Background: Physical activity (PA) is an important component of a healthy pregnancy and has consistently been associated with improved weight management and a reduced risk of pregnancy complications. While the percentage of pregnant women meeting PA guidelines internationally is alarmingly low, no such data exists for the Canadian population. PA in pregnancy may also be a useful intervention for preventing and managing cardiometabolic dysfunction, but research in pregnancy is limited. Objectives: 1) To describe the PA and exercise habits of women in early pregnancy and assess the percentage of women meeting SOGC/CSEP guidelines for exercise in pregnancy; 2) To determine the association of PA with maternal cardiometabolic health in early pregnancy. Study Design: Maternal blood samples, and PA, dietary, and adiposity measures were collected from a subset of women in early pregnancy (12 – 17 wk gestation) upon enrollment in the Be Healthy in Pregnancy RCT. Fasted blood samples were analyzed for glucose, triglycerides, insulin, leptin, adiponectin and C-reactive protein (CRP). Self-reported and objectively measured PA were assessed using the PARmed-X for Pregnancy and an accelerometer. PA was quantified by three parameters: daily step count, energy expenditure (kcal/day) and meeting the SOGC/CSEP recommendations. Results: For the 198 participants of age 31 ± 4 years; BMI 25.4 ± 4.7kg/m2; at 13 ± 2 wk gestation (mean ± SD), 19.2% reported not exercising in early pregnancy. Approximately half of participants met the minimum SOGC/CSEP recommendation (15 min, 3x/wk), but only 14.2% met the preferred SOGC/CSEP recommendation (30 min, 4x/wk). Meeting the preferred recommendation was associated with lower CRP. Daily step count and energy expenditure (kcal/day) were not significantly associated with glucose, triglycerides, insulin, leptin, adiponectin or CRP. Percent body fat and a higher diet quality were associated with some of the cardiometabolic biomarkers. Conclusion: In a healthy pregnant cohort, while the majority had PA below recommendations, measured PA was not associated with most cardiometabolic biomarkers thus cardiometabolic risk in early pregnancy was low. / Thesis / Master of Science (MSc)

Målet med detta projekt var att optimera produktionslinjen för att maximera antalet färdigställda artiklar som produceras. Projektet påbörjades med en planering och en undersökning av de verktygen som skulle användas så som simulering, lean och information relaterat till produktionslinjen. Därefter modellerades den i simulerings-verktyget utifrån den faktainsamlingen som utfördes och simuleringsmetoden. När modellen var klar utfördes experimentella tester för att undersökningar hur specifika faktorer så som strategiskt placerade buffertar och antalet operatörer påverkade effektiviteten på produktionslinjens bearbetning. Utifrån resultaten av dessa tester bestäms en optimal nivå för faktorerna som skall användas i full factorial design testerna. Med dessa tester utförda kunde det noteras att ingen optimering kunde utföras på produktionslinjen då simuleringen uppnådde endast 72% när målet för produktionslinjen är 75%. Istället gavs andra strategiska rekommendationer på vad företaget kunde göra för att öka effektiviteten på produktionslinjen. Dessa rekommendationer inkluderar, en tillfällig buffert, vänta ut de tillfälliga stoppen, åtgärda avvikande processteg och minska kassationerna. / The goal of this project was to optimize the production line to maximize the number of completed items produced. The project started with a planning and research of the tools which will be used such as simulation, lean principles, and information related to the production line. Thereafter, it was modelled in the simulation tool based on the data collection that was carried out and the simulation method. Once the model was ready, experimental tests were conducted to investigate how specific factors, such as strategically placed buffers and the number of operators, affected the efficiency of the production line's processing. Based on the results of these tests, an optimal level for the factors to be used in the full factorial design tests was determined. With these tests performed, it was noted that no optimization could be carried out on the production line as the simulation achieved only 72% efficiency when the target for the production line is 75%. Instead, other strategic recommendations were provided on what the company could do to increase the efficiency of the production line. These recommendations include, a temporary buffer, waiting out temporary stoppages, addressing deviant process steps, and reducing rejections.

This master’s thesis has aimed to contribute and fill the gap in existing studies and research where there has been a lack of knowledge about the relationship between credit ratings and stock recommendations. The purpose of this study is to analyse whether credit ratings from credit rating agencies affect financial analysts’ recommendations, as well as the opposite, if financial analysts’ recommendations affect credit rating agencies' credit ratings. The thesis has used quantitative methods with both panel data regressions where credit rating has been the dependent variable, as well as logistic regressions where recommendation has been the dependent variable. The data set has been based on firms Moody’s has issued credit ratings to between the years 1994 and 2016. The thesis’ results show that both the credit ratings from credit rating agencies and recommendations from financial analysts do indeed affect each other. This concludes that the two-way mirror between credit ratings and recommendations does exist.

Bakgrund: Övervikt och fetma är ett växande hälsoproblem som medför ökad risk för följdsjukdomar och kan bidra till konsekvenser för reproduktiv hälsa. Svårigheter med att bli gravid och upprepade missfall kan leda till att kvinnor blir ofrivilligt barnlösa. Fler kvinnor söker sig till bariatriska enheter med förhoppning om att viktnedgång kan leda till föräldraskap. Tidigare forskning visar att det saknas kunskap och information om graviditet efter bariatrisk operation. Syfte: Att belysa kvinnors erfarenheter av graviditet efter bariatrisk operation. Metod: Kvalitativ undersökning med semistrukturerade intervjuer med tio kvinnor. Data har bearbetats med hjälp av kvalitativ innehållsanalys med induktiv ansats. Resultat: I resultatet framkom tre kategorier och sju subkategorier. Sammanfattningsvis beskrev kvinnorna ett behov av mer information och rekommendationer i samband med graviditet efter bariatrisk operation. Att barnmorskor har kunskap om eller vilja att ta reda på information om graviditet efter bariatrisk operation för att bemöta kvinnorna och frågor är en viktig del för goda relationer. Konklusion: Befintlig kunskap och rekommendationer i samband med graviditet efter bariatrisk operation behöver stärkas. Barnmorskor behöver mer utbildning inom området för att kunna bemöta ett växande behov. Det är önskvärt att ett fungerande samarbete mellan barnmorskor och bariatriska enheter initieras. / Background: Overweight and obesity is a growing health problem that entails an increased risk of sequelae and can contribute to consequences for reproductive health. Having difficulties getting pregnant and repeated miscarriages can lead to women becoming involuntarily childless. More women are applying to bariatric units with the hope of weight reduction leading to parenthood. Previous research has shown that there is a lack of knowledge and information about pregnancy after bariatric surgery. Purpose: To shed light on women's experiences of pregnancy after bariatric surgery. Method: Qualitative survey with semi-structured interviews with 10 women. The data has been processed using qualitative content analysis with an inductive approach. Results: The results revealed three categories and seven subcategories. In summary, the women described a need of more information and recommendations concerning pregnancy after bariatric surgery. If midwives have knowledge of or an ambition to find information about pregnancy after bariatric surgery to meet women’s needs and questions is an important part for good relations. Conclusion: Existing knowledge and recommendations concerning pregnancy after bariatric surgery need to be strengthened. Midwives need more education to be able to meet a growing need. It is desirable that a functioning collaboration between midwives and bariatric units is initiated.

Providing high quality of topics inference in today's large and dynamic corpora, such as Twitter, is a challenging task. This is especially challenging taking into account that the content in this environment contains short texts and many abbreviations. This project proposes an improvement of a popular online topics modelling algorithm for Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA), by incorporating supervision to make it suitable for Twitter context. This improvement is motivated by the need for a single algorithm that achieves both objectives: analyzing huge amounts of documents, including new documents arriving in a stream, and, at the same time, achieving high quality of topics’ detection in special case environments, such as Twitter. The proposed algorithm is a combination of an online algorithm for LDA and a supervised variant of LDA - labeled LDA. The performance and quality of the proposed algorithm is compared with these two algorithms. The results demonstrate that the proposed algorithm has shown better performance and quality when compared to the supervised variant of LDA, and it achieved better results in terms of quality in comparison to the online algorithm. These improvements make our algorithm an attractive option when applied to dynamic environments, like Twitter. An environment for analyzing and labelling data is designed to prepare the dataset before executing the experiments. Possible application areas for the proposed algorithm are tweets recommendation and trends detection. / Tillhandahålla högkvalitativa ämnen slutsats i dagens stora och dynamiska korpusar, såsom Twitter, är en utmanande uppgift. Detta är särskilt utmanande med tanke på att innehållet i den här miljön innehåller korta texter och många förkortningar. Projektet föreslår en förbättring med en populär online ämnen modellering algoritm för Latent Dirichlet Tilldelning (LDA), genom att införliva tillsyn för att göra den lämplig för Twitter sammanhang. Denna förbättring motiveras av behovet av en enda algoritm som uppnår båda målen: analysera stora mängder av dokument, inklusive nya dokument som anländer i en bäck, och samtidigt uppnå hög kvalitet på ämnen "upptäckt i speciella fall miljöer, till exempel som Twitter. Den föreslagna algoritmen är en kombination av en online-algoritm för LDA och en övervakad variant av LDA - Labeled LDA. Prestanda och kvalitet av den föreslagna algoritmen jämförs med dessa två algoritmer. Resultaten visar att den föreslagna algoritmen har visat bättre prestanda och kvalitet i jämförelse med den övervakade varianten av LDA, och det uppnådde bättre resultat i fråga om kvalitet i jämförelse med den online-algoritmen. Dessa förbättringar gör vår algoritm till ett attraktivt alternativ när de tillämpas på dynamiska miljöer, som Twitter. En miljö för att analysera och märkning uppgifter är utformad för att förbereda dataset innan du utför experimenten. Möjliga användningsområden för den föreslagna algoritmen är tweets rekommendation och trender upptäckt.

This research is aimed at identifying the challenges facing the effective management of a multicultural teaching environment in Gauteng primary schools by the school management team and educators. The research addressing the problems and sub-problems involved a literature review conceptualising multicultural education. The empirical investigation included the use of observations, a questionnaire and interviews to gather data. The findings linked to the literature review, revealed areas of strength and weakness of the school management team and educators. Based on the findings recommendations were made for school management teams and educators to design development programmes to inculcate in school management teams and educators the competencies necessary to perform effectively in a multicultural environment. / Educational Leadership and Management / M. Ed. (Education Management)

German text / Seit dem Fall der DDR arbeiteten Kirchen jeder Couleur daran, unter der atheistischen Bevölkerung der neuen Bundesländer Gemeinde zu bauen, aber das erhoffte Gemeindewachstum blieb aus. Trotz vieler Fortschritte ist die Kirche nach wie vor lediglich eine Nische der ostdeutschen Gesellschaft. Auch freikirchliche Bemühungen sind bisher weitgehend erfolglos geblieben (Schröder 2007:2). Die Menschen im Postsozialismus scheinen gegen das Evangelium immun zu sein. Weil aber Gemeinde Jesu dazu gesandt ist, Menschen jeder Kultur und jeden Milieus mit dem Evangelium zu erreichen, muss sich Missiologie darüber Gedanken machen, wie Gemeinde dieser Sendung auch in Ostdeutschland gerecht wird. Wie kann es gelingen, das Evangelium im speziellen Kontext Ostdeutschlands zu beheimaten? Westliche Gemeindemodelle können in der kulturellen Prägung Ostdeutschlands nicht greifen. Der Besonderheit des ostdeutschen Kontextes muss im Gemeindebau Rechnung getragen werden. Die neuen Bundesländer brauchen einen kontextuellen Gemeindebau. Ausgehend von einem missionalen Gemeindeverständnis, das eingebettet ist in die missio dei (Reimer 2009:170), ist es deshalb Ziel dieser Studie einen kontextuellen Gemeindebau für die neuen Bundesländer zu entwickeln, der die Fragen und Nöte der Menschen im Osten kennt und das Evangelium für ihre Lebenswelt kontextualisiert. Mit Hilfe des bei der Unisa gebräuchlichen Praxiszyklus soll es dabei nicht nur um Theoriebildung gehen. Die vorliegende Studie mündet in Handlungsempfehlungen für die ostdeutsche Gemeindepraxis allgemein und ganz konkret für Magdeburg-Sudenburg. Diese Handlungsempfehlungen versuchen, sowohl dem ostdeutschen Kontext als auch den biblischen Leitlinien für missionale Gemeinde gerecht zu werden. / Since the fall of the GDR, churches have worked hard in the new German states. Despite that, the church is still only a niche in East German society. East Germans seem to be immune to the gospel. But how can Jesus' church fulfill her mission in East Germany, where western models of church planting have been largely unsuccessful. East Germany needs a contextual church planting. Starting from a missional church understanding that is embedded in the missio dei, this study develops a contextual church planting stratagy for the new states, that takes the uniqueness of East-Germany into account and contextualizes the gospel. This study should not end in theory. It leads to recommendations for the East German church in general practice and more specifically for Magdeburg-Sudenburg. These recommendations seek to meet the needs of both the East-German context and the biblical guidelines for missional church. / Christian Spirituality, Church History & Missiology / M. Th. (Missiology)

The purpose of the study was to improve the understanding of the present situation and the key problems regarding the conservation of designed landscapes of the recent past. Another aim was to investigate roles and initiatives undertaken by key stakeholders and recommend key areas for measures and action to enhance the conservation and protection of designed landscapes of the recent past. The emphasis of the research was on the United Kingdom but relevant findings and actions from an international context were included. A qualitative method was applied using the between-method triangulation research methodology, which combined two methods of investigation, namely data triangulation and theory triangulation. Theory triangulation allowed for an investigation of the wider context or ‘the general’ and a comparison of findings from published sources and records, including an examination of the existing inventories and the roles and initiatives of key stakeholders. The data triangulation used a case study survey, with questionnaires and interviews, to enable the collection and analysis of data from different categories of stakeholders from a site-specific perspective or ‘the particular’ context. The case study survey investigated eleven case study sites using questionnaires and interviews. A total of 146 respondents were contacted and 103 completed responses were received. The results revealed that several recommendations for actions to improve the conservation and protection of heritage of the recent past exist, and that general conservation principles and methodologies exist for the conservation of designed landscapes, but that a lack of recognition and awareness for the significance of designed landscapes of the recent past results in poor implementation of such principles, and the continuing destruction and disfigurement of significant sites. The findings of the study led in the conclusions to the preparation of recommendations for measures and actions by stakeholders, to improve the protection and conservation of landscapes of the recent past.

Outdoor education may be quite a well-known conception but still unsettled in the Slovenian pedagogical context. The Scandinavian – Swedish conceptual tradition in the thesis provides a framework for analysing the Slovenian curriculum; the lesson plans for the compulsory school from an outdoor education perspective. The main characteristics of outdoor education, gathering around experience, place and method/activities, are found also in the Slovenian context, exactly in the formal education documents. The perspective of outdoor education would therefore lie in introducing the Swedish concept of outdoor education as an opportunity to reflect upon an existent outdoor teaching and learning practice and inherent teacher education. / Utomhuspedagogik må vara ett välkänt begrepp men är fortfarande okänt i den slovenska pedagogiska kontexten. Den skandinavisk-svenska traditionella uppfattningen i denna uppsats bildar ett ramverk för att analysera de slovenska kursplanerna och läroplanerna för den obligatoriska grundskolan, ur ett utomhuspedagogiskt perspektiv. Det som huvudsakligen karaktäriserar utomhuspedagogik, och som rör sig kring erfarenhet, plats och metod/aktiviteter, finns också i den slovenska kontexten, och mera exakt i de formella utbildningshandlingarna. Det utomhuspedagogiska perspektivet skulle därför kunna skapas genom att introducera den svenska uppfattningen om utomhuspedagogik som en möjlighet att reflektera kring en befintlig pedagogik och lärandepraktik samt kring lärarutbildningen.

Les traitements du cancer de la prostate permettent d’analyser les savoirs tels qu’ils sont élaborés actuellement en cancérologie. Les propositions de traitement découlent des savoirs scientifiques. La participation du patient au choix du soin s’en trouve questionnée. Le patient est une figure socialement construite et médicalement produite qui n’a de sens qu’au regard du rôle professionnel du médecin. La relation entre ces deux acteurs s’inscrit dans une structure de soin. Cette situation sociale est instituée autour de la nécessité du soin, entendue comme réponse à la souffrance de l’autre. Notre analyse montre les tensions qui traversent le groupe professionnel des médecins sur la question des recommandations thérapeutiques. Les questions de légitimité et d’expertise permettent de mettre à jour la concurrence entre les urologues et les oncologues-radiothérapeutes. Cette concurrence se joue à travers les traitements proposés. Les savoirs mobilisés pour justifier de la légitimité ne sont pas les mêmes et ne sont pas uniquement scientifiques. Ils s’organisent selon une priorité accordée à la sur-vie. En outre, ces savoirs médicaux retentissent de façon différente chez les patients, eux aussi détenteurs d’un savoir sur le soin. En somme, les savoirs sur le soin apparaissent comme une recherche de sens, une mise en cohérence de la pathologie, inhérente à des mondes sociaux différents, mais qui se nourrissent les uns des autres. / Treatments for prostate cancer have led us to analyze how knowledge can be produced in cancer research. The different treatment options offered to the patient directly originate from scientific knowledge. At that point already, one can question the patient’s participation to the choice of his treatment. The patient is a figure who is socially constructed and medically produced. This figure only becomes significant in regard to the doctor’s professional role. The relation between those two actors – doctor and patient – has to be replaced in its context of a social structure of care. Social situation instituted from the necessary of care, as an answer to human suffering, the analysis shows the tensions that arise within the professional group of doctors. Issues of legitimacy and expertise have revealed the rivalry between urologists and oncologists. That rivalry shows mostly through the treatments which are offered. The knowledge used to legitimate one option or the other varies and is not exclusively scientific. Different bodies of knowledge take priority according to the survival (goal). Moreover those medical bodies of knowledge are not understood in the same way for each patient, as they themselves hold particular knowledge about care/cure. In the end, it appears the pieces of knowledge about cure/care inherently belong to different social worlds that feed from each other, and those different bodies of knowledge seek to make sense of illness.