A significant proportion of worldwide research concerning adult refugees has investigated clinical perspectives and emphasised the impact of pre and post-migration experiences as key factors affecting their mental health status. Nevertheless, a clear understanding of their mental health problems and psychiatric morbidity is difficult to obtain due to major prevalence variations and discrepancies between studies. Further, recent studies in New Zealand have underlined the limitation of health providers' abilities to meet refugees' mental health needs. On the other hand, despite the acknowledgment of refugees' endurance abilities to overcome traumatic events during both their pre-migration flight and in their first asylum countries, relatively less is known about their capacities to show positive adaptation to life's tasks in the course of resettlement in a final host country and how this impacts on preventing mental health problems. The current study, therefore, was undertaken to develop a theoretical understanding to describe and explain adult refugees' coping processes in overcoming resettlement difficulties and adjusting to life in New Zealand. This was achieved by using the grounded theory methodology where qualitative data were collected from twenty-six former refugees coming from war torn countries namely Afghanistan, Burma (Myanmar), Ethiopia, Kurdistan region and Somalia who are now living in Christchurch and Nelson. Participants described the basic social process of obtaining a social position as being the main goal which motivated them to develop their coping skills and behaviour. They explained that this was underpinned by the inter-relationship of their personal resources and gradual personal achievements which were influenced by encouraging external support from resettlement services providers and "caring" New Zealanders. Data collected during this study suggest that this dynamic process, in which personality and environmental factors interacted in a reciprocal and transactional relationship, appeared to be the condition sine qua non to negotiate and manage resettlement challenges. Indeed, participants frequently emphasised that if this interaction was not activated they faced greater difficulties in coming to terms with their new environment and in their adjustment to life in New Zealand, thus leading potentially to adverse mental health outcomes. Additionally, quantitative socio-economic data were collected so as to describe participants' characteristics. The study’s findings underline the complexity of adult refugees’ coping processes as well as some of the institutional constraints hindering their adaptation progress which can result in mental distress. These issues require responses which are beyond the health sector on its own. The implications of supporting the development of personal abilities so as to guide pragmatic support and encourage multisectoral collaboration are outlined and discussed. Areas for further research are highlighted as well as strategic issues which need to be addressed for improving the current situation of refugees resettled in New Zealand.

The surface of the weld pool contains information that can be exploited to emulate a skilled human welder to better understand and control the welding process. Of the existing techniques, the method that uses the pool's specular nature to an advantage and which is relatively more cost effective, and suitable for welding environment is the one that utilizes reflected images to reconstruct 3D weld pool surface by using structured light and image processing techniques. In this thesis, an improvement has been made to the existing method by changing welding direction to obtain a denser reflected dot-matrix pattern allowing more accurate surface measurement. Then, the reflected images, obtained by capturing the reflection of a structured laser dot-matrix pattern from the pool surface through a high-speed camera with a narrow band-pass filter, are processed by a newly proposed algorithm to find the position of each reflected dot relative to its actual projection dot. This is a complicated process owing to the increased density of dots and noise induced due to the harsh environment. The obtained correspondence map may later be used by a surface reconstruction algorithm to derive the three-dimensional pool surface based on the reflection law.

Rotor Position information is essential in the operation of the Switched Reluctance Motor (SRM) for properly controlling its phase currents. This thesis uses Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) technology to implement a method to estimate the SRMs rotor position using the inverse inductance value of the SRMs phases. The estimated rotor position is given as input to the Commutator circuit, also implemented in the FPGA, to determine when torque-producing currents should be input in the SRM phase windings. The Estimator and Commutator design is coded using Verilog HDL and is simulated using Xilinx tools. This circuit is implemented on a Xilinx Virtex XCV800 FPGA system. The experimentally generated output is validated by comparing it with simulation results from a Simulink model of the Estimator. The performance of the FPGA based SRM rotor position estimator in terms of calculation time is compared to a digital signal processor (DSP) implementation of the same position estimator algorithm. It is found that the FPGA rotor position Estimator with a 5MHz clock can update its rotor position estimate every 7s compared to an update time of 50s for a TMS320C6701-150 DSP implementation using a commercial DSP board. This is a greater than 7 to one reduction in the update time.

Tyrimo pagrindinis tikslas buvo išanalizuoti miesto ir kaimo vyresniojo mokyklinio amžiaus mergaičių ir berniukų pozicijas, vertinant jų socialinį elgesį. Šiam tikslui pasiekti buvo iškeltos dvi hipotezės, iš kurių abi pasitvirtino. Pagal anketinius rezultatus gavome, kad miesto vaikai yra labiau linkę nusižengti nei kaimo ir kad Kauno paaugliai labiau toleruoja netinkama elgesį nei provincijos vaikai. Apibendrintus rezultatus palyginę su koreliaciniai ryšiai tarp nagrinėjamų segmentų, pastebėjome, kad hipotezės dar kartą pasitvirtino ir sutapo su anketiniais duomenimis: miesto vaikai yra labiau linkę nusižengti nei kaimo; ir antra hipotezė pasitvirtino. / The main object of the study is to analyze the positions of urban and rural older school-age girls and boys in terms of their social behavior. To achieve this, there have been two hypotheses, one of which is rejected. According to the received questionnaire results, in urban schools children are more likely to misdemeanor than rural teens while Kaunas teenagers tolerate inappropriate behavior more than their peers in province. Comparison of the aggregated results with the correlation between the analyzed segments shows that the hypothesis is confirmed again and coincides with the questionnaire data that urban children are more likely to misdemeanor than rural; and the hypothesis that both urban and rural boys are more prone to misconduct than girls is not proved.

Background: High blood pressure is the leading risk factor for disease burden worldwide, contributing to more than 9 million deaths each year. Some research suggests that the prevalence of hypertension increases as individual/household socioeconomic position (SEP) decreases. The results of multilevel studies also suggest an association between poorer neighborhood socioeconomic circumstances and hypertension. Further, at both the individual/household- and area-level, high blood pressure may be more strongly related to SEP among women than men. Most research, however, has been restricted to urban populations. There has not been much research which examines risk factors for hypertension in rural Canada and, in particular, socioeconomic risk factors. Objectives: To examine the relationship between individual/household- and area- level socioeconomic circumstances, gender, and high blood pressure in a rural Saskatchewan population. Methods: There were two data sources for this study. Individual/household-level data were from the Saskatchewan Rural Health Study (SRHS). Analyses focused on adults (n=8,261) who completed the cross-sectional baseline questionnaire. Census subdivisions were used to link SRHS data with area-level data from the 2006 Canadian census. The dependent variable was self-reported diagnosed high blood pressure. The primary independent variables were gender and four measures of socioeconomic circumstances: household income, educational attainment, arealevel material deprivation, and area-level social deprivation. Principal components analysis was used to derive the area-level measures of deprivation. Multilevel logistic regression was the primary method of analysis. Results: Four main findings emerged: 1) low educational attainment was associated with a greater odds of high blood pressure; 2) the relationship between low household income and high blood pressure was more pronounced among women than men; 3) the relationship between higher area-level social deprivation and high blood pressure was more pronounced among men than women; and 4) area-level material deprivation was not associated with high blood pressure. iii Conclusion: Study results revealed complex relationships between SEP, gender, and high blood pressure in this rural Saskatchewan population. Future research applying a longitudinal design is needed to advance understanding of the relationship between SEP and incident hypertension in rural Canada, including the identification of vulnerable subgroups. Also needed is research examining the factors which explain (i.e. mediate) associations between SEP and hypertension in rural settings, particularly at the area-level.

This thesis investigates the control of motion for a general class of vehicles that rotate and translate in three-space, and are propelled by a thrust vector which has fixed direction in body frame. The thesis addresses the problems of path following and position control. For path following, a feedback linearization controller is presented that makes the vehicle follow an arbitrary closed curve while simultaneously allowing the designer to specify the velocity profile of the vehicle on the path and its heading. For position control, a two-stage approach is presented that decouples position control from attitude control, allowing for a modular design and yielding almost global asymptotic stability of any desired hovering equilibrium. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified both in simulation and experimentally by means of a hardware-in-the-loop setup emulating a co-axial helicopter.

This thesis deals with the design and implementation of a visually guided robotic assembly system. Stereo imaging, three dimensional location extraction and object recognition will be the features of this system. This thesis study considers a system utilizing an eye-in-hand configuration. The system involves a stereo rig mounted on the end effector of a six-DOF ABB IRB-2000 industrial robot. The robot is controlled by a vision system, which uses open-loop control principles. The goal of the system is to assemble basic geometric primitives into their respective templates. Recognition

The assessment of proprioception in contemporary clinical practice usually involves having the patients with eyes closed attempt to identify passively held test positions using verbal descriptions or limb matching responses. It is equally common for the examiner to estimate the accuracy of these responses without the aid of a measuring instrument. Since these uninstrumented assessments are unlikely to allow adequate identification or quantification of a patient’s proprioceptive deficits, the aim of this study was to develop and validate an improved method for the clinical assessment of joint position sense. The two main types of assessment investigated were: (1) replication of joint positions using limb matching responses, during which the test and response positions were measured using computer-aided or manual digitisation of videotape images, and (2) joint position sense assessments where rating scales were used to define either the test or response positions. (For complete abstract open document)

One of the most challenging tasks for augmented reality systems is that of position and attitude determination in outdoor unprepared environments. Augmented reality, a technology that overlays digital information with views of the real world, requires accurate and precise position and attitude determination to operate effectively. For small (often indoor) areas, careful preparation of the environment can allow for augmented reality systems to work successfully. In large outdoor environments, however, such preparation is often impractical, time-consuming and costly. This thesis aims to investigate the development of a position and attitude determination component for augmented reality systems capable of operation in outdoor unprepared environments. The hypothesis tested in this investigation is that the integration of Global Positioning System (GPS), Dead Reckoning (DR) and map matching techniques enables the continuous and accurate real-time visual alignment of three-dimensional data with objects in the perspective view of a user operating in outdoor unprepared environments.

Thesis (M.Sc.)--University of Western Australia, 2006.