[pt] A transição para uma economia circular (EC) requer modelos multidimensionais para a definição de objetivos e metas de circularidade em diferentes horizontes temporais, prazos, diretrizes circulares setoriais, políticas públicas nacionais e regionais, entre outros. Visando fornecer estruturas consistentes para decisões de negócios baseadas em evidências, com implicações para os níveis meso e macro de CE, o objetivo desta dissertação é propor um modelo de mensuração estratégica para monitorar e avaliar o desempenho da circularidade no nível micro, integrando GMA e dois métodos multicritério de tomada de decisão. Os principais resultados deste estudo envolvem: (i) uma matriz morfológica genérica composta por oito parâmetros e seus possíveis estados para definir e representar visualmente possíveis cenários de transição de CE para uma determinada organização que pretende evoluir através de transições de CE; (ii) o uso potencial de uma abordagem metodológica híbrida (que combina GMA com dois métodos MCDM) para selecionar os indicadores C mais relevantes para cada estratégia-R pode ser destacado; (iii) uma lista inicial de 58 C-indicadores e métricas associadas a dez estratégias-R e um conjunto de 38 C-indicadores selecionados por meio da adoção do método híbrido AHP-TOPSIS; (iv) definição de dez indicadores de circularidade compostos associados às estratégias R, bem como um Índice de Performance de Circularidade (IPC) geral, e um procedimento passo a passo para calculá-los em diferentes cenários de transição de CE. De uma perspectiva de transição circular, os resultados destacam implicações práticas para organizações e cadeias de valor, uma vez que o modelo foi concebido para ser aplicado em diferentes contextos de negócio, especialmente em organizações que irão definir seus objetivos de circularidade e respectivas agendas relativas à transição para uma economia circular. / [en] The concept of a circular economy (CE) transition requires multi-level frameworks regarding the definition of goals and targets for different time horizons, desired change timeframes, sectoral circularity guidelines, and national and regional public policies, among other factors. Aiming to provide consistent frameworks for evidence-based business decisions with implications for the meso and macro levels of CE, the objective of this dissertation is to propose a strategic measurement model to monitoring and evaluating the circularity performance at the micro level by integrating GMA and two multicriteria decision-making methods. The main findings of this study are: (i) a generic morphological matrix comprising eight parameters and their possible states to define and visually represent possible CE transition scenarios for a given organization that aims to evolve through CE transitions; (ii) the potential use of a hybrid methodological approach (that combines GMA with two MCDM methods) for selecting the most relevant C-indicators for each R-strategy could be highlighted; (iii) an initial list of 58 C-indicators and metrics associated to ten R-strategies and a set of 38 selected C-indicators by adopting the hybrid AHP-TOPSIS method; (iv) definition of ten composite C-indicators associated with the R-strategies, as well as an overall Circularity Performance Index (CPI), and a step-by-step procedure to calculate them in different CE transition scenarios. From a CE transition perspective, the results highlighted practical implications for organizations and value chains, once the proposed model is designed to be applied in different business contexts, especially in those organizations that will define their circularity targets and respective agendas concerning CE transitions.

This study uses defensive realism, offensive realism and power transition theory (PTT) in order to examine the great powers’ grand strategies in the Arctic region, aiming to recontextualise the security theatre in the Arctic as a reflection of the return of great power politics and the end of Arctic exceptionalism, and to examine the explanatory power of the different strands of realism on the great power behaviour identified in their Arctic strategies. The study is conducted using qualitative content analysis and utilises Jacob Westberg’s theorisation of grand strategies through the categories of context, ends, means and ways as analytical framework, to which the theoretical framework is applied. The result shows that realism is a suitable theory for predicting great power behaviour in the Arctic, where PTT provides the strongest explanatory power; that the dichotomy between hard and soft security is eroding; and that the strategies were highly context-dependent, thus rendering generalisable results difficult to discern.

Dans plusieurs milieux on s’attend à ce que les infirmières récemment diplômées fassent du préceptorat (Cubit et Ryan, 2011). Ainsi, les infirmières sont fréquemment affectées à ce rôle tôt après leur intégration sur le marché du travail et souvent sans préparation adéquate (Debra, 2014; Elmers, 2010). Le but de la présente étude était d’explorer l’expérience de devenir infirmières préceptrices auprès de Candidates à l’exercice de la profession infirmière [CEPI], dans un délai de 0 à 3 ans après avoir elles-mêmes été CEPI. La théorie de la transition d’Afaf Ibrahim Meleis (2010) a servi de cadre de référence en guidant la formulation du but de cette étude qualitative interprétative. La théorie de Meleis (2010) a également accompagné la discussion des résultats de notre recherche. Cinq infirmières nouvellement préceptrices âgées de 24 à 27 ans ont participé à des entretiens semi-structurés. L’analyse des données a été conduite selon les étapes d’analyse thématique proposée par Benner (1994) et Paillé et Muchielli (2006). D’abord, il résulte de notre étude que l’expérience de devenir préceptrice suscite chez les jeunes infirmières l’occasion d’un engagement réflexif sur leur propre expérience d’infirmière et de préceptrice. Puis, elles font l’expérience du sens des responsabilités pour «façonner» la CEPI. Finalement, une proximité avec l’expérience de la CEPI influence l’expérience de devenir préceptrice. Devenir préceptrice tôt dans la carrière d’infirmière semble être le moment opportun. Toutefois, il importe d’essayer d’uniformiser et de standardiser la préparation de l’infirmière soignante à devenir préceptrice. Également, jumeler une infirmière préceptrice plus aînée pour guider la nouvelle préceptrice dans cette expérience serait un atout. Finalement, l’approfondissement du besoin de soutien dans l’accompagnement de l’infirmière dans son expérience de devenir préceptrices est une des pistes pour la future recherche. / In today’s reality, nurses start to precept soon in their career (Cubit and Ryan, 2011), and often without any prior notice or preparation (Debra, 2014; Elmers, 2010). The purpose of the present study is to explore the experience of nurses becoming a preceptor for a Candidate to the Profession of Nursing Practice [CPNP], within 0 to 3 years of being CPNP themselves. Five young nurses who were newly preceptors participated in semi-structured interviews. Participants were between 24 et 27 years of age. Data was analysed using Benner`s (1994) and Paillé et Muchielli’s (2006) thematic analysis. The theoretical framework of Transition theory by Afaf Ibrahim Meleis (2010) directed the formulation of the purpose of this qualitative interpretive study. Meleis’s theory also accompanied the discussion of the results of the present study. The results of the present study suggest that the young nurses who are newly preceptors are living through the sense of responsibility of shaping the CPNP, they find themselves situated close to the CPNP experience and their experience of becoming a preceptor leads them to reflect on their personal experience as a nurse and a preceptor. Becoming a nurse preceptor early in their career seems to be an opportune moment. However, it would be recommended to standardise the preparation of the nurses for this new responsibility which could ease their experience of becoming a preceptor. Also pairing a more experienced nurse preceptor to guide the new nurse in the process of acquiring the new role of a preceptor would be an asset. Finally a further research could explore the need for support during the experience of becoming a preceptor.

An increase in the co-operativity in the motion of particles and a growth of a suitably defined dynamical correlation length seem to be generic features exhibited by all liquids upon supercooling. These features have been observed both in experiments and in numerical simulations of glass-forming liquids. Specially designed NMR experiments have estimated that the rough magnitude of this correlation length is of the order of a few nanometers near the glass transition. Simulations also predict that there are regions in the system which are more liquid-like than other regions. A complete theoretical understanding of this behaviour is not available at present. In recent calculations, Berthier, Biroli and coworkers [1, 2] extended the simple mode coupling theory (MCT) to incorporate the effects of dynamic heterogeneity and predicted the existence of a growing dynamical correlation length associated with the cooperativity of the dynamics. MCT also predicts a power law divergence of different dynamical quantities at the mode coupling temperature and at temperatures somewhat higher than the mode coupling temperature, these predictions are found to be consistent with experimental and simulation results. The system size dependence of these quantities should exhibit finite size scaling (FSS) similar to that observed near a continuous phase transition in the temperature range where they show power law growth. Hence we have used the method of finite size scaling in the context of the dynamics of supercooled liquids. In chapter 2, we present the results of extensive molecular dynamics simulations of a model glass forming liquid and extract a dynamical correlation length ξ associated with dynamic heterogeneity by performing a detailed finite size scaling analysis of a four-point dynamic susceptibility χ4(t) [3] and the associated Binder cumulant. We find that although these quantities show the “normal” finite size scaling behaviour expected for a system with a growing correlation length, the relaxation time τ does not. Thus glassy dynamics can not be fully understood in terms of “standard” critical phenomena. Inspired by the success of the empirical Adam-Gibbs relation [4] which relates dynamics with the configurational entropy, we have calculated the configurational entropy for different system sizes and temperatures to explain the nontrivial scaling behaviour of the relaxation time. We find that the behaviour of the relaxation time τ can be explained in terms of the Adam-Gibbs relation [4] for all temperatures and system sizes. This observation raises serious questions about the validity of the mode coupling theory which does not include the effects of the potential energy (or free energy) landscape on the dynamics. On the other hand, in the “random first order transition” theory (RFOT), introduced by Wolynes and coworkers [5], the configurational entropy plays a central role in determining the dynamics. So we also tried to explain our simulation results in terms of RFOT. However, this interpretation has the drawback that the value of one of the exponents of this theory extracted from our numerical results does not satisfy an expected physical bound, and there is no clear explanation for the obtained values of other exponents. Thus we find puzzling values for the exponents relevant to the applicability of RFOT, which are in need of explanation. This can be due to the fact that RFOT focuses only near the glass transition, while all our simulation results are for temperatures far above the glass transition temperature (actually, above the mode coupling temperature). Interestingly, results similar to ours were obtained in a recent analysis [6] of experimental data near the laboratory glass transition, on a large class of glass-forming materials. Thus right now we do not have any theory which can explain our simulation data consistently from all perspectives. There have been some attempts to extend the RFOT analysis to temperatures above the mode coupling temperature [7, 8] and to estimate a length scale associated with the configurational entropy at such temperatures. We compare our results with the predictions arising from these analyses. In chapter 3, we present simulation results that suggest that finite size scaling analysis is probably the only feasible method for obtaining reliable estimates of the dynamical correlation length for supercooled liquids. As mentioned before, although there exists a growing correlation length, the behaviour of all measured quantities (specifically, the relaxation time) is not in accordance with the behaviour expected in “standard” critical phenomena. So one might suspect the results for the correlation length extracted from the scaling analysis. To find out whether the results obtained by doing finite size scaling are correct, we have done simulations of very large system sizes for the same model glass forming liquid. In earlier studies, the correlation length has been extracted from the wave vector dependence of the dynamic susceptibility in the limit of zero wave vector, but to estimate the correlation length with reasonable accuracy one needs data in the small wave vector range. This implies that one needs to simulate very large systems. But as far as we know, in all previous studies typical system sizes of the order of 10, 000 particles have been used to do this analysis. In this chapter we show by comparing results for systems of 28, 000 and 350, 000 particles that these previous estimates are not reliable. We also show that one needs to simulate systems with at least a million particles to estimate the correlation length correctly near the mode coupling temperature and this size increases with decreasing temperature. We compare the correlation length obtained by analyzing the wave vector dependence of the dynamic susceptibility for a 350, 000particle system with the results obtained from the finite size scaling analysis. We were only able to compare the results in the high temperature range due to obvious reasons. However the agreement in the high temperature range shows that the finite size scaling analysis is robust and also establishes the fact that finite size scaling is the only practical method to extract reliable correlation lengths in supercooled liquids. In chapter 4, we present a free energy landscape analysis of dynamic heterogeneity for a monodisperse hard sphere system. The importance of the potential energy landscape for particles interacting with soft potentials is well known in the glass community from the work of Sastry et al. [9] and others, but the hard sphere system which does not have any well defined potential energy landscape also exhibits similar slow dynamics in the high density limit. Thus it is not clear how to treat the hard sphere systems within the same energy landscape formalism. Dasgupta et al. [10, 11, 12, 13, 14, 15] showed that one can explain the slow dynamics of these hard core systems in term of a free energy landscape picture. They and other researchers showed that these system have many aperiodic local minima in its free energy landscape, with free energy lower than that of the liquid. Using the Ramkrishnan-Yussouff free energy functional, we have performed multi parameter variational minimizations to map out the detailed density distribution of glassy free energy minima. We found that the distribution of the widths of local density peaks at glassy minima is spatially heterogeneous. By performing hard sphere event driven molecular dynamics simulation, we show that there exists strong correlation between these density inhomogeneity and the local Debye-Waller factor which provides a measure of the dynamic heterogeneity observed in simulations. This result unifies the system of hard core particles with the other soft core particles in terms of a landscapebased description of dynamic heterogeneity. In chapter 5, we extend the same free energy analysis to a polydisperse system and show that there is a critical polydispersity beyond which the crystal state is not stable and glassy states are thermodynamically stable. We also found a reentrant behaviour in the liquid-solid phase transition within this free-energy based formalism. These results are in qualitative agreement with experimental observations for colloidal systems.

This study explores the one-child policy as viewed by the present generation of single daughters who grew up in urban China, and the extent to which this policy has affected their family values. Through snowball sampling methods, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 unmarried only-child daughters from urban China now studying in Victoria and Vancouver. For purposes of comparison, 11 unmarried only-child daughters of the same generation were also interviewed in Hong Kong during the same time period. The findings revealed that some only-child daughters from urban China experienced low dissemination and enforcement of the one-child policy and expressed noncompliance and dissatisfaction towards the policy. A comparison between the China and Hong Kong samples indicates that the one-child policy has limited effect on the family values of the only-child daughters in urban China. By exploring the concept of governmentality, the demographic transition theory, and the concept of resistance, this thesis aims to address the dynamics between action of state power and the reaction of only-child daughters from urban China born under the one-child policy.

This study explores the one-child policy as viewed by the present generation of single daughters who grew up in urban China, and the extent to which this policy has affected their family values. Through snowball sampling methods, semi-structured in-depth interviews were conducted with 12 unmarried only-child daughters from urban China now studying in Victoria and Vancouver. For purposes of comparison, 11 unmarried only-child daughters of the same generation were also interviewed in Hong Kong during the same time period. The findings revealed that some only-child daughters from urban China experienced low dissemination and enforcement of the one-child policy and expressed noncompliance and dissatisfaction towards the policy. A comparison between the China and Hong Kong samples indicates that the one-child policy has limited effect on the family values of the only-child daughters in urban China. By exploring the concept of governmentality, the demographic transition theory, and the concept of resistance, this thesis aims to address the dynamics between action of state power and the reaction of only-child daughters from urban China born under the one-child policy.

La population - en son sens originel de processus de peuplement - est un sujet étonnamment absent de l'énorme volume d’études sur Adam Smith. Ce thème était au centre de la philosophie morale et de l'économie politique du 18e siècle, les deux domaines auxquels les contributions de Smith sont les plus connues. Son importance dans l’œuvre de Smith a été obscurcie au 20e siècle par une focalisation étroite sur les questions économiques dans la littérature secondaire. Pour une analyse intégrale de son œuvre, il est essentiel que la place centrale du peuplement soit révélée. Trois thèmes aujourd'hui considérés comme essentiels au projet de Smith sont ainsi intimement liés à la population : le lien entre division du travail et étendue du marché ; la théorie des quatre stades du progrès de la société ; et le lien entre développement rural et urbain, lui-même au centre du plaidoyer de Smith pour la liberté du commerce. Le marché est un concept aujourd'hui assimilé au fonctionnement du système économique capitaliste ; pour Smith, il décrivait la faculté de commercer, aux vecteurs essentiellement démographiques et géographiques. Le progrès de la société est à la fois cause et effet de la croissance de la population. En son sein se trouve l'interrelation symbiotique entre le développement rural et urbain que Smith appelait le «progrès naturel de l'opulence». Adopter l’optique smithienne plutôt que néo-malthusienne dans l'examen des dynamiques de population et de développement - y compris l'analyse de la transition démographique - conduit alors à une reconsidération fondamentale des interactions causales entre mortalité, fécondité, richesse et variables institutionnelles. / Population - in its original sense of the process of peopling - is a topic surprisingly absent from the huge volume of scholarship on Adam Smith. This topic was central to 18th century moral philosophy and political economy, the two fields Smith most famously contributed to. Its importance in Smith’s work was obscured in the 20th century by a narrow focus on economic matters in the secondary literature. For an undivided analysis of Smith’s oeuvre it is crucial that the central position of the peopling process be brought to light. Three topics that are today recognised as essential to Smith’s project are thus intimately connected to population: the relation between the division of labour and the extent of the market; the stadial theory of progress; and the link between the development of town and country, itself central to Smith’s advocacy of the freedom of trade. The market is a concept read today through an institutional lens linking it to the functioning of the capitalist economic system; Smith conceived of it as facility for trade, with essentially demographic and geographic vectors. The progress of society is both cause and effect of the growth of population. At its core is the symbiotic interrelationship between rural and urban development that Smith called the “natural progress of opulence”. In turn, looking at dynamics of population and development - including the analysis of the demographic transition - through a Smithian rather than a neo-Malthusian lens leads to a fundamental reconsideration of causal interactions between mortality, fertility, wealth and institutional variables.