Magister Scientiae - MSc (Physiotherapy) / Across the world, physical inactivity was found to be associated with cardiovascular and chronic diseases of lifestyle which often leads to an increased rate of various physical disabilities and premature death. To combat these high incidences of chronic diseases of lifestyle, WHO strongly encourages people to become physically active on a daily basis to reduce the risk of premature death. Running has thus become the preferred choice of physical activity by thousands of people to help improve their overall health and wellbeing. Apart from the health benefits&nbsp; that running provides, it can also predispose the runner to potential injury especially when runners follow an inappropriate training programme and have inadequate knowledge about factors causing injury. Therefore, baseline data about the prevalence, incidence of injury and the identification of the aetiological factors associated with running injuries are needed to develop and implement preventative programmes to allow runners to optimally perform in training and races without injury. In South Africa, there is limited research available on the incidence of injury in runners yet there is an annual increase in participation in races such as Two Oceans and Comrades marathon which could lead to an increase in the number of running injuries.Thus, the purpose of this study was to determine the incidence of injuries and identify the various risk factors that are associated with injuries in road runners at a local athletic club. Methods: A prospective cohort study design over a 16 week period using quantitative research methods was used. A sample of 50 runners had consented to participate in the study. The participants had to complete a self-administered questionnaire and clinical measurements of BMI, Q-angle, leglength, muscle strength of lower leg and ROM of hip and knee were recorded. The participants had to complete an injury report form to record any new injuries sustained over the 16 week period of the study. Statistical Package for Social Sciences (SPSS) version 18 and software SAS v9 (SAS Institute Inc., Cary, NC, USA) was used for data capturing and analysis. Descriptive and inferential statistics were done to summarize the data and was expressed as frequencies, percentages, means and standard deviations. Injury prevalence and cumulative incidence was calculated as a proportion rate along with 95% confidence interval. The Poisson regression model was used to analyse the association between running injury and the independent variables of interest such as demographics, anthropometric measurements, training methods, running experience and previous injury. The alpha level was set as p< 0.05. Results: The study found that the majority (92%) of the participants (n=46) sustained running injuries in the past prior to the study. A total of 16 participants sustained a number of 50 new injuries over the 16 week study period. Thus the prevalence rate of injuries was 32%. The incidence rate of injuries for this study was 0.67 per 1000km run at a 95% confidence interval of 0.41, 1.08. Furthermore, the most common location of new injuries reported were the calf (20%) and the second most common location was the knee (18%). PFPS was the most common type of knee injury diagnosed, followed by lumbar joint sprain. The results showed that none of the identified factors (running distance, stretching, age, Q-angle, BMI, running experience, leg-length discrepancy and previous running injuries) were directly associated with running injuries. However, a marginal significance was found for running distance (p = 0.08) and leg length discrepancy (p = 0.06). Conclusions: The study found a high prevalence and incidence rate of injury thus the need for preventative programmes have been highlighted. There was no statistical significance found between the identified factors and risk of injury however, there was clinical relevance found between factors identified. One major limitation was the small sample of participants and the short duration of study period. Thus, future research is needed to further determine possible factors associated with running injuries over a longer period and including a larger sample. The results of the study will be made available to all the stakeholders (runners, coaches and medical team) to implement in athletic club. / South Africa

Magister Scientiae Dentium - MSc(Dent) / BACKGROUND: The application of dental sealants is a recommended procedure to prevent and control dental caries. However, despite strong evidence for the safety and effectiveness of dental sealants, their use still remains low, especially among children from lower socioeconomic communities. The World Health Organization (WHO), Centres for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) and the Association of State and Territorial Dental Directors (ASTDD) strongly endorse the implementation of school based dental sealant programmes as a community-based preventive strategy to increase sealant use and reduce dental caries. However, in the WHO African Region, oral health is seen as a very low priority and this is compounded by limited technical and managerial resources. The availability of human resources and equipment are crucial for the successful placement of dental sealants. A gap in the research literature was identified for determining the effectiveness of fissure sealants placed under field conditions. AIM: To evaluate the caries preventive effect as well as retention status of a resin-based fissure sealant that was placed under field conditions as part of a school based sealant programme. METHODOLOGY: A cross-sectional comparative study was conducted at two primary schools in close proximity of each other in the same low socio-economic area in Beaufort West, South Africa. The study population consisted of grade two children between the ages of 7-9 years who had fully erupted first permanent molar teeth. The case group consisted of 100 learners who received dental sealants on caries-free first permanent molar teeth 12 months earlier. The control group consisted of a random selection of the same number of learners from the adjacent school. Dental caries on the occlusal surfaces of the first permanent molar teeth was detected by making use of the decayed (D) portion of the decayed, missing and filled tooth (DMFT) score, while a separate diagnosis distinguished between cavitated and non-cavitated lesions. Sealant retention was determined by a calibrated examiner who was not involved in the placement of the sealants. RESULTS: The response rate of the study was 80.0% (n=100) and 78.9% (n=356) of the fissure sealants that were originally placed were evaluated. When the sealants were placed in 2013, 52.0% of the children were female and at the 12 month follow-up, 51.3% were female. The average age of the female children at follow-up was 8 years and 4 months (99.9 months) and 8 years and 5 months (101.8 months) for the males. The standard deviation of the gender profiles differed by 1 month only and implies an equal distribution of age between female and male children throughout the study. Just less than ten per cent (7.8%) of the sealants were fully intact at the 12 month follow-up examination and 91% were totally lost, which is a higher sealant loss rate than what is generally reported on in the literature. Of the 7.8% fully retained sealants, a statistically significant proportion (p=0.044) were found on the mandibular molar teeth. The caries incidence rate in the sealed group was 7.1% versus 9.1% in the control group. Relative risk (RR) calculations was slightly lower for the sealed (RR=0.79) than the unsealed (RR=1.02) teeth. CONCLUSION: The study showed a 2% lower caries prevalence rate on the occlusal surfaces of the sealed versus the unsealed teeth. However, this does not represent a statistically significant finding (P=0.39). The study also showed a low retention rate for the resin-based sealants placed under field conditions (12 month retention rate of 7.8%). The results from this study has therefore shown that resin-based fissure sealants placed on grade 1 learners under field conditions appear to be not ideal in preventing the onset of dental caries on the occlusal surfaces of the first permanent molar teeth.

Notre thèse souhaite analyser le rôle et la place du média radiophonique dans la société en étudiant la relation établie entre une station et son auditoire dans le cadre des émissions interactives, omniprésentes sur la bande FM. Le cas des émissions service, qui affichent une intention d’aide et de conseil à l’auditeur dans sa vie quotidienne, révèlent et reflètent pour nous les nouvelles orientations dans la pratique et les usages des médias. Mais, en ce cas, les stations de radios sont-elles actrices ou outils de médiation ? Les publics sont-ils instrumentalisés ou se saisissent-ils de ces espaces médiatiques de manières autonomes ? En prenant en compte l’évolution en cours du média radiophonique, le développement, l’intrusion ou l’imbrication des nouvelles technologies avec des formes médiatiques plus traditionnelles, nous souhaitons mettre en lumière les relations de corrélation ou de causalité, voire de concomitance qui relient les évolutions en cours des uns et des autres, et leurs accommodations par les publics. Pour ce faire, notre terrain de recherche se focalise plus particulièrement sur l’émission de Menie Grégoire sur RTL (de 1967 à 1981), sur « Ça peut vous arriver » sur RTL et sur « Lahaie, l’amour et vous » sur RMC, encore diffusées de nos jours. / The purpose of our doctoral thesis is to analyze radio’s roles in society, observing connections between radio stations and their audience within the context of phone-in programs which are omnipresent on air. Service broadcasts, meanwhile intending to offer help and advice in listener’s day-to-day problems, reveal new ways of using this media. Considering this, are radio stations passive or active devices? Is the audience used by these broadcasters or do they seize it autonomously? By studying the actual evolution of radio, throughout its new forms of technologies as in its most traditional uses, we seek to highlight the causual, comparison and concomitance links among broadcasts, as well as listerner’s reactions to it. In order to do that, our work has focused on Menie Grégoire’s broadcast on RTL from 1967 to 1981, on “Ça peut vous arriver” on RTL, and on “Lahaie, l’amour et vous” on RMC, still emitted nowadays.

Technology-enhanced learning environments such as blended learning and e-learning are utilised increasingly in higher education institutions with expectations of an increase in output rates and retention rates. As the demand for technology-enhanced e-learning courses increases, the pressure on lecturing staff to rise to the challenge also increases. In recent years great advances and improvements in the fields of learning and instruction were envisaged as a consequence of the application of new educational technologies. Although some of these promises have materialised it would seem that relatively few lecturers have mastered the skills and knowledge needed to integrate technology successfully into the practice of teaching and learning. The role of emotional intelligence is a significant construct which has not been adequately researched in terms of the mastering of new technologies in the e-learning and blended learning environments. The purpose of the study is to explore and describe linkages between emotional intelligence and the ability to cope with mastering new educational technologies. It is presumed that this study may contribute towards a deeper understanding of emotional intelligence as a moderator of work stress and of the stress encountered in mastering new educational technologies with subsequent coping strategies. With its contribution to this emergent body of knowledge, the significance of the study lay in the clarification of the role of emotional intelligence in mastering new educational technologies. The case study is based on the 2004 participants in the Partners@Work programme at the Department of Telematic Education at the Tshwane University of Technology. The unit of analysis provided rich and detailed data for this study. A mixed methods approach, that is, the use of both qualitative and quantitative data, assisted in crystallising the data in order to provide insight into the way participants coped with the mastering of new educational technologies. Findings from this study suggest that a number of factors influence coping strategies when attempting to master new technologies, including self-efficacy beliefs, social networking structures as a resource, the use of positive emotions, the role of the facilitator and the emotional intelligence abilities associated with coping competencies. While a number of linkages between emotional intelligence and coping strategies could be identified, the interdependency of coping strategies and emotional intelligence remains elusive. The study recommends that institutions should create a supportive organisational climate for e-learning as a support for face-to face training programmes in skills development. The provision of programme facilitators trained in coaching participants, focusing on the accomplishment of self-directed learning, assisting participants in the attainment of goals, modelling positive emotive skills, and encouraging the practice of new skills may help to realise the promise of blended learning. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2008. / Curriculum Studies / unrestricted

The aim of this study was to explore and describe HIV and AIDS workplace programmes and policies (WPPs) in the tourism industry of Nelson Mandela Bay Municipality (NMBM) in South Africa. This study adopted a quantitative and qualitative approach, in other words, a mixed approach. The reason for using more than one method of inquiry was to obtain a deeper understanding of the tourism industry of NMBM in terms of examined behaviour, and of the meaning of occurrences in the industry. To gather qualitative data concerning HIV and AIDS programmes, key informant stakeholders in the tourism industry at global, national, provincial, and local levels were identified to conduct in-depth interviews. These respondents were selected using the non-probability sampling method of quota sampling. This is a type of stratified sampling in which the selection of the strata within the sample is not random, but rather is typically left to the discretion of the interviewer (Wienclaw, 2015). One respondent for each level of the industry was selected, resulting in four key informant stakeholders participating in the qualitative research component of this study. The initial criterion for participation in the quantitative portion for this study was that tourism businesses based in NMBM must be able to produce robust evidence of HIV and AIDS WPPs. The researcher selected the probability sampling method of stratified random sampling with proportional allocation. This technique considers the known characteristics of the population (Wienclaw, 2015). A database of tourism businesses was obtained from the local tourism organisation, who are members of the governing body for local tourism. This database was cleaned, to eliminate any data that did not meet the participation criterion for the study. Ten per cent of the total number of businesses in the cleaned database were sampled. The simplest approach to sampling is to merely randomly select from the population by, for example, having a computer choose names at random from a list, or by selecting names from a hat (Wienclaw, 2015). Therefore, every fifth business listed on the sampled database was selected to participate. Unfortunately, surveys tend to have notoriously low return rates, and people are frequently reluctant to give out information over the phone. This was also the case for most of the tourism businesses in the sample. When emailed or telephoned, they refused to participate for various reasons. Some stated that HIV does not affect their business; others reported that their businesses were too small and therefore they could not afford to implement these programmes. Some businesses were hearing about the WPP for the very first time, while several others responded with simple disinterest in participating. The findings of the study are that although tourism is viewed as an important industry that contributes to the economy, tourism businesses do not include any intervention programmes with which to respond to the threat of HIV and AIDS to their businesses. Additionally, there is neither leadership nor support from any level of the tourism industry, to create a conducive environment for the adoption of HIV and AIDS WPPs by tourism businesses. The primary reason for the lack of uptake of these programmes is ignorance across cascading levels of the tourism industry, which includes tourism businesses. Additionally, a number of perceived barriers, such as size of business, are cited as the reasons why tourism workplaces in the NMBM fail to participate in HIV and AIDS WPPs. It is anticipated that this study will create further awareness of HIV and AIDS WPPs, in an industry that seems to have limited knowledge about such programmes. This study will also provide guidance regarding the requirements to implement effective HIV and AIDS WPPs.

Both the NHS and Public Health are keen to identify how best to manage long term health condition’s as a result from obesity and vice-versa. There is evidence to support the efficacy of psychological support in weight management programmes. This study explored the perceived importance of psychological support within weight management services; perspectives of both client and healthcare practitioners, in view of considering the implications for the role of a counselling psychologist. There were nine interviews conducted with five healthcare practitioners and four clients. The professionals’ disciplines included: physiologist, dietician, health psychologist, programme manager, and a medical consultant. Of the four patients, two had accessed psychology services as part of their weight management programme and two had not. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. Five overarching themes were identified. Tension (pivotal central theme) this connected to: Lifestyle; Quality of Life (QoL); Service Delivery Model; and Professional and Personal beliefs and values. The findings highlighted that perceived importance of psychological support was influenced by an individuals’ background and experiences by both groups. The implications for the role of a counselling psychologist was to provide training to health professionals as well as raising clients’ awareness of the role of counselling and psychological support within such programmes. Further research is needed to understand better the potential of psychological support within weight management services to help contain UK obesity.

Tato diplomová práce podává ucelený přehled o česko-polské přeshraniční spolupráci na příkladu Euroregionu Glacensis. Součástí práce je nezbytné teoretické vymezení euroregionů a dalších přeshraničních struktur, vymezení jejich cílů a principů fungování, legislativní úprava a institucionální zabezpečení. Cílem práce je potvrdit význam a přínos přeshraniční spolupráce v procesu evropské integrace a zhodnotit do jaké míry tyto aktivity naplňují cíle vymezené ve strategii rozvoje ERG. Použitím metody komparace jsou zhodnoceny a srovnány programy, jejichž podpora je pro realizaci těchto rozvojových aktivit nezbytná. Pozornost je věnována předvstupním fondům Phare CREDO a Phare CBC, Iniciativě Společenství INTERREG IIIA a Novému operačnímu programu. Prostřednictvím dotazníkového šetření je zhodnocena informovanost studentů o existenci a aktivitách ERG. Výsledky šetření ukazují rovněž na vztah respondentů k obcím, ve kterých žijí a na jejich vztah k Polské republice.

First chapter contains the characterictic of programming period 2007 - 2013, main objectives and instruments of regional policy EU. There is also description of the situation concerning European Funds in the Czech Republic including main strategic documents and operational programmes. Second chapter deals with particular programmes that include subvention of projects in tourist trade in programming period 2007 - 2013. For illustration there are also introduced some examples of successfully realized projects. Last chapter provides an overview of using financial resources from the Structural Funds in the Czech Republic both in the previous programming period 2004 - 2006 and in the new period 2007 - 2013.

The theoretical part of diploma thesis "Consumer loyalty - competitive advantage of travel agencies" is focused on specification of tourism product and the main differences in goods and services. This part also deals with principles of loyalty and motivation programmes and includes marketing view of particular forms of sales promotions. The practical part is based on analysis of loyalty and motivation programmes aplicated by travel agencies in the market of the Czech republic during the period under consideration (june 2007 - september 2008). Practical part is also focused on marketing research concentrated on relation between consumers and travel agencies, their knowledge of existing loyalty and motivation programmes and demonstration of theirs effectivity.

Suivant la libéralisation du marché aérien européen, les transporteurs aériens se sont déployésdans un environnement concurrentiel nouveau. Face à l’émergence des compagnies low cost,les compagnies traditionnelles ont renforcé leurs stratégies de consolidation (alliances etfusions) autour de leur hubs afin de connecter leurs réseaux et de générer des économiesd’échelle et de densité. Ces regroupements peuvent créer et renforcer les barrières à l’entréesur certains marchés et sur les principaux aéroports saturés. De plus, certaines pratiques ontcherché à empêcher l’arrivée de ces nouveaux entrants par des comportements restreignant laconcurrence (cartels, prédation, programmes de fidélisation discriminatoires, restrictionsverticales).Depuis 2004, la régulation du transport aérien s’est renforcée notamment à travers l’adoptiondes procédures antitrust communes et l’extension du contrôle aux alliances extraeuropéennes.La Commission a développé une approche globale au regard de la définition desmarchés, de l’évaluation des effets concurrentiels et a cherché à renforcer l’efficacité desmesures correctives en imposant la libération des créneaux horaires au profit des concurrents.Pour autant, entre la nécessité de promouvoir l’apparition de nouveaux entrants, la sauvegardedes intérêts du consommateur et la création nécessaire de « champions européens », lapolitique de régulation européenne est source de complexité et d’insécurité juridique pour laplupart des compagnies aériennes. / Following the liberalisation of the EU aviation market, airlines have competed in achallenging environment. Facing the emergence of low cost carriers, traditional carriersstrengthened their consolidation strategies (mergers and alliances), connecting hubs andnetworks in order to generate economies of scale and density. This consolidation can createand reinforce barriers to entry in certain routes and in major congested airports. In addition,some practices have sought to prevent the arrival of these new entrants by adoptinganticompetitive practices (cartels, predation, discriminatory loyalty programs and verticalrestraints).Since the adoption of new antitrust procedures (2004), the European Commission extendedits control of extra-European alliances and sought to implement a more efficient policy. TheCommission’s general approach is to identify the relevant markets, to assess the likely effectson competition and to propose remedies such as the release of slots. However, between theneed to promote the emergence of new entrants, the willingness to safeguard consumerinterests and the necessity to create real "european champions", the Commission’s policyremains an increasing source of complexity and legal uncertainty for most airlines.