Notwithstanding progress made in description, prediction, and manipulation of self-forgiveness, the extant literature continues to be wrought with theoretical and empirical quandaries. In the current dissertation, I conceptualize self-forgiveness within the framework of Social Cognitive Theory and develop a two-factor scale to assess distinct decisional and emotional aspects of self-forgiveness among perpetrators of interpersonal transgressions. In Study One, I test the hypothesized two-factor structure in a new measure of state self-forgiveness and provide preliminary evidence supporting construct validity via associations of that measure with perceived responsibility, guilt, and shame. In Study Two, I replicate the factor structure and provide preliminary evidence of criterion-related validity by distinguishing self-forgiveness from self-punishment and self-exoneration using the two-factor structure. In Study Three, I explore profiles of association between the hypothesized decisional and emotional factors of self-forgiveness and pro-social as well as health-related correlates. In sum, findings generally supported the proposed two-factor structure of self-forgiveness, which provides a foundation for future investigations and applications of self-forgiveness.

Title: Personality typology of participants in survival races using psychodiagnostic method GPOP (Golden Profiler of Personality) Goals: Our main goal was to determine personality typology of participants in survival, specifically in Adventure racing to compare the results obtained by AR athletes with Czech standards. Method: There were used method of GPOP (Golden Profiler of Personality) in diploma thesis. This method follows a well - known method MBTI (Meyer - Briggs Type Indicator). However, compared to MBTI method GPOP is standardized in Czech Republic. GPOP consist of four paired scales and compared to MBTI it has also the scale which focuses on the stress reaction. GPOP is based on survey of 116 questions and statements. Final results show which of two pair scales is preferred by participants. Every paired scale has its own five subscales. GPOP presents us 16 types of personality overall based on mentioned paired scales and subscales. We also created secondary non - standardized survey which regards athletes participation in Adventure races and survivals, so we would confirm their inclusion to research group. Results: In the population of athletes who participate in survivals (AR) there shows significant representation personality type ISTJ and ESTJ (47,6 % in comparison with other...

Title: Sensation seeking tendency in freeskiing Objectives: The aim of this work is sensation seeking tendency in freeskiing. Methods: Were chosen due to parameters of examined group of freeskiers and required outputs. For sensation seeking tendency in freeskiing were chosen Sensation Seeking Scale form V. Results: The comparison of our group of freeskiers with population average was detected significant differences. Statistically significant differences were detected in all 4 subscales. In sensation seeking scale are freeskiers significant different compare to population average in total score of SSS. This was caused primarily due to score of subscale TAS- thrill and Adventure seeking. Keywords: Freeskiing, personality, experiencing, flow, sensation seeking scale

The aim of the thesis was to assess a construct validity of "Muscle Excitability Scale" in assessment of spasticity in patients with spinal cord injury. The correlation between this scale and other clinical tests evaluating various aspects of spasticity was investigated. 48 participants with symptoms of a spasticity were included in the study. The Spearman rank correlation coefficient was used for quantification of correlation between each two tests. The most significant correlation was found between the Muscle Excitability Scale and the Modified Ashworth Scale (rs=0,26 - 0,35, p<0,05). Less significant correlation was found in comparison with the Clonus Scale (rs=0,27, p<0,05) and with the SCI-SET (rs=0,25 - 0,26, p<0,05). There was no correlation between the Muscle Excitability Scale and the Penn Spasm Frequency Scale. Additionally every test was compared to each other and then the outcomes was discussed and compared to results of other similar studies. Keywords Muscle Excitability Scale, validity, spasticity, spinal cord injury, Modified Ashworth Scale, Penn Spasm Frequency Scale, Clonus Scale, SCI-SET

The aim of this paper was to define interrater reliability of "Muscle excitability scale" in assessment of lower extremities muscle spasticity in patiens with spinal cord injury. Raters were two students of 2nd grade of master study of physiotherapy. Testing was performed at Centrum Paraple o.p.s. and 48 patients took part in the research. Except the Muscle excitability scale, Modified Ashworth scale, Penn spasm frequency scale and Clonus scale were also assessed. Percentage rate of agreement and also value of kappa coefficient that state value of agreement between raters were assigned for each scale. Percent agreement for Muscle excitability scale was 54,2 % for right and 64,6 % for left lower extremity. Kappa coefficient and therefore interrater reliability of this test was assessed on 0,38 on the right side and 0,51 on the left. The results and thein comparison with other used scales are discussed in this thesis.

A variety of open and closed multi-layered nanoparticle structures have been considered analytically and numerically for their use as scatterers and radiators. These include metamaterial-inspired structures based on dielectrics and metals excited by either plane waves or electric Hertzian dipoles at optical frequencies. Both passive and active (gain impregnated dielectric) materials have been considered. Enhanced and mitigated scattering and radiating effects have been modeled. Nano-antenna and nano-amplifier configurations for optical applications have been emphasized. A review of these modeling efforts will be presented.

Using an information processing approach, this study examines how nurses working in the area of continuing care for older people in Scotland use the Waterlow scale to inform their judgement and decision making in risk of pressure ulcers and plan of care. While assessment tools are commonly used, a number of assumptions surround their use for nurse practice and for patient care. To date, there appears to be no research which actually examines how nurses use assessment tools to assess patient's needs and plan care, despite the emphasis placed on evidence based practice. Assessment is a fundamental activity when caring for an older person where multipathology and the potential for health state deterioration are likely. This study consists of 3 parts. Part 1 identified the number and type of assessment tools that are routinely used within continuing care settings using a postal survey, revealing that the Waterlow scale is the most routinely used tool to assess pressure ulcer risk. Part 2 examined how continuing care nurses assess pressure ulcer risk through the use of observation and interview. Part 3 involved a detailed examination of the cognitive processes used by nurses when assessing pressure ulcer risk and planning care using simulation and a technique known as `Think aloud'. The results of this study indicate there were no differences between continuing care nurses working in either hospital wards or nursing homes in how the assessment was carried out, as neither group based their assessment or plan of care solely on the Waterlow scale. However, the Waterlow scale was found to be used differently according to the nurses' experience with those with more than 2 years experience, less likely to base their assessment of pressure ulcer risk or plan of care on Waterlow derived information.

Advances in microlithography, dry etching, scaling of devices, ion-implantation, process control, and computer aid design brought the integrated circuit technology into the era of VLSI circuits. Those circuits are characterized by high packing density, improved performance, complex circuits, and large chip sizes. Interconnects and their spacing dominate the chip area of VLSI circuits and they degrade the circuit performance through the unacceptable high time delays. Multilayer metallization enables shorter interconnects, ease of design and yet higher packing density for VLSI circuits. It was shown in this dissertation that, tungsten films deposited in a cold-wall LPCVD reactor offer viable solution to the problems of VLSI multilayer interconnects. Experiments showed that LPCVD tungsten films have good uniformity, high purity, low resistivity, low stress-good adherence and are readily patterned into high resolution lines. Moreover, a multilayer interconnect system consisting of three layers of tungsten metallization followed by a fourth layer of aluminum metallization has been designed, fabricated and tested. The interlevel dielectric used to separate the metal layers was CVD phosphorus doped silicon dioxide. Low ohmic contacts were achieved for heavily doped silicon. Also, low resistance tungsten-tungsten intermetallic contacts were obtained. In addition to excellent step coverage, high electromigration resistance of interconnects was realized. Finally, CMOS devices and logic gates were successfully fabricated and tested using tungsten multilayer metallization schemes.

In this dissertation, performance analyses for large-scale antennas equipped two-way amplify-and-forward (AF) relaying and heterogeneous network (HetNet) are carried out. Energy-efficiency oriented design becomes more important for the next generation of wireless systems, which motivates us to study the strong candidates, such as massive multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) combined with cooperative relaying and HetNet. Based on the achievable rate analyses for both massive MIMO two-way AF relaying, effective power allocation schemes are presented to further improve system performance. Focusing on the MIMO downlinks in the HetNet, mean square error (MSE) based precoding schemes are designed and employed by the macro base station (BS) and the small cell (SC) nodes. Considering a HetNet where both macro BS and SC nodes are equipped with large-scale antenna arrays, the capacity lower bounds are derived, followed by the proposed user scheduling algorithms. The work on multi-pair two-way AF relaying with linear processing considers a system where multiple sources exchange information via a relay equipped with massive antennas. Given that channel estimation is non-ideal, and that the relay employs either maximum-ratio combining/maximum-ratio transmission (MRC/MRT) or zero-forcing reception/zero-forcing transmission (ZFR/ZFT) beamforming, we derive two corresponding closed-form lower bound expressions for the ergodic achievable rate of each pair sources. The closed-form expressions enable us to design an optimal power allocation (OPA) scheme that maximizes the sum spectral efficiency under certain practical constraints. As the antenna array size tends to infinity and the signal to noise ratios become very large, asymptotically optimal power allocation schemes in simple closed-form are derived. The capacity lower bounds are verified to be accurate predictors of the system performance by simulations, and the proposed OPA outperforms equal power allocation (EPA). It is also found that in the asymptotic regime, when MRC/MRT is used at the relay and the link end-to-end large-scale fading factors among all pairs are equal, the optimal power allocated to a user is inverse to the large-scale fading factor of the channel from the user to the relay, while OPA approaches EPA when ZFR/ZFT is adopted. The work on the MSE-based precoding design for MIMO downlinks investigates a HetNet system consisting of a macro tier overlaid with a second tier of SCs. First, a new sum-MSE of all users based minimization problem is proposed aiming to design a set of macro cell (MC) and SC transmit precoding matrices or vectors. To solve it, two different algorithms are presented. One is via a relaxed-constraints based alternating optimization (RAO) realized by efficient alternating optimization and relaxing non-convex constraints to convex ones. The other is via an unconstrained alternating optimization with normalization (UAON) implemented by introducing the constraints into the iterations with the normalization operation. Second, a separate MSE minimization based two-level precoder is proposed by considering the signal and interference terms corresponding to the macro tier and the individual SCs separately. Furthermore, robust precoders are designed correspondingly with estimated imperfect channel. Simulation results show that the sum-MSE based RAO algorithm provides the best MSE performance among the proposed schemes under a number of system configurations. When the number of antennas at the macro-BS is sufficiently large relative to the number of MUEs, the MSE of the separate MSE-based precoding is found to approach those of RAO and UAON. Together, this thesis provides a suite of three new precoding techniques that is expected to meet the need in a broad range of HetNet environments with balance between performance and complexity. The work on a large-scale HetNet studies the performance for MIMO downlink systems where both macro BS and SC nodes are equipped with large-scale antenna arrays. Suppose that the large-scale antenna arrays at both macro BS and SC nodes employ MRT or ZFT precoding, and transmit data streams to the served users simultaneously. A new pilot reuse pattern among small cells is proposed for channel estimation. Taking into account imperfect CSI, lower capacity bounds for MRT and ZFT are derived, respectively, in closed-form expressions involving only statistical CSI. Then asymptotic analyses for massive arrays are presented, from which we obtain the optimal antenna number ratio between BS and SCs under specific power scaling laws. Subsequently, two user scheduling algorithms, that is, greedy scheduling algorithm and asymptotical scheduling algorithm (ASA), are proposed based on the derived capacity lower bounds and asymptotic analyses, respectively. ASA is demonstrated to be a near optimal user scheduling scheme in the asymptotic regime and has low complexity. Finally, the derived closed-form achievable rate expressions are verified to be accurate predictors of the system performance by Monte-Carlo simulations. Numerical results demonstrate the effectiveness of the asymptotic analysis and the proposed user scheduling schemes. / Graduate / 0544 / 0984

The purpose of the project has been to investigate how synoptic scale climate systems control the frequency of air pollution episodes in the city of Christchurch, New Zealand. The work has been done at the University of Canterbury, New Zealand, and data from the region has been analysed. Air pollution is, during winter time, a growing problem in Christchurch and the project was initiated by the regional environmental legislative body. The first part of the report is on finding relationships on a local-scale between particulate matter concentrations, ground temperature, temperature at 10 meters and wind speed. The data set used in the analysis comes from a monitoring station in St. Albans, situated in the north-east of Christchurch. In the second part, a connection is made thought correlation calculations between the results from the local-scale analysis and the synoptic situation observed over New Zealand during the same period. Two different data sets have been used in the analysis. One data set includes different weather patterns observed over New Zealand and the other data set includes different zonal and meridional circulation indices. A pressure index is also used, the Southern Oscillation Index. On the local-scale, a relationship has been found between the particulate matter concentration and the number of night hours with an inversion present. A correlation also exists between the wind speed and the number of night hours with an inversion present. The connection to the synoptic scale through cluster frequencies and circulation indices was found to be divergent. The cluster frequency analysis indicates on a direct correlation between the Southern Oscillation Index and the air pollution concentration in Christchurch, while the circulation indices analysis indicates on an inverse relationship between the Southern Oscillation Index and the air pollution concentration in Christchurch. / Sammanfattning av ”Kopplingen mellan ENSO och aerosoler mindre än 10 μm i Christchurch” Avsikten med projektet har varit att undersöka om det finns ett samband mellan storskaliga vädersystem (synoptisk skala) och antalet lokalt inträffade händelser med höga halter av luftföroreningar. Arbetet har utförts vid University of Canterbury i Christchurch på Nya Zeeland och mätdata för denna region har analyserats. Luftföroreningar är här ett växande problem, speciellt vintertid, vilket de regionala lagstiftande myndigheterna har identifierat och önskat få utrett. I första delen av rapporten analyseras samband mellan lokala parametrar, så som temperatur vid marknivå och på 10 meters höjd, vindhastighet och koncentrationen av olika luftföroreningar. Data som använts i dessa analyser har uppmätts vid en mätstation placerad i St. Albans, vilken ligger i nordöstra delen av centrala Christchurch. I den andra delen av rapporten beräknas korrelationen mellan resultaten från den lokala analysen och olika synoptiska vädersituationer observerade över Nya Zeeland under motsvarande tidsperioder. Två databaser har använts vid analysen, dels en databas innehållande olika vädersituationer över Nya Zeeland och dels en innehållande olika cirkulationsindex. Dessutom användes också ett lufttrycksindex, ”The Southern Oscillation Index”. Två korrelationer har beräknats i den lokala analysdelen. Dels har ett samband mellan luftföroreningskoncentrationen och antalet timmar med en inversion närvarande nattetid beräknats samt en korrelation mellan vindhastighet och antalet timmar med en inversion närvarande nattetid. Kopplingen till den synoptiska skalan visar på två divergerande resultat. Analys genomförd med olika ”clusters” visar på ett direkt samband mellan ”The Southern Oscillaion Index” och luftföroreningskoncentrationen i Christchurch medan en analys genomförd för circulationsindex visar på ett omvänt samband mellan ”The Southern Oscillation Index” och luftföroreningskoncentrationen i Christchurch.