Voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) for HIV is a vital tool in HIV prevention and care, available information indicates low uptake among Nigerian adolescents despite effort at combating the scourge of HIV/AIDS. A cross sectional quantitative descriptive study was conducted to describe the knowledge, understand the attitudes and practices of VCT among adolescents of senior high school in Nigeria with the aim of informing VCT services and policies. A systematic random sampling of 100 adolescents was done and data collected by means of structured self-administered questionnaires. The study revealed inadequate knowledge on VCT among the study participants which is probably responsible for their poor VCT uptake. Free VCT services and availability of VCT services within the school are factors that could motivate VCT uptake among the students. There is need to enhance dissemination of VCT information among youth and create youth-friendly VCT services to increase VCT uptake among adolescents / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)

Third sector organisations (TSOs) have been operating in a turbulent environment of social, political and economic changes, presenting challenges to their continued activities. The volunteer workforce, as a key component of TSOs’ human resource, has long been considered crucial for the sector. Despite this acknowledgement, existing research suggests that TSOs have not effectively managed and supported their volunteer workforce in order to sustain development. There are claims for TSOs to place volunteer management (VM) onto a strategic level, and it is considered crucial for TSO managers, CEOs and volunteer coordinators (VCs) to achieve sustainable organisational development through the strategic planning and implementation of VM practices. However, existing research has focussed more on articulating volunteer motives; and little attention has been paid to considering the ways in which individual perspectives influence effective VM. This study addressed the gap by exploring key players’ (CEO, VC and volunteer) perceptions of the policies, practices and processes used to attract, engage and retain volunteers in small to medium Scottish TSOs. It aimed to provide insights into the importance of strategic VM in sustaining TSO performance and in understanding the crucial role of VCs, through unfolding the processes of making and fulfilling individual volunteer psychological contracts (VPCs). Three case studies were carried out within three Scottish TSOs; in-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with participants occupying different roles, CEO (n=3), VC (n=5) and volunteers (n=16). Supplementary data were obtained through documentary study of VM policies and practices. Data collection was guided by a conceptual framework developed by embedding the Resource Based View (RBV) of HRM and HR devolution to the Line into the process of making and fulfilling the psychological contract. Results support the claim that TSOs would benefit from more strategic management of their volunteer workforce as a competitive resource. Examining VM through the lens of the VPC provided empirical evidence to confirm that it is crucial to engage and retain volunteers by shaping their expectations and motives within the TSO, and thus ensure more sustainable TSO performance. The results further support the salient role of VC as volunteer line manager, in attracting, engaging and retaining volunteers through effective VM implementation. In arriving at these results, this research has extended the theoretical debate on the importance of strategic HR management and the key role that line managers can play in achieving this beyond the more dominant private sector focus.

Venture capital (VC), a historically American industry, has been in the process of globalizing in recent years. International venture capital flows (investing outside of one’s own country) have grown substantially over the past 30 years and even more dramatically in just the past decade. Previous research has mostly highlighted the determinants of where capital flows. However, research on the factors in a VC’s home country that affect investments abroad has been underdeveloped. To address this gap, this paper explores the impact of home country economic conditions on VCs’ propensity to invest abroad. I find that higher interest rates and economic wellbeing in a country (as measured by GDP growth and stock market capitalization to GDP) are associated with less deal flow abroad and, that higher foreign exchange rates are related to greater deal flow. I also note an interesting divergence in the role of these factors between VCs located in countries that exhibit different levels of international investing experience. My research indicates that VCs’ home country economic conditions do play a role in their decisions to invest abroad and suggests that these considerations may be different depending on the experience level of the VC industry in the firm’s country.

Currently different types of transform techniques are used by different video codecs to achieve data compression during video frame transmission. Among them, Discrete Cosine Transform (DCT) is supported by most of modern video standards. The integer DCT (Int-DCT) is an integer approximation of DCT. It can be implemented exclusively with integer arithmetic. Int-DCT proves to be highly advantageous in cost and speed for hardware implementations. In particular, the 4x4 and 8x8 block size Int-DCTs have the increased applicability at the current multimedia industry because of their simpler implementation and better de-correlation performance for high definition (HD) video signals. In this thesis, we present a fast and cost-shared reconfigurable architecture to compute variable block size Int-DCT for four modern video codecs – AVS, H.264/AVC, VC-1 and HEVC (under development). Based on the symmetric structure of the transform matrices and the similarity in matrix operations, we have developed a generalized “decompose and share” algorithm to compute the 4x4 and 8x8 block size Int-DCT. The algorithm is later applied to those four video codecs. Our shared hardware approach ensures the maximum circuit reuse during the computation. The entire architecture is multiplier free and designed with only adders and shifters to minimize hardware cost and improve working frequency. Finally, the design is implemented on a FPGA and later synthesized in CMOS 0.18um technology to compare the cost and performance with existing designs. The results show significant reduction in hardware cost and meet the requirements of real time video coding applications.

In this manuscript we study hitting sets both from a combinatorial and from an algorithmic point of view. A hitting set is a subset of vertices of a hypergraph which intersects all the hyperedges. A packing is a subset of pairwise disjoint hyperedges. In the general case, there is no function linking the minimum size of a hitting set and a maximum size of a packing.The first part of this thesis is devoted to present upper bounds on the size of hitting sets, in particular this upper bounds are expressed in the size of the maximum packing. Most of them are satisfied when the dimension of Vapnik-Chervonenkis of the hypergraph is bounded. The originality of this thesis consists in using these hypergraph tools in order to obtain several results on graph problems. First we prove that a conjecture of Scott holds for maximal triangle-free graphs. Then we generalize a result of Chepoi, Estellon and Vaxès on dominating sets at large distance. We finally study a conjecture of Yannakakis and prove that it holds for several graph subclasses using VC-dimension.The second part of this thesis explores algorithmic aspects of hitting sets. More precisely we focus on parameterized complexity of graph separation problems where we are looking for hitting sets of a set of paths. Combining connectivity tools, important separator technique and Dilworth's theorem, we design an FPT algorithm for the Multicut problem parameterized by the size of the solution.

Dans cette thèse, nous considérons plusieurs paramètres des hypergraphes et nous étudions si les restrictions aux sous-classes des hypergraphes permettent d’obtenir des propriétés combinatoires et algorithmiques souhaitables. La plupart des paramètres que nous prenons en compte sont des instances spéciales des packings et transversals des hypergraphes.Dans la première partie, nous allons nous concentrer sur les line graphs des graphes subcubiques sans triangle et nous allons démontrer que pour tous ces graphes il y a un independent set de taille au moins 3|V(G)|/10 et cette borne est optimale. Conséquence immédiate: nous obtenons une borne inférieure optimale pour la taille d’un couplage maximum dans les graphes subcubiques sans triangle. De plus, nous montrons plusieurs résultats algorithmiques liés au FEEDBACK VERTEX SET, HAMILTONIAN CYCLE et HAMILTONIAN PATH quand restreints aux line graphs des graphes subcubiques sans triangle.Puis nous examinons trois hypergraphes ayant la propriété d’Erdős-Pósa et nous cherchons à déterminer les fonctions limites optimales. Tout d’abord, nous apportons une fonction theta-bounding pour la classe des graphes subcubiques et nous étudions CLIQUE COVER: en répondant à une question de Cerioli et al., nous montrons qu’il admet un PTAS pour les graphes planaires. Par la suite, nous nous intéressons à la Conjecture de Tuza et nous montrons que la constante 2 peut être améliorée pour les graphes avec arêtes contenues dans au maximum quatre triangles et pour les graphes sans certains odd-wheels. Enfin, nous nous concentrons sur la Conjecture de Jones: nous la démontrons dans le cas des graphes sans griffes avec degré maximal 4 et nous faisons quelques observations dans le cas des graphes subcubiques.Nous étudions ensuite la VC-dimension de certains hypergraphes résultants des graphes. En particulier, nous considérons l’hypergraphe sur l’ensemble des sommets d’un certain graphe qui est induit par la famille de ses sous-graphes k-connexes. En généralisant les résultats de Kranakis et al., nous fournissons des bornes supérieures et inférieures optimales pour la VC-dimension et nous montrons que son calcul est NP-complet, pour chacun k > 0. Enfin, nous démontrons que ce problème (dans le cas k = 1) et le problème étroitement lié CONNECTED DOMINATING SET sont soit solvables en temps polynomial ou NP-complet, quand restreints aux classes de graphes obtenues en interdisant un seul sous-graphe induit.Dans la partie finale de cette thèse, nous nous attaquons aux meta-questions suivantes: Quand est-ce qu’un certain problème “difficile” de graphe devient “facile”?; Existe-t-il des frontières séparant des instances “faciles” et “difficiles”? Afin de répondre à ces questions, dans le cas des classes héréditaires, Alekseev a introduit la notion de boundary class pour un problème NP-difficile et a montré qu’un problème Pi est NP-difficile pour une classe héréditaire X finiment défini si et seulement si X contient un boundary class pour Pi. Nouscontinuons la recherche des boundary classes pour les problèmes suivants: HAMILTONIAN CYCLE THROUGH SPECIFIED EDGE, HAMILTONIAN PATH, FEEDBACK VERTEX SET, CONNECTED DOMINATING SET and CONNECTED VERTEX COVER. / In this thesis, we consider several hypergraph parameters and study whether restrictions to subclasses of hypergraphs allow to obtain desirable combinatorial or algorithmic properties. Most of the parameters we consider are special instances of packings and transversals of hypergraphs.In the first part, we focus on line graphs of subcubic triangle-free graphs and show that any such graph G has an independent set of size at least 3|V(G)|/10, the bound being sharp. As an immediate consequence, we obtain a tight lower bound for the matching number of subcubic triangle-free graphs. Moreover, we prove several algorithmic results related to FEEDBACK VERTEX SET, HAMILTONIAN CYCLE and HAMILTONIAN PATH when restricted to line graphs of subcubic triangle-free graphs.Then we consider three hypergraphs having the Erdős-Pósa Property and we seek to determine the optimal bounding functions. First, we provide an optimal theta-bounding function for the class of subcubic graphs and we study CLIQUE COVER: answering a question by Cerioli et al., we show it admits a PTAS for planar graphs. Then we focus on Tuza’s Conjecture and show that the constant 2 in the statement can be improved for graphs whose edges are contained in at most four triangles and graphs obtained by forbidding certain odd-wheels. Finally, we concentrate on Jones’ Conjecture: we prove it in the case of claw-free graphs with maximum degree at most 4 and we make some observations in the case of subcubic graphs.Then we study the VC-dimension of certain set systems arising from graphs. In particular, we consider the set system on the vertex set of some graph which is induced by the family of its k-connected subgraphs. Generalizing results by Kranakis et al., we provide tight upper and lower bounds for the VC-dimension and we show that its computation is NP-complete, for each k > 0. Finally, we show that this problem (in the case k = 1) and the closely related CONNECTED DOMINATING SET are either NP-complete or polynomial-time solvable when restricted to classes of graphs obtained by forbidding a single induced subgraph.In the final part of the thesis, we consider the following meta-questions: When does a certain “hard” graph problem become “easy”?; Is there any “boundary” separating “easy” and “hard” instances? In order to answer these questions in the case of hereditary classes, Alekseev introduced the notion of a boundary class for an NP-hard problem and showed that a problem Pi is NP-hard for a finitely defined (hereditary) class X if and only if X contains a boundary class for Pi. We continue the search of boundary classes for the following problems: HAMILTONIAN CYCLE THROUGH SPECIFIED EDGE, HAMILTONIAN PATH, FEEDBACK VERTEX SET, CONNECTED DOMINATING SET and CONNECTED VERTEX COVER.

Voluntary counselling and testing (VCT) for HIV is a vital tool in HIV prevention and care, available information indicates low uptake among Nigerian adolescents despite effort at combating the scourge of HIV/AIDS. A cross sectional quantitative descriptive study was conducted to describe the knowledge, understand the attitudes and practices of VCT among adolescents of senior high school in Nigeria with the aim of informing VCT services and policies. A systematic random sampling of 100 adolescents was done and data collected by means of structured self-administered questionnaires. The study revealed inadequate knowledge on VCT among the study participants which is probably responsible for their poor VCT uptake. Free VCT services and availability of VCT services within the school are factors that could motivate VCT uptake among the students. There is need to enhance dissemination of VCT information among youth and create youth-friendly VCT services to increase VCT uptake among adolescents / Health Studies / M.A. (Public Health)

Submitted by Automa??o e Estat?stica (sst@bczm.ufrn.br) on 2017-02-22T18:54:35Z No. of bitstreams: 1 AnnaPaulaDeAndradeVasconcelos_DISSERT.pdf: 1583871 bytes, checksum: 3f327b9da51e9ab33448e340346b00bc (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Arlan Eloi Leite Silva (eloihistoriador@yahoo.com.br) on 2017-03-04T00:11:27Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 AnnaPaulaDeAndradeVasconcelos_DISSERT.pdf: 1583871 bytes, checksum: 3f327b9da51e9ab33448e340346b00bc (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-03-04T00:11:27Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 AnnaPaulaDeAndradeVasconcelos_DISSERT.pdf: 1583871 bytes, checksum: 3f327b9da51e9ab33448e340346b00bc (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-15 / A proposta deste trabalho foi a de analisar o telejornalismo empregado no Rio Grande do Norte, agindo no recorte da emissora Intertv Cabugi e na sua rela??o de di?logo com a audi?ncia sob o ponto de vista das rotinas produtivas dos jornalistas que selecionam as not?cias e pautam o telejornal RNTV, primeira edi??o. Compreendido nas novas tecnologias da comunica??o, o trabalho est? baseado nas teorias midi?ticas utilizadas por Muniz Sodr? e Hjavard. Apontamentos sobre o futuro do jornalismo de Chaparro s?o fundamentais para o desenvolvimento da perspectiva cient?fica. Uma vez que, segundo pesquisa recente, a quantidade telespectadores no Rio Grande do Norte permanece acima da m?dia nacional, justifica-se o interesse por estudos dessa natureza. Buscou-se analisar quais s?o as estrat?gias e as inova??es empregadas pelo ve?culo para garantir o interesse do p?blico, sob a ?tica dos autores, Ren? e Flores, Scolari e Shirky. A metodologia utilizada foi um estudo de caso, como prop?e Yin e fazendo-se uso da pesquisa participante relatada por Peruzzo. Para isso analisou-se, al?m das rotinas produtivas de produtores e editores, o poder de fala do telespectador na produ??o deste conte?do, atrav?s de um conjunto de m?todos e t?cnicas de pesquisa, entre eles a observa??o participante. Houve a inten??o de se verificar como se d? a sele??o do p?blico participante, e com base em quais crit?rios de noticiabilidade isso acontece. A partir dos resultados obtidos observou-se que o jornalismo vive uma crise de identidade e est? testando empiricamente solu??es empregadas em outros meios tradicionais de comunica??o. Assim, observou-se a presen?a do fen?meno denominado ?transbordamento?. Notou-se tamb?m, ao se analisar as rotinas produtivas, a inexist?ncia de n?cleo especializado em participa??o para intermediar essas falas. Sabe-se que a proposta do aplicativo estudado ? a de que todos sejam respons?veis pela sua atualiza??o e retorno aos emissores, o que n?o ocorreu de forma satisfat?ria. / The purpose of this study aims to analyze the Telejournalism used in Rio Grande do Norte, acting by means of clipping of Intertv Cabugi station and its relationship with the audience dialogue response, from the point of view of the productive routines of journalists who select the news and guided the newscast RNTV first edition. Being included in New Communication Technologies, the work is based on media theories used by Muniz Sodr? and Hjavard. Notes on the future of journalism by Chaparro are fundamental in the development of a scientific perspective. Justified interest, given the fact that according to recent research the viewers of Rio Grande do Norte remain above the national average. It attempted to analyze what are the strategies and innovations used by the vehicle to ensure the public interest, from the perspective of the authors, Ren? and flowers, Scolari and Shirky. The methodology used was a case study, as proposed by Yin and making use of participatory research reported by Peruzzo. In order to accomplish this, was analyzed well beyond production routines, producers, and editors, but also to determine the power of speech from the viewer in the production of content by a number of methods and searching techniques, including participant observation. In order to know if there are in fact newsworthiness criteria and how based upon that they are used to select the audience participation. Results show that journalism is experiencing an identity crisis and is empirically testing solutions used in other traditional communication media. Also there was the presence of the overflow phenomenon. It was also noted, when analyzing the production routines, the lack of a core nucleus specialized in participation to intermediate these lines, and the studied application proposal is that everyone is responsible for being up to date and for the feedback to issuers, which does not occur in a satisfactory manner.

Submitted by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2017-02-15T15:22:18Z No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertação - João Carlos Martins.pdf: 2839902 bytes, checksum: f515009c41a7024f990b1cb0971c911e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2017-02-15T15:22:35Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertação - João Carlos Martins.pdf: 2839902 bytes, checksum: f515009c41a7024f990b1cb0971c911e (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Divisão de Documentação/BC Biblioteca Central (ddbc@ufam.edu.br) on 2017-02-15T15:22:50Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertação - João Carlos Martins.pdf: 2839902 bytes, checksum: f515009c41a7024f990b1cb0971c911e (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2017-02-15T15:22:50Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 2 license_rdf: 0 bytes, checksum: d41d8cd98f00b204e9800998ecf8427e (MD5) Dissertação - João Carlos Martins.pdf: 2839902 bytes, checksum: f515009c41a7024f990b1cb0971c911e (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-08-09 / CNPq - Conselho Nacional de Desenvolvimento Científico e Tecnológico / Electrochemical capacitors are energy storage devices that have high power density and higher energy density than a conventional capacitor, so they are used in portable devices like cell phones and cameras. The materials used in these devices are carbon, conductive polymers and transition metal oxides. The conductive polymers have increasingly attracting the interest of many researchers to the application in supercapacitors, within that classification polyaniline (PANI) has great merit due to good conductivity, stability and easy preparation. The polyaniline (PANI) was studied by galvanotechnics potentiostatic mode at 0.7 V. using a stainless steel substrate in ratio of 1:1, 2:1, 5:1 and 10:1 (mol.L-1 sulfuric acid H2SO4 and Aniline 99%) for 900 and 1800 seconds. The SEM analysis showed that the morphologies of the proportions 1: 1 and 2: 1 have more spongy and dense areas than the electrodeposited polymer films in ratios 5: 1 and 10: 1. The electrochemical characterizations were investigated by: chronoamperometry, cyclic voltammetry, charge-discharge and electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. Through the measures by cyclic voltammetry, we found the redox couple of leucoemeraldine / emeraldine and by the charge-discharge a 884 F.g-1 capacitance was achieved. Already, by the electrochemical impedance spectroscopy was performed a prospective study and found that the polymeric films obtained are capacitive, without the formation of resistive semicircle. / Capacitores eletroquímicos são dispositivos de armazenamento de energia que possuem alta densidade de potência e densidade de energia mais elevada que um capacitor convencional, podendo ser utilizados em equipamentos portáteis como celulares e câmeras fotográficas. Os materiais geralmente utilizados nestes dispositivos são carbono, polímeros condutores e óxidos de metais de transição. Os polímeros condutores têm cada vez mais atraído o interesse de muitos pesquisadores para aplicação em supercapacitores. Dentre esta classificação, a polianilina (PANI) tem grande destaque, devido à boa condutividade, estabilidade e facilidade na preparação. A polianilina (PANI) foi estudada pela técnica galvânica modo potenciostática em 0,7 V, utilizando como substrato o aço inoxidável, em proporções de 1:1, 2:1, 5:1 e 10: 1 (mol.L-1 de H2SO4 e anilina 99%), nos tempos de 900 e 1800 segundos. Pelas análises de MEV, observou-se que as morfologias nas proporções de 1:1 e 2:1 apresentaram áreas mais esponjosas e densas que os filmes poliméricos eletrodepositados nas razões 5:1 e 10:1. As caracterizações eletroquímicas foram investigadas por: cronoamperiometria, voltametria cíclica, carga-descarga e espectroscopia de impedância eletroquímica. Nos cronoamperogramas dos filmes sintetizados em 1800 segundos obteve-se os maiores acúmulos de cargas, consequentemente, os materiais obtidos neste tempo foram os de maiores espessuras. Através, das mensuras por voltametria cíclica encontrou-se o par redox da leucoesmeraldina/esmeraldina e, pela carga-descarga, foi alcançada uma capacitância de 884 F.g-1. Já pela espectroscopia de impedância eletroquímica, realizou-se um estudo de potencial e concluiu-se que o os filmes poliméricos obtidos são capacitivos, não havendo a formação de semicírculo resistivo.

The Covid-19 pandemic has affected the world globally and the way humans conduct their work today. Face-to-face meetings have since before the pandemic been the most standard and effective way to do business, but due to the recommendations from the Swedish Public Health Agency workshops conducted by ERP-consultants does now have to be executed digitally. The transition from physical to digital meetings has imposed major challenges for consultants such as replicating the communication, lack of engagement and a higher risk for becoming fatigued. However, there is little to no research from an ERP-consultant's perspective on how to facilitate and conduct workshops as well as how it has now been affected by the ongoing global pandemic. Therefore, the purpose of the study is to gain an understanding of workshops conducted by ERP-consultants, comparing the process of a traditional workshop to digital workshops. In addition, understanding which strengths and weaknesses can be found with traditional and digital workshops. The study also aims to create guidelines that will help ERP-consultants to achieve higher quality in digital workshops. The data was gathered via semi-structured interviews with five ERP-consultants and was split into two stages; first stage aimed at identifying strength and weaknesses, further the second stage of interviews aimed at evaluating the created guidelines. From the interviews several strengths and weaknesses were identified, and the weaknesses acted as a foundation for the creation of the five guidelines. In conclusion, 1) there are strengths in traditional workshops that are lost in digital workshops, and 2) there are added strengths in digital workshops that could not be fulfilled in traditional workshops.  Lastly, the study found that the traditional workshop and the face-to-face communication can not be fully replaced by the digital as it is human nature to connect and socialize with other people.