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Untreated depression has a detrimental effect in the lives of the adolescents suffering from this disorder. Depression is a multidimensional phenomenon that has been linked to biological, psychosocial and cognitive risk factors. Adolescents may be at risk for depression because adolescence is a time of physical, hormonal, emotional and intellectual changes. Depression may lead to impaired social and school performances and to poor physical health. In addition to a reduced quality of life, depression has also been linked to suicidal ideation and attempts. Suicide is the third cause of death in adolescents in the United States.The purpose of this practice inquiry was to conduct a critical review and synthesis of the literature on evidence-based treatment of unipolar depression in adolescents and to make recommendations for health care providers. This topic was chosen because of the high prevalence of depression in adolescents and because of the devastating effects of not treating this disorder.The methods used to synthesize the literature are described in the Guide for Literature Reviews by Cooper (1998). After the problem was identified, a literature search was conducted in PubMed, Cinahl, Psych Info, Complementary and Alternative Medicine and AMED. Next, the literature yielded 93 articles. The evidence from the literature was ranked according to the Oncology Nursing Society (ONS), Putting Evidence into Practice (PEP), Levels of Evidence scale. This system is an adaptation of the Rating the Quality of Evidence for Clinical Practice Guidelines developed by Hadorn and others (1996). Lastly, the recommendations for practice were made based on the ONS PEP, Weight of Evidence Classification Schema by Mitchell & Friese. Based on the evidence found in the literature, a guideline with the recommendations for practice was developed.The need for the treatment of adolescents with depression was supported in this synthesis of the literature. Future research is needed to explore treatment modalities tailored to the developmental, biological, psychosocial and cultural needs of adolescents and their families.

The Hohokam Water Management Simulation (HWM) is a computer simulation for exploring the operation of the Hohokam irrigation systems in southern Arizona. The simulation takes a middle road between two common kinds of archaeological simulation: large-scale, detailed landscape and environmental reconstructions and highly abstract hypothesis-testing simulations. Given the apparent absence in the Hohokam context of a central authority, the specific aim of the HWM is approaching the Hohokam as a complex system, using principles such as resilience, robustness, and self-organization. The Hohokam case is reviewed, and general questions concerning how the irrigation systems operated are shown to subsume multiple crosscutting and unresolved issues. Existing proposals about the relevant aspects of Hohokam society and of its larger long-term trajectory are based on widely varying short- and long-term processes that invoke different elements, draw different boundaries, and operate at different spatial and temporal scales, and many rely on information that is only incompletely available. A framework for pproaching problems of this kind is put forward. A definition of modeling is offered that specifies its epistemological foundations, permissible patterns of inference, and its role in our larger scientific process. Invoking Logical Positivism, a syntactic rather than semantic view of modeling is proposed: modeling is the construction of sets of assertions about the world and deductions that can be drawn from them. This permits a general model structure to be offered that admits hypothetical or provisional assertions and the flexible interchange of model components of varying scope and resolution. Novel goals for archaeological inquiry fall from this flexible approach; these move from specific reconstruction to a search for more universal and general dynamics. A software toolkit that embodies these principles is introduced: the Assertion-Based Computer Modeling toolkit (ABCM), which integrates simulation with the logical architecture of a relational database, and further provides an easy means for linking models of natural and social processes (including agent-based modeling). The application of this to the Hohokam context is described, and an extended example is presented that demonstrates the flexibility, utility and challenges of the approach. An attached file provides sample output.

Asthma is a chronic disease that affects 8.4 million children in the United States (American Lung Association [ALA], 2007). Adolescents with asthma need tailored management of their care with attention given to particular developmental concerns. Standards of care, such as the National Heart, Lung, Blood Institute [NHLBI] 2007 asthma guidelines (NHLBI, 2007), exist to guide patient care and in this case, also address specific adolescent needs. Advanced practice nurses should incorporate "national standards of care as a framework for managing patient care" (American Association of Nurse Practitioners [AANP], 2007, p. 2). There is a lack of research about nurse practitioner use of standards of care, especially in caring for adolescents with asthma.The purpose of this practice inquiry was to explore patterns of practice and perceptions of practice by the nurse practitioners who care for adolescents with asthma, and to evaluate the current patterns of practice in comparison with national standards for providing care to adolescents with asthma at the Larry Combest Community Health Wellness Center [LCCHWC]. The design for this practice inquiry was descriptive retrospective, using mixed methods for process evaluation of a program through description of nurse practitioner practice at an academic nurse-managed primary care clinic.The nurse practitioners addressed all components of the process of care recommended by the AANP (2007), which includes assessment, diagnosis, development and implementation of a treatment plan, and evaluation of the patient status. However, despite comments about the importance of using evidence based practice in the form of guidelines, results from health records review indicate that nurse practitioners have not fully integrated the NHLBI 2007 asthma guidelines into providing care to adolescents with asthma. This study establishes a baseline measure of adoption of the NHLBI 2007 asthma guidelines by nurse practitioners at this clinic site. The results of this study may ultimately contribute to nurse practitioners' awareness of use of standards of care and improved quality of care for adolescents with asthma.

The search engine has become one of the most popular tools used on the Internet. Most of the existing search engines locate information based on queries consisting of a small number of keywords provided by the users. Although those search engines can query their databases and retrieve documents in a timely manner, the quality of the results is often unsatisfactory. This problem, based on previous studies and our observation, is partially due to the lack of semantic interpretation of a search request, as well as the user's incapability to precisely express their information need in a short query. In this research, we propose a conceptual framework that classifies various types of context in a Web search environment and present a new semantics-based approach that disambiguates user queries by analyzing the "relationship" context associated with query concepts.Our multi-methodological research approach includes: (i) building a context framework by categorizing different types of context; (ii) proposing a search mechanism that discovers and utilizes semantic relationships among query terms; (iii) demonstrating the practical implications of our proposed model using a proof-of-concept prototype system; and (iv) evaluating the usefulness of "relationship" context through an experimental study. From a technical perspective, our approach integrates ideas from semantic network, ontology, and information retrieval techniques. The experimental study conducted in the medical domain shows that our approach is effective and outperforms an existing popular search engine on search tasks consisting of key semantic relationships.

There has been a continuous push among industry, educators, and accreditation organizations to infiltrate all levels of engineering education with design skills development instruments. At Texas A&M University there was the unique opportunity to modify a manufacturing and materials laboratory with this ideal in mind. Prior to 2001 the materials and manufacturing laboratories were independent initiatives. Recently, these courses have been combined into one entity. It was proposed that if these two courses integrated fully under the umbrella of one project, that the students would better understand the nature of product development in design and that this simple change would result in a higher level of learning. The proposed manufacturing and materials selection project was a 1/8th scale replica of a 12 lb. Civil War Napoleon Cannon in a field mount. The product was selected due to its ease of manufacture and potential for addressing a sufficient variety of materials during development. The development of the product followed a simple timeline. Initially, students took an existing model and used it to develop working drawings. Next the barrel material was selected by examining the performance of two materials using common testing methods. Selected materials were then subjected to heat treatment. Once the material processing was complete; Manual Machining, CNC Machining, Welding and a novel Rapid Manufacturing approach were used to produce the cannons. The cannons were then tested and destroyed for metallographic examination. A quasi-experimental two by two factorial design was used to evaluate the effects of the innovative laboratory treatment compared with the effects of standard laboratory treatment. Assessment was performed using two instruments. These instruments consisted of three student surveys and two open-ended qualitative essays graded for depth of learning using analytic rubrics. Preliminary results indicate that the students are highly enthused by the new class. Analysis of the open-ended qualitative essays indicate that the students in the treatment, or project-based, laboratory performed at an equal level to those in the non-treatment, or control group.

This thesis presents the development of a hydrologic model in the vector environment. Establishing spatial relationship between flow elements is the key for flow routing techniques. Such a relationship is called hydrologic topology, making each flow element know which other elements are upstream and which are downstream. Based on the hydrologic topology established for the flow elements, tools were developed for flow network navigation, drainage area estimation, flow length calculation and drainage divide determination. To apply the tools, data required might be obtained from different sources, which may lead to certain problems that have to do with wrong flow direction of stream lines and, mismatches in location of stream lines with respect to the corresponding drainage area polygons. Procedures to detect such inconsistencies and to correct them have been developed and are presented here. Data inconsistencies correction and parameter computation methods form the basis for the development of a routing model, which would be referred as hydrologic model. The hydrologic model consists of an overland flow routing module, two options for channel routing and a reservoir routing module. Two case studies have been presented to show the application of the tools developed.

The formulation of the scientific problem New challenge society, opening possibilities, tradition standpoint, emphasize real news importance, don‘t be in keeping changing society and activities requirements. Upbringing are orientating to special habits, to be able to live in the society and to get more information and news in the public education and bringing up schools. (www.smm.lt ). Developing social industrial system, increasing education system, social service requirements problems are very growing problem in the schools. One of the most important conditions social in providing pedagogical help is team-based work. In that way the work of individual professionals can be coordinated, the optimal need of social pedagogical help can be determined, the cooperation among institutions and departments can be increased.

Wireless networked control systems use shared wireless links to communicate between sensors and controllers, and require a channel access policy to arbitrate access to the links. Existing multiple access protocols perform this role in an agnostic manner, by remaining insular to the applications that run over the network. This approach does not give satisfactory control performance guarantees. To enable the use of wireless networks in emerging industrial applications, we must be able to systematically design wireless networked control systems that provide guaranteed performances in resource-constrained networks. In this thesis, we advocate the use of state-based channel access policies. A state-based policy uses the state of the controlled plant to influence access to the network. The state contains information about not only the plant, but also the network, due to the feedback in the system. Thus, by using the state to decide when and how frequently to transmit, a control system can adapt its contribution to the network traffic, and enable the network to adapt access to the plant state. We show that such an approach can provide better performance than existing methods. We examine two different state-based approaches that are distributed and easy to implement on wireless devices: event-based scheduling and adaptive prioritization. Our first approach uses events to reduce the traffic in the network. We use a state-based scheduler in every plant sensor to generate non-coordinated channel access requests by selecting a few critical data packets, or events, for transmission. The network uses a contention resolution mechanism to deal with simultaneous channel access requests. We present three main contributions for this formulation. The first contribution is a structural analysis of stochastic event-based systems, where we identify a dual predictor architecture that results in separation in design of the state-based scheduler, observer and controller. The second contribution is a Markov model that describes the interactions in a network of event-based systems. The third contribution is an analysis of the stability of event-based systems, leading to a stabilizing design of event-based policies. Our second approach uses state-based priorities to determine access to the network. We use a dominance protocol to evaluate priorities in a contention-based setting, and characterize the resulting control performance. An implementation and evaluation of this channel access mechanism on sensor nodes is also presented. The thesis finally examines the general networked control problem of jointly optimizing measurement and control policies, when a nonlinear measurement policy is used to perform quantization, event-triggering or companding. This contribution focuses on some of the fundamental aspects of analyzing and synthesizing control systems with state-based measurement policies in a more generalized setting. We comment on the dual effect, certainty equivalence and separation properties for this problem. In particular, we show that it is optimal to apply separation and certainty equivalence to a design problem that permits a dynamic choice of the measurement and control policies. / <p>QC 20140408</p>

The increasing tendency of youth getting involved in crime, globally as well as in South Africa is an indication of the comprehensive problem and the duty that is resting upon professionals dealing with the youth. It is therefore important that in South Africa attention will be given to the young first offender. Various intervention methods such as drama-based intervention can be used as service delivery for the young first offender. Drama based intervention hold various therapeutic values for the young first offender. This program can make use of various methods for intervention such as, dance, movement and theatre. The objectives of the program, the need of the participants as well as the background of each individual participant are determining the choice of the intervention method. A drama-based intervention program was used for the study. The aim of this study was to examine the nature of a drama-based intervention for young first offenders. The aims were to: • Through an intensive literature study the various intervention methods was studied. The finding of the literature study was that the involvement of the first young offender within any creative activity has a lasting effect on the social development of the client resulting in a decrease in anti-social behaviour such as crime. Experimental exercises that is based on social learning-; role- and cognitive-behavioural theory are very effective in working with young people • To develop, implement and evaluate a drama-based intervention program through an intensive literature study and empirical research. This program needs to focus on the decreasing and prevention of recidivism with young first offenders. This goal was achieved as the program was developed according to guidelines of the GEESE theatre, which was adapted for South-African circumstances. The program was implemented and evaluated with a group of seven young first offenders. The research showed that the most effective intervention program for young first offenders should be more experimental and based upon creative arts, rather than a structured goal-oriented program, creating opportunities for in-depth exploration of the inner self. The program would then also help the respondent to develop resiliency by building on protective factors, identifying risk factors and developing skills to manage factors such as low self esteem, family relations, peer pressure and poverty. / Thesis (M.A. (MW))--North-West University, Potchefstroom Campus, 2005.