Thesis (D.Min.)--South Florida Center for Theological Studies, 2003. / DOLPHINS stands for "Different Options for Living Playing and Hoping In Non-violence and Safety" Includes bibliographical references.

This dissertation deals with the issue of smoking. Its practical part specifies several objectives, one of them being finding out whether the prevalence of smoking within the population is dependant upon the attained qualifications. Establishing the respondents{\crq} views on the harm of smoking is another goal. The approach of the respondents towards a smoking ban in restaurants is demonstrated in this dissertation, so is their awareness of quitting-smoking methods. The decision to give up is also affected by the knowledge and understanding of all the risks bred by smoking, therefore determining the level of the respondents{\crq} awareness of these health risks is another aim of this dissertation. A quantitative research was used in my dissertation to obtain results. A questionnaire of 18 questions was answered by 211 addressed respondents being in the age group of 45-60 years of age. Analysing the outcome it can be said that the prevalence of smoking within the population is not dependant upon the attained qualifications. Nicotine dependence is referred to as a disease therefore the risk of developing an addiction is the same for everyone irrespective of the qualifications accomplished. Nonetheless, the outcome manifests the fact that smokers with lower qualifications smoke a higher amount of cigarettes a day as opposed to smokers with higher qualifications. Considering the results it can be, furthermore, assumed that smokers with lower qualifications are more tolerant towards the nicotine addiction and they feel less unpleasant in a smoky environment. Moreover, their favour for a smoking ban in restaurants and at working places is lower. At the same time, their awareness of possibilities to treat their nicotine addiction as well as of the negative health effects of smoking proved to be lower. Most smokers would like to quit their nicotine addiction (app. 50% lower- qualified individuals and 72% university and college graduates). However, only a very small percentage would seek any professional help when giving up smoking. The unwillingness to treat the nicotine addiction with the help of an expert reflects the unawareness of the severity of such addiction by the smokers themselves. Therefore, the prevention aimed at non-smokers is as important as effecting smokers so that they become more aware of the seriousness and vast consequences of their addiction.

Adaptation of personal experiences to a screen is no new concept, in fact it is the driving force to media content creation. All storylines and narratives are related to personal experience whether literally or metaphorically. These experiences are externalized in media by many forms, ranging from the visible and audible. Mainstream media is tied to an entertainment purpose, regardless of themes and topics presented. Therefore, it is important to understand that some of the depictions presented in media are linked to stigma or misrepresentation. This is particularly true for portrayals of mental illness and experiences of trauma. I plan on exploring how media, specifically animation, can communicate subjective experiences of mental illness and trauma. In my exploration I will also speak about the role of abstract and experimental animation in this endeavor. While live action contains an element of reality in contextualizing events or experiences, animation allows one to take full control of the visual representation of a subject and agency over constructing a narrative. Animation is a means of inquiry that exemplifies an art form and a journey of self-discovery. I created a short experimental film reconstructing my subjective experience with childhood sexual trauma. I will embrace visually stimulating abstract animation and stop motion to create an evocative visualization of my personal experience. This means of visual production takes the process of subjective experience a step further and literally becomes a process of laborious and tedious composition, culminating with a personal narrative piece.

Introduction: Obstructive sleep apnea (OSA) is a common breathing disorder with numerous health consequences, including greater risk of complications perioperatively. Undiagnosed OSA is known to place surgical patients at a higher risk of serious adverse events, including stroke and death. Polysomnography (PSG) assessment is the current gold standard test for diagnosing OSA. However, due to the significant time commitment and cost associated with PSG, a substantial number of OSA patients go undiagnosed before the perioperative period. Although the STOP-Bang questionnaire screening tool is currently used to help detect OSA patients, the low specificity to screen people without the disease is considered a major limitation. There is a clear need to develop a quick and effective prediction rule with higher overall accuracy to help streamline OSA diagnosis. Tracheal breathing sound analysis in awake patients at the bedside has shown potential to screen OSA patients with higher specificity compared to the STOP-Bang questionnaire. To date, no screening tools exist to detect OSA patients that combine the results of breathing sound analysis and STOP-Bang. Objectives: The present study aimed to develop a prediction rule, using both breathing sound analysis and variables in the STOP-Bang questionnaire, to better streamline the diagnosis of OSA. Methods: This prospective cohort study recruited patients referred for PSG at the Ottawa Hospital Sleep Centre from November 2016 to May 2017. The study conduct was approved by the Ottawa Health Science Network Research Ethics Board (#20160494-01H). After obtaining informed consent, anthropomorphic, breathing sound recordings, and STOP-Bang questionnaire data was collected from over 400 consenting patients. All patients that met the eligibility criteria were included. The breathing sound analysis and STOP-Bang results were utilized to design a prediction rule using logistic regression. Sensitivity, specificity, and likelihood ratio were used to compare the diagnostic performance of the final model. Results: Of the 439 consenting study participants, 280 study participants data were eligible for inclusion in the logistic regression analysis. Physician sleep specialists diagnosed 114 participants (41%) with moderate-to-severe OSA and 166 participants (59%) with normal-to-mild OSA. At a predicted probability of moderate-to-severe OSA greater than or equal to 0.5, breathing sound analysis had a similar sensitivity of 75.9 (95%CI; 65.4, 82.0) and higher specificity of 74.5% (95%CI; 68.5, 82.0) when compared to STOP-Bang with a sensitivity and specificity of 68.4% (95%CI; 58.9, 76.6) and 63.2% (95%CI: 55.0, 70.1), respectively. The sensitivity and specificity for the Safe-OSA rule, obtained by combining breathing sound analysis and STOP-Bang variables, were determined to be 75.4% (95%CI; 65.4, 82.0) and 74.5% (95%CI; 68.5, 82.0), respectively. A sensitivity analysis using a likelihood ratio test showed that breathing sound analysis contributed significantly to the performance of the Safe-OSA rule. The Safe-OSA rule was determined to be reasonably discriminative and well calibrated. The five-fold cross-validation showed similar results for the final model in the derivation and testing subsamples, which provides support for the internal validity of the Safe-OSA rule in our study population. Conclusion: The present study lends further support for the future testing of tracheal breathing sound analysis as a potential method to screen for moderate-to-severe OSA to help streamline patient care in the perioperative setting. Trial registration: ClinicalTrials.gov identifier NCT02987283.

The experiments reported in this thesis were conducted to examine the effects of executive-control and associative-learning processes on performance in conventional executive-control paradigms. For this purpose, I developed comparative task-switching and response-inhibition paradigms, which were used to assess the performance of pigeons, whose behaviour is presumably based purely on associative processes, and of humans, whose behaviour may be guided by executive control and by associative processes. Pigeons were able to perform accurately in the comparative paradigms; hence, associative-learning processes are sufficient to account for successful performance. However, some task-specific effects that can be attributed to executive-control processes, and which were found in humans applying executive control, were absent or greatly reduced in pigeons. Those effects either reflect the mental operations that are performed to ensure that a specific set of stimulus-response-contingencies is applied and any contingencies belonging to a different set are suppressed, or reflect mental preparations for the possibility that the requirement to execute a certain response suddenly changes. In particular, in Chapter 3, it is shown that the benefits of repeatedly applying the same set of stimulus-response contingencies (or, in reverse, the costs of switching from one set to another) do not apply when Pavlovian processes dominate learning, which is likely the case for pigeons. Furthermore, as shown in Chapters 4 and 5, the behavioural effects of preparing for an unpredicted change in response requirements appeared to be absent when behaviour was based purely on associative processes. Instead, associatively mediated performance was primarily influenced by the stimulus-response contingencies that were effective in each paradigm. Repeating the same response in consecutive trials facilitated the performance of pigeons and associatively learning human participants in the task-switching paradigms, and performing a particular Go response increased the pigeons' likelihood of executing that response in the following trial in two response-inhibition paradigms. In summary, any behavioural effects that can be observed at the level of abstract task requirements reflect the influence of executive-control processes, both in task-switching paradigms and in response-inhibition paradigms.

The first part of thesis focuses on theoretical introduction to the methods of text mining -- Information retrieval, classification and clustering. LSA method is presented as an advanced model for representing textual data. Furthermore, the work describes source data and methods for their preprocessing and preparation used to enhance the effectiveness of text mining methods. For each chosen text mining method there are defined evaluation metrics and used already existing, or newly implemented, programs are presented. The results of experiments comparing the effects of different preprocessing type and use of different models of the source data are then demonstrated and discussed in the conclusion.

Denna studies syfte är att synliggöra vilket förändringsarbete som sker inom den kommunala verksamheten när organisationer går från en hieraktiskt organisationsstruktur till en processinriktidad organisation. Studien genomfördes i en svensk kommun och fallstudie användes som metod. Den data som samlades in bestod av intervjuer av individer involverade i projektet, dokumentation och egna observationer. Analysen som gjordes på fallstudien utgick från fyra olika förändringsperspektiv. Genom perspektiven kan djupare förståelse skapas för det som händer i en organisation i förändring. Enligt studien ses förändringen som någonting positivt, men nya organisatoriska hinder uppstod till följd av det nya samarbetet. Bland annat strukturella problem på hur de olika organisationerna ska vara fristående men ändå samarbetande. Studien visar på att betrakta orgranisationen ur flera perspektiv kan ge djupare förståelse av vilka effekter det får på organisationen. Bland annat kan samma situation uttrycka sig annorlunda beroende från vilket perspektiv som betraktras. Vår slutsats är att kommunal verksamhet är komplex och mycket svår att förstå. Avtal mellan kundtjänst och förvalting kan ses som enkla instruktioner till kundtjänstpersonalen. Genom flerperspektivanalys kan dessa instruktioner få en ny innebörd och visa på oförutsedda effekter för hela organisationen.

Nas últimas duas décadas, observamos a transição da TV analógica para a TV digital nas várias partes do mundo, com o estabelecimento de sistemas internacionais de TV digital, como o ATSC, DVB e ISDB. No final de 2007, o sistema brasileiro de TV digital (SBTVD) foi lançado em caráter comercial na cidade de São Paulo. O SBTVD traz significativas inovações, dentre as quais destacamos interatividade, que é oferecida através de vários mecanismos de transmissão de dados junto ao conteúdo audiovisual. Esta dissertação tem por objetivo investigar e avaliar os mecanismos existentes para a implantação da interatividade na TV digital brasileira. Para atingir este objetivo, é proposta uma plataforma modular para testes com interatividade na TV digital brasileira. Os módulos que constituem esta plataforma foram propostos tendo por base as três etapas do circuito percorrido por uma aplicação interativa ao longo de um sistema de TV digital, a saber: geração de um transport stream contendo um aplicativo interativo, tratamento do aplicativo no receptor e retorno do resultado da interação pelo canal de interatividade para a emissora. Ensaios experimentais são realizados sobre o primeiro módulo desta plataforma, considerando os sinais das emissoras de TV disponíveis em Janeiro de 2008 na cidade de São Paulo. Esta dissertação apresenta duas contribuições importantes: os resultados destes ensaios experimentais e a proposta inicial de uma plataforma para realizar testes e avaliações que permitam um melhor entendimento e uso dos recursos de interatividade oferecidos pelo sistema brasileiro de TV digital. / We have watched the transition from analog TV to digital TV around the world in the last two decades, with the establishment of international systems, as ATSC, DVB and ISDB. At the end of 2007, the Brazilian Digital Television System (SBTVD) was released for commercial purposes in São Paulo City. SBTVD brings significant innovations, from which we emphasize interactivity, that is offered by some data transmission mechanisms. This work aims to investigate the current mechanisms for implementing the interactivity in the Brazilian Digital TV. In order to reach this aim, it\'s proposed a modular platform for tests with interactivity in the Brazilian digital TV. The three modules of that platform are based on the three stages of the interactive TV System: transport stream generation containing an interactive application, treatment of the application in the receiver, and returning of user\'s interaction through the interactivity channel. Experiments are released on the first module, considering the digital TV signals available in São Paulo in January, 2008. This work has two main conclusions: the result of these experiments and the initial propose of a platform for tests execution and evaluation which allow us to have a better understanding and a more efficient use of the interactive resources offered by SBTVD.

Due to plans of reconstructing the local public transport stop in front of the railway station in Norrköping, southern Sweden, a simulation model was created to compare the current stop design with an alternative design. The micro simulation model was created with the simulation software Aimsun and includes scenarios based on the current traffic situation as well as future scenarios including assumptions for the future demand growth. While creating the alternative design, which provides a second lane for overtaking, several limitations in Aimsun were recognized and modifications were required to create simulation behaviour as close to reality as possible. Due to the software limitations the simulation results for the alternative design showed slightly higher results and made it difficult to make explicit comparisons of the output values. Nevertheless the output data indicated that both design layouts include remaining capacity of the public transport stop.

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