The purpose of this study was to evaluate the impacts of Peru's research and extension programs on two regions in Peru and assess the implications of those impacts on institutional action by the Agrarian Bank and the Peruvian research and extension service. An LP model was constructed for two regions, Contumaza and Tarapoto, and was run under various levels of risk, alternative credit arrangements, selected price changes, and with and without the newly released varieties. Results from the various scenarios demonstrated that the introduction of new varieties increased net income, labor use, and the demand for credit in both regions. Also, altering the amount of credit available had a much more significant impact on the regions than altering the interest rate. / M.S.

Evidensbaserade riktlinjer är en del i vårdkontexten vilka tillsammans med strukturer inom utbildning, ekonomi och ledarskap finns för att stärka sjuksköterskans omvårdnadsutförande och patientens möjlighet att få god vård. Patientgruppen som vårdas på akutmottagningen till följd av drogpåverkan har ett komplext vårdbehov vilket förutsätter ett kunskapsbaserat och professionellt omhändertagande. Kompetensen vad gäller vården till dessa individer är dock bristfällig och patientgruppen möts ofta av stigmatiserande attityder från vårdpersonal. Behovet av evidensbaserade riktlinjer för att säkerställa vårdkvaliteten till denna patientgrupp är därför påtaglig. Syftet med studien är att kartlägga förekomsten av kliniska omvårdnadsriktlinjer specifika för patienter som söker vård till följd av drogpåverkan, samt bedöma dess evidensgrad. Studien utfördes enligt kvantitativ metod med explorativ ansats. En postenkät med 15 frågor utskickades till de (N = 72) svenska sjukhusbundna akutmottagningarna, och svarsfrekvensen uppgick till 62,5%. Studieresultatet redovisades med hjälp av deskriptiv statistik och förekommande riktlinjer evidensgranskades utifrån AGREE II. Resultatet visade att fem av de sjukhusbundna akutmottagningarna svarade att de hade riktlinjer för omvårdnaden av drogpåverkade patienter. AGREE II evidensgranskning av dessa riktlinjer visade på likartade låga resultatpoäng, där det lägsta poängresultatet återfanns i domänen Stringens i framställningen, det vill säga avseende riktlinjernas kunskapsbasering. Resultatet av den slutgiltiga sammanställningen av evidensbedömningen tydliggjorde att ingen av riktlinjerna kunde rekommenderas som stöd för patientkategorins omvårdnad. / Program: Magisterprogram i vårdvetenskap med inriktning mot akutsjukvård

The scope of this project includes a re-engineering of the internal architecture of the Solicitation Management System (SMS), a web-based application that facilitates the running of grant proposal solicitations for the Office of Technology Transfer and Commercialization at California State University San Bernardino (CSUSB). A goal of the project is to increase consistency and efficiency of the code base of the system, making it easier to understand, maintain, and extend. The previous version of SMS was written to rely on the Spring and Hibernate frameworks. The project includes a restructuring of the system to remove reliance on the Spring framework, but maintain reliance on Hibernate. The result is an updated version of the SMS. The system was written using current technologies such as Java, JSP, and CSS.

The topic of this thesis is evaluation and remuneration of employees. The thesis is divided into two parts. The theoretical part is focused on system of evaluation and remuneration of employees in general, their importance, meaning and continuity. The practical part includes a study of particular company and a questionnaire survey. Its goal is to find out the opinion of the employees and then to analyze the current situation and suggest corrective actions that should contribute to improvement of the system and to satisfaction of the employees.

The Online Solicitation Management System (OSMS) is a web-based system designed for California State University, San Bernardino's Office of Technology Transfer and Commercialization (OTTC) to run grant proposal solicitations more efficiently. The system accepts grant proposals, finds the best matched evaluators, calculates evaluation scores, and generated reports. Users in the system are divided into five (5) different roles: system administrator, program officer, staff, evaluator and applicant.

Despite the growing importance of information and communication technologies (ICTs), their use in the field of program evaluation has been, to date, understudied. Using a mixed-method approach and a conceptual framework informed by social interdependence theory, this thesis sought to contribute to this area of research by exploring how evaluation practitioners engage with ICTs, and if and how this influences evaluation use. The comprised two parts are in a cascade design: a qualitative study relied on interviews with practitioners, followed by a quantitative study utilizing a survey instrument to obtain findings from a larger cohort of practitioner respondents. The findings from both studies revealed that ICTs’ value is greater for the use of evaluative results (findings use) than for benefits arising from evaluation processes (process use), and that these tools support evaluation activities by aiding background and foreground processes. When used in the background, ICTs can help evaluators by offering flexibility, improving speed, and efficiency. In contrast, ICTs used for foreground processes help foster communication with and engagement of stakeholders. Together, this makes the use of ICTs a valuable extension to existing evaluator skillsets, especially when the tools are mindfully incorporated to fit a project’s contextual complexity. The findings also point to a number of barriers – at both the individual and organizational levels - that inhibit further integration of technology into evaluation practice. A conceptual framework developed as a result of the findings visually depicts this process, and it represents a significant contribution of the thesis. Given the growing proliferation of ICTs in all aspects of life, further insight through systematic inquiry is much needed to keep abreast of these rapidly changing trends. The provision of such has implications not only for evaluation practitioners, client organizations and professional evaluation associations, but for the ongoing development of empirical inquiry in the area.

This thesis is concerned with the topic of research evaluation by bibliometric methods at European level. European level is defined in two perspectives: first as a set of countries grouped in EU (and its historic predecessors), second the Framework Programmes were appointed as a representative of pan-European research. It is investigated how bibliometric methods are used in a research development and evaluation on both political and academic level. The thesis maps the history of use of bibliometric methods and indicators in great detail and it analyzes the aim and impact of such use. The rationale of use of those methods as well as the enablers such as availability of data are investigated. An experiment of constructing and analyzing the set of relevant data is pursued to assess the relevancy and feasibility of such analysis. Based on the findings the thesis summarizes the options and opportunities of bibliometrics as a method for formation and evaluation of European research.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / The modification of brucine derivatives as chiral ligands and the use of a multifaceted chiral ligand, brucine diol, under different reaction conditions to produce various optical isomers is described. In Chapter 1, the generation of a number of brucine derivatives is described. Taking the advantage of brucine-diol’s excellent molecular recognition capability for multiple organic functional groups, we focused on the synthetic modifications of brucine-diol and the synthesis of brucine N-oxide. We also produced various brucine derivatives with different functional moieties in good yields and selectivities. In Chapter 2, we described the investigation of brucine N-oxide catalyzed Morita-Baylis-Hillman (MBH) reaction of alkyl/aryl ketones. Brucine N-oxide was used as a nucleophilic organic catalyst in the MBH reaction of alkyl vinyl ketone. In addition, asymmetric MBH reactions of alkyl vinyl ketones with aldehydes were investigated using a dual catalysis of brucine N-oxide and proline. In this dual catalyst system, proline was found to form iminium intermediates with electron-deficient aryl aldehydes, while the N-oxide activated vinyl ketones provided enolates through the conjugate addition. Our dual catalysis approach also allowed the development of MBH reaction of aryl vinyl ketones. In Chapter 3, brucine diol-copper complex catalyzed asymmetric conjugate addition of glycine (ket)imines to nitroalkenes is discussed. Stereodivergent catalytic asymmetric conjugate reactions for glycine (ket)imines with nitroalkenes were achieved using various chiral catalysts derived from a single chiral source, brucine diol. Both syn- and anti-conjugate addition products were obtained with high diastereoselectivity and enantioselectivity. In Chapter 4, enantiodivergent production of endo-pyrrolidines from glycine (ket)imines using brucine diol-copper complex is described. The [3+2] cycloaddition reaction of glycine imines and activated alkenes was performed to produce endo-pyrrolidines. The reversal of enantioselectivity was observed for endo-pyrrolidines between concerted and stepwise reaction pathways. The three new brucine derivatives produced in this study would potentially work as organocatalysts and chiral ligands with metal ion in asymmetric synthesis. The brucine diol-metal complex catalyzed reactions laid a good foundation for catalytic asymmetric reactions, where a single chiral source was used to control the absolute and the relative stereochemical outcomes of reactions. Understanding the molecular-level interactions between catalyst and substrates will provide insightful mechanistic details for the stereodivergent approaches in asymmetric catalysis.

Indiana University-Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) / Our connections to the digital world are invoked by brands, but the intersection of branding and interaction design is still an under-investigated area. Particularly, current websites are designed not only to support essential user tasks, but also to communicate an institution's intended brand values and traits. What we do not yet know, however, is which design factors affect which aspect of a brand. To demystify this issue, three sub-projects were conducted. The first project developed a systematic approach for evaluating the branding effectiveness of content-intensive websites (BREW). BREW gauges users' brand perceptions on four well-known branding constructs: brand as product, brand as organization, user image, and brand as person. It also provides rich guidelines for eBranding researchers in regard to planning and executing a user study and making improvement recommendations based on the study results. The second project offered a standardized perceived usability questionnaire entitled DEEP (design-oriented evaluation of perceived web usability). DEEP captures the perceived website usability on five design-oriented dimensions: content, information architecture, navigation, layout consistency, and visual guidance. While existing questionnaires assess more holistic concepts, such as ease-of-use and learnability, DEEP can more transparently reveal where the problem actually lies. Moreover, DEEP suggests that the two most critical and reliable usability dimensions are interface consistency and visual guidance. Capitalizing on the BREW approach and the findings from DEEP, a controlled experiment (N=261) was conducted by manipulating interface consistency and visual guidance of an anonymized university website to see how these variables may affect the university's image. Unexpectedly, consistency did not significantly predict brand image, while the effect of visual guidance on brand perception showed a remarkable gender difference. When visual guidance was significantly worsened, females became much less satisfied with the university in terms of brand as product (e.g., teaching and research quality) and user image (e.g., students' characteristics). In contrast, males' perceptions of the university's brand image stayed the same in most circumstances. The reason for this gender difference was revealed through a further path analysis and a follow-up interview, which inspired new research directions to unpack even more the nexus between branding and interaction design.

RB redactó el primer borrador del artículo y realizó la revisión final. EM redactó la versión presentada al comité editorial, elaboró las figuras del artículo, levantó las observaciones del comité editorial y redactó la versión final del artículo. AG realizó contribuciones al texto inicial, desarrolló la primera versión del resumen y revisó la versión final. GM realizó contribuciones al texto inicial, levantó las observaciones del comité editorial, realizó contribuciones al texto final y revisó la versión final. / Los estudios de síntesis (EDS): revisiones sistemáticas y metanálisis, son base para llevar a cabo las evaluaciones económicas en salud (EES). Los EDS, al permitir obtener parámetros para las probabilidades de estimación y de efectividad a partir de la combinación de resultados de estudios primarios y, al incluir en su metodología procesos de selección, evaluación, sistematización y síntesis, son considerados como el primer nivel de jerarquía en la evidencia científica. No obstante, pueden estar sometidos a sesgos y fallas metodológicas que afectan su validez. El presente artículo expone, inicialmente, la importancia de la aleatorización en la jerarquización de los diseños de investigación; luego se revisa los principales factores que afectan la validez de los EDS, incidiendo en el sesgo de publicación, la heterogeneidad y la inclusión de estudios primarios con objetivos principales distintos al del EDS; asimismo, se presenta a los estudios individuales como una alternativa válida para el desarrollo de una EES. Se concluye que uno de los aspectos claves en una EES es la selección adecuada de los tipos de estudio, sean estos primarios o secundarios. / Synthesis studies (SS): systematic review and meta-analysis are the basis for developing Health Economic Evaluations (HEE). SS allow us to obtain parameters for estimating probabilities and effectiveness from the combination of the results of primary studies, and, as they include in their methodology the selection, evaluation, systematization and synthesis processes, they are considered the first level of hierarchy in scientific evidence. Nevertheless, they can be prone to bias and methodological failures that can affect the validity of their results. This article initially presents the relevance of the randomization in the hierarchic classification of research designs, then it reviews the main factors affecting the validity of the SS, emphasising the publication bias, the heterogeneity and the inclusion of primary studies with main objective differing from the one of the SS. Moreover, it presents individual studies like a valid alternative for the development of a SS. The conclusion is that one of the key aspects in a SS is the correct evaluation of the study types and the objective evaluation of their quality, being these primary or secondary.