This paper examines the role that gold and other precious metals play in portfolio construction as hedges and safe havens in comparison with the Volatility Index (VIX), a derivative of market volatility. Gold has long been considered to be among the best assets for reducing portfolio volatility due to its lack of correlation with the overall market. However, the major finding of this paper is that while gold and the other precious metals do serve in this role to varying extents, the VIX performs this function far better. Both econometric and portfolio analyses reveal that the VIX improves overall portfolio performance to a greater extent, and most importantly serves as an effective safe haven relative to the market.

Background: When an individual is cared for in a hospital, which is a new and unknown environment, this can create feelings of uncertainty and insecurity for some. Insecurity can lead to a feeling of pressure and makes the caring more difficult. This can therefore worsen the recovery for the patient. Aim: The aim of this study was to illuminate the patient's perceived experience of safety at hospital. Method: A literature based study was done based on ten qualitative articles among men- and women at hospital. Result: The study showed that the feeling of safety could be experienced when the patient felt confirmed, the patient feels involved in their own care and when nursing staff cares for the patient. To felt safe is also found in how patients perceive their environment through the hospital's physical and social environment. The result of the articles were presented in two main themes; the meaning of the caring relationship and presence of others. Conclusion: There was several factors that contribute to the feeling of safety for the patient in hospital care. Patients’ feelings of safety can be experienced by acts such as to be confirmed by the care giving staff, the patient's opportunity to be involved and when the patient feels cared about. / Examensarbetet har för avsikt att belysa patienters upplevda erfarenhet av trygghet vid sjukhusvård. Trygghet är ett filosofiskt begrepp med olika innebörder och upplevs olika från individ till individ. Trygghet kan delas in i både inre och yttre trygghet där den inre tryggheten skapas av positiva minnen från barndomen såsom minnen från en vacker sommardag. Inre trygghet kan också skapas i vuxen ålder av positiva erfarenheter såsom bli väl bemött och omhändertagen under sjukhusvården. Yttre trygghet kan ses såsom miljön patienten har runt sig. Detta examensarbete benämner det som den sociala och fysiska miljön. Den sociala miljön skapas av närvaro av närstående, andra patienter och vårdpersonal. Den fysiska miljön handlar om hur sjukhusmiljön är utformad och påverkar den sociala miljön. Resultatet från de tio vetenskapliga artiklarna inkluderade i examensarbetet visar att upplevelse av trygghet är associerad med upplevelsen av vårdrelationen och relationen till andra signifikanta personer. Det framkommer att upplevelse av trygghet påverkas av graden av delaktighet i vården, relationen till personalen och närstående samt den fysiska vårdmiljön.

Traffic Cop is a game where the player become a traffic police officer trainee and direct the traffic to reduce the car accident rate in MA. The game is a top-down view traffic simulation and the player need to respond to the violations correctly. The game is aimed at new drivers ages from 16-24 and the purpose is to change the drivers' attitude about safe driving. Player will learn what they should stay focused on while driving and what the consequences may be when they choose to violate the traffic signal.

The provision of safe drinking water provides a dramatic example of the inherent complexity involved in incorporating environmental justice (EJ) considerations into the implementation and enforcement of new environmental standards. To promote substantive EJ, implementation policy must be concerned with the net risk reduction of new and revised regulations. The regulatory concern is that higher water bills for low-income customers of small public water systems may result in less disposable income for other health-related goods and services. In the net, this trade-off may be welfare decreasing, not increasing. Advocates of Health–Health Analysis have argued that the reduction in health-related spending creates a problem for traditional benefit-cost analysis since the long-run health implications of this reduction are not considered. The results of this investigation tend to support this contention. An evaluation of the internal structure of consumption expenditures reveals that low-expenditure households can be expected to react to an increase in the relative price of housing-related goods and services due to a water-rate hike by reducing both housing and health-related expenditures. That is, the representative low-expenditure household re-establishes equilibrium by not only decreasing housing-related spending, but also by decreasing spending on health-related expenditures in a modest but significant way. These results reflect the fact that expenditures on housing are a major proportion of overall household spending, and that accommodating drinking water surcharges exacerbates both health and food security concerns for low-expenditures households.

There has been extensive, mostly negative research on the outcomes of foster care youth. Due to the abundance of this research, Extended Foster Care (EFC) was created to help to provide additional resources and support to young adults in foster care until age 21. This is a fairly new program, therefore little research has been completed. One of the negative outcomes of foster youth is the high pregnancy and parenting rates. The purpose of this study is to be able to understand the knowledge and use of family planning services among the young adults participating in EFC. Understanding this information will help to improve services provided by the social workers who work with this population. This research used a quantitative questionnaire. The questionnaire was mailed to the young adults participating in EFC in San Bernardino County. A statistical analysis was completed using SPSS version 21. The study’s findings showed that on average, EFC participants have a good understanding of safe-sex practices but do not usually use safe-sex methods or go to family planning service organizations. The study also found that participant demographics do not have a correlation to their knowledge or use of family planning services, nor to the number of pregnancies or live births. However, there is a negative correlation between a participant's knowledge score and if they have children in their custody. Finally, 47% of participants reported being informed about family planning service organizations by their Social Worker.

Within the last decade there has been considerable national attention focused upon hospital quality and patient safety performance. Improvements in performance have been realized, but the rate of improvement has been slow. There is an increasing consensus that new ideas and national strategies are needed to accelerate improvement efforts in addressing quality/safety issues. Currently, within the hospital setting more attention is being paid to the role of leadership starting with the board of trustees in addressing gaps in performance. Organization-wide awareness of critical gaps in performance, accountability structures, and organizational ability are considered critical facilitators of improvement efforts. The characteristics of awareness, accountability, ability, and action are components of a "4A" conceptual framework that is used most prominently by the National Quality Forum (NQF) in their Safe Practices for Better Healthcare toolkit to frame governance and leaderships' responsibilities in establishing leadership structures and systems to ensure the safety of patients and staff. This study utilizes the National Quality Forum's version of the 4A model to frame an empirical examination of the relationship between leadership structure and system characteristics and hospitals' implementation of the medication reconciliation innovation. A Patient Safety, Culture, and Leadership survey was used to capture Iowa hospital CEO/Quality Leaders' perceptions of board and leadership awareness and accountability characteristics. And, on a quarterly basis since mid-2006 a separate web-based survey has captured Iowa hospital Quality Leaders' perceptions of medication reconciliation implementation. Both cross-sectional and longitudinal analyses were conducted to examine the relationship between leadership structures and systems and hospital-wide deployment of the medication reconciliation initiative. This study finds evidence that board-level awareness characteristics - the time the board spent in meetings on quality and safety issues, and the frequency of board receipt of a formal quality/safety report - were positively related to hospitals' early efforts to deploy the medication reconciliation initiative. Over time hospitals' financial ability was positively related to deployment of this initiative. Further research should focus on how healthcare governance and leadership teams can use the elements of leadership structures and systems safe practices to effectively create and sustain a culture of safety.

Numerous Thai older people fall each year. Although it has been shown that only 3.1% of fallers sustained fractures (Nevitt, Cumming, Kidd, & Black, 1989), injuries in older people are often more serious. For example, hospital charges for older adult fall injuries are about US $2,000 per person higher than for young fallers (Ellis & Trent, 2001). Moreover, falling can lead to social isolation, physical restraint, disability and institutionalisation (Donald & Bulpitt, 1999; Tideiksaar, 1994). Therefore falling in old age results in a considerable burden on, not only the individual concerned, but also the whole society. Internationally, a successful falls prevention program usually employs a multidimensional approaches (Alexander & Edelberg, 2002; Mosley, Galindo- Ciocon, Peak, & West, 1998). However, limited information about fall prevention has been reported in Thailand. A survey indicated that Thai elderly fall outside their homes which is different from the findings in Western countries (Jitapunkul et al., 1998). This suggests that adoption of fall prevention strategies from Western countries might not be successful in Thailand. Prior to this study, details of fall circumstances in terms of location, time, associated activity, hazards and type of falls in Thai older people were not available. Moreover, there was no information about fear of falling and activity restriction. These are important fall consequences that impact on quality of life and themselves are risk factors for falls. The purpose of this study was to determine the prevalence of fear of falling, and to describe activity restriction in fallers and non-fallers, and the circumstances associated with falls in Thailand. No fear of falling measurement tools for Thai older people were available prior to the study. / Therefore the Survey of Activities and Fear of Falling in the elderly (SAFE) has been modified for use with Thai elderly people. The SAFE was translated to Thai by a certified translator, checked for cultural relevance and back-translated by a second translator; reliability testing then took place in Thailand. Face validity and cultural appropriateness were tested with a sample of convenience of 10 bilingual Thai elderly people living in Perth, Australia. After translation into Thai, 4 items showed less than 80% agreement and required adjustment to capture the equivalent meaning of the original version. The ‘take a show/wash yourself with a basin of water’ was added because the participants reported that taking a tub bath is not common or traditional in Thailand. However, the item ‘take a tub bath’ was retained until the examination in the main study confirmed that less than 1% of Thai older persons had taken a tub bath and inclusion of the item confounded actual fear of falling results. Interrater reliability was tested; nine 4th year occupational therapy students and 15 older persons living in the Chiang Mai community were recruited. The intraclass correlation coefficient of fear of falling of activities done, activities not done and activity restriction scores were .9845, .9236 and .9718 respectively (p < 0.001). Four raters and 50 older community dwellers participated in the intrarater and test-retest reliability tests. The results showed that intrarater reliability of all raters exceed 0.8 in every scores (p < .001). / The test-retest also demonstrated good reliability: .9960, .9376 and .9849 (p < 0.0001) for fear of falling of activities done, activities not done and activity restriction scores respectively. Five hundreds and forty six Thai older adults were then recruited by multistage random sampling. Fall history, fall circumstances, fear of falling and activity restriction data were obtained by structured interview and using the Thai version of the SAFE. The results demonstrated that prevalence of falls, fear of falling and activity restriction in Thai older people were 21%, 48% and 18%, respectively. Comparison between fallers and non-faller showed that fallers were more likely to be older (p < .001), female [χ2(1, N = 546) = 6.133; p = .013], not married [χ2 (4,N=546)=61.102;~= .001], living alone[χ2 (l,N=546)=4.313;p= ,041, rated their health as poorer [χ2 (4, N = 546) = 13.232; p < .001], had fear of falling [χ2 (1, N = 546) = 6.265; p = .015] and activity restriction [χ2 (1, N = 546) = 5.488; p = ,0271]. Older persons with a fear of falling tended to be older (p = .005), lower educated (p < .001), female [χ2 (1, N = 546) = 29.602; p = .001], rated their health as poorer [χ2 (4, N = 546) = 69.70; p < .001], had fallen [? (1, N = 546) = 6.265; p = ,0151 and had activity restriction [χ2 (l, N = 546) = 23.267; p < .001]. Older adults who curtailed their activities tended to be married [χ2 (1, N = 546) = 6.188; p = ,0131, rated their health as poorer [χ24, N = 546) = 14.302; p = ,0061, have a fall history [χ2 (1, N = 546) = 5.488; p = ,0271 and have a fear of falling [χ2(1, N = 546) = 23.267; p < .001]. / Using Chi-square test, the results showed that there were significant associations between falls and fear of falling χ2(l,N=546)=6.265;p=.015], falls and activity restriction [χ2 (l,N= 546) = 5.488; p = ,0271] and fear of falling and activity restriction [χ2 (1, N = 546) = 23.267; p < .001]. Fall circumstances of 114 falls demonstrated that most falls took place outdoors (65%), were associated with work (40%), involved environmental hazards (76%), occurred during the daytime (90%). Moreover most falls were falls on the same level from slipping, tripping or stumbling (61%). Logistic regression analysis indicated that risk factors for fear of falling in Thai older people were age (odds ratio = 1.025), unmarried-female (odds ratio = 5.979), married female (odds ratio = 1.903), poor self perceived health (odds ratio = 3.383) and more than 2 falls experience (odds ratio = 7.202). The protective factors were unmarried marital status for men (odds ratio = 0.344) and level of education (odds ratio = 0.933 2 or less falls and = 0.5625 if more than 2 falls in 12 months). The logistic model also provided a logistic equation for individual prediction of probability of fear of falling. To calculate the probability of having fear of falling, 6 parameters are required: age, gender, marital status, level of education, self-perceived health and number of falls in the past 12 months. The equation predicts with 70% accuracy and can be used for screening fear of falling in Thai elderly people. In conclusion, this study has modified a measurement tool (the SAFE Thai version) and developed a screening tool (logistic equation) for fear of falling. Both of them appear to be appropriate to further examine FOF in Thai elderly. The survey results showed a considerably number of Thai elderly people have fall experiences, fear of falling and activity restriction. / The predisposing factors for each problem have been identified. The association between 3 problems implicated that fear of falling and activity restriction interventions are necessary for fall prevention. The fall circumstances data show that conditions of falls in Thai elderly people were similar and dissimilar to those in Western countries. The preventive efforts to reduce falls should consider these distinctive fall circumstances.

Within recent years, there has been a growth of interest in both queer health and geographies of sexualities. However, the majority of this research has focused on both queer health and use of space as they related to sexual activity, sex-related health risks, and desire, while overlooking those aspects of both queer identity and health that are not directly tied to sexual activity. This study addresses these gaps within the literature by studying queer health using the lens of place. The objective of this study is to understand how self-identified queer students at the University of Saskatchewan negotiated space and in particular, safe spaces, in their daily lives, and how this negotiation affected their health and well-being. This research was conceptually guided by ideas within feminist thought and queer theory. The study took place in Saskatoon, Saskatchewan and included a group of five University of Saskatchewan undergraduate and certificate students who self-identified as queer. Participants were recruited through advertisements posted both online and throughout the campus. Data were collected through an action research approach with methods that included individual interviews, group meetings, and Photovoice. Results of the study include a list of elements that participants used to label safe spaces and lists of common safe spaces and safe areas on the University of Saskatchewan campus and throughout Saskatoon. Participants in this study emphasized the relationship between the people who made regular use of a space, its overall "feel," and their familiarity with the space with its level of safety, while also making it clear that queer was not always synonymous with safe. These findings yield insight into the process that individuals use to mentally label space and the subsequent ways in which this labelling influences use of space and, on a broader level, reflects individual and group identity. This raises some important questions about current definitions and ideas regarding safe spaces and provides a foundation for future research.

A multinational enterprise may adopt a tax avoidance mechanism under the contribution of paid-in capital to its subsidiary in Taiwan is decreased, while increasing its loans to the subsidiary as much as possible. This may result in the minimization of the taxable income of the subsidiary through the increase in interest expense deduction of the subsidiary. Under such an arrangement, non-deductible dividend payments are replaced with deductible interest payments. Anti-thin capitalization that was originated from the arm's length principle is adopted from Article 9(1) of the OECD Model Tax Convention. Many countries set a fixed debt-equity ratio as a safe harbor to anti-tax avoidance. In this paper, we use factor analysis to find the optimal debt-equity ratio under the optimal capital structure model. The purpose of this study is to find an optimal debt-equity ratio and propose suggestions in order to revise the law and advance tax system.

Competitive Diffusion is a recently introduced game-theoretic model for the spread of information through social networks. The model is a game on a graph with external players trying to reach the most vertices. In this thesis, we consider the safe game of Competitive Diffusion. This is the game where one player tries to optimize his gain as before, while his opponents' objectives are to minimize the first player's gain. This leads to a safety value for the player, i.e. an optimal minimal expected gain no matter the strategies of the opponents. We discuss safe strategies and present some bounds on the safety value in the two-player version of the game on various graphs. The results are almost entirely on the safe game on trees, including the special cases of paths, spiders and complete trees but also consist of some preliminary studies of the safe game on three other simple graphs. Our main result consists of a Centroidal Safe Strategy (CSS) Algorithm which suggests a safe strategy for a player on any centroidal tree, a tree which has one vertex as centroid, and gives its associated guaranteed gain.