Apesar dos avanços tecnológicos voltados para o uso das Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação em Saúde, vários aspectos normativos ainda estão sendo discutidos em âmbito nacional para o estabelecimento de uma legislação específica para a área de telemedicina. As normativas mais utilizadas como referência para definição do escopo de atuação profissional em telemedicina são: a RESOLUÇÃO CFM nº 1.643/2002, que define e disciplina a prestação de serviços através da Telemedicina e a RESOLUÇÃO CFM nº 2.107/2014, que define e normatiza a Telerradiologia e revoga a RESOLUÇÃO CFM nº 1890/09. Essa dissertação apresenta um estudo retrospectivo, quantitativo, descritivo, baseado em levantamento bibliográfico que tem como proposta verificar a conformidade das formas de uso da telemedicina e da telessaúde, nos contextos nacional e internacional, em relação ao modelo proposto para essa atividade pelo CFM, representado pelas resoluções 1.643/2002 e 2.107/2014. O levantamento bibliográfico foi feito no período de 2009 a 2015, nas bases de dados Scielo, PubMed e IEEE, com base nas palavras chaves videoconferencing, webconferencing, VTC, meeting, telemedicine e telehealth e suas combinações. Foram encontrados, incialmente, 2352 artigos que foram reduzidos para 572 após a leitura de seus resumos e, novamente reduzidos para 115, após a leitura parcial dos artigos. Os 115 artigos selecionados foram lidos na íntegra. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que o uso da telemedicina pode ampliar consideravelmente a área de atendimento especializado dos grandes centros médicos, o que deve ser incentivado, principalmente em países com menores recursos financeiros, ou com poucos especialistas, ou extremamente extensos, como no caso do Brasil / Despite technological advances aiming the best use of Information and Communication Technology in Healthcare, several normative aspects are still being discussed in national scope, in order to establish a specific legislation for telemedicine area. There are some specifically normative aspects for professional orientation in telemedicine as follows: CFM no. 1.643/2002 that define disciplines and services provided by telemedicine, and CFM no. 2.107/2014 that define and guide the teleradiology services. This work was a retrospective, quantitative and descriptive study based on bibliographic surveying, in order to verify the conformity of the use of telemedicine and telehealth in both national and international contexts, according to the CFM proposed model for this activity, represented by CFM resolutions no. 1.643/2002 and no. 2.107/2014. The bibliographic surveying between 2009 and 2015 used Scielo, PubMed, and IEEE databases, and the key words: videoconferencing, webconferencing, VTC, meeting, telemedicine, and telehealth plus their combinations. We found 2352 articles, reduced to 572 after reading their abstracts. One hundred and fifteen potentially relevant articles were selected after partial reading of the articles. After that, the 115 selected articles were fully read. The results showed that the use of telemedicine could considerably increase the area of specialized attending crew on important medical facilities, what should be encouraged mainly in countries with few or no financial resources, or the small number of specialists, or extensive areas such as Brazil

Apesar dos avanços tecnológicos voltados para o uso das Tecnologias da Informação e Comunicação em Saúde, vários aspectos normativos ainda estão sendo discutidos em âmbito nacional para o estabelecimento de uma legislação específica para a área de telemedicina. As normativas mais utilizadas como referência para definição do escopo de atuação profissional em telemedicina são: a RESOLUÇÃO CFM nº 1.643/2002, que define e disciplina a prestação de serviços através da Telemedicina e a RESOLUÇÃO CFM nº 2.107/2014, que define e normatiza a Telerradiologia e revoga a RESOLUÇÃO CFM nº 1890/09. Essa dissertação apresenta um estudo retrospectivo, quantitativo, descritivo, baseado em levantamento bibliográfico que tem como proposta verificar a conformidade das formas de uso da telemedicina e da telessaúde, nos contextos nacional e internacional, em relação ao modelo proposto para essa atividade pelo CFM, representado pelas resoluções 1.643/2002 e 2.107/2014. O levantamento bibliográfico foi feito no período de 2009 a 2015, nas bases de dados Scielo, PubMed e IEEE, com base nas palavras chaves videoconferencing, webconferencing, VTC, meeting, telemedicine e telehealth e suas combinações. Foram encontrados, incialmente, 2352 artigos que foram reduzidos para 572 após a leitura de seus resumos e, novamente reduzidos para 115, após a leitura parcial dos artigos. Os 115 artigos selecionados foram lidos na íntegra. Os resultados obtidos mostraram que o uso da telemedicina pode ampliar consideravelmente a área de atendimento especializado dos grandes centros médicos, o que deve ser incentivado, principalmente em países com menores recursos financeiros, ou com poucos especialistas, ou extremamente extensos, como no caso do Brasil / Despite technological advances aiming the best use of Information and Communication Technology in Healthcare, several normative aspects are still being discussed in national scope, in order to establish a specific legislation for telemedicine area. There are some specifically normative aspects for professional orientation in telemedicine as follows: CFM no. 1.643/2002 that define disciplines and services provided by telemedicine, and CFM no. 2.107/2014 that define and guide the teleradiology services. This work was a retrospective, quantitative and descriptive study based on bibliographic surveying, in order to verify the conformity of the use of telemedicine and telehealth in both national and international contexts, according to the CFM proposed model for this activity, represented by CFM resolutions no. 1.643/2002 and no. 2.107/2014. The bibliographic surveying between 2009 and 2015 used Scielo, PubMed, and IEEE databases, and the key words: videoconferencing, webconferencing, VTC, meeting, telemedicine, and telehealth plus their combinations. We found 2352 articles, reduced to 572 after reading their abstracts. One hundred and fifteen potentially relevant articles were selected after partial reading of the articles. After that, the 115 selected articles were fully read. The results showed that the use of telemedicine could considerably increase the area of specialized attending crew on important medical facilities, what should be encouraged mainly in countries with few or no financial resources, or the small number of specialists, or extensive areas such as Brazil

This study explores the perceptions of the causes of poverty of South Africa’s post apartheid generation at the North-West University’s Vaal Triangle Campus. The study uses a sample of 203 respondents aged 20 years or younger, from the campus two faculties (Economic Sciences and Information Technology, and Humanities). The main objective of the study is determining whether the post-apartheid generation perceives poverty as the result of fatalistic, individualistic or structural factors, as indicated by the Feagin scale. The secondary objective of the study was to determine whether demographic variables such as age, gender, home area and the faculty of study, along with socio-economic variables such as the employment status of the respondents’ parents, monthly expenses and the respondents’ lived poverty index influence perceptions of the causes of poverty. / MCom (Economics), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

Biochemical consequences of ascorbate deficiency were studied in the leaf tissue of Arabidopsis thaliana ascorbate-deficient vtc mutants with a view of understanding the relationship between ascorbate, stress response and metabolism. Ascorbate is an important antioxidant and is also a cofactor for 2-oxoglutarate-dependent dioxygenases, which are involved in the biosynthesis of a number of metabolites. The response of wild type (Col-0) and vtc1, vtc2-1, vtc2-2 and vtc3-1 mutants to high light intensity, wounding and salinity was investigated using a metabolomics and proteomics approach. Metabolite profiling and comparative proteomics were performed by liquid chromatography-quadrupole time of flight mass spectrometry (LC-QToF MS) and targeted analysis of plant hormones and flavonoids by liquid chromatography triple-quadrupole mass spectrometry (LC-QQQ-MS). These combined analyses revealed the effect of ascorbate deficiency and stress on metabolites and cell wall proteins. LC-QToF-MS based untargeted metabolite profiling methodologies were developed for analysis of metabolites on a large scale. Using this method about 3000-5000 metabolites (mass-retention time pairs) could be reproducibly detected in A. thaliana leaf extract and aligned between samples. Approximately 1000 metabolites were differentially expressed between WT and vtc mutants in different experiments. Of these, twenty eight compounds were confirmed to be differentially expressed by LC-QQQ-MS between WT and vtc mutants, and eight of these compounds were positively identified and validated with standards. The plant hormones abscisic acid (ABA), salicylic acid (SA) and jasmonic acid (JA) have all been implicated in plant stress responses and differences in their accumulation in some of the vtc mutants have been reported. A systematic study of the response to stress of these hormones in several vtc mutants was carried out using LC- QQQ- MS. While some of the mutants showed increased SA and SA-glycoside accumulation, stress-induced ABA and JA accumulation was generally unaffected. Methods for identifying the metabolites in a targeted manner by LC- QQQ-MS was developed and were shown that all vtc mutants were impaired in the accumulation of anthocyanin in response to HL treatment. In strong contrast to anthocyanin, flavonol glycosides were not affected by ascorbate deficiency. Therefore, ascorbate deficiency has a specific effect on the anthocyanin biosynthesis. Ascorbate occurs in the plant cell wall and isolation of apoplastic fluid showed that all vtc mutants have decreased apoplastic ascorbate compared to WT. Ionically-bound proteins were from the cell wall of A. thaliana leaves. Peroxidase specific activity in this fraction tended to be higher in vtc mutants than WT. High light intensity also increased peroxidase activity in WT and vtc mutants. To determine which peroxidase isoenzyme caused increased peroxidase activity, ionically-bound cell wall N-glycosylated proteins were isolated by Concanavalin A chromatography and analysed by LC-QToF-MS. Comparison of WT and vtc2-2 grown in low light and high light identified 937 peptides significantly different between WT and vtc2-2 and some are also affected by light intensity. Specifically, peroxidases 33 and 34 had increased abundance in vtc2-2. The results show that ascorbate deficiency causes a detectable change in the metabolome of A. thaliana leaves, with specific effects on anthocyanin accumulation being detected. Ascorbate deficiency also influences the expression of cell wall proteins. Peroxidase activity is increased, and this response could be related to the increased pathogen resistance reported in vtc mutants.

This study explores the perceptions of the causes of poverty of South Africa’s post apartheid generation at the North-West University’s Vaal Triangle Campus. The study uses a sample of 203 respondents aged 20 years or younger, from the campus two faculties (Economic Sciences and Information Technology, and Humanities). The main objective of the study is determining whether the post-apartheid generation perceives poverty as the result of fatalistic, individualistic or structural factors, as indicated by the Feagin scale. The secondary objective of the study was to determine whether demographic variables such as age, gender, home area and the faculty of study, along with socio-economic variables such as the employment status of the respondents’ parents, monthly expenses and the respondents’ lived poverty index influence perceptions of the causes of poverty. / MCom (Economics), North-West University, Vaal Triangle Campus, 2014

The first report of polyphosphates (polyP) was in 1890 by L. Liberman and since then, polyP’s role in biology has been explored. PolyPs are chains of phosphoanhydride-linked inorganic phosphates ranging from 3-1000s of units in length. These chains are implicated in many cellular pathways including blood clotting, bacterial virulence, and neuroproteotoxic disease. Given the diversity of polyP, they make an excellent candidate in the development of novel therapeutics. In yeast, polyP is synthesized by the vacuolar transporter chaperone (VTC) complex as a translocation event into the vacuole lumen. In 2015, polyP chains were found to act as a post-translational modification termed polyphosphorylation on yeast proteins (Nsr1 and Top1). This modification occurs non-enzymatically on lysine residues within poly-acidic, serine, and lysine (PASK) motifs and can only be detected via electrophoretic mobility shift on NuPAGE gels. We have since expanded the pool of yeast polyphosphorylated substrates to 25, with an enrichment of proteins with roles related to RNA biology. Additionally, we were the first group to demonstrate polyphosphorylation of 6 human proteins by expressing E. coli PPK1 in HEK293T cells. We next focused on elaborating how polyP is being regulated via the VTC complex by assessing which protein trafficking pathways are critical for VTC localization at the vacuole membrane. We found the adaptor protein 3 (AP-3) complex is responsible for localizing Vtc5 subunit to the vacuole membrane and in AP-3 mutants, Vtc5 becomes mislocalized to the vacuole lumen and degraded. Vtc5 degradation, upon AP-3 mutation, is mediated by the endosomal sorting complex required for transport (ESCRT) complex. The loss of polyP in AP-3 mutants is imparted by Vtc5 mislocalization. In humans, mutations in AP-3 cause a rare genetic disorder termed Hermansky-Pudlak Syndrome (HPS) which has a wide range of symptoms. These include defects in polyP accumulation in platelets, likely related to a loss of polyP. We expect that our work using yeast will provide a framework for understanding fundamental aspects of polyP biology related to HPS and other health conditions.

Vitamin C (ascorbic acid) is one of the most essential organic compounds required by the human body for normal metabolic function. Unfortunately, this valuable nutrient is not produced in the human body but most plants and animal can produce this molecule. Although ascorbic acid was not isolated until the early part of the twentieth century, it was known that eating limes and other citrus fruits could ward off the affects of scurvy as early as the 1500's. Ascorbate serves many critical functions in plants as well as the human body. In both, it works as a cofactor in the production of hydroxyproline-rich compounds and helps protect molecules such as proteins, lipids and fatty acids from oxidation. Although the biochemical pathway in animals has been known since the 1950's (Jackel et al., 1950), the exact process by which ascorbic acid is made in plants has eluded scientists. It was shown in 1963 that the inversion of the hexose carbon chain, which occurs in the animal pathway, is not a possible mode of synthesis in plants (Loewus, 1963). As an alternative, a non-inversion pathway was proposed, which achieves ascorbic acid using D-mannose and L-galactose as intermediates, referred to as the Smirnoff-Wheeler pathway (Wheeler et al., 1998). It was shown that transforming lettuce (cv. Grand Rapids and Black Seeded Simpson) and tobacco (cv. Xanthi) with the terminal enzyme in the animal biosynthetic pathway (GLO; L-gulono-gamma-lactone oxidase) increases the ascorbic acid content between 4 and 7 fold. It was also shown through feeding studies that wild type tobacco plants had elevated ascorbate levels when fed the animal precursor (Jain and Nessler, 2000). These data suggest that at least part of the animal pathway could be present in plants, along with the Smirnoff-Wheeler (1998) pathway. To further investigate this discovery, wild type and ascorbic acid-deficient Arabidopsis thaliana were transformed with the glo. Homozygous lines of these transformants were generated and the ascorbic acid levels were compared to the untransformed wild type and mutant plants. Although the wild type plants containing glo did not show a significant increase in ascorbic acid production, all five of the vtc mutant lines had an increased ascorbic acid content relative to wild type level. These data suggest that an alternative pathway is present in plants that does not require many of the steps in the published Smirnoff-Wheeler (1998) pathway to produce ascorbic acid. / Master of Science

This thesis examines two issues facing Florida's young and fledgling Veteran Treatment Courts. First is whether or not a separate hybrid court of already existing mental health and drug courts is needed exclusively for veterans; and second, funding and efficiency of such courts as compared to traditional criminal institutions.

<p>In this thesis we are concerned with the complexity of formalizing reasoning in Combinatorial Matrix Theory (CMT). We are interested in the strength of the bounded arithmetic theories necessary in order to prove the fundamental results of this field. Bounded Arithmetic can be seen as the uniform counterpart of Propositional Proof Complexity.</p> <p>Perhaps the most famous and fundamental theorem in CMT is the K{\"o}nig's Min-Max Theorem $(\KMM)$ which arises naturally in all areas of combinatorial algorithms. As far as we know, in this thesis we give the first feasible proof of $\KMM$. Our results show that Min-Max reasoning can be formalized with uniform Extended Frege.</p> <p>We show, by introducing new proof techniques, that the first order theory $\LA$ with induction restricted to $\Sigma_1^B$ formulas---i.e., restricted to bounded existential matrix quantification---is sufficient to formalize a large portion of CMT, in particular $\KMM$. $\Sigma_1^B$-$\LA$ corresponds to polynomial time reasoning, also known as $\ELA$.</p> <p>While we consider matrices over $\{0,1\}$, the underlying ring is $\mathbb{Z}$, since we require that $\Sigma A$ compute the number of 1s in the matrix $A$ (which for a 0-1 matrix is simply the sum of all entries---meaning $\Sigma A$). Thus, over $\mathbb{Z}$, $\LA$ translates to $\TC^0$-Frege, while, as mentioned before, $\ELA$ translates into Extended Frege.</p> <p>In order to prove $\KMM$ in $\ELA$, we need to restrict induction to $\Sigma_1^B$ formulas. The main technical contribution is presented in Claim~4.3.4, ~Section~4.3.3. Basically, we introduce a polynomial time procedure, whose proof of correctness can be shown with $\ELA$, that works as follow: given a matrix of size $e \times f$ such that $e\leq f$, where the minimum cover is of size $e$, our procedure computes a maximum selection of size $e$, row by row.</p> <p>Furthermore, we show that Menger's Theorem, Hall's Theorem, and Dilworth's Theorem---theorems related to $\KMM$---can also be proven feasibly; in fact, all these theorems are equivalent to KMM, and the equivalence can be shown in $\LA$. We believe that this captures the proof complexity of Min-Max reasoning rather completely.</p> <p>We also present a new Permutation-Based algorithm for computing a Minimum Vertex Cover from a Maximum Matching in a bipartite graph. Our algorithm is linear-time and computationally very simple: it permutes the rows and columns of the matrix representation of the bipartite graph in order to extract the vertex cover from a maximum matching in a recursive fashion. Our Permutation-Based algorithm uses properties of $\KMM$ Theorem and it is interesting for providing a new permutation---and CMT---perspective on a well-known problem.</p> / Doctor of Philosophy (PhD)

Denna studie redovisar genom en kvantitativ och kvalitativ undersökning, så kallad flermetodsforskning, vilka interpersonella aktiviteter som observerats hos åtta mötesledare av distansmöten med datorkommunikation.  Syftet med undersökningen är att undersöka de faktiska observationerna av mötesledares interpersonella aktiviteter på distansmöten. Denna undersökning bygger på åtta distansmöten med en utsedd mötesledare på respektive möte och sammanlagt 41 personer har deltagit i undersökningen. Distansmötena har skett genom Video Tele Conferencing (VTC) och via en  multimodal plattform (MP) där mötesledarna har suttit vid sina enskilda datorer. Undersökningens problemformulering är; Vilka interpersonella aktiviteter förekommer hos distansmötesledare och hur bidrar de till upplevelsen av relationsbyggande faktorer? Efter observationerna som har skett på distans och av inspelade möten har mötesledarna och deltagarna besvarat en webbenkät. Resultatet av studien visar att ögonkontakt inte sker nämnvärt mycket vid distansmöten jämfört med andra icke verbala uttryck som att nicka, le och uttrycka småord som ”mm” och ”ja” etc. Studien visar också att mötesledarnas och deltagarnas synpunkter på bra distansmöten handlar om mötesstruktur, tillit och att alla ska komma till tals på mötet. Skillnaden mellan VTC möten och MP möte är störst vad gäller observationer av kroppshållning och ansiktsuttryck där VTC mötena medger ett längre avstånd till mötesledaren och då framgår kroppshållningen bättre men under MP möten kan ansiktsuttryck lättare avläsas på nära håll. Där flest leenden förekommit har också deltagarna bedömt det som att mötesledaren alltid eller ganska ofta använder distansmöte som ett relationsbyggande verktyg. Studien visar att det är i lyssnarfasen som mötesledaren har flest interpersonella beteenden och inte när vederbörande talar.