Bakgrund: Det har studerats huruvida styrkeövningar genomförda med två armar (bilateralt) leder till bättre prestation i jämförelse med övningar genomförda med enbart en arm (unilateralt), och det har visat sig att båda genomförandena resulterar i liknande resultat efter en kortare träningsperiod. Samtidigt visar forskning på att blandade resultat mellan olika genomföranden sett till muskelaktivering och kraftutveckling existerar. Syfte: Huvudsyftet med denna studie var att se effekten av unilateral eller bilateral uppvärmning i bänkpress och dess påverkan på efterföljande unilaterala och bilaterala genomföranden i bänkpress, i faktorerna muskelaktivering, effekt, och kraftutveckling. Dessutom var syftet att relatera resultaten i studien till bilateralt index för att se om bilateralt underskott eller bilateral facilitering dominerade. Metod: Styrketränade män (n = 13, ålder 25 ± 3 år) värmde upp med två olika genomföranden (unilateralt eller bilateralt) och efter varje individs uppvärmning utfördes tre submaximala lyft (40 och 80 % av 1RM) i unilateral och bilateral bänkpress. Muskelaktivering, effekt, och kraftutveckling, uppmättes i musklerna pectoralis major, främre deltoideus, och triceps brachii, efter varje individs uppvärmning under tre submaximala lyft (40 och 80 % av 1RM) i unilateral och bilateral bänkpress. Resultat: Signifikanta resultat hittades vid unilateral prestation i effekt och kraftutveckling efter unilateral uppvärmning (184 ± 36 W och 164 ± 31 W; 416 ± 76 N och 412 ± 74 N), jämfört med bilateral uppvärmning (p = 0,05). Vid bilateral prestation hittades ingen signifikant skillnad mellan de olika genomförandena. Ingen signifikant skillnad hittades heller i muskelaktivering i något av genomförandena. I studien hittades även bevis på skillnad mellan testdeltagare gällande bilateralt underskott och bilateral facilitering sett till effekt och kraftutveckling, där större delen av testdeltagarna hade bilateral facilitering. Slutsats: Oberoende av uppvärmning kunde ingen skillnad ses i styrketränade män gällande muskelaktivering i bilateral eller unilateral bänkpress, däremot hade uppvärmningen betydelse för prestationen. Därför ska unilateral uppvärmning appliceras inför unilateral prestation, då detta visade på signifikant förbättring. Trots ingen signifikant förbättring bör även ett bilateralt genomförande efterfölja en bilateral uppvärmning. / Background: It has been studied whether strength-exercises performed with two arms (bilateral) leads to better performance when compared to exercises performed with only one arm (unilateral), and it has been shown that both implementations result in similar results after a short training period. At the same time, research shows that mixed results between different implementations in terms of muscle activation and force development exists. Objective: The main purpose of this study was to see the effect of unilateral or bilateral warm-up in the bench press and its influence on subsequent unilateral and bilateral performance in the bench press, investigating the factors: muscle activation, power, and force development. A secondary purpose was to relate the results of the study to bilateral index, to see if bilateral deficit or bilateral facilitation dominates. Method: Strength-trained men (n = 13, age 25 ± 3 years) warmed up with two different implementations (unilateral or bilateral), and after each individual warm-up they performed three submaximal lifts (40 and 80% of 1RM) in unilateral and bilateral bench press. Muscle activity, power, and force development were measured in muscles pectoralis major, anterior deltoid, and triceps brachii, after each individual warm-up during three submaximal lifts (40 and 80% of 1RM) in unilateral and bilateral bench press. Results: Significant results were found in unilateral performance in power and force development after unilateral warm-up (184 ± 36 W and 164 ± 31 W; 416 ± 76 N and 412 ± 74 N) compared with bilateral warm-up (p = 0.05). There were no significant differences between the different implementations in bilateral performance. Significant differences were neither found in the muscle activation of any of the implementations. The study also found evidence of a difference between the test participants regarding bilateral deficit and bilateral facilitation in terms of power and force development, where the majority of the test participants had bilateral facilitation. Conclusion: Regardless of warm-up, no difference was seen in the strength-trained men regarding muscle activation in the bilateral or unilateral bench press, however, the warm-up  was of importance to performance. Therefore, unilateral warm-up should be applied before unilateral performance, as this showed significant improvement. Although no significant improvement was observed, a bilateral warm-up should also preceed a bilateral performance.

Abstract available in the Journal of Investigative Medicine.

A dissertation submitted to the Department of History in fulfilment of the requirements for the Degree of Master of Arts in the Faculty Arts at the University of Zululand, 2018. / Bilateral trade flows among the BRICS member states thus far have contributed mutually between the progressions of each country and continue to. Nevertheless, South Africa‘s economy does not allow it to continue lagging behind its alliance partners. South Africa needed to be robust when it comes to the trade agreements with the group, since South Africa‘s economy has been scrabbling in growth in the past few years. With South Africa‘s economy still experiencing pressure from the global economic slowdown and domestic structural bottlenecks including labour unrest, unemployment remains high especially among young Africans and income inequality has increased. Economic growth has been volatile as the country has had to cope with the consequences of global crises. With all of these challenges the country is facing, one can only ask about where the aid of the BRIC countries is. Conversely, South Africa‘s role as the member of BRICS still remains cognisance. The bilateral flows of BRICS countries still remain largely influenced by the gains of China, however with time, the export and import performance continue increasing the volume of trade of each BRICS country, which also alone increases each country‘s economic activities like the FDI and the in-flow and out-flows of imports and exports industry.1 The BRICS countries today present an opportunity as new growth poles in a multi-polar world. As demonstrated during the global crisis when they played a pivotal role by recovering fast from the crisis; more than just that, the BRICS countries as a unit carry the capacity of changing the world on account of both the threats and the opportunities they present economically, socially and politically.2 Analysts and international agencies suggest and advice that investors should pay careful attention to the opportunities offered by BRICS member states and the impact and influence they carry globally.

Background: Strength and power are important factors in many sports, and rotational power of the trunk and upper body are important components of golf performance. Trunk and pelvis cooperated in the rotation movement and strength in the muscles surrounding these segments is contributing to a successful and powerful rotation. Side-to-side asymmetry is often discussed in the field of injury prevention and it is suggested that bilateral imbalances affects the performance. Hand strength is a measure of diverse use when testing physical requirements in athletes. It has previously been concluded that hands strength correlates strongly with strength in both lower and upper extremity in youths, but the correlation among adults and athletes are unknown. In golf, hand strength has been stated to be one of the most important components for golf performance and it strongly correlates with golf specific variables such as ball speed and drivers distance. The relationship between hand strength and rotational power is unknown. Aim: The aim was to study rotational peak power and hand strength in young golf players to compare side-to-side differences and the relationship between rotational peak power and hand strength. Methods: Twenty-seven subjects, 22 men and 5 women, with a golf handicap of ≤5 participated in the study. The two tests performed was a hand strength test using a T.K.K handheld dynamometer and a rotational peak power test in Quantum. The tests were performed at the same session, first hand strength and then rotational peak power. In order to test the rotational peak power a 1RM test was performed. In order to study the relationship between hand strength and rotational power a Spearman´s range of correlation (rs) was used. A Wilcoxon signed-ranked test was used to study the side-to-side differences between dominant and non-dominant hand strength and rotational power. Results: No statistical significant differences were found between dominant and non-dominant hand strength (p = 0.28) or between dominant and non-dominant rotational power (p = 0.97). A strong correlation between dominant hand strength and dominant rotational power was found (rs = 0.636) and a moderate correlation between non-dominant hand strength and non-dominant rotational power (rs = 0.589). Conclusion: There are no side-to-side differences in hand strength or rotational power in young healthy golf players. Dominant hand strength correlates strongly with dominant rotational power.

TESIS PARA OPTAR AL GRADO DE Magíster en Economía / El sistema de salud en Chile difiere considerablemente de los sistemas existentes en el mundo en términos de competencia. Por lo tanto, este trabajo se enfoca en los efectos de la competencia en el sistema de salud en Chile en dos niveles: los efectos de las estructuras de mercado sobre los precios y las negociaciones existentes entre aseguradoras y los proveedores de salud. Utilizando un panel de datos entre 2010 y el 2015, para un conjunto de prestaciones homogéneas, encontramos que la participación de mercado de las aseguradoras no tiene efectos significativos. Mientras que el aumento en la participación de los prestadores de salud aumenta significativamente los precios en $69,19 para una canasta de 17 exámenes ambulatorios de promedio $5500, y $4440,15 sobre los servicios de resonancia de promedio de precios de $195000. Además, por el lado de las negociaciones, las aseguradoras utilizan la relación derivada del flujo de pacientes a los hospitales para afectar los precios a su favor.

Thesis (Ph.D.), Faculty of Health Sciences, University of the Witwatersrand, 2009 / The purpose of this study was to assess the improvement of scissor skills after a graded scissor skills program in preschool children in South Africa (SA). A bilateral fine motor skills assessment tool was developed for use in this research. This task-based assessment included every day activities required at school as well as personal management items. This research phase included the development of the test items and test instructions, scoring as well as validity and reliability testing of the assessment. A suitable scissor skills program was then developed for Grade 0 children in South Africa. The program was validated by a pilot study and also by a focus group of occupational therapists. Some changes were made to the picture selection, the grading of the program, as well as to teacher instructions on how to present the program before it was finalised and ready for use in the implementation phase of the research study. The implementation phase of the study included the individual assessment of 149 learners (mean age of 5 years 6 months), from three different schools in South Africa. The main aim was to establish the effectiveness of the scissor skills program by measuring skill improvement, transferability of skills and skill retention. A further aim was to compare the difference of skill levels of learners from various socio-economic backgrounds in South Africa. The results showed statistically significant improvement in scissor skills in all groups from the three different schools, as well as an ability to retain the learnt skills. Participants from lower socio-economic backgrounds demonstrated the least skill initially but made the greatest gains during the program, at times decreasing the gap between themselves and other participants. It was concluded that children benefited from a graded scissor skills program, which allowed them to improve and retain their scissor skills but improvement did not transfer to other fine motor tasks.

Diss. (sammanfattning) Stockholm : Karolinska institutet, 2007. / Härtill 4 uppsatser.

Magister Legum - LLM / BITs signed prior to the 21st century are problematic. Some countries with BITs signed during this period have since reviewed those BITs and taken action to address the disadvantages the BITs held for the host nation or have either resorted to eradicating some of their BITs. In particular, developing countries that signed BITs with developed nations seem to be disproportionately disadvantaged in these agreements. This thesis highlights Kenya‟s current BIT situation and compares it in light of another developing country, South Africa, with regards to its BIT experience. Given that South Africa has undergone an extensive BIT review process and moves to change some of these BITs, this thesis compares and contrasts the Kenyan and South African experience. The study highlights the possible lessons that could be learnt from the South African BIT review experience and provides recommendations for the Kenyan government regarding its outdated BITs. The lessons and recommendations benefit not only Kenya but also other countries that are still to review their BITs as it adds to the literature on why it is important for countries with such BITs to revisit them and how best they can go about the review mechanism. In addition, the study is also significant in that it raises awareness of the use and effects of BITs, thereby enabling countries that enter into such agreements to make informed decisions.

A teleoperation system is a master-slave robotic system in which the master and slave robots are at different geographical locations and synchronize their motions through the communication channel, with the goal of enabling the human operator to interact with a remote environment. The two primary objectives of bilateral teleoperation systems, position tracking and force feedback, are necessary for providing the user with high fidelity telepresence. However, time delays in communication channels impede the realization of the two objectives and even destabilize the system. To guarantee stability and improve performance, several damping injection-based controllers have been developed in this thesis for two channel and four channel teleoperation systems. For two channel teleoperation, an adaptive bounded state feedback controller has firstly been proposed to address teleoperation with time-varying delays, model uncertainties and bounded actuations. Next, a simplified and augmented globally exponentially convergent velocity observer has been designed and incorporated in the conventional P+d control to obtain stable bilateral teleoperation without using velocity measurements. Then, the more challenging bounded output feedback control problem has been solved by combining the bounded state feedback control and output feedback control two techniques with more conservative control gains. In four channel teleoperation, a hybrid damping and stiffness adjustment strategy has been introduced to tightly constrain the master and slave robots and achieve robust stability. Further, the nonsingular version is developed to conquer the singularity problem in the hybrid strategy, which has been proved to avoid unexpected torque spikes due to the singularity problem at zero velocities. Besides, this thesis has also provided a reduced-order controller to guarantee position coordination for arbitrarily large position errors and maintain the tight coupling between the master and slave sites. After concluding all the research results, future study directions are pointed out at the end of this thesis. / Graduate

This paper empirically examines the effect of institutional quality on trade considering the gravity equation model. Taking data for 252 countries covering the period of 19 years from 1996 to 2014, the research has been done with two stage regression analysis. In the first stage, we estimate the effect of gravity factors that either benefit or hinder trade along with OECD membership and Linder’s effect by Poisson-Pseudo-Maximum-Likelihood (PPML) estimator with importer- time, and exporter- time fixed effects. Taking the estimated exporter- time fixed effects from the first stage, we regress it with institutional variables in the second stage by OLS method with country and time fixed effects. Results indicate that institutional quality has a significant and positive impact on bilateral export with mostly 1% and 5% significance level. Interestingly, our study also shows that Linder’s effect is negative only for trade among the OCED countries.