This research was to explore the¡§Correlation among participating motivation, job satisfaction and sustained willingness to serve of volunteers of cultural institution.¡¨Kaohsiung Public Library is presented as a case study in this research. The questionnaire is the main method. Meanwhile, interviews with volunteers are also offered for providing more evidence and new thinking toward this issue. There are four objectives to serve as guidelines for this research. ¡]1¡^To understand the status quo of the backgrounds of volunteers of cultural institutions and their participating motivation, job satisfaction and sustained willingness to serve. ¡]2¡^To explore the differences of participating motivation, job satisfaction and sustained willingness to serve of volunteers of different background. ¡]3¡^To explore the correlation among participating motivation, job satisfaction and sustained willingness to serve.¡]4¡^To predict the influence of participating motivation and job satisfaction on the sustained willingness to serve. The questionnaires were distributed to 235 volunteers, including 172 current and 51 quitted, in 10 branch libraries of Kaohsiung Public Library. There were 223 valid questionnaires . Usable rate was about 95¢M. After analyzed, the results of this research are as follows¡G ¡]1¡^The background of each volunteers of Kaohsiung Public Library shows a great amount of similarities with one another. ¡]2¡^As for the overall participation motivation, the highest one is self-growth. Different age, whether they have religious beliefs would make obvious difference on the participating motivation. ¡]3¡^As for the overall job satisfaction, the highest one is self-growth. Different age, occupations , whether they have religious beliefs and status would make obvious difference on the job satisfaction. ¡]4¡^Volunteers in Kaohsiung Public Library have strong willingness to continue to serve in the future. Different age, occupations and whether they have religious beliefs would make obvious difference on sustained willingness to Serve. ¡]5¡^The study results show significant positive correlation between a volunteer¡¦s participation motivation and job satisfaction, participating motivation and sustained willingness to serve, and job satisfaction and sustained willingness to serve. ¡]6¡^¡§self-growth satisfaction¡¨can predict the level of sustained willingness to serve. In compliance with the above-mentioned results, the researcher provides authorities, institutions, and future researchers with constructive suggestions.

Meditation training has been shown to improve attention and emotion regulation. However, the mechanisms responsible for these effects are largely unknown. In order to make further progress, a rigorous interdisciplinary approach that combines both empirical and theoretical experiments is required. This dissertation uses such an approach to analyze electroencephalogram (EEG) data collected during two three-month long intensive meditation retreats in four steps. First, novel tools were developed for preprocessing the EEG data. These tools helped remove ocular artifacts, muscular artifacts, and interference from power lines in a semi-automatic fashion. Second, in order to identify the cortical correlates of meditation, longitudinal changes in the cortical activity were measured using spectral analysis. Three main longitudinal changes were observed in the retreat participants: (1) reduced individual alpha frequency after training, similar reduction has been consistently found in experienced meditators; (2) reduced alpha-band power in the midline frontal region, which correlated with improved vigilance performance; and (3) reduced beta-band power in the parietal-occipital regions, which correlated with daily time spent in meditation and enhanced self-reported psychological well-being. Third, a formal computational model was developed to provide a concrete and testable theory about the underlying mechanisms. Four theoretical experiments were run, which showed, (1) reduced intrathalamic gain after training, suggesting enhanced alertness; (2) increased cortico-thalamic delay, which strongly correlated with the reduction in individual alpha frequency (found during spectral analysis); (3) reduction in intrathalamic gain provided increased stability to the brain; and (4) anterior-posterior division in the modeled reticular nucleus of the thalamus (TRN) layer and increased connectivity in the posterior region of TRN after training. Fourth, correlation analysis was performed to ground the changes in cortical activity and model parameters into changes in behavior and self-reported psychological functions. Through these four steps, a concrete theory of the mechanisms underlying focused-attention meditation was constructed. This theory provides both mechanistic and teleological reasoning behind the changes observed during meditation training. The theory further leads to several predictions, including the possibility that customized meditation techniques can be used to treat patients suffering from neurodevelopmental disorders and epilepsy. Lastly, the dissertation attempts to link the theory to the long-held views that meditation improves awareness, attention, stability, and psychological well-being. / text

Made available in DSpace on 2014-06-11T19:23:08Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 0 Previous issue date: 2011-02-15Bitstream added on 2014-06-13T19:28:48Z : No. of bitstreams: 1 zeminian_lb_me_botfm.pdf: 506409 bytes, checksum: 08bea6131bbfbe54e0327803c5f6bb14 (MD5) / Ministério da Saúde / O vírus da Hepatite C (VHC) é um importante patógeno associado com doença hepática crônica sendo que alguns infectados podem desenvolver cirrose e carcinoma hepatocelular. O tratamento da hepatite C crônica visa a resposta virológica sustentada (RVS), definida como níveis de RNA viral indetectáveis no soro por seis meses depois do término do tratamento. Atualmente, a terapia padrão ouro é a combinação de interferon α peguilado e ribavirina, porém esse esquema terapêutico vem se mostrando eficaz em, apenas, 50% dos pacientes infectados com o genótipo 1, o mais prevalente no Brasil. Portanto, novas drogas mais eficazes e menos tóxicas estão sendo desenvolvidas para melhorar a assistência aos pacientes infectados pelo VHC, entre as quais merecem destaque os inibidores da serina protease NS3, a qual é uma enzima essencial para a replicação do VHC e assim um potencial alvo para novas terapias antivirais. Entretanto, a emergência de variantes resistentes é o maior obstáculo para o sucesso da terapêutica. Variantes resistentes já foram isoladas em pacientes tratados com os inibidores de protease e, estão associadas com a falência terapêutica. Porém o impacto dessas variantes resistentes em pacientes virgens de tratamento ainda não foi esclarecido e, esse tipo de informação pode avaliar o impacto dos inibidores de protease na terapia antiviral. O objetivo deste estudo foi avaliar a presença de mutações de resistência e polimorfismos genéticos na região genômica NS3 do VHC em 37 pacientes virgens de tratamento com inibidores de protease infectados com genótipo 1. RNA viral sérico foi utilizado como fonte para amplificação e seqüenciamento da região NS3 do VHC e, avaliar a presença de mutações de... / The Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) is an important pathogen associated with chronic hepatic disease and some infected patients can develop cirrhosis and hepatocellular carcinoma. The treatment of chronic hepatitis C aimed the sustained virological response (SVR), defined as having undetectable serum HCV RNA at the end of therapy for at least 6 months. Currently, the gold standard therapy is a combination of pegylated interferon-α and the ribavirin, however this treatment present efficacy in only 50% of patients infected with genotypes 1, the most prevalent in Brazil. Then, new drugs more effective and less toxic have been developed to improve the attendance of the HCV infected patients as the serine protease NS3 inhibitors, which is an enzyme essential to HCV replication and main target of new antiviral therapies. However, the emergence of drug resistant variants has been the major obstacle to therapeutic successful. Resistant variants have already been isolated in patients treated with protease inhibitors and, these resistant variants are associated with non response to treatment. But the impact of the resistant variants in naïve protease inhibitors patients is unclear yet and, this information can evaluate the impact of protease inhibitors in antiviral therapeutic. The goal of this study was evaluate the presence of resistance mutations and genetic polymorphisms in the NS3 genomic region of HCV in 37 protease inhibitors-naive genotype 1 HCV infected patients. Serum viral RNA was used as source to amplification and sequencing of NS3 region of HCV and, evaluates the presence of resistance mutations and polymorphisms in this region. The results showed that only 07 (18.9%) samples presented resistant variants, the mutations... (Complete abstract click electronic access below)

M.Ing. / Sustained or long endurance solar powered flight is defined as an aircraft capable of main- taining flight through multiple day-night flight cycles, using only solar power and rechargable energy stores. The project is focused on developing solar powered flight theory and real-world unmanned aerial vehicle implementations. The important aspects of system design are es- tablished and studied at a fundamental theoretical level. A preliminary design is conducted with endurance optimisation as the main aim. The optimisation process aims to establish a theoretical basis for sustained solar powered flight. The project is started with a feasibility and relevance study. A literature study was used to gather the required theoretical information. A novel theoretical preliminary design basis is conducted. The study is aimed at answering many questions in the field. The study is the first to show how previously varied aircraft from 3 m to 80 m are valid solutions to the long endurance flight requirement. The optimisation results correlates well with the current state-of-the-art. The theoretical models were then characterised through the development of two unmanned aerial vehicles. The development required a multidisciplinary integration of various fields. The development process was characterised and discussed. Flight automation was successfully integrated into the system. Multiple test flights were conducted. An interpretation of multi- faceted results are given. This project has contributed to international theory regarding solar powered and sustained endurance aircraft. Many specific contributions were made to the field. The project has achieved multiple unofficial records from the flight tests in the Southern Hemisphere and African continent.

No description available.

Post installed anchors come in either mechanical anchors that develop their strength purely through mechanical interlock with the base concrete, or bonded anchors that develop their strength by bonding anchor rod to the base concrete. Bonded anchors are either grouted, typically cementitious material, or adhesive, typically a chemical material. This thesis presents a current literature review of post-installed bonded anchors, preliminary testing of adhesive bonded anchors, and details of short term and long term test setups for future testing. The purpose of this thesis was to develop the test setups that will be used for future testing on anchors.

Windstorms result in significant damage and economic loss and are a major recurring threat in many countries. Estimating surface-level wind speeds resulting from windstorms is a complicated problem, but geostatistical spatial interpolation methods present a potential solution. Maximum sustained and peak gust weather station data from two historic windstorms in Europe were analyzed to predict surface-level wind speed surfaces across a large and topographically varied landscape. Disjunctively sampled maximum sustained wind speeds were adjusted to represent equivalent continuously sampled 10-minute wind speeds and missing peak gust station data were estimated by applying a gust factor to the recorded maximum sustained wind speeds. Wind surfaces were estimated based on anisotropic and isotropic kriging interpolation methodologies. The study found that anisotropic kriging is well-suited for interpolating wind speeds in meso- and macro-scale areas because it accounts for wind direction and trends in wind speeds across a large, heterogeneous surface, and resulted in interpolation surface improvement in most models evaluated. Statistical testing of interpolation error for stations stratified by geographic classification revealed that stations in coastal and/or mountainous locations had significantly higher prediction errors when compared with stations in non-coastal/non-mountainous locations. These results may assist in mitigating losses to structures due to excessive wind events.

No description available.

Since the approval of recombinant human insulin in 1982, there has been a growing interest in the use of biotherapeutics, and more particularly of monoclonal antibodies (mAb)-based products due to their multiple advantages compared to small chemical entities. Nonetheless, mAbs also show some drawbacks, one of them being their sensitivity to diverse instability pathways due to their complex structure. Therefore, attention needs to be paid during formulation and storage of such entities. While administration of mAbs using non-invasive routes has been extensively investigated, it still faces several challenges, especially regarding systemic therapy. Thus, parenteral route currently remains the main route of administration for antibodies (Abs). However, frequent injections are required in order to maintain Ab plasma levels into the therapeutic range, which may induce peak-to-trough fluctuations in blood levels due to multiple dosing as well as poor patient compliance. Consequently, methods to increase the half-life of Abs have gained interest over the last decades, and more particularly the use of sustained-delivery systems based on poly(lactide-co-glycolide) acid (PLGA) derivatives. In this work, the spray-drying of a water-in-oil emulsion (w/o) was selected as the formulation technique to produce Ab-loaded PLGA microparticles. Based on the requirement of sustained-release delivery systems, different objectives were set regarding the characteristics of the microparticles, i.e. a drug loading (DL) of at least 20%, a continuous in vitro and in vivo Ab release over a minimum of one month with a limited burst release and the possibility to maintain Ab stability during manufacturing, storage and release. / Doctorat en Sciences biomédicales et pharmaceutiques (Pharmacie) / info:eu-repo/semantics/nonPublished

<p> A Matrix Stiffness-Modification Technique has been proposed for the inelastic analysis of ·reinforced concrete frames subjected to short term or sustained loads. To check the applicability of the analytical method, two large scale concrete frames were tested under short-term loads and sustained-loads respectively. In addition, data for twenty-two frame tests from other sources has also been compared with the non-linear analysis. Close agreement has. been observed for all the frames considered. It was further concluded that a conventional elastic matrix method using stiffnesses based on a cracked transformed section of concrete does net yield accurate results, especially in the case of sustained loading conditions. From the method developed, comments can therefore be made on present column design practice. </p> / Thesis / Master of Engineering (MEngr)