Faced with a turbulent higher education environment senior management teams in universities seek to secure the future of their university by accessing as much information about the environment as possible, often through networks. Pro-Vice Chancellors (PVCs) are members of these teams, normally with significant responsibility for activities that are integral to the university, but very little is known about their role and the importance that connections to others might play in it. Taking a social network perspective, this thesis investigates this gap using a two stage research design. First an electronically distributed questionnaire was used to determine the connectivity between PVCs either with responsibility for research or with responsibility for teaching from the original 16 UK universities of the 1994 Group. Secondly, semistructured interviews were conducted with eight PVCs from four of these universities, to examine similarities and differences in the roles of different PVCs and the importance of connectivity for them. Network maps showed that research PVCs were cohesively linked; most were connected to at least two others, and often to many more. Conversely, PVCs with responsibility for teaching were almost wholly unconnected. Connections to other PVCs served three purposes. Occasionally they were important for personal development, otherwise they either enabled PVCs to perform her/his duties by providing information, or enhanced the performance of the university by allowing access to additional resources. It is concluded that PVCs play a boundary spanning role both internally and externally to the University. Moreover, enduring connections to other PVCs formed where opportunities existed to pursue additional resources collaboratively or when it was necessary to lobby government to protect the existing resource base from others. It was argued that these circumstances commonly occurred in the research environment but not in the teaching environment and so the observed pattern of connectivity amongst PVCs was explained.

Breast cancer is the most common cancer in the UK and Basal-like breast cancer (a highly aggressive subtype) accounts for approximately 8-22% of all cases depending on ethnicity. Unlike most human malignancies and indeed other PAM50 breast cancer subtypes, the vast majority of Basal-like tumours are positive for wild type p16. This p16 signature is associated with a particularly poor prognosis and p16-positive Basal-like breast cancer remains the most clinically challenging subtype and is the focus of this project. Pro-senescence therapies are gaining momentum as attractive strategies for the treatment of those breast cancers with current unmet clinical need. To identify targets for pro-senescence therapy in p16-positive Basal-like breast cancer, a genome‐wide siRNA screen and two subsequent validation screens using two p16-positive cancer cell lines were performed. Screening revealed 20 siRNAs that induced senescence within both cancer cell lines. Strikingly, 11 of these 20 siRNAs targeted ribosomal proteins, implicating disrupted ribosomal biosynthesis in senescence activation in p16-positive Basal-like breast cancer. Importantly, subsequent experiments in normal human mammary epithelial cells established that specific ribosomal protein knockdown is well tolerated by normal cells. Analysis of the METABRIC data set showed a high degree of ribosomal dysregulation in Basal-like tumours and revealed that all 11 ribosomal hits identified were frequently overexpressed in p16-positive Basal-like breast cancers. Kaplan Meier analysis confirmed that elevated expression of six of the 11 ribosomal proteins correlates with a reduced overall survival in these women, further supporting a role for these proteins as drivers of disease. These six ribosomal hits, associated with the poorest patient survival, were prioritised for further validation. Senescence induction was found to be highly stable, and associated with dramatic changes to nucleolar morphology, reminiscent of the nucleolar signature observed upon premature senescence induction in normal human mammary epithelial cells. In addition, siRNA rescue experiments indicated that senescence initiation is dependent on p16 and p21 expression and is accompanied by p16 nuclear translocation and p21 degradation. Further, ribosomal protein silencing in MDA-MB-231 cells (p16-null Basal-like breast cancer cell line) resulted in a 'death-like' phenotype, partially dependent on p21 expression suggesting that, within a cancer context, ribosomal protein silencing may induce a differential response depending on the status of p16. In conclusion, it is proposed that these six ribosomal candidates may form the basis of a novel pro-senescence therapy for p16-positive Basal-like breast cancer. They may also represent novel prognostic biomarkers for this disease subset and may help to improve disease stratification and future directed personalised therapies.

The purpose of this thesis is to gain a better understanding of how elderly people seek and use information in everyday situations. A further aim is to suggest ways for the library to offer more services specifically tailored for pensioners. This is an important topic as pensioners are a rapidly growing group of library users. We conducted qualitative interviews with four elderly people concerning their information needs in everyday life, and discovered that they rarely use the library, preferring instead to get their information from various internet sites and their pensioners’ organisation. The interviews were analysed with the help of Anderson and Skot-Hansen’s model of library use. We suggest that libraries work more closely with pensioners’ organisations, thus allowing elderly people more options for information seeking, as well as greater access to library services and resources.

Thermal performance of an insulation material is influenced by the in-service temperature condition. Unlike most other insulation materials, thermal resistance (R-value) of polyisocyanurate (polyiso) foam insulation with ‘captive blowing agent’ varies non-linearly with temperature. Building designers consider constant R-value of different insulating materials for building design and energy calculations, and hygrothermal simulation software packages, such as WUFI, consider linear temperature dependent R-value profiles, even for polyiso. However, neither the linear temperature dependent thermal resistance nor the constant thermal resistance value of polyiso represents the actual thermal performance of the building envelope. This thesis aims to quantify the impact of in-service boundary temperature conditions in Canadian climates on the thermal resistance of polyiso foam insulation board used in EPDM and PVC roof constructions. Hygrothermal simulations were performed using WUFI® Pro, which considers real climate data and hygrothermal properties of constituent roof components for evaluating moisture and temperature conditions in roof constructions. Based on heating degree days (HDD), ten different cities were selected between climate Zone 4 (HDD<3000) to Zone 8 (HDD≥7000). The thermal resistance measurements were conducted using heat flow meter apparatus on four polyiso insulation boards (two new and two aged) of different sizes [thickness - new: 1inch (25mm) and 2 inch (51mm); aged: 2 inch (51mm) and 3 inch (76mm)] at five mean temperatures -4°C (25°F), 4.5°C (40°F), 10°C (50°F), 24°C (75°F), 43°C (110°F) and at a temperature differential of 28°C (50°F). The measured thermal resistance data of the four samples at different mean temperatures were normalized with calculated thermal resistance of each sample at 22°C (72°F). The normalized R-value variation was calculated using in-service boundary temperature conditions determined from hygrothermal simulations and considering linearly varied thermal resistance with temperature, for the selected ten Canadian cities. / Graduate

Teoretická část se zaobírá pojmami jako hodnota pro zákazníka, komerčná úspěšnost ve vztahu k hodnotě pro zákazníka. Pojednává se taky o teorii funkce a funkčního přístupu. Jsou uvedeny různé metody stanovení hodnoty významu funkcí, metody stanovení stupně splnění funkcí a metody stanovení nákladů na tyto funkce. V praktické části se zjišťuje závislost mezi velikostí objemu prodejú vybaných matrací Sultan společnosti IKEA na ukazateli hodnoty pro zákazníka.

V diplomové práci na téma: Srovnávání produktů hodnotovým přístupem se autorka pokusila o výpočet ukazatele hodnoty pro zákazníka u šesti osobních automobilů třídy "malé vozy". V další části provedla analýzy a komentáře k výsledným hodnotám ukazatelů. V diplomové práci byly použity teorie hodnotového managementu a řada statistických metod.

This dissertation explores women's activism in the anti-abortion movement in the United States, from the 1960s through the close of the twentieth century. I study the transformation of the movement, from its origins in the Catholic Church in the 1960s, to the influx of evangelical Christians into the movement in the early 1980s. My primary sources include organizational records, personal papers, newspapers, legal documents, and oral histories. I analyze women's roles within the movement and the religious contexts that influenced their ideology and informed their choice of tactics. Anti-abortion activism provided a forum for many religiously conservative women to engage in public debates, shape public policy, and protest publicly. First, I examine the relationships between women who established national anti-abortion organizations with those women who participated in grassroots activism. I suggest that evangelical Protestant women were more likely to hold leadership positions in the mainstream movement because most leaders in the evangelical grassroots wing of the movement enforced a patriarchal organizational structure. On the other hand, progressive Catholic women had considerably more influence in the grassroots organizations they formed apart from the Roman Catholic Church. Second, I address how women responded to the rise of the New Right and the subsequent influx of evangelical Christians into the movement. I trace the history of violence in the history and suggest that women had prepared the movement to accept the radicalism of evangelical Christians by the 1980s. By focusing on women, I seek to reveal the contradictions between religiously conservative ideas about proper gender roles that many women in the movement espoused and the actual work they performed as activists.

The COVID-19 pandemic has challenged fast fashion to circular products to prevent excessive overstock in responding to consumers' shift toward less consumption. These shifts are worth studying as consumers are willing to partake in pro-environmental behaviors, leading to a circular business model for fast fashion. This study explores how sustainable knowledge and consumer goals toward circularity can influence behavior toward circular consumption based on the goal framing theory. An online survey employing the Prolific survey platform was conducted with 300 fast-fashion consumer panels. The quantitative approach (ANOVA, cluster, factor, multiple regressions analyses) supported that consumers' framed-goals toward circularity significantly influence their intention to purchase fast fashion products. Fast-fashion consumers have prioritized reliable communication and pro-environmental goals to respectfully purchase circular products and 5Rs behaviors. They perceived circular economy and environmental knowledge as deciding factors in their pursuits of circularity. It corresponds to the benefits of lucrative circular business applications for fast fashion.

<p>This report is the result of a thesis as been implemented during the spring term 2009 at</p><p>the University of Gävle.</p><p>The company Bruks produces mobile chippers which are used for chipping logging</p><p>slash, roundwood and parts of trees. The chipper is powered by a separate diesel engine</p><p>and the chipper can be assembled on trucks, trailers or some other carrier vehicles.</p><p>When the chip has passed the chipper drum, the chip is collected in an integrated bin</p><p>which is mounted on the vehicles frame with dumping yokes. When these dumping</p><p>yokes were designed they were probably created with large material dimensions. The</p><p>aim with the degree project is hence to study the strengths of materials and, if possible,</p><p>to suggest an arrangement that can decrease the total weight on the dumping yoke on</p><p>Bruks´ mobile chippers 805 CT.</p><p>The CAD-program Pro/ENGINEER was used during the project for outlining the 2Ddrawings,</p><p>as distributed of constructors on Bruks, to solid 3D-parts. The three-dimensional</p><p>assembly from Pro/ENGINEER was transferred to Pro/MECHANICA. The construction is</p><p>complex and contains many components, and therefore the model has been divided into two</p><p>different parts, the external and the internal dumping yoke.</p><p>The conclusion of the degree project is that the product generally is not over dimensioned.</p><p>However there are many options for optimizing, mainly on the external dumping yokes.</p>

Purpose. To investigate the validity of the Sense Wear Pro Armband (SWA) to measure energy expenditure (EE) in healthy participants using wheelchair ergometry as an exercise modality. Method. Minute by minute EE was measured simultaneously using the SWA and indirect calorimetry(IC) during three different wheeling speeds including self-selected speed (0.81 m/s), moderate speed (1.11 m/s), and fast speed (1.73 m/s). Results. Twenty healthy volunteers (age = 34.0 (5.8) years)participated. The intraclass correlation coefficients (ICCs) were 0.50 (p=0.010), 0.59 (p=0.003), and 0.68 (p=0.000) for the self-selected speed, moderate speed, and fast speed wheeling, respectively. The SWA overestimated EE 57.8%, 57.4 %, and 63.7% for self-selected speed, moderate speed, and fast speed, respectively. Conclusions. The SWA failed to provide an accurate estimate of EE as measured by indirect calorimetry for wheelchair ergometry exercise in healthy subjects. The SWA overestimated EE for all exercise intensities. / REHABILITATION SCIENCE-PHYSICAL THERAPY