This thesis focuses on Canadian consumers concerns and attitudes towards healthy eating. The analysis is based on two years (2007 and 2008) of the Nielsen Health and Wellness survey data (Nielsen, 2008) and Nielsen Homescan household food purchase data. These datasets are used to investigate, first participating Canadian consumers stated food and health behaviour, and second the actual revealed meat purchase patterns of the same households. The results from logistical regression models show how differences in social-demographic factors and food behaviours affect consumers’ health and dietary concerns. Significant variables are gender, age, family lifestyle, changing eating habits towards a healthier lifestyle, and information from products’ Nutrition Facts Tables. These variables are key factors that increase the probability of Canadians being more concerned about their future health, healthy eating, as well as obesity in their household. In the second analysis, meat purchase patterns across survey participants with varying stated levels of health and dietary concerns are investigated using descriptive data analysis. Although the first part of analysis suggested that consumers are getting more knowledgeable about making healthier food choices and diet-health related problems resulting from an unbalanced diet, no differences in meat purchase patterns related to households’ stated diet and health concerns were found. The discrepancies between stated and revealed food, diet, and health preferences among Canadians suggest that more emphasis needs to be placed on consumer information and education to improve healthy food choices in meat and other products. Also, the relationship between consumer socioeconomic and demographic characteristics and their impact on consumer health behavior requires further attention. Improved knowledge and information regarding Canadian consumers’ diet and health behavior can support more efficient marketing programs for healthier products and assist policy makers in designing more effective policies aimed at changing Canadians’ diets to promote healthier lifestyles. / Agricultural and Resources Economics

The Pigeon River was severely impacted beginning in the early 1900s by a paper mill located in Canton, North Carolina. The mill discharged chemical byproducts into the Pigeon River until 1992 when the paper mill modified their processes. As a result, water quality improved but the status of salamander species in the Pigeon River was unknown. Worldwide amphibian declines over the last 20 years have drawn attention to the need for more research and a better understanding of species-specific habitat relationships. There is concern about amphibian population declines because amphibians are critical to the balance of ecosystems and are considered exceptional indicators of environmental health. The objectives of this study were: 1) to conduct a baseline survey of salamander species composition in the Pigeon River watershed, 2) to determine if salamander populations differ above and below the Canton paper mill, and 3) to attempt to explain variance in salamander abundance, richness and diversity by comparing water quality and substrate characteristics among streams. Eight stations were examined on the Pigeon River, with four stations located above the paper mill and four stations below. We also chose three stations on each of four tributaries, Big Creek, Fines Creek, Jonathan Creek and Richland Creek. Snorkel surveys were completed in the summer of 2009. Five of eight species of stream salamanders were found that historically existed in Haywood County, NC: Eastern hellbender, Blue Ridge two-lined salamander, shovel-nosed salamander, black-bellied salamander and spring salamander. No salamanders were found in the main channel of the Pigeon River below the mill. Eastern hellbenders and Blue Ridge two-lined salamanders preferred substrates consisting of rubble and avoided bedrock. Percent rubble was the only variable retained in substrate models and was positively related to salamander abundance, richness and diversity. Conductivity, salinity, and water temperature were higher in the Pigeon River below the mill than at all other sites. Salamander abundance was explained by dissolved oxygen, pH, and stream width in water quality models. The results of this study suggest salamander abundance was negatively associated with the Pigeon River below the mill because of poor water quality and not habitat availability.

Seismic survey design methods often rely on qualitative measures to provide an optimal image of their objective target. Fold, ray tracing techniques counting ray hits on binned interfaces, and even advanced 3-D survey design methods that try to optimize o?set and azimuth coverage are prone to fail (especially in complex geological or structural settings) in their imaging predictions. The reason for the potential failure of these commonly used approaches derives from the fact that they do not take into account the ray geometry at the target points. Inverse theory results can provide quantitative and objective constraints on acquisition design. Beylkin??s contribution to this ?eld is an elegant and simple equation describing a reconstructed point scatterer given the source/receiver distribution used in the imaging experiment. Quantitative measures of spatial image resolution were developed to assess the e?cacy of competing acquisition geometries. Apart from the source/receiver con?guration, parameters such as the structure and seismic velocity also in?uence image resolution. Understanding their e?ect on image quality, allows us to better interpret the resolution results for the surveys under examination. A salt model was used to simulate imaging of target points located underneath and near the ?anks of the diapir. Three di?erent survey designs were examined. Results from these simulations show that contrary to simple models, near-o?sets do not always produce better resolved images than far-o?sets. However, consideration of decreasing signal-to-noise ratio revealed that images obtained from the far-o?set experiment are degrading faster than the near-o?set ones. The image analysis was performed on VSP ?eld data as well as synthetics generated by ?nite di?erence forward modeling. The predicted image resolution results were compared to measured resolution from the migrated sections of both the ?eld data and the synthetics. This comparison con?rms that image resolution analysis provides as good a resolution prediction as the prestack Kirchho? depth migrated section of the synthetic gathers. Even in the case of the migrated ?eld data, despite the presence of error introducing factors (di?erent signal-to-noise ratios, shape and frequency content of source wavelets, etc.), image resolution performed well exhibiting the same trends of resolution changes at di?erent test points.

This thesis described socioeconomic inequalities in fruit and vegetable consumption in Stockholm County. A comparative descriptive analysis was carried out with the use of secondary data from the 2006 Stockholm County Public Health Survey. The data was analyzed through cross tabulations that were conducted in SPSS. The findings showed that people with high socioeconomic position consumed fruit and vegetables more frequently than those of low socioeconomic position. Differences in fruit and vegetable consumption were found for the three measures of socioeconomic position; education, occupation and income. These differences were pronounced to a larger extent across different education levels compared to levels of occupation and income. Further research is needed to investigate which factors may explain the observed differences.

Does the country people live in affect the probability of them experiencing happiness? Can a country variable in an ordinal regression model be affected when microeconomic and macroeconomic factors are added to the model? The possible outcomes are either that the country variable affects less when the additional predictors are added to the model, or that they stay the same. The micro data is collected from the European Social Survey database, the macro data is collected from the World Bank. The country variable becomes less substantial when additional variables are added to the model. The variable with the most influence over expected happiness apart from the country variable is whether the individual often socializes with friends or not. It’s statistically significant that the supervened variables make the country variable less volatile in some cases.

Den forensiska vetenskapen innefattar en mängd olika vetenskaper som tillämpas för att bistå och besvara frågor av intresse för rättsväsendet. Skoavtrycksjämförelser har använts sedan slutet av 1700-talet för att bistå i brottsutredningar. Genom att undersöka egenskaper hos ett skoavtryck kan en forensiker ge utredaren värdefull information om skon och ibland även om bäraren. I bästa fall är skoavtrycket så unikt att det kan individualiseras och identifieras till en specifik sko. För att underlätta och förbättra den forensiska bevisvärderingen är det av stort intresse att statistiskt erhålla förekomsten av ett bevis. Genom att samla in data gällande sulmönster och sedan etablera en databas kan styrkan hos ett specifikt skoavtryck fastställas. I denna studie samlades 687 avtryck in slumpmässigt och lades in i ett visualiserat databasklassificeringssystem, SIMSALAPIM, varpå en statistisk utvärdering utfördes. Resultatet i denna studie visar på att ett specifikt sulmönster generellt förekommer endast en gång i databasen, varför det kan sägas att ett skoavtryck tillför en viss styrka/värde som forensiskt bevis även om det inte besitter några individualiserande detaljer. Vidare, genom ytterliggare statistiska utvärderingar, kunde även ett samband mellan ålder och typ av sko ses. / The Forensic Science comprises a variety of sciences that are applied in order to assist and answer questions of interest to the legal system. Since the end of the 18th century footwear impression comparison has been applied to assist in crime investigations. By examining the characteristics of a footwear impression the forensic scientist may provide the investigator with valuable information about the footwear and sometimes even about the wearer. Ultimately, the footwear impression is so unique that it can be individualized and identified to a specific shoe. In order to facilitate and improve the forensic evidence evaluation it is of great interest to statistically establish the prevalence of evidence. By collecting data of outsole patterns and then recording it in a database the strength of a specific footwear impression can be determined. In this survey 687 impressions were randomly collected and recorded in a visualised database classification system, SIMSALAPIM1, whereupon a statistical evaluation was performed. The result of this survey indicates that a specific outsole pattern typically only occurs once in the database, wherefore it can be stated that any footwear impression provides some strength/value as forensic evidence even though there are no individual characteristics present. Moreover, through additional statistical evaluations, a relation between age and shoe type also was revealed.

Background Mortality data are critical to understanding and monitoring changes in population health status over time. Nevertheless, the majority of people living in the world’s poorest countries, where the burden of disease is highest, remain outside any kind of systematic health surveillance. This lack of routine registration of vital events, such as births and deaths, constitutes a major and longstanding constraint on the understanding of patterns of health and disease and the effectiveness of interventions. Localised sentinel demographic and health surveillance strategies are a useful surrogate for more widespread surveillance in such settings, but rigorous, evidence-based methodologies for sample-based surveillance are weak and by no means standardised. This thesis aims to describe, evaluate and refine methodological approaches to mortality measurement in resource-poor settings. Methods Through close collaboration with existing community surveillance operations in a range of settings, this work uses existing data from demographic surveillance sites and community-based surveys using various innovative approaches in order to evaluate and refine methodological approaches to mortality measurement and cause-of-death determination. In doing so, this work explores the application of innovative techniques and procedures for mortality surveillance in relation to the differing needs of those who use mortality data, ranging from global health organisations to local health planners. Results Empirical modelling of sampling procedures in community-based surveys in rural Africa and of random errors in longitudinal data collection sheds light on the effects of various data-capture and quality-control procedures and demonstrates the representativeness and robustness of population surveillance datasets. The development, application and refinement of a probabilistic approach to determining causes of death at the population level in developing countries has shown promise in overcoming the longstanding limitations and issues of standardisation of existing methods. Further adaptation and application of this approach to measure maternal deaths has also been successful. Application of international guidelines on humanitarian crisis detection to mortality surveillance in Ethiopia demonstrates that simple procedures can and, from an ethical perspective, should be applied to sentinel surveillance methods for the prospective detection of important mortality changes in vulnerable populations. Conclusion Mortality surveillance in sentinel surveillance systems in resource-poor settings is a valuable and worthwhile task. This work contributes to the understanding of the effects of different methods of surveillance and demonstrates that, ultimately, the choice of methods for collecting data, assuring data quality and determining causes of death depends on the specific needs and requirements of end users. Surveillance systems have the potential to contribute substantially to developing health care systems in resource-poor countries and should not only be considered as research-oriented enterprises.

The purpose of this study was to identify the positive and negative aspects of the work and dynamics of a management team and from that recommend how the team can improve. The aim was also to investigate whether there was a gap between how the members of the management team comprehend themselves and how the project, section and team managers comprehend the management team. The management team contains of seven core team members and is the head function of a research and development site in central Sweden. The results are based on interviews with the present members of the management team and three former members, a survey among the project, section and team managers and by participating observation on meetings with the team. The results show that the management team is an overall well-functioning team that with some changes and improvements, especially concerning communication and information, can reach even further. In addition the results show that there was no considerable gap between how the management team comprehends them and how the project, section and team managers comprehend the management team.

In the majority of cases students are short of money and have problems to finance their low standard subsistence. An additional financial burden for students is purchasing the costly literature for their courses and studies. Universities often support their students by providing a library but a library can never cover all the books that are demanded. Students often do not need or use their purchased books longer than they have to; with the closure of a course or a semester books become useless for the owner. To get back some money after having used a book it is common to resell the book in various ways. Regularly students’ organisations or universities established some sort of platform for example a bill-board in their facilities or on the internet. But the existence of these platforms made trading the used literature not easier because there are no rules and no regulations. The store Campusbokhandeln took this problem and started a business to make it easier for students to sell and buy used books with fair regulations so every participator profits. Campusbokhandeln has a main store at Örebro University and one at Karlstad University. The purpose of the study is to find out whether Campusbokhandeln is able to expand their actions to another university in Sweden and if yes to which university. The results of the research show that the demand for a platform like Campusbokhandeln if very high and that the owners can take the chance to expand. After a SWOT-analysis we were able to point out chances and give suggestions about the future of the business.

Bullying is a common problem among children and adolescents in which the consequences can be severe. Bullying is associated with a variety of negative outcomes and can lead to a variety of mental and physical health problems. The purpose of this study was to examine forms of bullying behaviors that were most predictive of student-reported bullying and the frequency of student-reported bullying in response to a variety of bullying behaviors. In this study, an archival dataset was utilized. Data collected in the fall of 2012 came from 8387 6th through 12th grade students who attended 124 public middle and high schools in Anne Arundel County Public Schools, Maryland. The web-based bullying survey, designed as a component of a district-wide bullying prevention initiative, was intended to assess the prevalence, type, and social norms associated with bullying and school violence.<br>For the first research question, logistic regression analyses indicated that teasing and name-calling were the most frequent forms of bullying and were the two primary predictors of student-reported bullying. Social and/or relational forms of bullying were overall the most frequently reported forms of bullying. In contrast, physical or direct forms of bullying and cyberbullying were the least frequent forms of bullying reported.<br>For the second research question, a series of chi-square analyses indicated significant differences for all types of bullying behavior and whether or not student reported being bullied. Specifically, compared to student who did not report being bullied in the past month, those students who did report being bullied within the last month were more likely to report (a) being called names, (b) being threatened, (c) being teased or picked on, (d) being pushed or shoved, (e) having emails or messages sent to others about them, (f) having rumors or lied spread about them, (g) being ignored or left on purpose, (h) having sexual comments or gestures made toward them; and (i) having their property stolen. Based on the results of this current study, several different proposals for future research can be proposed, including (a) examination of the changes in bullying behaviors and reporting of bullying longitudinally, from elementary to high school and (b) comparisons between schools with and without bullying prevention programs in regard to type and frequency of student bullying behaviors and student reporting of bullying. / School of Education; / School Psychology / PhD; / Dissertation;