer än 427 miljoner kronor är ett borttagande av närståendevetot en samhällsekonomiskt lönsam åtgärd. I känslighetsanalysen presenteras flera alternativa kalkyler där de monetära effekterna ger en positiv nettobesparing i samtliga vilket tyder på ett robust resultat i vår huvudkalkyl. Trots att våra beräkningar tyder på att ett borttagande av närståendevetot leder till en nettobesparing kan uppsatsen inte fastställa om det är den mest kostnadseffektiva åtgärden. Tidigare studier menar att det inte finns bevis för att borttagandet i sig leder till fler donerade organ och att strukturella förändringar kan vara minst lika betydelsefulla, om inte mer. Vi rekommenderar att fler jämförande studier görs med länder som har en hög andel donatorer för att kunna utvärdera vilka åtgärder som skulle vara mest kostnadseffektiva i Sverige. / In early spring 2021, the Swedish government presented a bill that would entail amendments to the Transplantation Act. Since there is an organ shortage in Sweden, the purpose of the bill is to enable more donations. One of the proposals is the removal of the family consent which means that relatives will no longer have the right to refuse donation from a deceased relative when the willingness to donate is unknown, also known as a hard opt out system. This would make Sweden the third country in the world to implement such a donation system. There are few previous studies which examine the economic aspect of removing the family consent. The purpose of our thesis is to analyze such a systemic change in Sweden through a CBA. In addition to our CBA, we conduct a survey to analyze certain non-monetary effects. We also seek to analyze whether the attitude towards organ donation has changed since the most recent survey was conducted in 2015. The results show a more positive attitude towards organ donation in our study compared to earlier research.  In the main calculation, the monetarily valued effects of a removal of the family consent presents net savings of SEK 427 million. Given that the non-monetary effects do not add up to a cost of more than SEK 427 million, a removal of the family consent is a profitable measure from a CBA perspective. The sensitivity analysis presents several alternative calculations where the monetary effects provide a net saving in all of them, which indicates a robust result in our main calculation. Even though our calculations indicate that a removal of the family consent leads to a net saving, we cannot determine if it is the most cost-effective measure. Previous studies suggest that there is no evidence that the removal itself leads to more donated organs and that structural changes can be at least as significant, if not more so. We recommend that additional comparative studies with countries that have a high proportion of donors should be conducted. This would help with the evaluation of which measures would be the most cost-effective in Sweden.

Nowadays most of the information is gathered through the internet, where a vast amount of data is being exchanged every second. However, most of the cyberspace users are not fully aware of the technological side of the Internet. One of the tools used on the Internet to ensure instant and informative service to users, are cookies, a small piece of collected data about user’s preferences. Data collected and combined from different cookies creates a serious danger to users’ privacy. The fact that users are not always aware of their data being collected even sharpens the problem of privacy protection on the Internet. The purpose of this thesis was to examine the consent requirement for the use of tracking cookies in legal framework of European Union, United States of America and Lithuania and to find out if the use of tracking cookies without user consent interferes with users’ right to privacy. In order to achieve the aim of this work, descriptive-interpretive research approach was used in the first part of thesis to analyse various concepts of privacy, defined in different scientific literature, as well as different types of cookies and their purpose. In the second part of thesis, normative-comparative approach was used to analyse various legal systems, their essential laws and principles, theoretical backgrounds and their requirements for the valid user consent intended for the use of cookies. The principal conclusion was that use of tracking cookies without unambiguous... [to full text] / Šiuolaikinėje globalioje žinių visuomenėje, teisė ne visuomet yra pajėgi sureguliuoti pagrindinės valiutos – informacijos, apsaugą. Internetas ir kompiuterinės technologijos suteikia galimybę greitai, pigiai ir nenutrūkstamai keistis dideliais kiekiais informacijos, kaupti ją duomenų bazėse ir apdoroti. Internetu kasdien naudojasi net 40,7% visos pasaulio populiacijos, tai priemonė be kurios daugelis neįsivaizduoja kasdienio savo darbo ir laisvalaikio. Tačiau didžioji interneto vartotojų dalis neturi žinių apie techninę interneto pusę ir grėsmes, kurios gali kilti jiems, jų teisei į privatumą ir duomenų apsaugai internete. Tarptautinė bendruomenė išreiškė susirūpinimą interneto vartotojų privatumo apsauga, Jungtinių Tautų Generalinė Asamblėja priėmė rezoliuciją 68/167 „Teisė į privatumą skaitmeniniame amžiuje“. Šia rezoliucija Jungtinės Tautos ragina valstybes atkreipti dėmesį į pavojus privatumui esančius interntete ir derinti savo įstatymus siekiant suteikti žmogaus teisių ir laisvių aapsaugą interneto vartotojams. Slapukai (angl.-cookies) yra viena iš priemonių, kurią paieškos sistemos, socialiniai tinklai ir kiti interneto aktoriai nuolatos naudoja siekdami suteikti nenutrūkstamas ir kokybiškas paslaugas interneto vartotojams. Dažniausiai slapukai yra naudojami atsiminti vartotojų pirkinių užsakymus, kalbos pasirinkimą, slaptažodžius ir aplankytus puslapius. Vadinamieji sesijos slapukai( angl. -session cookies) yra automatiškai ištrinami iš galinio vartotojo įrenginio... [toliau žr. visą tekstą]

This thesis combines the disciplines of public policy analysis and anthropology to consider parental consent policies for sex education in California. After providing historical, political, and cultural context for sex education and the parental consent function, the thesis considers (1) the factors that inform parental perspectives on sex education, (2) if parents should be able to opt their children out of sex education, and (3) the discrepancy between the actual policies regarding parental consent and the way they are implemented. The thesis concludes with policy recommendations for improving the implementation of current California sex education policies.

The standardized testing regime begun under No Child Left Behind and continued with the Common Core is being challenged. Opt Out is a national movement in which parents refuse to have their children partake in state mandated tests. This case study examines the Opt Out movement through the lens of political spectacle which suggests public policy is largely formed through dramatic public acts that reinforce existing inequalities. Arguing that Opting Out is inherently a dramatic public act, the study examines the Opt Out movement’s impact on legislative educational policy formation in the State of Arizona. Opt Out legislation and texts formed from the accompanying legislative debate, relevant media, and interviews with legislators are critically analyzed to further explain the mechanics of political spectacle. Theoretical aspects of political spectacle such as the current political spectacle framework and current methodological issues involved with the theory are also critiqued with possible solutions proposed.

Submitted by SIMONE SILVA FRUTUOSO DE SOUZA null (simone_mat@hotmail.com) on 2017-03-29T13:28:59Z No. of bitstreams: 1 Tese Doutorado - Final.pdf: 4108375 bytes, checksum: d0138f5bfaaf0248f430b27319d3c9e2 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Luiz Galeffi (luizgaleffi@gmail.com) on 2017-03-30T17:35:45Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 souza_ssf_dr_ilha.pdf: 4108375 bytes, checksum: d0138f5bfaaf0248f430b27319d3c9e2 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-30T17:35:45Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 souza_ssf_dr_ilha.pdf: 4108375 bytes, checksum: d0138f5bfaaf0248f430b27319d3c9e2 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2017-02-24 / Coordenação de Aperfeiçoamento de Pessoal de Nível Superior (CAPES) / Neste trabalho são apresentados três algoritmos imunológicos artificiais para resolver o problema de reconfiguração de sistemas de distribuição de energia elétrica considerando demanda fixa e também demandas variáveis. Para resolver este problema foram utilizados os algoritmos CLONALG (Clonal Selection Algorithm), Copt-aiNet (Artificial Immune Network for Combinatorial Optimization) e Opt-aiNet (Artificial Immune Network for Optimization). O problema de reconfiguração considerando demandas variáveis é um problema complexo e de natureza combinatória, que tem por objetivo identificar a melhor topologia radial para um sistema de distribuição de energia elétrica, de modo a minimizar os custos das perdas de energia ao longo de um período de operação. Para avaliar a factibilidade em relação às restrições de operação dos sistemas de energia elétrica, e calcular as perdas ativas para cada demanda foi utilizado o algoritmo de fluxo de carga radial de varredura. Os algoritmos foram escritos na linguagem C++. Para avaliar os algoritmos propostos foram realizados testes com os sistemas elétricos de 33, 84, 136, 417 e 10477 barras. Os resultados foram comparados com os existentes na literatura, de modo a verificar a eficiência e robustez dos algoritmos. / This work presents three artificial immune algorithms to solve the reconfiguration problem of electrical distribution systems (EDSs) with fixed demand and variable demands. To solve this problem were used the algorithms CLONALG (Clonal Selection Algorithm), Copt-aiNet (Artificial Immune Network for Combinatorial Optimization) and Opt-aiNet (Artificial Immune Network for Optimization). The reconfiguration problem with variable demands is a complex problem having combinatorial nature and aiming at identifying the best radial topology for an EDS, in order to minimize the cost of the energy losses in a given operation period. To evaluate the feasibility of the topology regarding the operating constraints of the EDS and to calculate the active power losses for each demand level it was used a specialized sweep load flow for radial systems. The mentioned algorithms were implemented in C++. To evaluate the proposed algorithms were performed testing using test systems with 33, 84, 136, 417 and 10477 nodes. The results were compared with the ones in the literature in order to validate the efficiency and robustness of the algorithms.

Orientador: Rubén Augusto Romero Lázaro / Resumo: Neste trabalho são apresentados três algoritmos imunológicos artificiais para resolver o problema de reconfiguração de sistemas de distribuição de energia elétrica considerando demanda fixa e também demandas variáveis. Para resolver este problema foram utilizados os algoritmos CLONALG (Clonal Selection Algorithm), Copt-aiNet (Artificial Immune Network for Combinatorial Optimization) e Opt-aiNet (Artificial Immune Network for Optimization). O problema de reconfiguração considerando demandas variáveis é um problema complexo e de natureza combinatória, que tem por objetivo identificar a melhor topologia radial para um sistema de distribuição de energia elétrica, de modo a minimizar os custos das perdas de energia ao longo de um período de operação. Para avaliar a factibilidade em relação às restrições de operação dos sistemas de energia elétrica, e calcular as perdas ativas para cada demanda foi utilizado o algoritmo de fluxo de carga radial de varredura. Os algoritmos foram escritos na linguagem C++. Para avaliar os algoritmos propostos foram realizados testes com os sistemas elétricos de 33, 84, 136, 417 e 10477 barras. Os resultados foram comparados com os existentes na literatura, de modo a verificar a eficiência e robustez dos algoritmos. / Abstract: This work presents three artificial immune algorithms to solve the reconfiguration problem of electrical distribution systems (EDSs) with fixed demand and variable demands. To solve this problem were used the algorithms CLONALG (Clonal Selection Algorithm), Copt-aiNet (Artificial Immune Network for Combinatorial Optimization) and Opt-aiNet (Artificial Immune Network for Optimization). The reconfiguration problem with variable demands is a complex problem having combinatorial nature and aiming at identifying the best radial topology for an EDS, in order to minimize the cost of the energy losses in a given operation period. To evaluate the feasibility of the topology regarding the operating constraints of the EDS and to calculate the active power losses for each demand level it was used a specialized sweep load flow for radial systems. The mentioned algorithms were implemented in C++. To evaluate the proposed algorithms were performed testing using test systems with 33, 84, 136, 417 and 10477 nodes. The results were compared with the ones in the literature in order to validate the efficiency and robustness of the algorithms. / Doutor

La « norme facultative » n’est pas reconnue en droit. Pourtant, elle renvoie à un phénomène singulierauquel les juristes se trouvent de plus en plus confrontés. Celui-ci est porteur de normes non obligatoires, enmarge des instruments juridiques traditionnels. Ces normes ont en commun une mise en œuvre tributaired’un consentement préalable de leurs destinataires, ce qui signifie qu’elles sont laissées à leur libredisposition et qu’ils peuvent les utiliser entièrement ou seulement en partie, selon leur convenance.Facultatives, elles supposent la reconnaissance d’une normativité distincte de l’obligatoriété et del’impérativité. Elles tirent leur caractère normatif du fait qu’elles constituent à la fois des actes de langageayant force illocutoire et des modèles pour agir.En raison de leur originalité, leur intégration en droit est susceptible d’entraîner des bouleversementsdans la théorie des normes. En effet, la reconnaissance de la norme facultative conduit à s’interroger sur laplace du facultatif au sein des catégories de contenus normatifs. À côté des contenus normatifs classiquesconçus à partir de l’obligation, à savoir le prescriptif, le prohibitif et le permissif, le « facultatif » désigne unautre contenu normatif correspondant aux normes de faculté tournées vers le « normativement souhaitable ».Ces normes sont porteuses d’une faculté de choisir, autrement dit, une opportunité normative ouverte audestinataire et demandant à être saisie. Une fois qu’elles ont fait l’objet d’une adhésion, elles s’introduisentdans un « lien normatif». / The « voluntary norm » is not recognized in law. Yet, it refers to a peculiar phenomenon that juristshave increasingly to deal with. It is associated with noncompulsory norms, outside the traditional legal tools.These norms share a tributary implementation of a prior agreement from their recipients, which means theycan freely dispose of them and use them fully or partly, at their convenience.Being voluntary, the norms involve the recognition of a normativity distinct from the bindingnessand imperativity. They draw their standards-relative feature from the fact that they establish bothillocutionary speech acts and patterns to operate.As a result of their originality, their incorporation into law is likely to cause some changes in thetheory of norms. Indeed, the recognition of the voluntary norm leads to question the position of the voluntaryfeature within the categories of standards-relative contents. Besides the classical standards-relative contentsbuilt upon what is compulsory, that is the prescriptiveness, prohibitiveness and permissiveness, the“voluntaryness” refers to another standards-relative content which corresponds to the voluntary normsfocused on what is normatively desirable. These standards include the capacity of choice, in other words, astandards-relative opportunity opened to the recipient and asking to be seized. And once they obtain anadhesion, they get into a “standards-relative bond”.