Thesis (M. S.)--Civil and Environmental Engineering, Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008. / Committee Chair: Aral, Mustafa; Committee Member: Guan, Jiabao; Committee Member: Pavlostathis, Spyros; Committee Member: Uzer, Turgay; Committee Member: Yiacoumi, Sotira.

A qualidade dos serviços desenvolvidos por uma instituição de saúde depende muito da competência técnica e da habilidade de interação e comunicação de seus trabalhadores para com o usuário. As intervenções técnicas realizadas pela equipe de enfermagem requerem avaliações permanentes face aos riscos que comportam. Este estudo, observacional e seccional, analisou a qualidade e o tempo de execução dos procedimentos, banho e curativo, realizados pela equipe de enfermagem em pacientes internados na unidade médico-cirúrgica de um Hospital Universitário no estado do Paraná, tomando por referência o grau de dependência assistencial desta clientela. A população alvo foi constituída dos seguintes procedimentos: banho, em três tipologias (aspersão, aspersão com auxílio de cadeira de banho e banho no leito) e curativos executados em pacientes classificados segundo grau de dependência da assistência de enfermagem (I, II, III e IV). A amostragem para ambos os procedimentos foi por conveniência. Os dados foram coletados por meio de observação direta com a utilização de um instrumento tipo check list (lista de verificação). A qualidade dos procedimentos foi analisada com base no Índice de Positividade (IP) para cada item do instrumento e no escore de acertos, obtidos em cada procedimento; o tempo de execução foi avaliado em minutos. A qualidade da execução do procedimento foi considerada satisfatória quando a mediana do IP e do escore mediano de acertos fosse ? 70%. Foram observados 258 banhos de aspersão (42,6% grau I, 42,6% grau II e 14,8% grau III); 98 de aspersão com auxílio de cadeira de banho (12,5% grau I, 26,5% grau II, 54,1% grau III e 7,1% grau IV) e 46 banhos no leito (4,3% grau I, 37% grau III e 58,7% grau IV). O IP superou 70% apenas no banho de aspersão com auxílio de cadeira de banho em pacientes classificados no grau IV e no banho no leito no grau I. Os itens mais comprometidos estão relacionados à orientação/comunicação/interação com o paciente, higiene oral, desinfecção concorrente do leito, inspeção das condições da pele e valorização das queixas do paciente. Os resultados obtidos nos scores medianos de acertos nas três tipologias de banho, nos quatro graus de dependência também evidenciaram baixa qualidade, uma vez que somente no banho de aspersão com auxílio de cadeira de banho, grau IV e banho no leito grau I, 50% dos procedimentos alcançaram scores de até 80% e 76,5% de acertos, respectivamente. No procedimento curativo dos 168 observados, 33,9% foram em pacientes de grau I, 38,7% de grau II, 19,6% de grau III e 7,8% de grau IV. Em todos os graus de dependência, alcançou-se o índice de positividade total recomendado (? 70%). Entretanto, itens como preparo adequado do ambiente, conferência do prazo de validade dos materiais, respeito aos princípios de assepsia e manutenção da seqüência lógica do procedimento mostram baixa positividade. Os scores medianos de acertos foram superiores a 70% em todos os graus de dependência, indicando que o procedimento atende um padrão de qualidade. Tanto nos banhos como nos curativos não foram observadas diferenças no tempo despendido entre os diferentes graus de dependência. / The quality of services offered by a health institution depends greatly on worker?s technical competence and interaction and communication abilities towards the client. Technical interventions performed by the nursing team require permanent evaluations of the risks involved. This observational and sectional study analyzed quality and time of execution of bathing and wound dressing procedures performed by the nursing team on hospitalized patients in a medical-surgical unit of a University Hospital in the State of Paraná, based on care dependency degrees of these clients. Target population was constituted by the following procedures: bathing, in three typologies (shower bath, shower bath with aid of a wheel chair and bed bath) and changing wound dressings on patients classified according to the nursing care dependency degree (I,II,III and IV). Convenience sampling was employed for both procedures. Data was collected through direct observation while using a check list instrument for documentation (verifying list). Procedure quality was analyzed based on the Positive Index (IP) for each item on the instrument and on the correct procedures score; execution time was evaluated in minutes. Quality of procedure execution was considered satisfactory when the IP median and the median correct procedure score was ? 70%. In this study 258 aspersion baths (42,6% degree I, 42,6& degree II and 14,8% degree III); 98 shower baths aided by wheel chair (12,5% degree I, 26,5% degree II, 54,1% degree III and 7,1% degree IV) and 46 bed baths (4,3% degree I, 37% degree III and 58,7% degree IV). The IP surpassed 70% only in the shower bath with aid of a wheel chair on patients classified as degree IV and on bed bath, degree I. The most frequently compromised items were related to orientation/communication/interaction with the patient, oral hygiene, bed disinfection, skin condition inspection and valuing patient complaints. Results obtained on the median of the correct procedures scores on the three bathing typologies, on the four dependency degrees also highlight low quality, because only in the shower bath with aid of a wheel chair, degree IV, and bed bath, degree I, 50% of the procedures reached 80% and 76,5% correct procedure scores, respectively. In the observed wound dressing procedures of the 168 patients, 33,9% were patients of degree I, 38,7% of degree II, 19,6% of degree III and 7,8% of degree IV. In all dependency degrees the recommended positivity index was reached (? 70%). Items such as adequate environment preparation, validity time frame checking, respect to aseptic principles and maintenance of procedure?s logical sequence, however, show low positivity. Medium scores were also superior to 70% in all dependency levels, indicating that the procedure meets a quality standard. It was not observed difference on time frame spent in the different dependency degrees in bathing and wound dressing procedures.

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Please read the abstract in the section 00front of this document / Dissertation (MSc)--University of Pretoria, 2007. / Geography, Geoinformatics and Meteorology / MSc / Unrestricted

Image and video quality evaluation is very important. In applications involving signal transmission, the Reduced- or No-Reference quality metrics are generally more practical than the Full-Reference metrics. Digital watermarking based quality evaluation emerges as a potential Reduced- or No-Reference quality metric, which estimates signal quality by assessing the degradation of the embedded watermark. Since the watermark contains a small amount of information compared to the cover signal, performing accurate signal quality evaluation is a challenging task. Meanwhile, the watermarking process causes signal quality loss. To address these problems, in this thesis, a framework for image and video quality evaluation is proposed based on semi-fragile and adaptive watermarking. In this framework, adaptive watermark embedding strength is assigned by examining the signal quality degradation characteristics. The "Ideal Mapping Curve" is experimentally generated to relate watermark degradation to signal degradation so that the watermark degradation can be used to estimate the quality of distorted signals. With the proposed framework, a quantization based scheme is first implemented in DWT domain. In this scheme, the adaptive watermark embedding strengths are optimized by iteratively testing the image degradation characteristics under JPEG compression. This iterative process provides high accuracy for quality evaluation. However, it results in relatively high computational complexity. As an improvement, a tree structure based scheme is proposed to assign adaptive watermark embedding strengths by pre-estimating the signal degradation characteristics, which greatly improves the computational efficiency. The SPIHT tree structure and HVS masking are used to guide the watermark embedding, which greatly reduces the signal quality loss caused by watermark embedding. Experimental results show that the tree structure based scheme can evaluate image and video quality with high accuracy in terms of PSNR, wPSNR, JND, SSIM and VIF under JPEG compression, JPEG2000 compression, Gaussian low-pass filtering, Gaussian noise distortion, H.264 compression and packet loss related distortion.

Estudos indicam que a utilização de aplicativos educacionais móveis vêm crescendo continuamente, possibilitando a alunos e professores maior flexibilidade e comodidade na execução de atividades e práticas educacionais. Embora várias instituições já tenham aderido à modalidade de aprendizagem móvel (m-learning), sua adoção ainda traz problemas e desafios organizacionais, culturais e tecnológicos. Um destes problemas consiste em como avaliar adequadamente a qualidade dos aplicativos educacionais desenvolvidos. De fato, os métodos existentes para avaliação da qualidade de software ainda são muito genéricos, não contemplando aspectos específicos aos contextos pedagógico e móvel. Nesse cenário, o presente trabalho apresenta o método MoLEva, desenvolvido para avaliar a qualidade de aplicativos educacionais móveis. O método tem como base a norma ISO/IEC 25000, sendo composto por: (i) modelo de qualidade; (ii) métricas; e (iii) critérios de julgamento. Para validar o método, foram realizados dois estudos de caso; o primeiro consistiu na aplicação do MoLEva para avaliar o aplicativo do ENEM; o segundo consistiu na aplicação do método para avaliação de aplicativos para o ensino de idiomas. A partir dos resultados obtidos, foi possível identificar problemas e pontos de melhoria nos aplicativos avaliados. Além disso, os estudos de caso conduzidos forneceram bons indicativos a respeito da viabilidade de uso do método MoLEva na avaliação de aplicativos educacionais móveis. / Studies indicate that the use of mobile learning applications has grown continuously, allowing students and teachers greater flexibility and convenience in the execution of educational activities and practices. Although several institutions have already adhered to the mobile learning (m-learning) modality, their adoption still brings organizational, cultural and technological problems and challenges. One of these problems is how to adequately evaluated the quality of the mobile learning applications developed. In fact, existing methods for evaluating software quality are still very generic, not considering aspects specific to the pedagogical and mobile contexts. In this scenario, the present work presents the MoLEva method, developed to evaluate the quality of mobile learning applications. The method is based on the ISO / IEC 25000 standard, being composed of: (i) quality model; (ii) metrics; and (iii) criteria of judgment. To validate the method, two case studies were performed; the first consisted of applying MoLEva to evaluate the ENEM application; the second consisted of applying the method for evaluating applications for language teaching. From the obtained results, it was possible to identify problems and improvement points in the evaluated applications. In addition, the case studies conducted provided good indications regarding the feasibility of using the MoLEva method in evaluating mobile learning applications.

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This thesis deals with the issue of influence of storage conditions on the quality of conventional fly ashes which are produced by combustion of lignite. These ashes were stockpiled for long time. A borehole for sampling was made in the fly ash stock-pile. Total depth of the borehole was 20 m. Samples of fly ashes taken from every single meter were analyzed and next mechanical properties and the volume stability of materials containing these fly ashes were tested. The quality of fly ashes especially with respect to the possibility to use them as components of pastes, mortars and concretes as pozzolanic admixture or fine filler was evaluated.

This study explores the consequences for a historically black university (HBU) of the South African state’s focus on routine and strategic quality evaluation within a policy framework that views higher education as a lever for social change and economic development. It analyses the changing nature of academic work and probes the motivations and understandings of institutional managers and academics in an attempt to explain their responses to policy requirements. The theory of the Evaluative State is employed to examine the nature and consequences of overzealous responsiveness by a historically black university in transition in South Africa. It suggests that the changing relationship between state and university is characterised by contradictions and ambivalence, a result of the interplay between a strong sense of loyalty to the state on the one hand and a recognition of the failure of the state to recognise and reward achievements valued by the HBU. This study suggests that state steering, through the use of output evaluation and efficiency-directed performance indicators, has resulted in failure to achieve central policy goals of development, equity and social justice. The study is guided by one main research question: How do academics in a historically black South African university in transition engage with and implement internal and external quality assurance processes and policies? The literature review reveals significant gaps in understanding the consequences of the rise of the Evaluative State in higher education. A major limitation has been a lack of focus on higher education systems in developing countries and on the consequences of imposing neo-liberal frameworks upon local realities which require redress to remedy historically constructed economic and social disadvantage. The descriptions of academics and institutional managers that emerge in this study highlight stark differences between the two groups in perceptions of and approaches to quality improvement and university work. Significantly, institutional history, context and mission emerge as strong factors shaping academics’ and managers’ responses to change, factors that have largely been disregarded by state policy which focuses more on output achievement than on input variables. / Thesis (PhD)--University of Pretoria, 2010. / Education Management and Policy Studies / unrestricted

Background. Secondary motion is a principle of animation, it is movement that occurs as a result of other movement, such as swinging hair or clothes. In 3D animation, such as in games, it is often simulated instead of animated manually. In game projects with time limitations, it can be interesting to know to what degree these simulations impact the visual quality in order to decide whether they should be prioritized. It is also interesting to know how the results of various methods compare to each other. To simulate in real-time means that physics simulations are running during gameplay. Baked animations on the other hand are simulations that have already been processed and saved as animation data, they are less dynamic but also less performance intensive. Objectives. The aim of this thesis is to evaluate the impact of three sets of animations by conducting a survey where each set is compared. The three sets are: animations that feature real-time simulations, baked simulations and ones without simulation. The goal is to acquire a metric from the comparisons that can give an insight to the visual quality impact of each method. Methods. Three animation sets were created. Then, a survey was conducted using a questionnaire that featured side by side video comparisons of the animation sets. The videos featured a stylized character running, walking, or jumping through an empty environment. Pairwise similarity judgements were done by asking the participants to rate each video compared to each other. The results from the questionnaire were analyzed using a method that is a part of the analytical hierarchy process. The data from each comparison was averaged, put into pairwise comparison matrices, and then used to calculate priority vectors. The level of consistency of the comparisons were also calculated. Results. The priority vectors show the ratios of how each animation set were preferred compared to each other. In the priority vector for all animations combined, the set without simulations ranked at twenty-four percent, the real-time set ranked at thirty-three percent and the baked set ranked the highest at forty-three percent. The comparisons were calculated to have a very high consistency, which strengthens the result. Conclusions. The results show the impact that adding simulated secondary motion has. The simulations appear to improve the visual quality, but the margin is not extreme. The calculated ratios could be used to argue for or against a game project’s prioritization of secondary motion simulations depending on the project’s time constraints and access to preexisting methods of simulation. It should be noted that the format of video comparisons did not showcase all the advantages of each method such as creation accessibility, technical performance or dynamicity. As such, it is uncertain how fair the comparisons of the baked and real-time simulations are in a more general sense. Nevertheless, the results are considered to give at least a partial insight into how these methods compare.